Archbishop Flynn wants higher taxes

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StJeanneDArc:
Hmmm-so apparently car models are the way to match voting habits to dollars donated. Keep going–I’m anxious to hear more.
My thoughts exactly :rolleyes: .
 
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miguel:
I don’t know if it’s a purely Calvinist notion that people with a work ethic tend to be more prosperous. It’s common sense don’t you think?
I think it’s at least heavily Calvinist, and certainly quite protestant. Have you read Max Weber?

As far as common sense, I think what’s obvious is that people with money tend to be more prosperous. The fact is that social mobility in the U.S. has actually been decreasing. It’s harder, today, for children to meet or exceed their parent’s social and income levels in comparison to earlier years. The decline of the middle class in America is a serious threat. I’d rather we address it now rather than wait until it’s a full-blown crisis.
 
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miguel:
I don’t know if it’s a purely Calvinist notion that people with a work ethic tend to be more prosperous. It’s common sense don’t you think?
John Calvin never met Paris Hilton.
 
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buffalo:
How about this - the government gives us a line item choice of where our money goes on the tax return?
The Quakers have been asking for that for decades.
 
Philip P:
I think it’s at least heavily Calvinist, and certainly quite protestant. Have you read Max Weber?

As far as common sense, I think what’s obvious is that people with money tend to be more prosperous. The fact is that social mobility in the U.S. has actually been decreasing. It’s harder, today, for children to meet or exceed their parent’s social and income levels in comparison to earlier years. The decline of the middle class in America is a serious threat. I’d rather we address it now rather than wait until it’s a full-blown crisis.
So what are you proposing: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?
 
a Catholic social vision would recognize the interdependence of various individuals and social organs. the businessman can earn a profit because he can ship his goods by highways or waterways, employ an educated workforce, market his good in a fair and regulated market.
 
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katherine2:
a Catholic social vision would recognize the interdependence of various individuals and social organs. the businessman can earn a profit because he can ship his goods by highways or waterways, employ an educated workforce, market his good in a fair and regulated market.
Going along really nicely Katherine until we came to the word “regulated” in connection with market. Can you show me any economy with a regulated market that ever prospered? Also who determines what is a fair market?

Lisa N
 
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dwc:
Lisa, if everyone votes to cut taxes, every time, the end result is that programs are eliminated, yes? And if you agree that many people in our secular society have no understanding of their responsibility toward their fellow human beings, then the result is that donations are not made to charities, and the charities are unable to assist even those everyone agrees are truly deserving.

I don’t have the answers. I would just like people to keep in mind that while all this heated rhetoric about the slothful, substance abusing, willingly uneducated welfare recipients is going on, there really are people who did everything right and still ended up in poverty. If you take the safety net away, you take it from them, too…
You have made my point. Welfare and other tax supported social programs were meant to be a SAFETY NET, not a way of life. It sounds like you want to throw a pan of spaghetti against the wall and hope a noodle sticks. The people who NEED the help should be getting it. No one begrudges that reality. What we do begrudge is those who game the system, who could make other choices and who could make a contribution to their own support.
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dwc:
I believe the welfare reform enacted during the Clinton administration was a good start. I have witnessed a very slow and painful adjustment in many women as they learn they can’t just live on welfare forever, but have to work. It’s a bumpy road, but I believe the work ethic is being reinstated. As far as charitable giving, I focus my giving toward shelters which require those living there to engage in education, job training or substance abuse, and toward charities which provide their recipients a means to earn money as opposed to a simple hand out.
We totally agree on that point. I volunteered with a local homeless families’ shelter for a number of years. We realized early on that the shelter needed to address the reasons for homelessness and engage the clients in making lifechanges. That meant job skills, “Ready to Rent” classes, parenting classes, etc."

Too many shelters have become temporary warehouses and there is a group who are simply ‘shelter hoppers’ moving from one shelter to the next as their time limit runs out. Many of the night shelters particularly simply enable their clients to continue drinking, drugging, panhandling by providing a roof over their head at night. They didn’t make any changes in their lives because they did not have to do so. OTOH a local faith based shelter demanded that the clients work toward self sufficienciy and address their issues. Guess which one had clients who were clean and sober and working a year later?

dwc why are you so sarcastic about reality? The reality IS that most people using social services in THIS country are there due to a few bad decisions. It would seem far more productive to support programs that PREVENT people from making these bad decisions, rather than supporting them after they are addicts, uneducated, or have several small children to support without benefit of a spouse.

