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Rudolfo
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“savage capitalism that operates by Darwinian rules of the jungle” !?!
All I can do is laugh. Would that we had anything close, maybe half the country would not be on food stamps.
All I can do is laugh. Would that we had anything close, maybe half the country would not be on food stamps.
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Nate13
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yeah I have to agree. We are a long ways away from a truly pure capitalistic system. We can look and see the fruits of where we are heading by looking at Europe, especially Great Brittan. I can’t for the life of me understand why people think that kind of system is a great idea. What rule states that people are incapable of donating to charities by themselves and need the government to collect all of it for us and use it ineffectively? These programs destroy the community bond we form and replace them with cold calculated bonds between people and government. Now when someone is sick in a community they turn to the government for help instead of the people around them in their community. The damage these programs do to the establishment of families and communities is a crime.
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GEddie
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Yeah, let’s go back to the days of sweatshops and Robber barons. After all, there were no food stamps in the late 1800s.
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Nate13
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I believe he was stating the fact that we are probably closer to socialism at this point then we are to capitalism. He wasn’t pushing for a purely capitalistic system but rather for something less socialist then the current trend.
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GEddie
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Because communities, as described, have failed. Too many decades of grinding poverty and gleaming opulence separated only by a street or train track.
There’s a reason why social programs are in Europe to stay. In their longer history, they have seen what happens when social classes get pushed too far: witness 1789 and 1917. Here in America, because we have been extremely favored with physical resources and social mobility, that has not been an issue. We won’t always be so fortunate.
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StrawberryJam
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Denouncing profits before people? Really?
Is this a new policy?
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Nate13
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Aha! so when they fail, the solution is we force them to do it? This ideology doesn’t sit well in America because its based upon the fact that people are stupid and selfish. I for one give humanity more credit than that. And if you decide to hold to the premise that people are stupid and selfish and therefore the government needs to nanny them, that isn’t any better because now you have stupid/selfish people ruling over stupid/selfish people…
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StrawberryJam
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What can you give humanity credit for that God did not? Humanity is fallen, after all. God wiped out many many people because he thought they were stupid and selfish.
God also is asking his people to live within the laws of their land unless it conflicts with their faith.
What conflicts with your faith in this example?
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Aelred_Minor
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The problem is that as local communities gradually fail to take care of their people higher levels of society (like State and Federal government) gradually take over. It’s hard to say no to that since otherwise you would have people starving. But at the same time it gives those with means to help their neighbors even less motivation to do so. Why buy food for your poor neighbor when they are already on Food Stamps, paid for by your hard-earned tax dollars? Private inaction fuels government action, and government action fuels private inaction. How do you break out of the cylce?
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Nate13
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The laws of the land are established by its people. This is the New Covenant and we are capable of living up to God’s standards because God has promised to give us the grace we need to do it. Humanity is fallen, by Christ has paved the way for redemption. What goes against my faith in this example is the fact that forced charity is no longer charity and it loses all of its value for the person. Acts of charity not only have an effect on the person who receives the charity but even more so for the person who performs the act of charity. I doubt very many people view paying their taxes as giving money to charity… In my opinion it completely depersonalizes the action. It is also scary to hear that some liberals are throwing around the idea of getting rid of the ability to write off charitable giving from being taxable income. This screams of plotting to make personal acts of charity a thing of the past and make the government the one stop shop. Do you not see how this will have a bad affect on society as a whole? A large part of what keeps society together is are the personal interactions that occur and every personal act of charity creates a bond that just isn’t there when the government is in control of everything. When a natural disaster happens like Hurricane Irene, people shouldn’t be putting their hands out to the government to come save them. They should be turning to their neighbors in their community or the community down the road who didn’t get hit as hard, when they are in need. Not only does this promote the family and community, but it also promotes personal responsibility when is a core ideal of the Bible.
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Nate13
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I’d like to add I think its also under the guise of making people more dependent on the government rather than their church first of all. In terms of what you described, you are right this is exactly what has happened. The only reason it has happened though is because people started blaming their government for their problems and started assuming they were the ones who were supposed to fix it. The blame had to go somewhere and the government is the easiest target. If we stopped telling people the government was responsible for taking care of them, we might make some progress.
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StrawberryJam
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edit
No one is living up to God’s standards even with all the graces he has bestowed on you.
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Saburo
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uch:Holy wild exaggeration, Batman! You should see more of the world before reaching for that level of hyperbole. Show me grinding poverty in America. The only difference between the two sides of the track is the size of the TV in the living room, as Walter Williams illustrates:— Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.
— Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
— Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
— The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
— Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
— Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
— Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
— Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Most of these people suffering “grinding poverty” are doing better than me!
read the rest: jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams063010.php3
What Mr. Williams doesn’t mention, because his column is from a year ago, is that the Black middle class has now almost completely disappeared under the socialist policies of the tax-and-spend Obama administration. An entire generation has had its wealth wiped away, and Warren Buffett has not raised a finger to write them a check. Neither has he written a check to the Department of the Treasury to cover those extra taxes he thinks he should be paying. What is stopping him? Does he need a pen? Does anyone have a pen for Warren?
