Are wealthy countries in anyway responsible to lift poor countries out of poverty?

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Rozellelily said:
Something I have also come across is some people saying/believing that taxation is theft.
While public taxes are often misused,isn’t the purpose of tax at least in theory to provide the Government with money to help those in situations of poverty-primarily local but also sometimes foreign aid to countries overseas?

Why then would someone be against this and view it as theft?
Is it that are disinterested in helping others?
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You answered your own question I think. Often people do feel the taxes are wasted or maybe even utilized for purposes that are counter to their beliefs. The money the Obama adim spent in central america to create economic development had no discernable impact on their economy nor stemming the flow of illegal immigrants.

The primary role of govt is to support it’s citizens, not people in foreign countries. I think everyone supports providing aid during a crisis but many question a significant role in their sustained development. Countries that step out of poverty have largely done so of their own volition, not because they were given aide money.

If you could figure out how to first improve their governance, most of their problems would recede.
 
Now it makes more sense.
Maybe citizens should be allowed to have online multiple choice votes of where they would most like their taxes used?
No doubt many people won’t support this because they will say when people voted at election for the party that’s when they decided,but this is too simplistic.
An individual may support some of the parties policies but not others,including certain areas where they are using their taxes.
 
Taxes help you directly. Roads, police, fire, public schools, defense ,social security, our veterans and more. No man is an island, our nation isn’t anarchical. I’m a believer if one balks at taxes one should live off the grid. Best Wishes to them, they will be missed to an extent. haha
 
What do you mean by “balks” at taxes?

Are you talking about those who illegally evade taxes, those who object to paying taxes, or just those who recognize that Americans are taxed far too much and want to trim back the extent of government?
 
DENNYINMI said:
I could care less what investors want,
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One thing investors want (among others) that you should want to is “results”. That is something government really does not care about…if government cared about results, a lot of people in government would be fired. What are the current results of the federal government? $20T of debt, and zero cost effective programs.

If you let government decide where to spend investment dollars on medical research, I’ll give you a one example of what happens: California spent $3B of taxpayer dollars on embryonic stem cell research. So far adult stem cells have delivered over 70 treatments.


(Note: on this website: stem cell treatments are “adult” stem cell treatments.

According to the NIH, embryonic stem cell research has delivered “hope”…but as far as I can tell, zero active treatments
https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.htm#success

My point is not to change the thread to a debate on stem cell research, rather to show that when government gets to pick where investments in health care go, its not always on the more promising treatments, and again, results are not important.
 
DENNYINMI said:
Taxes help you directly. Roads, police, fire, public schools, defense ,social security, our veterans and more. No man is an island, our nation isn’t anarchical. I’m a believer if one balks at taxes one should live off the grid. Best Wishes to them, they will be missed to an extent. haha
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Taxes do have a purpose. I don’t “balk” at paying taxes, I balk at seeing tax dollars wasted and then people telling me I need to pay more. I balk at people who don’t pay taxes telling me I don’t pay my fair share. I balk at being $20T in debt as a country. I balk at people who ignore the fact that there are zero cost effective government programs, yet want more.
 
What is poverty? Is it not earning at least $50,000/year and having a couple of hundred thousand in one’s 401k? Or is it only having two cows when your neighbor has twenty? Is it having enough corn for you to live all winter, feed your hog and sell some for enough cloth to make new clothes?

I grew up in what was then a primitive place in the U.S. We didn’t have running water. We hauled our water from a spring. A stone fireplace heated the house and kerosene lamps lit it. But we had plenty of food, good water, clothing, heat and light. Our house was solid.

We were better off than most of the neighbors, though. They all scratched a living out of 40-100 acres, raised corn, raised a few hogs, had a couple of milk cows, made butter to sell. Back then, sacks for livestock feed were made of cotton print so women could make clothing out of them. Some, however, were made of a thick cotton material for towels.

Was that poverty? It would be today in the view of most. It wasn’t then and in that place. My wife, though, was raised in a city and she is amazed at the primitive conditions I grew up with. It’s all relative once one gets past the basics of food, clothing and shelter.
 
fjk said:
The real charity is letting people face harsh consequences, no matter how much they brought them on themselves if at all, so they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even when they can’t afford boots.
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No. That’s the exact opposite of charity.
 
