Should the majority or vast majority be given more wealth

[Seeker1961]

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

–Adrian Rogers

This sounds really black/white to me. It also presupposes a very low view of our brothers and sisters-that those who aren’t doing well now have no interest in ever doing better and that those who are doing well just want more and more and more for themselves.

I really hope that isn’t true. The people I’ve met who are having a rough time always want to do better, and are trying hard to get jobs. On the other side are many good people who are in a good place now and they want to share those blessings with others.

Why does it have to be “all poor people are lazy slobs who want handouts” and “all rich people are greedy slobs who won’t help others”?

 

[kkollwitz]

“I’ve worked in food pantries in three different states since I was in college and I have never had an experience like that.”

My experience with the St. Vincent food pantry is that you get a different crowd there than at the soup kitchen. I think it’s because most of the stuff at the pantry requires the recipient to do their own prep…you can’t just walk in and be served a good meal.

 

[tabycat]

Jesus said that we would always have the poor among us. Being rich/poor is mostly relative. To Bill Gates, someone with only 500million dollars is poor, to the rest of us that person is rich.

 

[Bill_7154]

If capitalism has failed for sooo long to solve the problem we have, economic, what can we do?

But we do not live under capitilism in the USA. Capitalism is about free trade. Our government INHIBITS trade. It stands in the middle of me and other people wanting to trade and sets up all sorts of rules and regulations to interfere with free trade. Of course they force me and you to pay them to interfere with our potential desire to engage in free trade with one another. And they force us to pay penalties if we engage in free trade (there are all sorts of laws restricting trade and penalizing free trade i.e. not abiding by the restrictions).

There can not be true capitalism in a land controlled by a territorial monopoly (our government). The government sets up all sorts of artificial barriers to entry to engaging in free trade (get license x to do y, pay fee to government to get license, pay fee to government to maintain license, pay fees to government to create rules and regulations that dictate specific behaviors one (or company) must abide by, pay fees to have all sorts of regulators in inspecters poking their noses around to try and find flaws in the way one operates to see if they can catch you not following one of the myriad of rules and regulations. Pay fees/fines if you forget to dot and I or cross a T.

In fact, …“The word capitalism was coined by none other than Karl Marx, who hoped that it would help in his crusade to denigrate the system of private property and free enterprise and promote socialism.” Surprizing, huh?

Here is a link to an overview of a book that addresses true capitalism vs. what most of us beleive is actually capitalism. The book was written by a professor at Loyota University in MD, which just so happens to be a Jesuit College my nephew will be starting his freshman year at in a couple of weeks.

Title of the book: How Capitalism Saved America: the Untold History Of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

mises.org/daily/1887

There are a lot of info that could serve to educate people who get their notions of what capitalism is from tainted sources. Here’s a snip it from the link…DiLorenzo (the author) indicts large corporations, not because they are large or because they are corporations, but because “many corporations support interventionist or anticapitalist policies like trade protectionism or corporate welfare because they hope to benefit from the policies at everyone else’s expense.”

I just stumbled upon the link, but I might just purchase that book and send it to MD along with my Nephew to get it signed by the professor who wrote it.

 

[JIB]

Thomas DiLorenzo is a Catholic himself, as is Tom Woods. Most anything by those two are great reads. Woods has a great book about the free market and Catholicism that I’ve read a couple times that is great.

 

[Bill_7154]

The average American tax burden is over $16,000. The reality is that the poor in America do not pay their “fair share”.

I would suggest cutting government spending in lieu of more punitive taxes on anyone.

The non working poor pay taxes with the money they get from the taxes (sales taxes, misc other taxes) of others. When is enough enough? Government policies and practices irritate me.

 

[Bill_7154]

Thinking of my own adult children, the government impulse to forcibly take money from those who earn it and give it to those who don’t has already sapped the initiative of one of them (and his indolent friends); and is likely to do the same to another.

As long as society doesn’t distinguish between the lazy and the needy where gov’t largesse is concerned, lives will continue to be ruined under the guise of “morality.”

Of course. What do you expect from a government PR machine? I feel sad for the poor who exist on orther people’s taxes. I don’t get angry at someone who shows up to collect $100 bills from a man on a street corner with a sign around his neck saying “free $100 bills, come take some!” and by the same token I do not get angry with people who collect handouts from government. Government is the source of the problem, keeping the cycle going. Entitlement programs IMO are the big problem. They need to be changed so that most recipients, particularly long term recipients of hand out programs, should be required to be doing things to both help themselves as well as help another(s) in one way or another.

