Reform must recognize the role of the state and other forces of society to appropriately regulate the market and provide a social safety net, so as to ensure that everyone can meet their basic needs. In practice, even when macroeconomic indicators suggest improvement in a country's economy, people living in poverty frequently experience increasing insecurity and see insufficiency deepen into misery. For example, a country's overall agricultural sector can be growing because of exports by commercial farms, even as subsistence farmers lose the ability to market their crops and are driven from their land. In this form globalization has rendered ordinary people, and especially workers, more vulnerable. It has weakened or eliminated protective labor laws, weakened governments' ability to appropriately regulate markets, and established a highly competitive climate in which labor rights are difficult to exercise.
All people possess fundamental human rights and responsibilities.
Since human beings are created by God in the divine image, loved by God and claimed by God, each person has fundamental rights which must be respected by all. People living in poverty have the right and the responsibility to make claims on society as an expression of their God-given dignity and right to life. Members of society with excessive wealth and power must be willing to surrender their privileged position and contribute to policies and structures that create greater equity and guarantee human rights for all. These rights include, among others, participation and consent, an adequate standard of living, dignified employment, adequate wages, free and independent labor unions, food security, basic health care, adequate housing and education. Sin, incompleteness and fallibility are institutional as well as personal realities.