Use economics to end world hunger, says Pope

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What do you think?

ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_061114econom.shtml
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Hello bones,

I think that the leader of “1.2 billion Catholics” should first focus on having the Church be a model of feeding the poor. 1.2 billion Catholics, plus howevermany Protestants, Jews and any one else who the Church sees under the umbrella of worshiping our God (Muslims?), paying ten persent of their income, would be a good model to show the secular world.

I have heard that the average American Catholic pays only about a half of one percent of their income to feed the poor. If Catholics are ok with allowing the poor to starve to death, while they squander God’s portion of their income on themselves, why should the Pope (Catholics leader) be focusing on the secular world rather than on the poor performance of the Church?

The Church has not convinced me that, the unbaptized, the secular pagans, agnostics, heratics, satan worsipers and the like do go to heaven if they feed the poor. I firmly believe that Christ’s followers go to heaven if they do as Jesus commands and feed the poor. If Catholics hate Jesus and the poor by failing to tithe and donate with all their strength to keep the poor from dying, why should the Pope be focusing on the secular world rather than Christ’s Church?

I think the Pope should strongly preach Jesus’ warning to Catholics that He (Jesus) will burn Catholics in hell if they do not properly donate to the poor to keep them from dying. I have never heard any Pope strongly preach to Catholics that Jesus will burn them in hell if they do not properly donate to the poor. I think that the Pope should focus first on the one third or so of the world’s population who the Church sees as under Christ’s warning to love God through titheing, or donating with all your strength to keep the poor from dying. I think the Pope should first warn “1.2 billion Catholics” that they will burn in hell if they do not tithe/donate with all thier strength to keep the poor from dying, or burn in hell.

That is what I think.
NAB MAT 25:31

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."LUK 16:19 The Rich Man and Lazarus

"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.'
 
Steven, the pope did speak of lifestyles and personal responsibility. Why be critical of him when he essentially said the same thing you said?

The problem, as I see it, is not world economics or lack of generosity nearly so much as the mismanagement and constant fighting in certain areas of the world that keeps donated food from reaching those who need it. The former Rhodesia is a prime example of mismanagement. In a few short years, it went from being the breadbasket of Africa to a country that can’t even feed itself while its leaders take all donated food for themselves and their armies. That’s an internal problem that has absolutely nothing to do with the Church or the generosity of its members. Come up with a solution to this and similar problems and you will have solved a big portion of the hunger problem.
 
Some years ago, there was an award-winning (Peabody Award) TV show, with the title “World Hunger” … relevant to this thread. Three terribly suffering countries were featured.

Shortly thereafter I was sent to one of the countries in the TV program on a project. I was to be the regional economist.

The producer of the TV show provided me with a transcript of the show and I looked up the people who had been interviewed for the program.

To avoid legal difficulties I will disguise the names and identities of the country and the people involved.

Here are the things I found:

The head of one of the government agricultural ministries absconded with the national treasury and disappeared. (He popped up years later in another country.)

The foremost agricultural expert turned out to be a mercenary hired by the president of the country to be his pilot to fly him out of the country in case of a coup.

The agricultural methods advocated by the expert would totally destroy the soils of the country.

An American company was talked into providing funds for agricultural aircraft. The money was used to buy an airliner for the president of the country. The pilot stole the plane and disappeared.

A major transportation project was an absolute flop and resulted in several deaths; it was never ever remotely feasible.

Malaria which once had been wiped out, came back and caused enormous deaths.

Poor soils management and poor livestock management resulted in huge problems with soil compaction.

The wife of the president was found to have a gorgeous irrigated cattle ranch … hidden where a satellite was the only way to pick it up … by accident … it showed up as an anomaly on the imagery.

So … what happens???

How does this kind of situation get “resolved” to use the current buzzword]???

[Don’t get me started.]
 
The old saying “fine words butter no parsnips” comes immediately to mind. The problem is political, not economic. Africa is a political basket case. Food and money sent there is stolen by dishonest leaders of those kleptocracies. In some places, armed thugs keep food from being delivered or charge huge bribes.

Look hard to Zimbabwe and the vicious machinations of Robert Mugabe who has taken a nation that once exported agricultural produce and turned it into an economic basket case by taking farmland from the owners, running out the skilled farmers and turning the land over to unwitting dupes. And that is only part of the problem. Other African leaders won’t intervene - they won’t even criticize him! Bottom line, the leaders are jealous of their power but don’t seem to care if people are starving as long and they and theirs have full bellies.

