Acting Principal

Structures of Sin That Create Poverty and Extreme Inequality

I could continue to write about Dilexe te, the apostolic exhortation that was started by Pope Francis and finished by Pope Leo XIV for months, however, in this last instalment, I wanted to delve deeper into an ever-changing society and the challenges we face.

Paragraph 92 states ‘We must continue, then, to denounce the “dictatorship of an economy that kills,” and to recognise that “while the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is being born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.” [94] There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything. Nevertheless, the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences.’

As Christians, Australians and members of the St Patrick’s College community, we must stand up for those who are less fortunate and those people who need a helping hand. In my Economics class, we teach the concepts of the Lorenz Curve and the Gini co-efficient. Concepts that graphically and mathematically represent the measurement of the distribution of income and wealth. I often argue that the world would be a better place if all students had to undertake economics as a subject, as it gives students an insight into economic literacy that they will need to navigate their lives. The Lorenz Curve and the Gini co-efficient allow us to understand that while we do not want an equal distribution of wealth, we also do not want the gap between rich and poor to become too large, as ultimately that will lead to falling economic growth due to those who we consider rich stop spending and start saving. 

If we look around the world, we have so many extreme politicians and prominent businesspeople weighing in heavily on how we need to continue to open markets as they purport that this will benefit all. Economists would argue that this is not the case as I have stated above. We need to look after those on the margins. We need to challenge thinking that says that markets will sort themselves out. We need to challenge markets that exist in the ‘cloud’ and that have no regulation that allows them to be monitored.

Again, I am not arguing for over-regulation however, if we do not regulate properly, then markets including the one that argues that they are at the centre of the free world - the USA -  will fail, just as they did during the Global Financial Crisis.

An example of market failure exists when I hear some of our students saying that they buy products through TEMU (which has very questionable ethics in its treatment of where it sources its products and labour laws), then saying that their orders never arrived and then selling these products to make a profit. As parents/carers, we need to take the lead and ensure that our children are doing the right thing and acting in the interests of all and not just themselves.

As I tell the students in my class, while tax is not my favourite thing, I understand that paying tax is essentially a good thing as through Australia’s Progressive Tax System, we are able to redistribute money to those who are more in need than myself or my family. We are very quick as a society to say on one hand that we do not want to pay tax, yet on the other hand, we want the government to provide us with more services.

 Pope Leo XIV finishes his letter by asking us as Christians to let love break down barriers to unite strangers. Let us teach our children to love, love for our family is powerful, yet love for all of those who are less fortunate than ourselves is essential and the ultimate expression of living as a Christian.

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Adrian Byrne

Acting Principal