This from today's Wall St. Journal makes a very important point, that free markets erase poverty better than government social programs. It undercuts leftist thinking but also puts Catholic "preferential option for the poor" in a different light than usual:

Policy makers who pay lip service to fighting poverty would do well to grasp the link between economic freedom and prosperity. This year the Index [of free economies worldwide] finds that the freest economies have a per-capita income of $29,219, more than twice that of the "mostly free" at $12,839, and more than four times that of the "mostly unfree." Put simply, misery has a cure and its name is economic freedom.

See The Fire Ant Gazette for this quote plus commentary.