It is a fine thing to talk in elevated language about feeding the hungry, but if the people holding the reins of power won’t let it happen, it is very difficult to do.
 
geezerbob said:
Steven, the pope did speak of lifestyles and personal responsibility. Why be critical of him when he essentially said the same thing you said?
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Hello geezerbob,

I missed the part where the Pope spelled out Christ’s economic plan to keep the poor from starving to death; “Catholics must feed the poor or burn in hell”.
 
Hello All,

From reading the posts it seems like donations to keep the poor from starving to death do nothing unless the UN first uses military intervention to weed out the evil wicked leaders of starving countries. Establish democracy first then send in the finacial donations. Is this the feeling? Is this the Pope’s plan?
 
Maybe the first step in ending world hunger is to shine a very powerful light on those tyrants who steal the food money. Let EVERYONE know what they are doing. There’s a group of people who “seem” to believe in throwing money at problems; they cry constantly about all those poor people. But they are not willing to remove the tyrants.

So step two would be to force the tyrants to leave their countries.

They can live nicely somewhere else on their Swiss bank accounts. In fact, Libya has accommodated a few of these dictators. At least, they are no long in the “kleptocracy” business.

[And they DO have Swiss bank accounts … huge ones.]
don’t get me started]*
 
Good one, eliminate the obvious imbalance of the rich and poor would help reduce the anger of those who would use terror to try to adjust the wickedness of such injustice.

Better still, advocate the Reign of Christ in society for betterment of the human race…
 
Hard as it might be to understand. Hunger will not be solved until political justice is established.

Money can be stolen, food held for private/political use instead of being distributed. 10% of a families earnings and “wealth” to the poor for their needs is a wonderful thing. Only with the world as it is, this money tends to be used against those most in need. It keeps them under the rule of the oppressors. So if you are the wrong tribe, color, sex etc you still have nothing and your children starve.
 
From the article linked
The Pope asked, “[How] can we face this situation which, though repeatedly denounced, shows no sign of improving, indeed, in some ways is getting worse? It is certainly necessary to eliminate the structural causes linked to the system of managing the world economy, which restricts the majority of the planet’s resources to a minority of the population.”
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I think this is key. In the end it’s a problem in the very structure of capitalism. It is as if we have too much freedom with money and anything goes. An example would be professional sports and musicians. A guy with a talent for throwing a baseball can make $100,000,000. A guy with a commercial drivers license can make $45,000. A guy in other parts of the world that can do both won’t make a nickle. Cops and military make average wages while the lead singer of some rock band becomes a multi millionare.

Right across the ocean people are starving to death while some tin horn dictator steals all of the charity money. I think when the Pope talkes about “structural causes linked to the system of managing the world economy”, these are some of the issues.

The Pope thinks very globally as he should as a world leader. There is enough wealth in this world and enough food in this world to take care of everyone. We as regular people never question why things are what they are in all of there corruption. Why is it OK for Axle Rose to be a multi millionare while other people who risk there lives every day make less and others starve?

Another aspect is, what is the responsibility of government? Our leaders run a government in this day and age as if they are running a business. Making huge decisions that change peoples lives is not a business at all. Yet we all accept the fact that the money is considered more important then the people. I think the Pope questions all of these assumptions. If the world joined him perhaps it would get it together.

I have no desire to see some kind of communism come into play. I would however like to see laws enacted limiting wealth to a certain amount and the rest given to starving people everyplace. I think a person with a billion dollars could get by just fine with 350 million. I’m sure the greedy would appose this, yet hundreds of thousands of people could live.

-D
 
If power is diffused throughout society, then the average person can get by. However, some popular people will make huge amounts from voluntary payments from those average people, even though those huge earnings don’t diminish the earnings of the average person.

If power is concentrated with “the police” so that no one can make “too much money”, then there will be no one to “police the police”… the result is … a Lenin or a Stalin or a North Korea or a Cuba. And the average person starves.

When someone says they want to prevent an athlete or a rock star from making “too much” money, then that person is skirting the edge of envy.

There is a difference between jealousy and envy. Jealousy is when someone takes an emotional look at the property of someone else … and maybe is tempted to achieve some similar level of wealth. Whereas, envy is when someone looks at the property of others and wants to take it away.

