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The doctrines and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have always had a temporal component. The first chapter of James, which contains the famous “If any of you lack wisdom…” promise that Joseph Smith cited as his inspiration for the prayer leading to the First Vision, also contains this emphatic assertion:

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. [1]
This New Testament precedent was echoed in modern revelations. For example, Joseph Smith revealed the link between poverty and spiritual unity in the definition of Enoch’s Zion:
And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them. [2]
Next year came an even more stark revelation:
It is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin. [3]
The scriptural emphasis on equality and practical concern was necessarily matched by an even more pervasive institutional emphasis. Persecution and the hardships of frontier life and intercontinental immigration ensured that temporal needs were always in focus, and this tradition has continued to modern days with the Church’s welfare efforts and programs like the Perpetual Education Fund (initiated in 2001). [4]

Mormonism has a long history of concern for poverty, drawing from biblical sources as well as restoration scriptures. When the “threefold mission” was unveiled in 1981 [5], there was no mention made of poverty or economic equality. However, the threefold mission was extended in 2009 to include a fourth point: “to care for the poor and needy.” [6] This once again puts the Zion ideal of “no poor among them” at the forefront of Mormonism.

One possible explanation for the lack of poverty’s inclusion in the Church’s threefold mission comes from a talk given by President Kimball three years prior to its unveiling: “Becoming the Pure in Heart.”[7] In the talk, he linked a discussion of the “building of Zion through sacrifice and consecration” with a discussion of Church and state welfare programs. This intermingling of the spiritual with the temporal is typical of Mormon theology, which draws no distinction between the two. [8] President Kimball and other leaders of the day often broke anti-poverty measures down into two categories: (1) voluntary redistribution, which included things like locally administered Church-led welfare programs and independent charitable organizations, and (2) involuntary redistribution, including centralized government programs funded with tax dollars.

Yet, a quiet revolution has taken place since the 1980s that has fundamentally altered the discussion by demonstrating that it is economic growth rather than redistribution which most fundamentally alleviates poverty. But in order to fully appreciate it we must first adjust our perspective. All serious discussion of poverty should begin with a global perspective, rather than one restricted to any particular nation or group of nations. Certainly God’s concern for the suffering of His children doesn’t respect national boundaries. More importantly, however, the degrees of deprivation and suffering that are common in the developing world necessarily take precedence over the relatively minor inequalities faced in developed nations. How many protesters who decry the privilege of the top 1% of earners in the United States realize that anyone making more than $34,000 annually (after taxes) is in the top 1% of earners in the entire world? [9] As important as real inequalities within the United States may be, they pale in comparison to the hardships faced around the world.

The good news, however, is that in recent decades poverty has receded as never before in human history. The gains in lifting large swathes of humanity permanently out of poverty are truly unprecedented. News of this progress is not widely known, however, probably at least in part because the generally recognized reason for the stunning successes that have been made so far is not some kind formal, centralized program or policy, but rather the expansion of capitalism and economic freedoms. Because this progress is decentralized and not always even intentionally related to anti-poverty efforts, it lacks a cohesive, dedicated lobby. Because the changes are incremental they are easy to overlook. Thus, although charitable organizations and NGOs provide valuable and life-saving services (especially in times of acute crisis), in the long run it seems to be economic growth that has quietly but methodically come to the rescue of those in want.

As a recent issue of The Economist explained, one of the main targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) was to halve global poverty (extreme poverty being defined as $1.25 a day in 2005 prices) between 1990 and 2015. [10] That goal was achieved years early and the credit largely lies with one thing: “The MDGs may have helped marginally, by creating a yardstick for measuring progress, and by focusing minds on the evil of poverty. Most of the credit, however, must go to capitalism and free trade, for they enable economies to grow—and it was growth, principally, that has eased destitution.” [11]

fig1

(Sala-i-Martin, Pinkovskiy, 2010. Adjusted for 2000 dollars.)

