Do you buy imported items from China or numerous other third world countries where workers barely get enough money to survive? I go out of my way to buy products made in countries with good working conditions. I do not feel guity that the kid a the fast food restaurant is making such a low wage they have to buy a used car instead of a new one. Here in America we live in such luxury that we don’t understand what it means to truly be poor.
Regret to inform you that christcnection1 is 100% Correct, philosophically and morally, and is with Church thinking:thumbsup:You are in fact wrong, but I will charitably attribute that to your extreme youth (or the fact that you have a husband with a highly paid job.)People who want to extort money from those they believe have too much and grandly decide for us what size home we NEED and how many pairs of underpants we NEED and how much of what kind of food we NEED and what, if any, entertainment we NEED, and therefore convince themselves that the rest of OUR money belongs to their friends, cronies and apparatus, are all too common on college campuses and always have been. I had numerous young British friends who lived off their wealthy parents and spent all their time ranting and railing against The Rich (i.e. their parents) while taking full advantage of everything The Rich handed them. Most of these people distributed NONE of their own wealth. You even see this in the politicians like the Abomination who demand that we peons fork over our money and yet their own tax returns prove they give virtually NOTHING voluntarily.
I have also worked in shelters where twentysomething girls with four children by four different men, none of whom they could pick out of a line-up, spent all their time whining that The Rich OWED them and the rest of us had the duty to force them to turn that money over. And now that it is Christmas, they are all out there demanding that we Rich people turn over phones, Segways, Nintendo Wii and Grand Pianos because WE OWE THEM.
Back in the 1980s I got in a war with my Lutheran congregation which had an East German pastor who spent all his time railing against The Rich – who soon departed our congregation and left it full of Needy with no recourse. (Socialists have no money.) They actually prepared a working paper that said single people did not NEED to own three-bedroom, two-bath homes; we ought to be satisfied to live in one room and turn over our money to the single welfare mom with two illegitimate children (in Georgia the law says that children of different sexes must not sleep in the same room, and a child and a parent of different sexes must not sleep in the same room).
I give plenty to charity and adhere strictly to Matthew 6 (you should read it sometime) and therefore am excoriated by the socialists like you who assume that because i am comfortable and have money left over, I must not be doing anything. This does not encourage me to do anything more.
And nowdays when street beggars ask me for change I tell thm to call Obama.
Easy to answer: (1) The new administration wants stop redistributing Our resources to the Richest? Haven’t heard of 2000’s New national policy of Welfare to the Biggest, most profitable Corporations and Biggest Wealth?
Its not buying cheaply made products anymore. Forgot that Reagan Began it all in the historic change to allow Importing, sales of the the cheap Communist labor built Yugo in the USA that broke the dam wide open.
Remember his ‘Carribean Initiative’ to subsidize sending our Clothing manufactiring Industries to poor Carribean lands, Vastly lower pay?
Exactly!
:aok:Where did I say I supported those programs you are railing about?Its not buying cheaply made products anymore. Forgot that Reagan Began it all in the historic change to allow Importing, sales of the the cheap Communist labor built Yugo in the USA that broke the dam wide open.
Forgot that Reagan Began, had announced His historic Change in the US Economy from manufactiring to ‘service’ economy? (Am not touching that one!)
Know that Our big Corporations were subsidized by Us Taxpayers, Reagan Republicans 1980’s on, to Export our Jobs And plants to other countries?
Know which Nations have the highest standards of Living? Iceland, Scandinavian countries with Big “Social programs”, last time I looked.
Haven’t heard Which Economies will be The Biggest in the World in 20 years? Mainland China and India, because of their size and great Business attitudes. Know Bangladesh had 6% GDP growth last year, Red China 8%? Know ours was only 1%? Reagan, Bush “Right to Life” (aka BIG MONEY) policies have rioned US Economic potential. We are literally becoming 3rd world like economy.
True reality Really Hurts! Realize that Thios administration ‘Deregulation’, (Like 1980’s Reagan) has literraly brought beginnings of World Depression? That only Nations can try to correct?
Where is Any Semblance of Christianity in Enriching the Richest, at the direct expense of the Poor and Middle Class?
In that example everyone was taxed evenly. every one paid the same coin. In today’s world some are taxed while others are not.
