But what about his condemnation of the "globalization of indifference" by means of trickle-down economics and an economy founded upon the exclusion of the interests of all save those of the monied elites of global finance?
http://w2.vatican.va/content/france...ii-gaudium.html#No_to_an_economy_of_exclusion
53. Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
Is that comonsense and 'banal'? No siree.
This is heavy stuff and quite a different beast from the OP.
Many right-wing ideologues swear by the idea that the market and competition will inevitably lead to benefits "trickling down" to everyone and not just the top corporate CEOs. It's Reagonomics - mainstream economic thought in the U.S. for many years.
The Pope condemns here a very specific thing - a pervasive free-market ideology that has led to a Great Recession and untold human suffering in the past decade. He ain't speaking in placid generalities.
What you've got to bear in mind is that these "common sense" speeches by the pope as in the OP are pastoral homilies designed to appeal to the heart of his parishioners.
In the above quote, however, he is speaking not "pastorally" but prophetically in a doctrinal document about the social situation in today's globalized world.
Pope Francis the pastor and Pope Francis the visionary social prophet are two different sides of the one man.