Based on your post regarding your upbringing, you were wealthy beyond comparison. Catholic social teaching has spoken on reducing persons to consumer status.
 
I balk at excessive use of the word “balk.” 😛

I dislike Hillary very, very much. But Trump, at least it seems to me, is an almost Biblical event. I really can’t imagine someone doing worse if they tried to-- so much so that conspiracy theories are popping up that he’s deliberately undermining American politics.
 
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His “undermining American politics” is exactly why so many voted for him. People are tired of being dragged around by the hair by those in power. Think of one thing only for a moment. The Obama administration decided it wanted to force all religious objectors, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, to provide contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees and themselves.

They refused. So the government sued them. Trump let them off the hook.

There are more things like that. That’s just one of the more dramatic ones. Personally, I’m glad to see American politics-as-usual disrupted.
 
DENNYINMI said:
Based on your post regarding your upbringing, you were wealthy beyond comparison
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Not “beyond comparison” but compared to a lot of neighbors, we would have been. I remember bringing my lunch when I was in high school. All the country kids did. I actually got to eat lunch meat, tuna fish, roast beef, sliced ham, things like that in my sandwiches. Some of my country fellows would bring half a fried squirrel or a fried pie with gravy in it.

But nobody starved. You can live on squirrels, rabbits, ground hogs, deer and the occasional bit of pork when it’s butchering time in the fall. Sure can.

When it comes to considering poverty, though, medical costs always have to be considered. When I was a little kid, cancer was a death sentence every time unless it just happened to be one of those rare cases when it could be removed surgically and hadn’t spread. The doctor kept you supplied with morphine and that was that. Now, serious conditions like that are beyond the resources of almost anyone. It’s not that people are poorer. It’s that treatments are so sophisticated they’re beyond affordability.
 
DENNYINMI said:
I could care less what investors want, The world has been changed more with charity than with science, and I am shocked at the wave of gladiators on this site that need to dissect whether giving a beggar a piece of bread is a good thing…When you can charge for an epinephrine pen that saves lives in the case of anaphylactic shock 300 % over the usual cost there is plenty to investigate. Might I suggest we begin with moral conscience
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Making a big claim such as “the world has been changed more with charity than with science” may sound morally virtuous and inviolable, but in reality is impossible to be substantiate or corroborate.

What about where charity isn’t simply a handout but only possible because of creative innovation intended to help others or provide sustainable employment? Was Jonas Salk being “charitable” when he didn’t just give away his resources to those in need but used them to come up with a cure for polio?

Go ahead and blindly take resources from the innovative and creative and spread them equally across the board and see how far that plain “charity” (based upon “justice” defined as equality of outcome) gets you. Nothing like simple solutions based upon low resolution ideological views of the world.

You might want to view this video in its entirety to see why the issue isn’t black and white but much more nuanced.
 
Yeah. Who wants all those annoying international treaties and agreements? I mean, who do countries like Canada think they are-- our greatest trading partner or something?

Oh, wait. . .
 
benjamin1973 said:
Yeah. Who wants all those annoying international treaties and agreements? I mean, who do countries like Canada think they are-- our greatest trading partner or something?
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Just be calm. Apparently they’re very near completing a new NAFTA treaty.

International agreements are not biblical. They might be bad from the start. They might be fine initially but become less useful as conditions change.

I don’t know what your country is, but mine is the U.S. To me, if the agreement can be made more advantageous for the U.S. than at present, that’s fine.

But you’re fine with Obama suing the Little Sisters, then? Okay to sue the Little Sisters, but not to renegotiate a trade agreement with Canada. Wow.
 
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benjamin1973 said:
Yeah. Who wants all those annoying international treaties and agreements? I mean, who do countries like Canada think they are-- our greatest trading partner or something?

Oh, wait. . .
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Countries like Canada also impose trade barriers and tariffs on their “greatest trading partner or something.”

The reason countries like Canada have become “our greatest trading partner” is because, in the past, they have shown a willingness to be fair with trade to a certain and tolerable degree.

If you look at what Trump is attempting to bring about, it is, ultimately, a more fair trading environment absent all tariffs – something like open trading between partners. Justin Trudeau is not quite as amenable to that as Trump is, which implies “our greatest trading partner” doesn’t exactly want to remove barriers to trade, but to retain advantageous barriers and tariffs while pretending to want free trade.
 
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