Lisa N
 
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miguel:
So what are you proposing: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?
Luke seemed to think this was a good idea (Acts 2: 45).

In a country as large as ours, though, applying this in a strictly literal manner is problematic. Who determines need, for instance?

What I would like to see is discussions on poverty that admit the fundamental bias of the system and seek to correct it. I don’t want government to provide for everyone, but I DO want to use it to level the playing field. I don’t really see this as a matter of charity, but more of justice. Your income level should not determine the quality of your health care, your schools, your safety, or your enjoyment of a minimally acceptable standard of life.

For instance, I think the introduction of the minimum wage was a very good idea. I’d like to see it further reformed so that it automatically updates each year to prevent it’s value erosion. Currently, it takes a vote to raise it federally, and I believe in all the states that have one, too. The federal minimum wage has been the same since the late 90’s (I think 98, but don’t hold me to that year).

Health care should be universal. I’m not proposing it be government run, though I wouldn’t rule that out. I don’t really care how we get it, just so long as we get universal health care for all. Let’s get ideas out there and find out which one works, but let’s do something, because our current system’s not working.

Education, again, needs serious attention, from K - college. We’re falling behind the rest of the world, which is bad news for our competitive advantage.

Labor unions need to be re-invogarated. This isn’t the government’s job, but the government should back off its persecution of unions. Union members, meanwhile, need to put some hard work into rebuilding their organizations.

And as far as welfare programs - a safety net is important, but what we really should be spending more money on is not welfare programs, but enablement programs. Low-interest loans for home ownership. Tax policies that make mom and pop shop competitive against behemoths like Walmart, or at least level the playing field by mandating that big corporations offer full benefits (a 10 person shop without health insurance is understandable - a national chain keeping prices low by skimping on worker’s benefits is unacceptable. Paying substandard wages and skimping on benefis is too high a price for cheap consumer goods).

I could go on, but basically I’m a classic economic, not cultural, liberal/progressive. Unfortunately, I seem to have been born a generation or two too late…
 
Lisa N:
Can you show me any economy with a regulated market that ever prospered?
Ours, especially since the New Deal. Europe’s since WWII. Compared to the 19th century, western economies are very highly regulated, and much the better for it.
 
Philip P:
Ours, especially since the New Deal. Europe’s since WWII. Compared to the 19th century, western economies are very highly regulated, and much the better for it.
Not the way K2 means regulated. She’s talking wage and price controls and a socialist type state.

Further the more regulation, the more it impedes business. Like welfare, the safety net approach rather than the National Nanny approach provides the best solutions and most vigorous economies.

Lisa N
 
Philip P:
Luke seemed to think this was a good idea (Acts 2: 45)…
Something that works for a small group will not work in a country like the US.
Philip P:
What I would like to see is discussions on poverty that admit the fundamental bias of the system and seek to correct it. I don’t want government to provide for everyone, but I DO want to use it to level the playing field. I don’t really see this as a matter of charity, but more of justice. Your income level should not determine the quality of your health care, your schools, your safety, or your enjoyment of a minimally acceptable standard of life…
Actually I think the playing field is a lot more level than you give it credit for. Again we all have the opportunity NOT to take drugs,not to engage in premarital sex and not drop out of high school.

I think the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals try to equalize RESULTS through social tinkering, through programs like affirmative action and like the minimum wage. THe conservative approach is to equalize opportunities and let those who take advantage of those opportunities be allowed to flourish. I am not naive enough to think that a kid born in an upper middle class neighborhood doesn’t have advantages over a kid born to a single woman in a very low income area. But again, we should focus our effort on making opportunities available and stop trying to think we can make everyone equal. That will simply never happen.