There is no shortage of ideas in how to re-design programs to assist the poor and needy so that they actually assist them by training them to become more self suficient while also lending a hand to help another or society in general by doing volunteer work somewhere, whatever.

Most of my clients do not work. And most are capable of working despite having a major mental illness. Most all are not capable of full time work, but most are capable of part time work. Others are capable of job skills training type involvement if not yet ready for competetive employment. But when they get $15.00/hr tax free in money and goods (I’m not counting the ‘services’ they receive) based on a 40 hour work week, paid 52 week vacation a year they are simply not going to accept a part time job for $8.50/hr when the government is going to take 50% right off the top and then another arm of the government is going to take 30%, leaving them with 20% of that $8.50 minus the little bit extra that social security and rail road tax or whatever little misc taxes we who receive paychecks are hit with.

The system is a sick joke on all of us perpetrated by government beaurocrats who sit back in charge of large budgetted programs where they don’t do much of anything and receive a fat salary and pension. And the more ‘clients’ on the dole, the greater their chances of getting a promotion or fatter budget to oversee…

 

[Bill_7154]

And who determines the difference between the “lazy” and the “needy”?

Every 4 years the myth of the welfare queen returns, as she drives her new Escalade to the grocery store, buys filet mignon and lobster with her food stamp card-struggling to get it out of her Gucci wallet with her freshly manicured nails. (and the bonus point goes to who can pick her racial makeup!)

It’s a wonderful story, because everyone gets to feel all righteously indignant and superior-but it isn’t true. The majority of people who receive public assistance are children, and unless you would relish a return to child labor, they’re not getting jobs to pay taxes. Most of the rest have at least one job, some have 2 or 3. (you can look up the welfare statistics for your state if you like, the federal government makes them easily available as well)

Better yet, spend some time at your local food pantry, get to know the folks who come in at the end of the month when that $4 a day they get runs out and they can’t buy food for their children. You can call them lazy to their faces.

‘Welfare’ comes in many forms my friend. Housing subsidies cash money from the social security administration, free medical care, etc. When you pay someone $15.00 an hour tax free to sit at home and watch TV, a permanent 52 week per year vacation, why would anyone be surprised they are not applying for jobs (unless they have a real shot at making a fair ammt more than $15.00/hr).

Entitlement programs are esentially evil and destructive. Possibly not for those who have worked for years and years and hit a temporary rough spot but have a strong work ethic and reluctantly and with much moral struggle accept the assistance as they know it will be temporary and they know they have and will pay much more back in taxes than they will be receiving.

Would you like to come to the state of MA and visit a homeless shelter with me? I used to live in one. We can go in Jan, the dead of winter. On Dec 31st the shelther will be full. On Jan 1st it will be empty because that is when everyone gets their SSI checks and they (almost all, not all) go spend it all on drugs, coming back to the shelter 2-3 days later with no money left. This is widespread with the homeless population, they all receive about $750/month in cash and a couple hundred a month in food stamps (which most sell for drug money).

From now on, if you live in an area where there are panhandlers pay attention to the date and watch all the panhandlers disappear on the 1st of the month (or the Sat before if the 1st falls on a Sunday) and/or the 3rd of the month because this is when they all receive their SSI checks (the 1st) and their SSDI checks (the 3rd)- for those who have enough of a work history. I work in the system so I know. I used to be homeless myself, I choose to get counseling for help with my psychological problems and get a job though. I received food stamps for 2 months and sold them so I could have bus fare to go around job searching as the homelss, at least in this state, have ample places to eat 3 meals a day 7 days a week. The overwhelming majority of people who are begging for money already get government checks and are begging for alcohol and drug money. This is simple fact my friend. At least for those who have been homeless for any length of time.

 

[Bill_7154]

“Better yet, spend some time at your local food pantry, get to know the folks who come in at the end of the month when that $4 a day they get runs out and they can’t buy food for their children. You can call them lazy to their faces.”

Thanks for that advice: I worked Saturday lunch at a soup kitchen as a part of my parish commitments for about 6 years. Most of the people there were indolent and lazy like my son, and were being enabled in that laziness and indolence by an abundance of handouts. And the folks who ran out of food at the end of the month were easy to distinguish by their gratitude, politeness, and cleaning up after themselves.