Our Founding Fathers broke with England because of taxation. England proposed to take an ever larger share of our wealth, including a monopoly over control of the lands west of the original colonies. On repudiating England, we repudiated monarchy and nobility, where the elites of society made all the decisions. The Hamiltonians tended to accept a modified form of the English way, but we went for the Jeffersonian notion of agrarian democracy. This became he norm after the purchase of Louisiana and westerward expansion made impossible for the American elites to control the government. Even after the Europeans abandoned formal monarchy, their governments assumed all the powers of monarchy, so in reality each state is an oligarchy.Exactly!
Our Lord and His Church have always taught the Obligation to “Give on to Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s”. Government bills Have to be paid, or we go Nationally bankrupt as the GAO May 2008 financial status of the USA suggested, as result singularly of the 2000’s National Policies of current “Pro-Life” administration reversing historic federal spending priorities To the Richest. .:bigyikes:
It certainly appears that Financially enabled citizens, corporate and private, picture taxes as evils. Higher standard of living now European nations have historically pictured Taxes as responsibile citizenship. Ain’t nuthin free, as we usta say in da Best part of da kuntry, da South. :yyeess:
Exactly. What happen to every one being created equal and being treated equal?
lol. Didn’t say you support any of those problems. Am just stating What the Problems are. Our Massive problems have little to do with buying low-priced-labor goods anymore. Even Chinese labor is becoming more lower middle class pay. The massive Problems are USA Politics self Initiated and signed off on by the the Big R, Big Money Republican establishment, using ‘pro-life’ pre-natally only, to get into power.
People are not created equal… I want to replace it on a moral system based on “equal consideration of interest.”
Ok… you sorta took that train of thought into a different direction then.lol. Didn’t say you support any of those problems. Am just stating What the Problems are. Our Massive problems have little to do with buying low-priced-labor goods anymore. Even Chinese labor is becoming more lower middle class pay. The massive Problems are USA Politics self Initiated and signed off on by the the Big R, Big Money Republican establishment, using ‘pro-life’ pre-natally only, to get into power.
And I haven’t ‘railed’ since we teens tried walking Rail to see who could longest. Was too boring!
but you and yours advocate virtually no taxation ; a flat 6% to pay for the military, justice system, infrastructure etc.
What you propose would at least be a step in the right direction.
I took a second job to pay for the Catholic school – and when the boys complained about not getting Goodies that other kids had, I just said You are getting an education so you can get good jobs and buy your own stuff. Which they did. I learned that from Mama who did the same thing.
I had a different interpretation of the Ceaser passage. I understood it as Jesus saying don’t fight the tax in the same way other passages say to turn the other cheek. You don’t see people using the turn the other cheek comment as rationale that it is OK to slap people. Like wise, this passage does not state that it is OK for the goevernement to take what you owe. It only says don’t fight it.It has been brought up quite often on this thread, so I feel I should address this “giving to Ceasar” passage. As I understand it, the context is not as simple as a simple question of whether the government deserves to redistribute what we have earned. At the time of Christ, economic policy was quite different than it is now. The big concern was the image on the coins and what it said about the nature of the government. Images were a big deal and using Roman money with the ruler’s image was a conflict of interest as it almost acknowledged a godlike quality of the ruler. Hence the need for temple money changers. It was these allegiances that Christ was called on to address and he correctly implied that the image on the coin represented the true owner of the coin. Regardless of who held or earned it, the money itself was truly Caesar’s, and according to the rule of the time, he had a legitimate claim to it. Back to the idea of images, Jesus followed up by saying to give to God what is God’s. What he wants us to give to God is our very selves, because the image he speaks of is that of God in us, as we were made in his image.
Therefore, the render to Caesar passage is insufficient to completely address economics because that is not the true depth and context of the discussion. I don’t bring this up to refute, or support, the idea of economic redistribution. I just hesitate to use this passage as a basis. Heck, I am still discerning where I should stand on the issue myself. BTW, I won’t claim credit for the above analysis; I heard it in our homily a few weeks back
Our government run schools aren’t all that bad so we felt it would be better to save up and use the money for college. My grand father sent my dad to college and my dad sent me, In a few years it will be my turn to pay them back by sending my kids.
Ever realized that we didn’t want (Unjust) taxation, without representation, to correct same? The Tea Tax was unjustified, on the wrong colonialists segments. And Britain had some form of Parliament since an 1100’s popular uprising authorized it by Royal Signature. The House of Commons initiated in the 1400’s, but the House of Lord’s was more powerful until recent times.