Vatican advocates unequal pay...

...for unequal work.

The Times has the story

The Vatican will offer a three-tier “level of merit” bonus system, with the top bonus being 10 per cent of salary. “Meritocracy has breached the Vatican walls,” Il Messaggero, the Rome daily newspaper, said. The deal, to take effect in January, was negotiated with the Vatican’s association of employees, the ADLV, the closest organisation to a trade union in the Holy See. There are also about 1,000 clergy and nuns in Vatican City – one of the world’s smallest sovereign states. It is not clear how their “productivity” is to be measured, but this should prove rather easier with the administrators, secretaries, gardeners and mechanics, and the staff of the Vatican Museums, the Vatican Bank and Vatican Radio and Television.

According to The Times, 'When he was once asked how many people worked in the Vatican, Pope John XXIII (1958-63) is said to have replied: “About half, I think.”'

Who is most likely to beat Krugman in a debate?

Krugman 2007:

Lately, Barack Obama has been saying that major action is needed to avert what he keeps calling a “crisis” in Social Security — most recently in an interview with The National Journal. Progressives who fought hard and successfully against the Bush administration’s attempt to panic America into privatizing the New Deal’s crown jewel are outraged, and rightly so.

But Mr. Obama’s Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you’d expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable.

Krugman 1996:

Where is the crisis? Just over the horizon, that's where. . . . Responsible adults are supposed to plan more than seven years ahead. Yet if you think even briefly about what the Federal budget will look like in 20 years, you immediately realize that we are drifting inexorably toward crisis; if you think 30 years ahead, you wonder whether the Republic can be saved.

It's all explicated here in the Washington Post.

Don't get played for a sucker by Krugman. Not to criticize liberals in general, but beware someone who titles his blog Conscience of a Liberal. Well, at least he told us it's not possible to transcend partisanship. 1996. Let's see, what was the context of his remarks at that time?

Lesson learned: Apply a heavy discount to anything the man says.