Magnifica Humanitas §37

³⁷ The rich social teaching of Saint John Paul II lies at the crossroads of the crisis of the great ideological systems of the twentieth century and the onset of economic globalization. His Encyclical Laborem Exercens , written ninety years after the publication of Rerum Novarum , opened up a new avenue for reflection on work. It presents fair wages as the concrete means of verifying the justness of the entire socioeconomic system because they reveal whether the worker is treated as a person or merely as a cost of production. Work is not considered simply as a problem to be dealt with or a means of generating income, but a fundamental good for the person, a principle of economic activity and the key to the entire societal question. Through work, human beings bring their freedom, creativity and capacity for cooperation into play, contributing to the cultural and moral elevation of society. In light of this, the various kinds of job insecurity, fragmented career paths and automation must not be evaluated solely in terms of efficiency, but in relation to the dignity of the worker, the right to sufficient remuneration and the genuine possibility of participating in society.