J
JimG
Guest
I think that perhaps the point was that one cannot do much almsgiving if one has nothing to give. Almsgiving is a recommended penitential practice; taxation is not!
- Status
D
Dan_Grelinger
Guest
I did get it. I fully understood that you replaced almsgiving with accumulating wealth in your post. Perhaps it is you that doesn’t ‘get it’.
And I did not make the ‘ridiculous’ claim that the ‘best way’ to help the poor is to make sure you are not poor yourself, as you accuse me of. Maybe you should re-read my post.
It appears that JimG understood what I was saying and is trying to help you understand. If you would like to understand, please ask for clarification instead of attacking me. You will appear more charitable that way.
Dan
J
JimG
Guest
I pretty much agree with your post. As one of the older generation myself, it does strike me as odd that so many retirees object to any changes in Medicare or Social Security because “they earned it” by contributing to it.
But they will collect far more than they ever contributed. (And in fact their own contributions went to pay benefits for their own parents and grandparents. They weren’t accumulating at interest like some savings account or pension.)
And of course the great emphasis on contraception ensured that the upcoming generations would be smaller, and less able to support a growing population of older people, who are living longer, and whose care will likely eat up the potential inheritances of their kids and grandkids—who will be still be burdened with the responsibility for taking care of them in their old age! And if the care of elders doesn’t eat up the inheritance, the government has the ability to destroy it through devaluation and inflation.
But it surprises me even more to go on Facebook or other social media and note how blithely unaware its young posters seem to be of the economic dangers facing them. If hard times come, they appear to be woefully unprepared, financially, physically, emotionally, mentally.
But then I suppose one never knows how one will react to a challenge until it is upon them.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I do apologize for confusing you with ACCT who made the original comment using the term “best way”. I also missed the significance of the word “FIRST” in your posting #28. With that understanding I still question the necessity of ensuring your own prosperity before turning to help the poor. The story of the widow’s mite makes that point better than I can. In all the Lenten homilies I have heard, I have never heard the priest have to remind people to ensure their own prosperity as a first step in almsgiving. People have motivation enough to do that without being reminded. I realize that you have to have something before you can give. But ACCT was making in sound like having something yourself is a replacement for almsgiving, not a prerequisite. I also realize that the original discussion was about taxation, not voluntary almsgiving. But ACCT then went on to support his position on taxation by means of a much broader claim about “the best way to help the poor is by not being poor yourself.” (post #25) which was overly broad for the point he was trying to make.
D
Dan_Grelinger
Guest
Thank you for your post. I do appreciate it.
Here are my thoughts:
Here are my thoughts:
- Your last statement is perhaps the most at issue. If you used the qualifier ‘some’, or perhaps even ‘most’, it would be true. But it is certainly not true for all. Unfortunately it is not true for a great many. And that is the problem that is being addressed in these posts. As a prior landlord, combined with other observations, I have had a peek into people’s financial lives and have found that for the vast majority of those dealing with financial difficulties, they are the results of poor decisions that were made based on selfish immediate wants instead of a responsible eye towards future financial stability. The results of these selfish decisions are that not only can they not make meaningful contributions to almsgiving, but they take alms out of the hands of those that are in a financial plight truly through little fault of the own. The widow of the gospel being in the later group.
A
ACCT
Guest
*The European debt crisis has spread from Greece to
Spain, from sovereign debts to giant banks. It’s coming
at us like a speeding freight train. It’s barreling down
the tracks, mowing down everything in its path. And
it’s gaining steam virtually every day.
Governments have tried all they can to stop it. Central bankers
have printed trillions in currencies of all types to head off the
crisis. But nothing is working.
The final outcome? It’s hard to imagine any scenario that
does not include an epic market collapse — a “Lehman moment”
the likes of which we haven’t seen since the fall of 2008,
when the financial world was virtually brought to its knees.
And it’s equally hard to imagine how policymakers will
resist the massive political pressures to launch an even bigger
global intervention — untold ADDITIONAL trillions in
paper money printed out of thin air or borrowed like mad!
The problem: As this “Crisis-Collapse-Response” cycle plays
out over and over again like a bad movie, each successive iteration
is growing larger and larger. And each time it plays out, the
end game also gets closer — the ultimate day of reckoning when the interventions fail to work entirely and the dismal underlying fundamentals finally win out over the money printers.