Lisa N

I could go on, but basically I’m a classic economic, not cultural, liberal/progressive. Unfortunately, I seem to have been born a generation or two too late…
 
dwc why are you so sarcastic about reality? The reality IS that most people using social services in THIS country are there due to a few bad decisions. It would seem far more productive to support programs that PREVENT people from making these bad decisions, rather than supporting them after they are addicts, uneducated, or have several small children to support without benefit of a spouse.
I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic about *anything. *I have no idea what you mean there. As far as preventing people from making bad decisions – we can’t. We can only decide whether it’s our place to assume that most people are on welfare because they’re slothful and therefore undeserving, or whether our faith calls for us to view things a bit more charitably. I prefer not to make assumptions, but to support programs that offer realistic opportunities to get off welfare and motivation for doing so by limiting welfare time limits.
You have made my point. Welfare and other tax supported social programs were meant to be a SAFETY NET, not a way of life. It sounds like you want to throw a pan of spaghetti against the wall and hope a noodle sticks. The people who NEED the help should be getting it. No one begrudges that reality.

Funny, I thought you made my point. Your vote against taxes doesn’t distinguish between those you find worthy via the safety net or those you find unworthy. As far as the spaghetti analogy … I suppose that’s an insult? That’s ok, I’ve received worse insults this week alone.

I think we disagree more on philosophy than on practice. I’ve been a prosecutor for almost 15 years and I agree with otm that the old style welfare state has misguidedly and unintentionally caused more damage to the population it sought to help than anyone could have anticipated. At the same time, I have seen, from the prosecutor’s table, much human misery and hardship, and far from 100% of it is the result of what you attribute it to. I’m not a softie and I’m not a liberal, but I try to see Christ in those before me, and I try to approach things as I believe He would. If that’s spaghetti on a wall, so be it.
 
Lisa N:
Actually I think the playing field is a lot more level than you give it credit for. Again we all have the opportunity NOT to take drugs,not to engage in premarital sex and not drop out of high school.
I think it’s less. A wealthy person who abuses drugs and engages in premarital and extramartial sex can still be fabulously successful. And if their personal problems start to impede on their material well-being, money can cover up their problems or help pay for treatment. A poor person who abuses drugs and is sexually irresponsible suffers far more. A poor person who works hard and is sexually responsible is also likely never to be as successful as the wealth drug abusing skirt chaser. That is not an equal playing field.
I think the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals try to equalize RESULTS through social tinkering, through programs like affirmative action and like the minimum wage.
I see the minimum wage as helping equalize opportunity. If you work hard, you can earn a living. If you don’t work, you don’t get pay (compare this to pre-minumum wage - if you work hard, you work hard for a pittance until you can’t anymore, and then are tossed aside without a second thought).

Also, results seem a good method of judging effectiveness (you shall judge a tree by it’s fruits, after all). When you see that women earn less than men for equal work, something’s up. When you see that the most of the nation’s wealth and resources is in the hands of a very small number of people not representative of the country at large, something’s not working right. In a truly fair and equal society, you’d get what you earn, not what you’ve been lucky enough to have been born into.
 
Lisa N:
Not the way K2 means regulated. She’s talking wage and price controls and a socialist type state.
I can’t speak to what K2 means, but I personally have met very few out and out socialists/communists. I don’t think they really exist in American politics, to be honest, at least not in any real sense. They’re mythological beasts, like the right-wing theocratic fascists the more hysterical liberals are convinced are taking over. Haven’t met too any of those, either.

Most liberals and progressives I know look to a model closer to Europe and Canada than to the USSR.
 
Lisa N:
Actually I think the playing field is a lot more level than you give it credit for. Again we all have the opportunity NOT to take drugs,not to engage in premarital sex and not drop out of high school
A significant part of the debate about welfare reform rests on an underlying philosophical dispute about what it means to be a human being. For example, consider the case of an administrator at a New York homeless shelter who was reprimanded for a memo in which he proposed that male residents at the shelter not be allowed to wear dresses, high-heeled shoes, or wigs. The following response came from an assistant director of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City: “The memo is evidence of a real misconception of what the shelters are all about. Trying to curtail freedom of expression, trying to shape the behavior of clients is completely inappropriate.”1

A person’s reaction to that story may indicate where he or she stands on the cultural divide in contemporary American life. But it is also indicative of competing philosophies of human life. The assistant director’s response—that it is inappropriate for a shelter to curtail freedom of expression or make judgments about the behavior of the homeless men it serves—flows from a kind of expressive individualism that provides one account of the meaning of human life. In contrast, many Americans would find it deeply inappropriate for a shelter to provide services without challenging the people it serves to improve their behavior.

acton.org/ppolicy/forum/no4_full.html
 
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dwc:
I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic about *anything. *I have no idea what you mean there. As far as preventing people from making bad decisions – we can’t. We can only decide whether it’s our place to assume that most people are on welfare because they’re slothful and therefore undeserving, or whether our faith calls for us to view things a bit more charitably. I prefer not to make assumptions, but to support programs that offer realistic opportunities to get off welfare and motivation for doing so by limiting welfare time limits…
How about your comment “slothful, willingly uneducated, drug abusing welfare recipients.” I assume you were being sarcastic. You meant that literally?

