I think this is dead on, and I’ve seen you say it before. (seen you say ??? anyway …) How do I, Joe Pew Sitter and regular working stiff, do that? I mean I give to the poor box every week, that isn’t doing anything. I know it doesn’t do anything because I’ve given to that dang box on the wall every week for ever and it’s still there, it’s not going away. I do think this idea of getting the poor educated and gainfully employed is the ticket. But doesn’t that cross over into the political realm? Or only partially? We should seek political candidates that have education and jobs in their idea bag as well as do … do what?
Well I think there are a lot of things that can be done by the ‘average’ person. Some are going to be things like educating the poor, some will be simply aiding them.
My 12 year old daughter just organized a bake sale that netted about $500 for our parish. And when I say my daughter did it, I mean she actually did it. She called up people to work, she organized a work schedule. She baked (and so did my wife). She organized other kids & parents to bake too. That is a form of direct aid.
Another form of direct aid is volunteering for the parish St Vincent DePaul society. Collecting food and distributing it to the needy.
As for politics, that to me is a very slippery issue to get involved in with education. According to our legal system, the Federal government is NOT involved in local or state education but the national candidates tend to use is as a stumping point. The reality is that most efforts on the national level are NOT effective. So if you want to get involved in schools/education, the local and state levels are the place to do it. But you could also do it at your parish. Vern offered a great series of suggestions. We are taking our parish priest out to dinner Friday night, one of the things we will discuss is raising money for the school. I will propose to him a matching fund raising effort. My wife and I will gather a few other families and we will match any money the rest of the parish raises. So if the parish comes up with $5000, then a small group of families will match that $5000 to raise the total the school gets to $10,000. Not everyone can do this type of effort, but most people can organize bake sales, or car washes, or raffles. Sometimes it takes creativity. In the case of the offer we are making to the parish school, we are asking the WHOLE parish to come up with money, NOT just the school families. It is sad, but in our parish many people don’t consider the school to be anything other than a drain on the parish. They don’t see it is as part of the MISSION of the church, part of the faith formation of 100 little Catholics who will grow up to be big Catholics someday.
We have an obligation to do what we can. In whatever way we can.
AS to the specific question of the thread, who has the “Right” to my money? Well that is a tough one because it makes someone the judge of who has too much or who has more than their needs. Some people can’t afford a big house but have a boat in the driveway. Other people can’t afford a big house but they can afford to spend money on cigarettes and beer. Seems to me that some people are smart and even if they don’t make as much as their neighbor they save some of it and spend the other part more wisely, and they end up better off in the long run.
I will never forget when I first saw food stamps being used. The lady using them had a cart full of “prepared frozen foods” things like Swanson Frozen Fried Chicken and TV dinners (remember those?) and other expensive per portion types of food. I had some boxes of noodles, some ground beef and other staples so I could make spaghetti for dinner. She had dinner all prepared, all she had to do was warm it up. I figured it out, the price for my meal (per portion) was literally under a dollar per person. Her meals were $3 to $4 per person. If we give someone foodstamps, we should also teach them HOW TO COOK AN ECONOMICAL MEAL that will stretch the value. Perhaps we should eliminate some types of food so they cannot be purchased with food stamps?
), I very much doubt it. 
And my “wealth” will just about allow me to keep a roof over my head, and eat people-food, instead of cat tuna. 
