“The poor are poor not because the rich are rich,” says Robert J. Samuelson in his Washington Post column reproduced in The Hindu . In 1968, the sociologist Robert K. Merton coined the phrase ‘the Mathew Effect’ for the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The name Mathew came from the Bible. Jesus said, according to Mathew’s gospel, “For to him who has more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” [Mathew 13:12]. Jesus did not live in a time which promoted capitalism and its wealth-creating ideology. Jesus was far, far from being a capitalist. In fact, he would have been the ideal communist, had he been allowed to have his way by the various leaders of his time (political as well as religious). What he meant was that those who have the spirit of life in them will be given more of that, and those who are just bullshit will get lost. But religious scriptures can be
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