Why would we expect anything other than lazyness, they are getting paid to be lazy. That’s their JOB.

(Yes, I understand they have problems and difficulties. People don’t drop out of medical school to get on the welfare gravy train. But giving handouts withou expecting someone to lift a finger to try and help themself is making their problems worse). I know. I used to be homeless and witnessed this up close (and I was one of the ones who was thankful and helped clean up every day. Heck, the first bologona sandwhich I received after initially becoming homeless was one of the meals in my life I was most greatful for). I still remember this guy, homeless guy who was trying to convince me to see a psychiatrist and do a crazy act to get a ‘crazy check’. I started working day labor, he would yell out to me “Go for the GOLD!, $500 a month, TAX FREE!” (it’s up to $750-$800/month now, this was 20 years ago.

 

[bri89]

Wow. Some of these responses, one in particular, are worthy of Mitch McConnell," United States tax code favors lower income Americans too much already and should be restructured to make it fairer to upper income earners, Senate Republican Leader McConnell said".

There really is no place for a young “liberal” on this forum. In my city, which has some pretty high levels of concentrated poverty, there are literally homeless people living in encampments who ride to work on their bicycles and people with jobs living out of their cars. My dirt-poor single grandmother was a “welfare queen” who raised a son that is now an affluent regional manager for Dow Chemical, and she has a daughter who is a middle class RN. She received welfare and food stamps(it was government cheese in th 70s) almost her entire life, and without that government assistance my aunts and uncles would have starved to death. This is what happens when you’re from the ghetto, were child labor, then married off at 14 to an abusive husband, have no access to contraception because of your religion, and can’t work because you have seven kids. She’s worked harder than Mitch Mcconnell ever has, and has a registered Democrat high earning son who is un-objectionably paying more in taxes than most people. After my father divorced my mother we were on government assistance for sometime, and my older brother, once a recipient of food stamps, is now an English major at CAL. There’s been no laziness in my family.

 

[vera_dicere]

I got a pay rise the other week.

I now get LESS money in my bank each week from my employer, because that payrise put me into a higher tax bracket.

What really irks me, if I say people who get social welfare should be accountable for the tax payers’ dollars they’re given, somehow, I’m suddenly a monstrous rightwing nut job out to crush the poor under teh boot of my heel?

If politicans are held to account for the way they spend tax dollars, why can’t the people who expect a handout because theyr’e too lazy/depressed/whatever to get a job? I’m all for the state stepping in and helping a family when its absolutely neccessary, but parents blowing the money on the pokies, booze, and spending that money on TV’s and playstations why their kids starve?

Frankly, I think vouchers should be given. The state pays the rent and power directly to the landlord, the family are then given food vouchers where you can’t buy smokes and booze, and each year the family are given toy vouchers for kid’s birthdays and Christmases.

I hate the concept of taxing the rich more, all that does is hurt the poor. The rich are the ones who own the companies and hire people, if they loose profits because they’re paying mroe tax then they’ll just fire a few people, which then depresses the economy further.

I think we need to set up a system where more of us have access to larger portions of land, we can grow our own foods, set up local mini farmers markets and not only will we be getting fresher produce that is locally grown, we develop a better sense of community, it also cuts the cost of transporting foods we could grow ourselves to supermarkets from the farms they came from. Have the much larger farms grow more specialised high maintainence crops.

Capitalism is a complete failure, it’ll never be stable, our history shows us that. Communism is even worse. We need to find a middle ground. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor isn’t helpful.

 

[JIB]

I got a pay rise the other week.

I now get LESS money in my bank each week from my employer, because that payrise put me into a higher tax bracket.

Seems like an odd tax code. That’s not how it works here in the US.

Capitalism is a complete failure, it’ll never be stable, our history shows us that. Communism is even worse. We need to find a middle ground. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor isn’t helpful.

Who has had capitalism? Not the US. Certainly not Europe. We don’t have it now and never have. What society needs is a free market system with a moral citizenry.

There is no “middle ground”. You have capitalism/freedom/voluntary exchange/liberty or statism/communism/socialism/fascism. You’re going to move towards one or the other.

 

[kkollwitz]

“Seems like an odd tax code. That’s not how it works here in the US.” Yes…a higher bracket here only affects marginal income.

 

[kkollwitz]

“There’s been no laziness in my family.”

Good. On the other hand there has been laziness in my family. Do you propose handouts to my lazy kids the same as your industrious grandmother? I don’t.