When, in the United States laws have been passed to tax (limit) the wealthy, what happens in real life is that the wealthy are able to effectively shelter their wealth. So the true burden of the taxes falls on the poor and the middle class (i.e., the people who work at regular jobs and who get paid by the hour).
 
Some of the more promising programs to eliminate poverty involve micro-loans and micro-crop insurance. It’s more direct than other programs and harnesses the impulse of people to improve their own positions in life. I think the Nobel Economist this year is the guy who started the micro loan programs. They’ve found, too, that small loans made to women to start businesses are more likely to be paid back and generate more economic growth for the entire community. The micro-crop insurance is new, but could really help also.

Now, these schemes aren’t going to be useful in all situations, but they do seem to be working in some areas.
 
a_cermak said:
Some of the more promising programs to eliminate poverty involve micro-loans and micro-crop insurance.
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I give support to two Catholic charities whose programs include giving training and small loans to the poor to start self-sustaining small businesses and small loans to subsistence farmers. I agree that such programs are worthwhile.
 
Al_Masetti said:
Maybe I missed something.

Where did the Holy Father say we have to restrict or confiscate the income of athletes and rock stars?
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He pointed out that a small minority of people have the majority of the wealth. That includes athletes and rock stars among others. You said that if people are in oposition to the idea of people having such riches while others starve they must be bordering on envy. So in essence I must assume you disagree with the Popes statement that the system is broken when a small minority own the majority of wealth. Was I mistaken? I agree with the Pope, the system is broken and needs to be fixed so that people will survive. Will the world follow the Popes advice? I doubt it.

-D
 
Darrel, you are making the assumption that what Pope Benedict said was aimed directly at us and the wealthy in our society. While the goal of eliminating hunger is certainly most worthy, I think his statement was a little ambiguous, overly simplistic, and totally altruistic in blaming the global economic system, whatever that is, for the entirety of a multi-faceted problem that begins and will end with what is in the hearts of men.

For starters, where do professional athletes and rock stars get their money? If we, collectively, refused to shell out the exhorbitant prices for concerts and ball games, those high salaries would take a nose dive. If we, again collectively, voluntarily took the money spent on those tickets and other entertainment such as movies and Play Stations, and donated it to a world hunger fund, would the problem be solved? I don’t think so. There are too many other factors involved. The same goes for limiting or confiscating that income by legislation and/or taxation. It makes money available but, by itself, does not solve the problem.

Remember what the catechism says about (restricted) capitalism before suggesting that the entire system be destroyed. It may not be a perfect system but is better in practice than any other system yet devised. Most of those who get wealthy from capitalism put their money back into the system, thereby providing additional jobs which help to raise people out of poverty and prevent them from going hungry. Remember that we’re talking about hunger and not the equal distribution of wealth. The benefits of this system are apparent in such formerly underdeveloped areas as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and coastal China and we see changes taking root in Thailand, Malaysia, parts of Africa and other areas. Just as it did here, it will go through a maturation process, gradually moving from sweatshops to a thriving economy where most will make a living wage and receive some degree of benefits. Would legislation from any government or pleas from any pope have accomplished this without the investment of capitalists?

Over the years, I have witnessed thousands upon thousands of volunteers from the United States and other developed countries doing everything imaginable to alleviate hunger in impoverished areas. Some of these efforts included drilling wells, education in proper cultivation methods, providing higher producing and disease resistant seed stock and education and assistance in building basic sanitary facilities. The list goes on and on. All of these efforts come to naught as soon as the next tribe, or town, or whatever, comes marching through with guns blazing and destroys everything and kills off or displaces many of the people. Such actions have absolutely nothing to do with the “global economy” but wreak absolute havoc on the local economy and the ability of the populace to feed themselves. Sadly, before these people can be helped by outsiders, the bad guys with the guns have to be dealt with. Any volunteers? As has been pointed out, Zimbabwe is a prime example of what a once thriving country can do to itself with absolutely no help from the big bad United States or anybody else.

Another problem exists in the efforts of the west to export democracy. It simply won’t work unless it evolves slowly, and is dependent on an educated polulace. In the early days of this country, one had to own property or be able to read and write in order to vote. Those requirements helped prevent the chaotic mob rule we are now seeing in some parts of the world. As distasteful as it sounds to us who enjoy the freedoms of a republic, I have to agree with Marx and Lenin that a benign dictatorship is a necessary prelude to a workable democratic government. The problem with their theory is how to keep the dictatorship benign and temporary, human nature being what it is. No answers from this end.

