Yes, I do indeed. Could you show us the Church’s understanding of socialism and the text of her condemnation and we’ll see if there is any conflict? It would be distressing if the Church condemned every western economic system!
Please support your assertions
It’s very easy to look up and read… a slew of Papal Encyclicals.
I see. But in short, do all our western democracies cross the line of socialism “as the church understands it”?
I imagine the improved living standards wrought in China (under a particular brand of communist dictatorship no less!) have been more than sufficient to drag the world average in the right direction.
Consider: Does any nation on this worldly world ever walk in line with Catholic Church Teachings?
Ok that matches my earlier statement that all of our western systems incorporate some socialist elements. You’ve not demonstrated there is an in-principle problem with that.
That seems reasonable, that said, what about the issue that many working class are struggling to get by?
They’re what? OK, c’mon. There aren’t that many people working for the government, and those who are aren’t as glowing about what government can and can’t do as all of that.
The private sector is good at many things. But providing for health care for everyone (not just the lucky ones) is not one of them. There has never been a time when the private sector covered as many people with health insurance as the ACA does now, especially the unemployed. Medicare is much better than if everyone were left to their own resources. When has the private sector ever covered so many senors as Medicare?
Subsidiarity says that local solutions, when they work, are preferable to solutions from some higher level of government. In the particular case of medical care, when has the kind of local solution you are talking about ever worked as well as Medicare works?
There is nothing stopping local charities from taking over from Medicare. If they manage to do 5% as much as Medicare I might consider reducing the role of Medicare in favor of local charities. But it is risky to cut off or drastically reduce government provided health insurance in the hopes that charities will pick up the slack and do as thorough as job. I think the charities need to demonstrate they are up to the task before attempting that experiment.
The cost of providing health care coverage is also a problem for a lot of employers. People would also be more able to change jobs and work as independent contractors and in all sorts of other ways if employers weren’t seen as the source of group health care coverage. Individual coverage is just too expensive.
I think we need to revisit the issue of a living wage. I think it was easier to determine back in the day with more one-income households but now companies don’t have to pay 1 worker as much because most households are 2 incomes. I also think that one income families should get a tax break of some sort over their two income family counterparts who get child care tax credits. Why shouldn’t a one income household get to keep more of their taxes for child care? Isn’t child care a service to society in terms of raising productive members? I do think we also need a modest raise in the minimum wage. Maybe $10-$11/hr. It’s way past time for that to be adjusted. Now that the economy is in an upswing, it would be more feasible. I’d also be all for some kind of gov’t subsidized job training to fill gaps in labor markets that are underserved. I’m no economist but I also wonder if there could be some kind of corporate profit sharing requirements that the gov’t could impose on larger businesses as a way to put more of the profit share in the hands of the workers rather than it all aggregating at the top. Of course, I don’t know what negative ramifications of that would be that might make it prohibitive.
Again, I don’t count social insurance paid into by all as a welfare issue. I do think the government can cover more with health insurance than the private sector but we will mostly all benefit from paying into it through social security and medicare and medicaid if needed. That being said, I don’t want a completely gov’t based health care system.
I didn’t propose a purely local solution. However, just because Medicare has been the most successful solution to date (albeit riddled with it’s own problems) doesn’t mean we can’t consider other outside-the-box possibilities that would work better.
I don’t think anyone here was calling for any drastic cuts in gov’t provided health insurance. Although the health care issue is related to the problem of poverty, I’m more focused on Fed gov’t creep of taking on more and more responsibility to fight poverty that it takes it out of the hands of those closest to the problem. Gov’t incentives or even requirements for the super rich to give more of their wealth to fund or found private, efficient charities? Yes. Gov’t just taking more in taxes to do it far from the particular needs of different locales? No
Yeah, well even prize winners can have stupid ideas.
Got any better ideas?