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Nec5
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One problem with discussions over class and “poor” or “middle class” is location. A $70K salary in Kansas goes perhaps twice or even three times as far as $70K in New York or D.C.
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StrawberryJam
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If you have not seen poverty in America, then you have not seen much of America.
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Saburo
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You chose to read poorly: I did not say there is no poverty in America. I have seen most of the states, as well as Guam, and I have seen poverty. I have not seen grinding poverty in America. I have seen grinding poverty in the Phillipines, in South Korea, in Mexico, and in a few other places. The poverty seen in America might be called middle class or even moderate wealth in certain areas of those countries. Leave America and look around. I have seen naked little kids crawling through twenty foot high heaps of trash to find food. I have seen pre-teen daughters sold into prostitution by their families so they could feed themselves. I have seen boys leap into a river of sewage to retrieve a coin worth about four cents, and these smae boys live in homes constructed from disassembled wood pallets without any sort of water, sewer, or electricity. You don’t know what grinding poverty is until you leave America and see the real ugliness of not having any place to bathe and having to find firewood to cook outdoors in all weather when you are fortunate enough to have something to cook.
You see someone with a beater car in the States, and you think they are poor. I drive a beater car because I choose not to be poor. Most of the so-called “poor” in America are no worse off than me. Leftist politicians have convinced them they are poor to keep them pitted against some murky demographic called “the rich,” who owe the less wealthy something for the sin of being able to support themselves in a more comfortable style. The leftist politician can always count on the vote of the non-taxpayer, because the leftist promises to do their stealing for them. With 51% of tax filers paying no income tax at all, it seems reasonable that they must be poor, but things are not as they seem.
Did you read the statistics? I didn’t have household air-conditioning growing up, and I never use it now. Neither had I many of the other amenities described. I don’t have a dishwasher, but I never considered myself poor, and certainly never considered myself in grinding poverty. But then, I never thought my fellow tax-payers owed me a living. Maybe I just didn’t understand how the rich were keeping me down. When is rich Warren Buffett going to write a check to me? Anyone found that pen yet? The Oracle of Omaha is full of it. We are all poor compared to him.
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Abu
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We really need to get to know and to listen to sound papal social teaching.
Blessed John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 1991, 42:
‘If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.’
In Caritas in Veritate, the latest social Encyclical (2009), Pope Benedict XVI has explained that “Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (#36).
The laws of cause and effect in free enterprise were developed by the Catholic Late Scholastics which enabled untold millions to escape from the prevailing poverty.
Facing reality on increased taxation the Vatican Bank president has warned against higher taxes:
“During a prolonged crisis, inheritance taxes, new forms of taxation or similar alternatives reduce or wipe out resources for investments, discouraging the trust of investors, penalizing the cost of the public debt and the possibilities of its renewal at its expiration. In this context, imposing taxes on property and on income is equivalent to a suicidal anti-subsidiarity of the state to the citizen. Those who legally possess assets, on which they have paid the proper taxes, have contributed to creating wealth and, thanks precisely to these assets, continue to produce them with investments and consumption.”
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
August 27, 2011
tinyurl.com/4xggmw9
Blessed John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 1991, 42:
‘If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.’
In Caritas in Veritate, the latest social Encyclical (2009), Pope Benedict XVI has explained that “Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (#36).
The laws of cause and effect in free enterprise were developed by the Catholic Late Scholastics which enabled untold millions to escape from the prevailing poverty.
Facing reality on increased taxation the Vatican Bank president has warned against higher taxes:
“During a prolonged crisis, inheritance taxes, new forms of taxation or similar alternatives reduce or wipe out resources for investments, discouraging the trust of investors, penalizing the cost of the public debt and the possibilities of its renewal at its expiration. In this context, imposing taxes on property and on income is equivalent to a suicidal anti-subsidiarity of the state to the citizen. Those who legally possess assets, on which they have paid the proper taxes, have contributed to creating wealth and, thanks precisely to these assets, continue to produce them with investments and consumption.”
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
August 27, 2011
tinyurl.com/4xggmw9
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Hastrman
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The thing is, poverty is relative, in economics, because it’s defined as “can’t afford the necessities”. But “necessity” in economics is defined according to a community’s conceptions, basically anything one would be surprised to find an acquaintance didn’t have. Internet access and a cellphone are necessities in America, because if you don’t have one of them, it surprises people.
Of course, it is extremely useful for politicians (and their media pets) to say “X% of Americans are poor, defined as unable to afford the necessities”, without mentioning that necessity is here being used in its technical economic sense. It’s obviously more effective to conjure images of barefoot starving children than people who can’t afford a cellphone.
Incidentally, I believe the economic term for “merely the necessities to keep body and soul together” is subsistence. Virtually nobody in America is living anywhere near the subsistence level, although of course there are some. They, not the people who can’t afford XBox Live, should be the focus of our private and public aid.
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Nate13
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We are never going to see 0% unemployment. I know most of the people living on the street in my city have mental problems of some sort that hinder the progress they are able to make. They need a lot more help then just throwing some bills at them. Unemployment at 5% to me means everyone who wants a job has a job.
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