The World Bank reported that for the first time, all six developing regions—East Asia and Pacific, China, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa—have seen progress. In 2008, 22% of the developing world’s population lived on $1.25 a day or less compared to 43% in 1990 and 52% in 1981. [12] “These factors,” write the Brooking Institution’s Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, “are manifestations of a set of broader trends – the rise of globalization, the spread of capitalism and the improving quality of economic governance – which together have enabled the developing world to begin converging on advanced economy incomes after centuries of divergence. The poor countries that display the greatest success today are those that are engaging with the global economy, allowing market prices to balance supply and demand and to allocate scarce resources, and pursuing sensible and strategic economic policies to spur investment, trade and job creation. It’s this potent combination that sets the current period apart from a history of insipid growth and intractable poverty.”[13] In their 2011 study, Chandy and Gertz argued that poverty has declined so rapidly that the MDG goal of halving the rate of global poverty was likely met three years prior to their report. [14] Since 2000, developing economies have enjoyed a growth rate far higher than advanced economies. “From 2003 onwards, developing economies have expanded by more than 6 percent in every year except 2009, during the height of the Great Recession.” [15] The developing economies recovered quickly, reaching a rate of about 6 percent that will likely continue through 2015.

The Canada-based Fraser Institute publishes its oft-cited Economic Freedom of the World report annually. Its indicator--known as the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) Index--defines economic freedom based on five major areas: (1) size of the central government, (2) legal system and the security of property rights, (3) stability of the currency, (4) freedom to trade internationally, and (5) regulation of labor, credit, and business. According to its most recent report (which looks at data from 2011 [16]), countries with more economic freedom had substantially higher per-capita incomes. Those in the “most free” quartile brought in an average of $36,466, while those in the “least free” quartile only averaged $4,382. Freer countries also had higher rates of economic growth, the freest growing at 3.69% and the least free left at 1.09% between 1991 and 2011. What is perhaps the most striking find is the income earned by the poorest 10% in these countries: the poor in the least free eked out a mere $932, while those in the most free earned $10,556. Although their earnings may still seem low in the eyes of most Westerners, it is important to recognize that economic freedom allows the poorest 10% to earn over ten-times the amount of those in the least free countries.  

fig2

(Gwartney, Lawson, Hall, 2013)


Economist Joseph Connors compared the impact of economic freedom, democracy, and foreign aid on global poverty between 1980 and 2005. [17] Drawing on the EFW Index mentioned above, Connors found that a one unit increase in the average level of EFW over the 25 year period led to an 11.41 percentage point lower extreme poverty rate in 2005. [18] In comparison, democratic institutions had little impact on poverty, while foreign aid had virtually none.

Peter Leeson of George Mason University found countries that became more capitalist (defined according to the EFW Index and the World Bank) over the last 25 years also grew wealthier. GDP per capita (PPP) rose by 43%--from about $7,600 to nearly $11,800. Rich countries that became slightly less economically free saw little change in their GDP per capita. Surplus wealth over the years can allow for increased governmental consumption with little negative effects. Unfortunately, countries already low in economic freedom who backslid further experienced declines in GDP per capita. [19] The strength of these correlations caused Leeson to conclude, “Global capitalism’s effect is clear to the point of smacking one in the face: it has made the world unequivocally better off.” [20]

Harvard’s Andrei Shleifer has shown that between 1980 and 2005, world per capita income grew about 2% per year. During this 25 year period, serious hindrances on economic freedom declined: the world median inflation rate dropped from 14.3% in 1980 to 4.1% in 2005. The population-weighted world average of top marginal income tax rates fell from 65% in 1980 to 36.7% in 2005, while the world average tariff rates fell from 43% to 13 percent. [21] “In the Age of Milton Friedman,” summarizes Shleifer, “the world economy expanded greatly, the quality of life improved sharply for billions of people, and dire poverty was substantially scaled back. All this while the world embraced free market reforms.” [22]

A recent survey of the literature by economists Joshua Hall and Robert Lawson found that nearly 50% of the articles citing the EFW Index used it as an independent variable in an empirical study. Nearly 70% of these studies found economic freedom corresponding to “good” outcomes like faster growth, better living standards, more happiness, greater gender equality, and the reduced risk of civil conflicts. Less than 4% found “bad” outcomes like increased income inequality. [23]

