Cathonomics: How Catholic Social Thought Can Create a More Just Economy

摘要

Many authors have offered critiques of the modern economic system, from Thomas Piketty's (2017) Capitalism in the 21st Century and Binyamin Appelbaum's (2019) The Economists Hour to Kate Raworth's (2017) Doughnut Economics. Joining that list is Fordham University economist Anthony Annett (2022) with his book Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy. Annett critiques our modern economic system from the view of an insider, but one who never lost touch with his working-class roots. He grew up in Ireland and attended Trinity College Dublin - the first in his family to graduate from college. He later earned a Ph.D. studying macroeconomics and political economy from Columbia University in New York City. Annett joined the International Monetary Fund as a speechwriter for IMF presidents, including Christine Lagarde. His broad interest not only in economics, but also in history, theology and philosophy, might have served him well as a speechwriter, but, as Annett notes in the book's preface, left him unsatisfied with the field's technical, mathematical focus. Human relationships in all their complexity were, in the modern economic paradigm, reduced to satisfying individual preferences.