Wealth, Poverty, and Morality

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Because that would undermine his argument about the morality of our economic system.
 
Theo520 said:
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stinkcat_14:
Why? Greed and envy are vices, why should we not call them that?
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Is asking for a raise a virtue or greed?
Attributes is less subjective
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It could be either.
 
So you have no money budget to run the government?
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I expect, HolySpirit, that governments will tax as governments see fit. They generally do. But technically, the people, the tax-payers, own government assets and liabilities jointly.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
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There are a lot of problems with your plan, but charitably, the all of the $16,000 per person would be used up by the running of the government.

Imagine the expense alone of bringing third and fourth world countries up to first world standards. My town of 37,000 people has more than $110,000,000 dollar budget, and only paves 3 miles of road per year.

You really need to put more thought into your plan.
 
Read Acts 2:44, 4:32,-4:37, and 5:2. I dont know how long it lasted, but i suspect many of the early Christian groups lived communally. There is both Biblical and non Biblical evidence to support the idea of early Christian communes.
 
It’s not a plan. Just an observation, that a total of $X wealth/Y people = $Z per person, if one wants to divide wealth on an equitable basis. If one doesn’t, then it is incumbent on the objector to justify why the world’s wealth should not be distributed equitably.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
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The answer is simple. Communism has never worked.

You can even look at America. The Pilgrims tried it and they almost starved to death. When they moved to a market based system, they prospered. Today we have the world’s strongest economy.

People don’t work hard when there is no economic incentive to do so. That is Communism’s fatal flaw.
 
The answer is simple. Communism has never worked.
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I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I previously supplied on communism.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
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Then why were they abandoned as they grew larger? Why don’t Christians live in communes today?
 
While pure Marxian Communism has never been tried on a large scale, how do you overcome the fact that people don’t work hard or do quality work when there is no incentive to do so?
 
how do you overcome the fact that people don’t work hard or do quality work when there is no incentive to do so?
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I think many in public service would be thoroughly insulted by your insinuation that they don’t work hard or that their work has no quality. Fact is, selfish financial gain is not the only incentive that matters. Such as soldiers, medics, politicians and priests develop their careers, often enough, out of a sense of vocation, an idea that their work is what God made them to do, and allows them to express their skills and talents, attributes and aptitudes, in ways no other career could or would.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
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Take Somalia, it’s a land of a bunch of warlords. Guess what happens to the “equal distribution”? Last time we tried to feed the place it needed military escort.
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Actually, Seeksadvice, you have chosen somewhere I know (a little) about. I live in social housing, a block of around 80 flats, in the UK. It’s maybe 60 - 70% occupied by Somali refugees. The most recent information I have is that ‘the war’ there is pretty much over, although Al Shabaab remain a threat. Anyway, my point would be that even if there are bad places in the world where an equitable distribution of wealth is impossible, there are plenty of other, sufficiently stable, places where it would help those in poverty considerably.
Best wishes, 2RM
 
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Everyone of those occupations have merit based promotion and pay raises. (Let’s take the Priesthood and all other religious leaders out of it. They are unique outliers.) I work in one of those areas that you did not mention. Jobs and pay raises are guaranteed unless you do something that is outrageous. While there are people who work hard out of a sense of obligation, (and the possibility of career advancement) The majority of people do the bare minimum required.

As a real world example… How hard do you think that the garbage collectors or wastewater treatment plant people are going to work? Do you think they are going to be happy that they are going to be doing that work for 50 years? Or do you think they are going to come to work each day with real resentment and we are going to have trash all over the streets and defecation coming out of the sewers.

Are your policemen going to take heroic risks when the guy at the convenience store is making as much as them? (You already see this in Chicago where cops are no longer going into minority neighborhoods because they feel like management does not have their back. Doing something isn’t worth losing their pension.)

Now you are forcing a religion on them when you say,

their work is what God made them to do, and allows them to express their skills and talents, attributes and aptitudes, in ways no other career could or would.

I think atheists and the guy in the sewer are going to have a problem with God’s choice of their vocation.

There are reasons why communism doesn’t work. It boils down to people are lazy when they do not have any incentive to work hard.
 
HolySpirit said:
Everyone of those occupations have merit based promotion and pay raises.
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I don’t deny it. I just do not think this to be the reason why people choose these careers, and do their utmost to fulfill, and often exceed, their duties when they are in them. As for the sewers, I will concede that there is a case to be made for paying people more to work unsocial hours, or in adverse conditions, or perform objectionable or dangerous tasks. But even this is not the way the global economy is currently organised.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
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You are perhaps reciting the odd myth that the American right tells about Thanksgiving. It is not factual. The first Thanksgiving was in 1621, the change from common course was in 1623. They didnt change because they were starving. They changed because people wanted to make more $. The whole colony was a commercial project with shareholders. The 1623 change was not due to famine but because some colonists wanted to make more money by tending their own land. The whole thing was never s commune. A company granted a charter to the colony.
 
@2ndRateMind you are out of your element. As others have already shown, an income of $16,000 in the United States of America is below the poverty line. $16,000 simply does not buy you housing/food/transportation/healthcare in 2018 in the U.S.A or other developed countries. Your idea is not Biblical and is in fact preposterous.

Christ’s call to “sell everything you have and give to the poor” does not apply to everyone. It is logically impossible, in fact. This passage is not to be taken as a command for all, only for the wealthy young man. See for him, his love of money was keeping him from following Christ. The average American or Brit earning $40k does not love money, they are just trying to make a living and support their families. That you can’t see this is quite odd.
 
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2ndRateMind said:
That would allow us each a net worth of some $33,000, and an income per year of some $16,000.
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Actually, no it wouldn’t, and it wouldn’t even be close.

With this kind of distribution, figure to reduce the total wealth and income by something like 3/4.

It isn’t all that long ago that the “Soviet Union” was around . . . by the end, in desperation, they allowed about 3% of the farmland to be privately cultivated by the slaves, err, workers, from the state farms. This 3% was, in short order, responsible for 25% of the agricultural output . . .

Whether or not some level of redistribution is good idea, the notion that we can simply divide existing output/stock without radically reducing it shows an ignorance of both history and economics.

hawk (who is an economics professor)
 
Many in Religious Orders live communally. The Redemptorist Priests that serve my Parish live communally, theoretically. I dont know the full circumstances of how things are done in the Rectory, and what is considered personal and what is common property. There are some Christians that do live in communes. A small minority, to be sure. But as for the details of when and why the Communal life of early Christianity became the exception, i assume it was when the Church became larger, more spread out and diverse. In the early days they were close communities of believers who lived outside the norms of the Roman empire. This tradition is still carried out by some in Religious Orders.
 
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