Here’s a letter to a new correspondent.
Mr. __:
Thanks for sharing Sohrab Ahmari’s tweet, which I’d not otherwise have noticed.
It is, frankly, pathetically inept. In order to criticize the pro-free-market Acton Institute, Ahmari favorably quotes Pope Leo’s assertion that “pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty.”
I’ve not read the document in which the Pope makes this remark, but I doubt that the Pope – whatever his merits as a theologian – did a thorough survey of the relevant economic literature.
First, by using the word “automatically,” the Pope slays a straw man. I know of no serious scholar who claims that the free market “will automatically solve the problem of poverty.” From Adam Smith through Milton Friedman and Deirdre McCloskey, credible scholars have recognized that individual initiative plays a significant role in determining the particular economic ‘outcomes’ of individuals within market economies.
Second, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that the more economically free is a society, the greater is the material wealth not only of the mean or median person (and household) in that society, but also of the persons (and households) in the lowest deciles of those societies’ income ‘distributions.’ Just a few days ago the Fraser Institute released its Economic Freedom of the World: 2025 Annual Report. I urge Ahmari – and the Pope – to study this document carefully. It’s social science in the truest and best sense of the term, and there’s nothing pseudo-scientific about the data presented there.
This report shows a clear, positive correlation between economic freedom and various measures of material well-being. For example (quoting the Report):
– “The rate of poverty in the least free quartile [of countries] is about 25 times greater than it is in the freest”;
– “The level of income earned by the poorest 10% of the population is much higher in countries with greater economic freedom”;
– “People in the freest quartile live about 17 years longer than those in the least-free quartile”;
– “In the least-free countries, infants die at nearly 10 times the rate as they do in the freest countries.”
These last two facts, I should think, would be weighed especially heavily by people who are pro-life.
Perhaps the Pope and Ahmari will insist that these data are “pseudo-scientific” – in which case I’d ask them to offer in response their own data. I’m quite sure that they have none that begin to hold a scientific candle to the data in this Report.
I end with one other relevant fact: patterns of immigration. Most immigrants, if they are allowed, flee from countries that are economically less free to countries that are economically more free. Economically free countries (stupidly, in my opinion) struggle to limit immigration; economically unfree countries struggle to limit emigration. This reality ought to carry more than a little weight with the pontiff and his flock.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