So how WILL this cycle unfold in the months ahead? How will the coming crisis resemble the Lehman debacle? How will it differ? Can things really get THAT bad? The shocking conclusion of my research: Not only are we heading towards another Lehmanstyle collapse, but this time, it could be even worse.*
Mike Larson
Spain, from sovereign debts to giant banks. It’s coming
at us like a speeding freight train. It’s barreling down
the tracks, mowing down everything in its path. And
it’s gaining steam virtually every day.
Governments have tried all they can to stop it. Central bankers
have printed trillions in currencies of all types to head off the
crisis. But nothing is working.
The final outcome? It’s hard to imagine any scenario that
does not include an epic market collapse — a “Lehman moment”
the likes of which we haven’t seen since the fall of 2008,
when the financial world was virtually brought to its knees.
And it’s equally hard to imagine how policymakers will
resist the massive political pressures to launch an even bigger
global intervention — untold ADDITIONAL trillions in
paper money printed out of thin air or borrowed like mad!
The problem: As this “Crisis-Collapse-Response” cycle plays
out over and over again like a bad movie, each successive iteration
is growing larger and larger. And each time it plays out, the
end game also gets closer — the ultimate day of reckoning when the interventions fail to work entirely and the dismal underlying fundamentals finally win out over the money printers.
So how WILL this cycle unfold in the months ahead? How will the coming crisis resemble the Lehman debacle? How will it differ? Can things really get THAT bad? The shocking conclusion of my research: Not only are we heading towards another Lehmanstyle collapse, but this time, it could be even worse.*
Mike Larson
T
TimothyH
Guest
The book "Happy Are You Poor by Fr. Thomas Dubay will challenge everything you thought about the subject of Gospel poverty.
Only read this book if you want your life to change.
-Tim-
D
Dan_Grelinger
Guest
That is a cryptic comment. Only a fool wants ‘change’ when they have no idea if it is good or not.
A
ACCT
Guest
Poverty and abortion are not separate issues! I do not think that we should start with feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless.
Let’s start with opposition to abortion. There are many who praise Mother Theresa for her work with the poor. However, they do not share her opposition to abortion. ** Failure to understand her opposition to abortion is also a failure to understand her work for the poor. The two concepts are inseparable. **
Mother Theresa’s understanding of poverty was much more profound than most of us realize. She would often say that we were made to love and be loved. Poverty is the failure to love. The height of poverty is the failure to recognize another person as a human being, and legally destroying that human being
Let’s start with opposition to abortion. There are many who praise Mother Theresa for her work with the poor. However, they do not share her opposition to abortion. ** Failure to understand her opposition to abortion is also a failure to understand her work for the poor. The two concepts are inseparable. **
Mother Theresa’s understanding of poverty was much more profound than most of us realize. She would often say that we were made to love and be loved. Poverty is the failure to love. The height of poverty is the failure to recognize another person as a human being, and legally destroying that human being
A
ACCT
Guest
*There’s another side to low interest rates that no one really likes to talk much about. They’re a sign that all is not well. Period.
Interest Rate Fact #1 — Western nations are living (and dying) on debt: Western governments are drowning in debt and need to borrow trillions of dollars more just to survive.
The U.S. government alone may have to rollover and borrow as much as $3 trillion in the next 12 months. Europe is staring at at least a trillion in rollover financing, not to mention another trillion it may soon need to bail out its sinking banks.
Simply put, they desperately NEED low interest rates to survive. Even if it means you don’t get a return on your savings anymore.
Interest Rate Fact #2 — Fed Chief Bernanke knows fully well that allowing interest rates to rise would destroy any economy that’s as sick as ours is: Higher borrowing costs would dampen consumer spending … push millions of employers over the brink … bankrupt millions more homeowners … increase unemployment, and more.
So from that point of view, low interest rates are a sign of how ill our economy is, and not how great things could be with low rates.
Interest Rate Fact #3 — To keep rates low, the Fed (and other central banks) will soon have to resort to more money printing, and lots of it.
Right now, they’re getting lots of help keeping rates low as investors all over the world, frightened by sinking economies, are pulling their money out of stock and commodities and instead, are plowing that money mostly into U.S. government notes and bonds.
That’s helping governments, especially Washington, keep rates low.