There are certainly areas, many in our own hemisphere, where hunger is rampant, and we certainly should be doing more to eliminate it. Again, most, but not all of it is occurring in countries with unstable governments where the tinhorn with the most guns is able to take over and destroy much of what good may have been done in the past. In more stable countries, volunteers continue to beg for donations and continue to work to eliminate hunger and thirst and to provide education to the natives. It’s a long slow process but some small amount of progress is being made.

The pope is certainly entitled to his opinion about the fix for hunger and starvation in the world. I’m equally entitled to mine and I think he was a little simplistic with this statement, even though the end goal is certainly a noble one.
 
geezerbob said:
For starters, where do professional athletes and rock stars get their money? If we, collectively, refused to shell out the exhorbitant prices for concerts and ball games, those high salaries would take a nose dive. If we, again collectively, voluntarily took the money spent on those tickets and other entertainment such as movies and Play Stations, and donated it to a world hunger fund, would the problem be solved? I don’t think so. There are too many other factors involved. The same goes for limiting or confiscating that income by legislation and/or taxation. It makes money available but, by itself, does not solve the problem.

Over the years, I have witnessed thousands upon thousands of volunteers from the United States and other developed countries doing everything imaginable to alleviate hunger in impoverished areas. Some of these efforts included drilling wells, education in proper cultivation methods, providing higher producing and disease resistant seed stock and education and assistance in building basic sanitary facilities. The list goes on and on. All of these efforts come to naught as soon as the next tribe, or town, or whatever, comes marching through with guns blazing and destroys everything and kills off or displaces many of the people. Such actions have absolutely nothing to do with the “global economy” but wreak absolute havoc on the local economy and the ability of the populace to feed themselves. Sadly, before these people can be helped by outsiders, the bad guys with the guns have to be dealt with. Any volunteers? As has been pointed out, Zimbabwe is a prime example of what a once thriving country can do to itself with absolutely no help from the big bad United States or anybody else.

Another problem exists in the efforts of the west to export democracy. It simply won’t work unless it evolves slowly, and is dependent on an educated polulace. In the early days of this country, one had to own property or be able to read and write in order to vote. Those requirements helped prevent the chaotic mob rule we are now seeing in some parts of the world. As distasteful as it sounds to us who enjoy the freedoms of a republic, I have to agree with Marx and Lenin that a benign dictatorship is a necessary prelude to a workable democratic government. The problem with their theory is how to keep the dictatorship benign and temporary, human nature being what it is. No answers from this end.

There are certainly areas, many in our own hemisphere, where hunger is rampant, and we certainly should be doing more to eliminate it. Again, most, but not all of it is occurring in countries with unstable governments where the tinhorn with the most guns is able to take over and destroy much of what good may have been done in the past. In more stable countries, volunteers continue to beg for donations and continue to work to eliminate hunger and thirst and to provide education to the natives. It’s a long slow process but some small amount of progress is being made.

The pope is certainly entitled to his opinion about the fix for hunger and starvation in the world. I’m equally entitled to mine and I think he was a little simplistic with this statement, even though the end goal is certainly a noble one.
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Bob,

These are all good points. I think the answer to the problem of starvation in the world will not end with harsh laws that take peoples money away. In the end all of your concerns are valid. We need new answers new systems and new angles on how to regulate or distibute wealth.

The thing we need the most is to understand that people are many many times more important then some green piece of paper that we attach value too. In the long run capitalism removes the importance of humanity. That needs to change. Take a look at MTV cribs some time. Some rap artist has 12 cars and a million dollar house while hard working people are scraping by in near poverty. What makes the rap artist special? His capacity to make little rhymes? There is a real lack of social justice there and it happens all the time.

-D
 
It is not the global economy that keeps people poor, downtrodden and hungry, it is the local dictator.

There is no famine in democratic countries. It is when dictators and their cronies steal the money for development, fail to develop roads and trade facilities, and use hunger as a weapon that people starve.

Get rid of the brutal dictators and their corrupt henchmen and you will end hunger. Fail to do that, and you will accomplish nothing.
 
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