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o_mlly
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As in “state capitalism”? No, precisely defining terms is necessary as several posts in this thread demonstrate. The important difference is whether a few elites decide how to allocate society’s resources or the many.
Socialism and Catholicism
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StudentMI
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I did differentiate between capitalism and state capitalism. In any case I was just citing an author. All good.
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HarryStotle
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UBI hasn’t been tried so we don’t know that it is “the best solution” over the long term. You might as well claim that socialism hasn’t been tried either, at least not in the “pure” form you might envision. Sure, let’s, by all means, try that experiment again despite that it always ends up the same.
You might want to reflect on whether crony capitalism or crony socialism would end up producing the worst end, overall.
Having a free market and at least the possibility of reeling in those (politicians or capitalists) who abuse the system is preferable to predisposing all control into the hands of the state then having that control enriched and consolidated by the wealthy elites.
I would suggest you be careful what you wish for. What has the appearance of “best solution” might be a chimera for the ideologically predisposed.
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StudentMI
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One of the problems with that however, is that with increasing bureaucracy decisions do come to be made by the few, not the many.
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o_mlly
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Welfare is necessary in any economic system, not only private capitalism.
Asserting that welfare “necessarily destroys families” needs an argument in support. The contra-assertion that without welfare, families are destroyed is equally valid. Death by privation cannot be considered helpful to maintaining family integrity.
Secondly, the accidents of any particular welfare system do not destroy families but rather pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth destroy families.
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o_mlly
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Fascism, the extreme right-wing version of socialism, promotes not government ownership but government control of production of goods and services through overarching and constraining regulations. Both fascism and socialism allow a privileged minority to oppress the majority. That reality is the result of Original Sin. However, only private capitalism has allowed that minority to oppress a privileged majority as witnessed in the U.S.A. The poor in this country are the envy of most of the world’s poor.
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HarryStotle
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A more basic and significant difference is how wealth (and, therefore, well-being on Earth) is created. No state creates wealth. At best, it controls and re-distributes the wealth created by individuals in the market. The presumption that the State has some supervening capability to successfully determine all aspects of supply and demand at the basic level of individual transactions is deluded, besides lacking any moral justification.StudentMI:
As in “state capitalism”? No, precisely defining terms is necessary as several posts in this thread demonstrate. The important difference is whether a few elites decide how to allocate society’s resources or the many.
Take, for example, this instance of an individual church deciding to pay off the medical debt of 45 000 families at a cost of $46.5 million.
Cincinnati church wipes out $46.5 million in medical debt for 45,000 families
An Ohio megachurch in Cincinnati announced Sunday that it is paying off $46.5 million in medical debt for more than 45,000 families.
www.foxnews.com
It seems to me that individuals making such an essentially moral and "good will’ choice in support of their fellow human beings is the essence of what it means to act as autonomous (and good) moral agents – from the perspective of both the giver and receiver.
Imagine a government body seizing that amount of capital and “distributing” it to those who had accrued the debt.
The intervention of a third party – the state – places a completely different patina on the “redistribution” from every perspective. The state is taking onto itself the authority to essentially steal what it has no right to. Those who possessed the wealth to begin with view the invention of the state with rightful suspicion and horror precisely because the state has presented itself as the benefactor using what is ill-gotten wealth, appropriated without due moral right. And the beneficiaries are led to believe that the wealth that they have attained was due to some state-sanctioned “right” to wealth that wasn’t theirs to begin with. Every party, including the state is the loser, morally speaking.
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o_mlly
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(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
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StudentMI
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o_mlly
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Essential to all capitalistic systems is the initial capital formation. Wealth, defined as goods exceeding that which is necessary to satisfy immediate consumption needs, did not exist in the two most egregious examples of socialism, the USSR and China. Having no wealth to steal, these evil systems created the necessary capital to modernize their economies by murdering their citizens through artificial famines and forced labor camps. While private capitalism’s record is no reason for celebrating, it is not one of murder and false imprisonment.
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StudentMI
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One thing Marx did get right is about the capital formation of early capitalism. He said it was “written in fire and blood.” The enclosures, the oppression of indigenous peoples during the colonial and imperialist eras, etc. These things were accomplished with the state.
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Socrates92
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Are thoughts “of this world”?
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Socrates92
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LeafByNiggle
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This is indeed a good story, but let’s give credit to who is really paying most of those bills. It is the doctors and the hospitals. You see, the donations made to the church mentioned do not go directly to pay the actual medical debt incurred. Instead they have partnered with a non-profit organization called “RIP Medical Debt” which buys up bundled debt from debt collectors for about a penny for each dollar of actual medical debt. So the church donors are paying 1% of the debt. Who is paying the remaining 99%? Well, it is whoever first agreed to sell that debt for a penny per dollar. That would be the hospitals and doctors who wanted to get the debt off their books because it was essentially uncollectable. And so the doctors and hospitals have essentially paid 99% of the debt themselves by selling the debt to a debt collector so cheaply. Then the debt collector sells that debt to RIP Medical Debt, which in turn “sells” it to donors who simply forgive the debt. So let’s hear it for the doctors and hospitals who are 99% responsible for this debt forgiveness as well the as church donors who are 1% responsible.
