I think the issue with the Super-rich is how they get and stay that way and it’s not making good stock investments. No one gets super-rich in the 1st place without a lot of people on the bottom suffering.
If they cared about social justice, they wouldn’t be the super-rich.
I’m curious about more of your thoughts in this regard. Certainly there are some people ‘born’ rich, they can’t be held accountable for the acts of those whose wealth the inherited, can they?
How, specifically, do you think that the average person who gets super rich actually gets super rich? And could you expand upon your statement about ‘without a lot of people on the bottom suffering’?
I won’t disagree with you that if the super rich cared about social justice they wouldn’t be super rich. I think there are a lot of productive ways to use money to assist people in ‘learning how to fish’. And while these endeavors may not be financially profitiable, they most certainly can be internally rewarding.
I have worked in a program where people came from homeless shelters and prison and went on to get jobs and pay rent and be productive members of society. The people needed to be ‘hand picked’ out of several applicants, as they had to be willing to put forth real effort, and continuous effort, to make and sustain changes in the way they lived their lives…but it was nice to work in a program where dozens and dozens of men went from being drug addicts and/or alcholics as well as homeless and/or incarcerated to being clean and sober, getting and keeping jobs, and moving out into the world living in their own apartments, paying taxes, contributing to society through charity (in the form of personal sweat work, few had anything that could be considered financial ‘means’).
So I have seen, and been part of a process, where people made dramatic changes in their lives. They were required to pay rent while there, follow a set of rules, attend counseling, etc and some of these folks had more than a decade of being in and out of prison. A couple did 20 years in prison straight.
If I had wealth I would most certainly love to open up programs under the type of model of program I worked for in order to give people a ‘hand UP’ rather than a hand out. And teach men who never learned how to fish, how to fish… so they could go out into life and sustain themselves.
There are many in need in this country and others. It makes me greatful to know that such programs exist, and to have been part of such a program. Not every human can be saved. The world is not perfect. But with increased cooperation between people who truely care about their neighbors, who truely care about those in need, great things are possible.
It is my hope that more individuals learn to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, to learn to love their neighbors as themselves, and look for ways to give their neighbors a ‘hand UP’ as there are many looking for a hand up and not a hand out. And many looking for handouts are only doing so because they have been condtioned to do so by government through multi generational welfare. I don’t blame, or hold in contempt, people who live lives they were taught to live on a daily basis by their parents and grandparents.
It would be nice if they somehow instantly got a strong work ethic. But as a realist I do not think it’s reasonable to expect that to happen. And I am certainly not going to look down on my neighbor who shows up to collect $100 bills from a government that freely hands out $100 bills and has handed them out to those people’s parents and grandparents, essentially engraining in them that this is the way to live life.
That attitude can be changed. But it takes a concerted effort by those who truely care enough to get involved.
