Since when are the well-being of the economy and addressing the sufferings of the poor mutually exclusive? That is the fundamental mistake well-meaning people make. A strong, robust economy will help those who are poor find a job more easily. Plus, a robust economy will help people contribute more to charities - if I got laid off, I wouldn’t be able to donate as much to charity as I do now.
lets say the economy in 2012 has a 5% increase does that increase alone help a single mother of 2 who has no job get food for her and her two kids?
or does it help the unemployed guy who has no health insurance but just came down with a life threatening illness? (no i’m not calling for obama care)
does it help the middle class elderly couple who is in debt up to their ears, and only one can work a low end job that pays minimum wage?
there may be less poor but there will still be poor, and those who are poor are still going to struggle to get money they are still going to struggle to pay for medical expense and pay of debts, and while a 5% increase in GDP may help them in the long term it won’t do anything for the immediate short term.
I don’t think its up to the government to make sure the poor are feed the, the sick are taken care of, and so on and so forth. But I don’t think the government should put in a system that makes it very difficult for the poor to get out of the situation they are in, but helps the economy boom. You have to put in a system that finds a balance a system that provides a small safety net but no enough to live on, a system that gives the ability for the poor to come out of poverty and have no road blocks set up that will make it difficult to come back, some happen today. Lastly have a system that will encourage economic growth without sacrificing the two things I just mentioned.
But how do you measure “doing too much” ? Is it based on how much of my money is confiscated and then given to a bureaucracy to redistribute to others? We are called to help the poor. However, if the government takes $1000 from a rich guy and lets $20 trickle down to a poor guy (and makes him dependent on that money) that doesn’t relieve you or me from our obligation to help the poor with our own time and money. The Democrat policy to “help” the poor is really “trickle down charity” with others’ money. It is time we stop measuring compassion by how much a party supports confiscating others’ money. We need to measure compassion for the poor by what we ourselves are doing.
I don’t know I would say maybe when the governments intervention in your life makes it to difficult for you to live a good catholic life and support your own life style along with charity and such. I think the catechism explains it well go back and look at it.
and I think government job is more to set up systems that help the poor, like a tax structure that doesn’t discourage increases in salary. Setting up a system that doesn’t make it impossible for people with bad credit histories to make purchases. Providing some safety nets that those who are the worst of the worst won’t be left out on the street to fend for themselves. Setting up safety nets could simply be providing funds for the local St. Vincent De Paul Charity. Along with other things. I don’t think the government should do nothing and let people do everything. While the people should do the most the government still has a job to help the poor.
