Is the Pope Capitalist? – WSJ

“I do not condemn capitalism in the way some attribute to me,” he says in “El Pastor,” a just-published book based on several interviews with him by two Argentine journalists. “Nor am I against the market [economy].”

Who knew?

Pope Francis, in other words, wants to improve capitalism, not do away with it. We’re long used to hearing this “civilizing capitalism” line from the American left. But in the past few years, it’s found a home on the American right. Republican Sen.

Marco Rubio’s

economic goals may differ from those preferred by socialist Sen.

Bernie Sanders

—but both rest on the idea that a fair capitalism has to be tempered by some mix of wise regulation, corporatism and wealth redistribution.

Samuel Gregg

is a distinguished fellow in political economy at the American Institute for Economic Research. He notes that the arguments for more economic intervention from the political and technocratic classes started gaining ascendancy among conservatives when

Donald Trump

ran for president. In his new book, “The Next American Economy,” Mr. Gregg calls this state capitalism—and he says the right’s version will fare no better than the left’s.

“The problems with extensive interventionism into the economy by the government are well established,” he writes. “These include rampant cronyism, massive misallocation of resources, declining competitiveness, the crowding out of the private sector, growing dependency on state hand-outs, the undermining of civil society, and, above all, the relentless expansion of government and consequent undermining of freedom that goes along with that.”

“These problems don’t go away simply because the interventions are being directed by conservatives rather than progressives,” Mr. Gregg says.

What interventionism’s new conservative disciples don’t appreciate…