Poverty industrial complex

[Loud-living-dogma]

Poverty industry, or the poverty-industrial complex-- is it a thing? To what extent do Catholics contribute to it or help alleviate poverty?

Documentary claims fighting poverty is big business - Arlington Catholic Herald

 

[Maximilian75]

As said in the article, giving aid is far less effective than creating jobs/ an infrastructure in which a country can become self- supporting. I hope CRS and other large Catholic charites know of this, but I don’t know of their specific methods.

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

This is my biggest issue with the welfare state. It’s the most inefficient way to try and help people at the bottom imaginable.

I’d rather we just have some kind of a negative income tax on the working poor so they don’t lose half their check to taxes.

I’d also like to see everyone’s 1st home be tax exempt, property taxes are a huge contributor to poor people not being able to afford a home. Even if they inherit a nice home from a relative they can’t always afford to pay the property taxes on it.

Same with a vehicle, 1st vehicle in a household should be exempt from taxes.

We don’t need the government to provide people’s basic needs, the community needs to do that. The government needs to just stop taking so much from people who can’t afford it.

 

[Maximilian75]

The concept of subsidiarity is one that has, IMO, been largely forgotten in the past years by Catholic social justice economists.