Again I have NEVER used the word slothful or lazy. I have used the phrase ‘bad decisions’ and I think it is right on point. MOST people in this country are poor because they made bad decisions along the way. You can look at ANY statistics from DHS, to homeless shelters, to drug treatment facilities and you will see time after time that the person tended to be an unmarried parent, a dropout, or a substance abuser. Or all three. The GREATEST indicator of whether a child is going to live in poverty is the marital status of his parents. This is reality although anyone can come up with an exception.

I agree that programs need to focus on changing behaviors but in our oh so politically correct society we cannot impede someone in their ‘self expression’ or ‘freedom.’ We are free to overdose on drugs or live under a bridge. But that there are social workers and bureaucrats who think we should provide endless support for this bad behavior is where I get a bit stuck. There are many drug addicts receiving SSI including my former BIL. He was offered drug treatment, free, many times. He would comply up to a point but he would always go back to his old ways because he LIKED taking drugs and drinking and partying. He was very open about that. He thought the system was great. Do what you want and someone else pays. What a country!

I do think prevention programs are where we should focus, not paying for the bad behavior after someone engages. What works? Do it. Outcomes based programs. I also frankly think that unwed teens ought to be strongly counselled to adopt out their children. When I was in high school that’s what most of them did. But our social services system has basically encouraged them to keep their babies that are often in the system in some fashion for life. Same with drug programs. MANDATORY treatment seems to work in some areas. We have something called ‘drug court’ that puts people into treatment vs jail. If they comply they get help. If they don’t they go to jail. This has proven quite successful, particularly with “meth moms.”
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dwc:
IFunny, I thought you made my point. Your vote against taxes doesn’t distinguish between those you find worthy via the safety net or those you find unworthy. As far as the spaghetti analogy … I suppose that’s an insult? That’s ok, I’ve received worse insults this week alone…
No it wasn’t an insult. You seem to believe we should spend bazillions of dollars on people who don’t need help because somehow in this bowl of noodles there is one or two who are truly needy and unable to help themselves…i.e. the ONE noodle that sticks to the wall. I do not believe in throwing money at a problem on the off chance it might help someone. I think our money and our effort should be carefully targeted. I have seen in my own family how very easy it is to game the system and get social services when you don’t need them.
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dwc:
II think we disagree more on philosophy than on practice. I’ve been a prosecutor for almost 15 years and I agree with otm that the old style welfare state has misguidedly and unintentionally caused more damage to the population it sought to help than anyone could have anticipated. At the same time, I have seen, from the prosecutor’s table, much human misery and hardship, and far from 100% of it is the result of what you attribute it to. I’m not a softie and I’m not a liberal, but I try to see Christ in those before me, and I try to approach things as I believe He would. If that’s spaghetti on a wall, so be it.
Sure I think we see Christ in others but is it truly helpful to enable people to continue to engage in self destructive behavior? Frankly I think we disagree more on practice than on philosophy. I think we both believe that the needy deserve help. I just don’t think the “gill net” approach is the right one for taxpayers or consumers of social services.

LIsa N
 
Philip P:
Education without work ethic is meaningless. It’s all about a degree nowadays and then corporate America has to train/educate all over again. The value of the degree has also been diminished as a result of admitted cheating.
 
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buffalo:
Education without work ethic is meaningless. It’s all about a degree nowadays and then corporate America has to train/educate all over again. The value of the degree has also been diminished as a result of admitted cheating.
And a work ethic without an education won’t get you too far, either. Everyone deserves a high quality education, so that their success or failure truly depends on their work ethic and not on their socieconomic class (and by extension the education they have access to).
 
Philip P:
And a work ethic without an education won’t get you too far, either. Everyone deserves a high quality education, so that their success or failure truly depends on their work ethic and not on their socieconomic class (and by extension the education they have access to).
Deserves? Isn’t a quality education a privelege? And what is your measure of success?
 
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