The evidence is highly suggestive that economic freedom results in positive outcomes for the poor. As summarized neatly in her response to the anti-Friedman slogan that began popping up in 2009 (i.e. “Milton Friedman, Proud Father of Global Misery”), economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey writes,

Some misery: income per head in the world and the world's poor increased in real terms from 1973...to 1998...by 40 percent. In the countries that followed [Friedman’s] philosophy more exactly than the world-as-a-whole, the increase was much larger even than the world's average of 40 percent. In China, for example, much influenced by Friedman's ideas after 1978 (his book of 1962, Capitalism and Freedom, was widely read by Chinese reformers), it was a factor of 3.7, or 270 percent. In Ireland, which dramatically liberalized a la Friedman, it was a factor of 3.2, or 220 percent. My poor Irish sixth cousins were saved by Friedmanian devotion to the market and innovation. [24]
Columbia University economist and international trade expert Jagdish Bhagwati has argued effectively that “globalization, in the specific form of freer trade…impl[ies] a closer integration into the world economy” and is thus a “poverty-reducing policy.” [25] Drawing on the examples of China and India [26], Bhagwati concludes “that freer trade is associated with higher growth and that higher growth is associated with reduced poverty.” [27] In fact, Bhagwati argues that it “was bad policy that kept China and India from growing in the first place. Only after liberal economic reforms did these countries register accelerated growth rates that, during the last 20 years, finally pulled nearly 500 million people above the poverty line. However grim the current [financial] crisis has been, it cannot be used to deny this elemental truth.” [28] Being of the view that there is “no way to significantly affect the share of the pie going to the bottom 30 percent,” Bhagwati argues that “the most important thing [is] to grow the pie…[G]rowth had to be the principal…strategy for raising the incomes, and hence consumption and living standards, of the poor.” [29]

Yet, with the continual rise of the poor out of destitute poverty, it seems logical that global inequality would also be declining. Happily, recent evidence seems to supports the logic. As former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic put it, “[P]erhaps for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, there may be a decline in global inequality…For the first time in almost two hundred years—after a long period during which global inequality rose and then reached a very high plateau—it may be setting on a downward path.” [30] Though cautious in his conclusions, Milanovic nevertheless finds that when population is factored into the data, the evidence demonstrates that the world became a “much better (“more convergent” or more equal) place” between 1980 and 2011. When country price levels (used to determine purchasing power) are factored in, a decline in global inequality can be seen over the past decade.

Several studies [31] over the past few years have found that as the world poverty rates plummeted, so did global inequality. As one pair of researchers explains,
We can compute not only the world poverty rates and the poverty rates of any country or region, but also other statistics related to the distribution of income. For instance, we can compute the world gini coefficient, a measure of world inequality, for every year between 1970 and 2006. We show that world inequality measured by the gini fell from 67.6 to 61.2 (Figure 3), and similar declines in inequality can be shown for other inequality statistics, such as the mean logarithmic deviation, the Theil Index, and the Atkinson family of inequality indices. [32]

fig3

(Sala-i-Martin, Pinkovskiy, 2010)

While inequality is still high and increasing within countries, global inequality (between countries) has seen an unprecedented decline. [33] “Even though the bulk of this decline is due to the performance of China and other Asian countries,” evidence shows “that a (weaker) declining trend survives even when these countries are excluded from the analysis.”[34] Economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek noted that