But that’s not going to last much longer. For one thing, central banks don’t like it one bit at all when disinflation hits the markets. That means declining asset prices, which makes it more difficult for consumers to borrow, even when rates are low, and also creates a negative wealth effect, making consumers fell less wealthy.
So central banks have no other choice when that happens but to step back in and print trillions more, both to keep interest rates low — through the increased supply of money and credit — and to inflate asset prices back up again.
Thing is …
You’re caught in the middle. When asset prices fall, you lose money … and then, when central banks flood the world with trillions of dollars of new money, the value of every dollar you have declines in value.
That puts your wealth in a pickle, to put it lightly. It’s also why I believe
that it’s now more important than ever that you watch every word spoken by any central banker, the world over.
They hold all the cards right now. They are far more powerful than most like to admit. I personally believe Fed Chief Bernanke is the most powerful man on the planet, far more powerful than our President, because Big Ben can print money at will. And there is nothing that can stop him.*
Interest Rate Fact #1 — Western nations are living (and dying) on debt: Western governments are drowning in debt and need to borrow trillions of dollars more just to survive.
The U.S. government alone may have to rollover and borrow as much as $3 trillion in the next 12 months. Europe is staring at at least a trillion in rollover financing, not to mention another trillion it may soon need to bail out its sinking banks.
Simply put, they desperately NEED low interest rates to survive. Even if it means you don’t get a return on your savings anymore.
Interest Rate Fact #2 — Fed Chief Bernanke knows fully well that allowing interest rates to rise would destroy any economy that’s as sick as ours is: Higher borrowing costs would dampen consumer spending … push millions of employers over the brink … bankrupt millions more homeowners … increase unemployment, and more.
So from that point of view, low interest rates are a sign of how ill our economy is, and not how great things could be with low rates.
Interest Rate Fact #3 — To keep rates low, the Fed (and other central banks) will soon have to resort to more money printing, and lots of it.
Right now, they’re getting lots of help keeping rates low as investors all over the world, frightened by sinking economies, are pulling their money out of stock and commodities and instead, are plowing that money mostly into U.S. government notes and bonds.
That’s helping governments, especially Washington, keep rates low.
But that’s not going to last much longer. For one thing, central banks don’t like it one bit at all when disinflation hits the markets. That means declining asset prices, which makes it more difficult for consumers to borrow, even when rates are low, and also creates a negative wealth effect, making consumers fell less wealthy.
So central banks have no other choice when that happens but to step back in and print trillions more, both to keep interest rates low — through the increased supply of money and credit — and to inflate asset prices back up again.
Thing is …
You’re caught in the middle. When asset prices fall, you lose money … and then, when central banks flood the world with trillions of dollars of new money, the value of every dollar you have declines in value.
That puts your wealth in a pickle, to put it lightly. It’s also why I believe
that it’s now more important than ever that you watch every word spoken by any central banker, the world over.
They hold all the cards right now. They are far more powerful than most like to admit. I personally believe Fed Chief Bernanke is the most powerful man on the planet, far more powerful than our President, because Big Ben can print money at will. And there is nothing that can stop him.*
- Larry Edelson
R
Robert_Sock
Guest
Everything is going to be OK! Sit back and watch as things crumble. Things have got to change in order to evolve.
T
TimothyH
Guest
Sorry, yes, you are right. Sorry to be cryptic.
Scripture records Jesus calling his disciples to live a life of poverty many times. If we want to live as Jesus calls us to live, an authentic Christian life, we have to recognize that Jesus did not call us to live a life of wealth but of poverty. Nowhere in scripture is wealth praised.
This is 180 degrees reversed from what society tells us. That is what this book addresses - what the real definition of gospel poverty is and what it means to live it as part of an authentic Christian life.
The disclaimer is that I am nowhere near it, but it has changed the way I view money and my practical behavior significantly. I have a long way to go.
-Tim-
D
Dan_Grelinger
Guest
Thank you for the additional information.
12 Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; 14 for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.
It appears that God blessed Isaac with great wealth. Or, are you suggesting that God blessed Isaac with a curse?
Similarly, in Genesis chapter 31, God blessed Jacob with wealth, aparantly in retribution for harms that had been done to Jacob by some who were abusing him. And those that had done these harms were jealous of Jacob’s wealth.
And in Deuteronomy 8:18, **But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. ** So God gives us the power to make what He does not want us to have?