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AlNg
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People pay for Social Security when they receive their paycheck and then get most of it back when they retire or if they die, the widow gets it. Military spending in Afghanistan or in Iraq does not come back. It is just lost.
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HarryStotle
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Not all spending on defence is “just lost.” Spending that is ill-conceived is certainly a waste, but defence spending that legitimately prevents a nation from being attacked or citizens from being injured or killed is another matter.HarryStotle:
People pay for Social Security when they receive their paycheck and then get most of it back when they retire or if they die, the widow gets it. Military spending in Afghanistan or in Iraq does not come back. It is just lost.
As to “welfare spending” perhaps we ought not merely assume that all money that goes into the social welfare system ends up promoting the well-being of those who end up with it. The assumption is that individuals on the receiving end know how to handle money and spend it wisely for their long-term benefit.
That certainly isn’t necessarily true since welfare-dependency through multi-generational cycles is a reality. Assuming that those living in unsuccessful situations simply lack the capital to extract themselves from the situation is somewhat naive, since it misses the fact that the reasons a significant number of these individuals are unable to live well could have much to do with lack of competency (to name only one example) in terms of life skills. Merely endowing these individuals with capital doesn’t automatically fix their competency nor ameliorate the complexity of circumstances that reinforce the cycle.
In other words, social welfare spending could be as much a “waste” as military spending depending upon what actually happens to the capital (name removed by moderator)ut. Let’s not merely assume that because “welfare” rather than “military” is the label placed on the spending that it is thereby automatically rendered good and holy.
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HarryStotle
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One of the four amounts you have lumped together is “other agencies that protect our nation,” which includes federal funding for things like policing and firefighting. To expand “military” spending to include all expenses to protect the country from all natural and human threats kind of stretches the word “military,” beyond recognition, no?
As the OP I think that, with almost 400 posts, we are often wandering off the topic.
Many countries, with a large proportion of the earth’s population, are fully or partially socialist, including China, Russia, Portugal and India.
I include below a partial list of countries that have socialist parties located all around the world, many with a substantial number of Catholics.
Armenia
Bolivia
Brazil
Croatia
Denmark
Ecuador
Finland
France
Germany
Greenland
Iceland
Italy
Luxembourg
Moldova
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Norway
Peru
Portugal
Serbia
Slovenia
Sweden
Tunisia
Turkey
UK
Venezuela
This forum should not be a chat group for US Catholic conservatives, but should represent the universal views of the Church where very many good Catholics, perhaps including the Pope, hold socialist views.
Many countries, with a large proportion of the earth’s population, are fully or partially socialist, including China, Russia, Portugal and India.
I include below a partial list of countries that have socialist parties located all around the world, many with a substantial number of Catholics.
Armenia
Bolivia
Brazil
Croatia
Denmark
Ecuador
Finland
France
Germany
Greenland
Iceland
Italy
Luxembourg
Moldova
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Norway
Peru
Portugal
Serbia
Slovenia
Sweden
Tunisia
Turkey
UK
Venezuela
This forum should not be a chat group for US Catholic conservatives, but should represent the universal views of the Church where very many good Catholics, perhaps including the Pope, hold socialist views.
I note that apparently the church does not agree with socialism according to CAF, objecting to the State intervention in the economy, favouring the only system the US considers moral and right, the free market. Yet today I hear the Fed is going to intervene to save the economy. Please do not tell me the Fed is not the State regulatory body of the US financial system, as I see ‘The federal government sets the salaries of the board’s seven governors, and it receives all the system’s annual profits’.
It is not only the Republican administrations that rely on the state to save the economy. A Democratic government saved the car industry (GM) recently.
Finally universal state health care differs from what I read of it here. In fact doctors may have more control in it than in the free market US system where insurance companies seem to be able to decide on treatment.
It is not only the Republican administrations that rely on the state to save the economy. A Democratic government saved the car industry (GM) recently.
Finally universal state health care differs from what I read of it here. In fact doctors may have more control in it than in the free market US system where insurance companies seem to be able to decide on treatment.
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Socrates92
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Perhaps, but the breakdown of that includes $105B for Veteran Affairs, and $50B for Homeland Security, out of the total of $228B for that category. So, even if you exclude the remainder of $44B for the State Department, $20B for the Department of Energy, and $9.8 for Department of Justice, the resulting ~$915Billion comes pretty close.
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