“after rapid progress has continued for some time, the cumulative advantage for those who follow is great enough to en­able them to move faster than those who lead and that, in consequence, the long-drawn-out column of human progress tends to close up…[O]nce the rise in the position of the lower classes gathers speed, catering to the rich ceases to be the main source of great gain and gives place to efforts directed toward the needs of the masses. Those forces which at first make inequality self-accentuating thus later tend to diminish it.” [35]
The ongoing triumph of the market and innovation over the cruel deprivations of poverty powerfully illustrates that the “poor are getting poorer” critiques of capitalism may be at best misleading and at worst utterly false. As science writer Matt Ridley explains,
The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better. The poor in the developing world grew their consumption twice as fast as the world as a whole between 1980 and 2000…Despite a doubling of the world population, even the raw number of people living in absolute poverty...has fallen since the 1950s. The percentage living in such absolute poverty has dropped by more than half to less than 18 percent. That number is, of course, still all too horribly high, but the trend is hardly a cause for despair: at the current rate of decline, it would hit zero around 2035, though it probably won’t. The United Nations estimates that poverty was reduced more in the last fifty years than in the previous 500. [36]
In an early volume of SquareTwo [37], historian and Joseph Smith biographer Richard Bushman wrote that capitalism is “godless” and similar to “Korihor’s creed that one succeeds according to the strength of the creature.”  He criticized what he saw as its encouragement of “rugged individualism as a way of life in direct opposition to the communal service called for by the gospel.” Yet, Ridley argues that the reason for such vast improvements in human welfare is the collective nature of exchange and specialization. Borrowing language from biological evolution, Ridley finds that prosperity derives from the meeting and mating of ideas: “Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution.” [38] Ridley further notes—using the example of a computer mouse in a modern spin on Leonard Reed’s “I, Pencil”—that products today are often made “by hundreds of people, maybe even millions. This is…collective intelligence. No single person knows how to make a computer mouse. The person who assembled it in the factory did not know how to drill the oil well from which the plastic came, or vice versa.” [39] Not only is capitalism playing a major role in creating “no poor among them,” but it is doing so through a highly collective, dare we say communal, endeavor. Perhaps a change in rhetoric surrounding market exchange is in order. [40]

The evidence of the last several decades suggests that commercial enterprise—when it operates within a context of law-and-order and fair play—is an engine of economic growth that lifts people out of poverty. Criticizing economic expansion is a luxury only the already-privileged can afford. It is easy to feel “justified by the warm if mistaken feeling over one's second cappuccino that one is thereby being generous” by simply caring “passionately about the poor.” [41] McCloskey paints a rather vivid picture of this kind of critic: “You sit down with a cup of dark coffee and a nice croissant to read the New York Times, venting daily your hatred of the cruelties recorded there, and as a result are yourself saved, regardless of whether policies of “protection” advocated in its pages do the poor and tortured any actual good.” [42] The position of privilege is further captured by the following anecdote:
A man from Prague was sometimes visited by Czech friends who had settled abroad. They deplored McDonald’s having come to Prague, because it threatened the city’s distinctive charm. This response made the man indignant. How could they regard his home city as a museum, a place for them to visit now and then in order to avoid fast food restaurants. He wanted a real city, including the convenient and inexpensive food that these exile Czechs themselves had access to. A real, living city cannot be a “Prague summer paradise” for tourists. Other countries and their populations do not exist in order to give us picturesque holiday experiences. They, like us, are entitled to choose what they think suits them. [43]
Many General Authorities over the years have spoken positively about capitalism while displaying a strong distrust in centralized economies. [44] Yet, the voiced justification for this distrust largely rested on principles of freedom and human agency. [45] Now, given the evidence, it may be time to support free markets because of their potential to fulfill the newest addition of the “fourfold mission” of the Church: “to care for the poor and needy.”


NOTES:

[1] James 1:27 (KJV) [Back to manuscript].

[2] Moses 7:18 [Back to manuscript].

[3] Doctrine and Covenants 49:20 [Back to manuscript].

[4] Carrie A. Moore, “LDS fund transforms lives,” Deseret News (Sept. 30, 2005): http://www.deseretnews.com/article/615154075/LDS-fund-transforms-lives.html . [Back to manuscript].

[5] The threefold mission was originally expressed by President Spencer W. Kimball in "A Report of My Stewardship," Ensign (May 1981): http://www.lds.org/ensign/1981/05/a-report-of-my-stewardship. However, inklings of the “threefold mission” can be found in the early 20th century. See Ardis E. Parshall, “Origin of the “Threefold Mission of the Church” Statement,” Keepapitchinin (Dec. 10, 2009): http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2009/12/10/origin-of-the-threefold-mission-of-the-church-statement/ . [Back to manuscript].

