Page:Catholic Social Doctrine and the Dignity of Work Marco Rubio 2019.pdf/4

 * And after the war, returning veterans would never have been able to find a job, buy a home, and start a baby boom if we didn’t have strong businesses to hire them.


 * That was the America my parents came to in 1956 – the place in which it was possible for poorly educated immigrants like them to find dignified work, purchase a house, raise a family, and leave all four of their children better off than themselves.


 * This is why I have always told their story: not because of what it says about me, but because of what it says about our country.


 * This is why since the day I entered public service I have been an unabashed believer in American exceptionalism and promoter of the American Dream.


 * But when I ran for president, I learned the hard way that many Americans did not share my optimism.


 * They were anxious, even angry at those they blamed for ignoring them, disrespecting them, and leaving them behind.


 * From cabinet-makers in Georgia to power tool factory workers in Pennsylvania, they are the people whose lives were turned upside down when companies exercised their right to make a profit by offshoring their jobs, with little regard for their corresponding duty to invest in their own workers.


 * They were the people who were told to go back to school, learn to code, and leave their extended family and community behind and get a job in the “new economy”.


 * These millions of Americans are the victims of an economic re-ordering which Pope Benedict in Caritas in Veritate described as the dominance of “largely speculative” financial flows detached from real production.


 * When we started only focusing on the right of businesses to make a profit and stopped recognizing the obligation of businesses to reinvest in America, large corporations became nothing more than financial vehicles for shareholders, managers, and banks to assert their claims over.


 * The right to return money to shareholders became a right above all others. And the obligation to invest for the benefit of our workers and our country became an afterthought.


 * The economic numbers tell the tale.