In fact, I find reference after reference in the Bible that clearly indicate that material wealth is a blessing from God.
Tim, you are going to have to explain your statement to me, as it seems to be untrue.
Dan
I had to check out that claim, and I don’t believe it to be true. In fact, searching the Bible, the first reference to wealth is this one, from Genesis, chapter 26.
12 Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; 14 for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.
It appears that God blessed Isaac with great wealth. Or, are you suggesting that God blessed Isaac with a curse?
Similarly, in Genesis chapter 31, God blessed Jacob with wealth, aparantly in retribution for harms that had been done to Jacob by some who were abusing him. And those that had done these harms were jealous of Jacob’s wealth.
And in Deuteronomy 8:18, **But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. ** So God gives us the power to make what He does not want us to have?
In fact, I find reference after reference in the Bible that clearly indicate that material wealth is a blessing from God.
Tim, you are going to have to explain your statement to me, as it seems to be untrue.
Dan
J
JimG
Guest
Those called to the monastic life are particularly called to make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The rest of us are to not have money as our god. There is a great deal to be said for living a simple life.
Still, I find it rather ironic that the Federal government is about to make it more likely for everyone to lead a life of poverty!
A
ACCT
Guest
There will be no evolution of the global economy. We have built a world without God. The economy will not improve in our lifetime. Additionally, the 10 chastisements will break the back of evil. The world will change forever.
A
ACCT
Guest
Wealth never has been and never will be evil. Read Mathew 6:24 It is the love of money that is evil.
If you want an example of the love of money, you have to look no father than Uncle Ben, the head of the Federal Reserve. However, there is nothing federal about the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is not part of the federal government. Uncle Ben can create money out of thin air and then lend this monopoly money to us, all to the benefit of the central bankers!
A
ACCT
Guest
DEFAULT! TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE! This is the Noah solution to the economy. We are past the point of no return with our national and global debt. The global economy cannot be fixed! Your money will not save you. The Euro is toast and the dollar will be toast.
A total economic collapse will eliminate the Federal Reserve and the central bankers. You will have to go back to the land to get the food and shelter that you need. Pray together and work together!
A total economic collapse will eliminate the Federal Reserve and the central bankers. You will have to go back to the land to get the food and shelter that you need. Pray together and work together!
A
ACCT
Guest
**The Myth of Equality **
Public figures have generally accepted a responsibility to bring prosperity to everyone, which is perhaps the motivation behind the ‘growth at all costs’ mentality. Only their naturally progressive approach doesn’t alleviate the problem;** it perpetuates the problem**.
The result of this myth, when accepted by a country dependent on debt and deficit spending, is to continue their profligate ways and** tax the productive players of a society in order to distribute to underproductive players. The myth generates action that allegedly supports growth. But it’s hard to expect how this drive for so-called equality can contribute to a foundation for financial and economic prosperity**
Public figures have generally accepted a responsibility to bring prosperity to everyone, which is perhaps the motivation behind the ‘growth at all costs’ mentality. Only their naturally progressive approach doesn’t alleviate the problem;** it perpetuates the problem**.
The result of this myth, when accepted by a country dependent on debt and deficit spending, is to continue their profligate ways and** tax the productive players of a society in order to distribute to underproductive players. The myth generates action that allegedly supports growth. But it’s hard to expect how this drive for so-called equality can contribute to a foundation for financial and economic prosperity**
A
ACCT
Guest
Europe’s economy is now sliding deeper into a recession. The U.S. economy is also now rolling over to the downside.
Europe is now in complete meltdown mode and the world is panicking.
Greece will have no choice but to soon pull out of the euro.
Spain, already reeling, will fall next. It can’t possibly fund the nearly $1 trillion of debt it has coming due in the next 12 months, yet alone bail out its failing banking system.
Italy will soon start to totter. The contagion will definitely hit the country, one of the most indebted in all of Europe.
Europe is now in complete meltdown mode and the world is panicking.
Greece will have no choice but to soon pull out of the euro.
Spain, already reeling, will fall next. It can’t possibly fund the nearly $1 trillion of debt it has coming due in the next 12 months, yet alone bail out its failing banking system.
Italy will soon start to totter. The contagion will definitely hit the country, one of the most indebted in all of Europe.
D
Dan_Grelinger
Guest
Does the sun ever shine in your world?
- Status