[6] Peggy Fletcher Stack, "New LDS Emphasis: Care for the Needy," The Salt Lake Tribune (Dec. 9, 2009): http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_13965607 . [Back to manuscript].

[7] "Becoming The Pure in Heart" https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1978/04/becoming-the-pure-in-heart?lang=eng . [Back to manuscript].

[8] “Wherefore, verily I say unto that all things unto [the Lord] are spiritual…” (Doctrine & Covenants 29:34). In his wonderful exploration of Mormon metaphysics, Catholic philosopher Stephen H. Webb explains that “both Mormons and Catholics believe in transubstantiation. They just locate [it] in different theological places…For Catholics, transubstantiation is dramatized in a quite literal way in the Eucharist, where the bread and wine become the first fruits of the eschatological economy of Christ’s abundantly capacious body. That drama for Mormons is not localized in such a specific way…[T]he Saints actually locate transubstantiation in the potential for every event, no matter how mundane, to convey the physically uplifting power of God’s grace…For the Saints, everything we do should rise to the occasion of the Lord’s Supper” (Webb, Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, 74-75). See also Walker Wright, Allen Hansen, “Worship Through Corporeality: Mormonism, Hasidism, and Management,” Presented at the Mormon Transhumanist Association Conference, April 2014. [Back to manuscript].

[9] This is according to Branko Milanovic, The Haves and Have-Nots: A Brief Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 2011). The top 20% requires $5,000 annually, the top 10% requires $12,000 annually, and the top 5% requires $18,500. To be in the top half of the globe, one needs only $1,225 per year. Note: This is per person, i.e. after being divided by the number of household members. [Back to manuscript].

[10] “Poverty Overview,” The World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview . [Back to manuscript].

[11] “Toward the End of Poverty,” The Economist (June 1, 2013): http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim . [Back to manuscript].

[12] “New Estimates Reveal Drop in Extreme Poverty 2005-2010,” The World Bank: Data & Research (Feb. 29, 2012): http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/; “An Update to the World Bank’s Estimates of Consumption Poverty in the Developing World” (2012): http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVCALNET/Resources/Global_Poverty_Update_2012_02-29-12.pdf .[Back to manuscript].

[13] Laurence Chandy, Geoffrey Gertz, “With Little Notice, Globalization Reduced Poverty,” Yale Global Online (July 5, 2011): http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/little-notice-globalization-reduced-poverty . [Back to manuscript].

[14] Laurence Chandy, Geoffrey Gertz, "Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015," Global Views 18 (Brookings Institution, Jan. 2011). [Back to manuscript].

[15] Chandy, Gertz, Jan. 2011: 6. [Back to manuscript].

[16] Economic Freedom of the World: 2013 Annual Report, ed. James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall (Fraser Institute, 2013). [Back to manuscript].

[17] Joseph Connors, “Global Poverty: The Role of Economic Freedom, Democracy, and Foreign Aid,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Economics, Florida State University (2011) . [Back to manuscript].

[18] Ibid., 32-33. [Back to manuscript].

[19] Peter T. Leeson, "Two Cheers for Capitalism?" Society 47:3 (2010): 227-233. Similar arguments were made in Seth W. Norton, James D. Gwartney, “Economic Freedom and World Poverty,” Economic Freedom of the World: 2008 Annual Report, ed. James D. Gwartney, Robert Lawson, with Seth Norton (Economic Freedom Network, 2008). [Back to manuscript].

[20] Leeson, 2010: 233. [Back to manuscript].

[21] Andrei Shleifer, “The Age of Milton Friedman,” Journal of Economic Literature 47:1 (2009): 123-135. [Back to manuscript].

[22] Ibid.: 126. [Back to manuscript].

[23] Joshua C. Hall, Robert A. Lawson, “Economic Freedom of the World: An Accounting of the Literature,” Contemporary Economic Policy 32:1 (2014): 1-19. [Back to manuscript].

[24] Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 426. [Back to manuscript].

[25] Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 52. [Back to manuscript].

[26] China began liberalizing its markets in 1978, while India did so in the early 1990s. [Back to manuscript].

[27] Bhagwati, 2007, 64. [Back to manuscript].

[28] Bhagwati, “Feeble Critiques: Capitalism’s Petty Detractors,” World Affairs (Fall 2009): http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/feeble-critiques-capitalisms-petty-detractors .[Back to manuscript].

[29] Bhagwati, 2007, 54. As of 2011, the share of the poorest 10% is virtually the same in all countries, from the “most free” quartile to the “least free” quartile (Gwartney, Lawson, Hall, 2013). [Back to manuscript].

[30] Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Inequality By the Numbers: An Overview,” World Bank Policy Research Paper 6259 (Nov. 2012): 7-8. [Back to manuscript].

[31] See Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Maxim Pinkovskiy, “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” NBER Working Paper 15433 (Oct. 2009); Sala-i-Martin, Pinkovskiy, “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” VoxEU.org (Jan. 22, 2010): http://www.voxeu.org/article/parametric-estimations-world-distribution-income; Paolo Liberati, “The World Distribution of Income and Its Inequality, 1970 – 2009,” Departmental Working Papers of Economics – Roma Tre University 163 (2012). [Back to manuscript].

[32] Sala-i-Martin, Pinkovskiy, 2010. [Back to manuscript].

[33] Liberati, 2012. [Back to manuscript].

[34] Ibid.: 39. [Back to manuscript].

[35] F.A. Hayek, “The Common Sense of Progress,” The Freeman 10 (Nov. 1960): http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-common-sense-of-progress [Back to manuscript].

[36] Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 15. [Back to manuscript].

[37] Richard L. Bushman, “On Being Ill At Ease in the World,” SquareTwo 2:2 (Summer 2009): http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleBushmanIllAtEase.html . [Back to manuscript].

[38] Ridley, 2010, 7. [Back to manuscript].

[39] Ibid., 5. [Back to manuscript].

[40] McCloskey is of the view that pro-bourgeois rhetoric was the main force behind the Industrial Revolution and the modern world. See McCloskey, 2010. [Back to manuscript].

[41] McCloskey, 2010, 424. [Back to manuscript].

[42] Ibid., 428-429. [Back to manuscript].

[43]Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2003), 282. [Back to manuscript].

[44] See Phillip J. Bryson, “In Defense of Capitalism: Church Leaders on Property, Wealth, and the Economic Order,” BYU Studies 38:3 (1999): 89-107. [Back to manuscript].

[45] Cold War tensions and concern over Communism likely helped fuel this antagonism toward centralized economies. Perhaps the most vocal and controversial General Authority on the subject was Ezra Taft Benson. Just four years prior to Kimball’s “threefold mission” statement, Benson had given a BYU devotional address that declared “collectivized socialism” to be a “counterfeit system to the Lord’s plan” (“A Vision and a Hope for the Youth of Zion,” BYU Devotional, 12 April 1977: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=85). He had even given an address in the October 1968 General Conference titled “The Proper Role of Government.” For more on Benson’s conservative politics, see Gary James Bergera, "'Rising Above Principle': Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1953-61, Part 1," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 41:3 (2008): 81-122; Bergera, "'Weak-Kneed Republicans and Socialist Democrats': Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1953-61, Part 2," Dialogue 41:4 (2008): 55-95; Gregory A. Prince, "The Red Peril, the Candy Maker, and the Apostle: David O. McKay's Confrontation with Communism," Dialogue 37:2 (2004): 37-94; D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts," Dialogue 26:2 (1993): 1-87. It is worth noting that Benson’s education was in economics. [Back to manuscript].



Full Citation for this Article: Givens, Nathaniel and Walker Wright (2014) "No Poor Among Them": Global Poverty, Free Markets, and the 'Fourfold' Mission," SquareTwo, Vol. 7 No. 1 (Spring), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleGivensWrightNoPoor.html, accessed <give access date>

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