Socialism leads to Atheism?
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Poverty! That's a hard one. I mean, who's poor? Forget the media who love to pretend they care... who do we call poor and what can/should we do about it?
Our poor are persons who make less than, about $1,000 per month or families with less than about double that. On top of that, they have free access to food stamps, MedicAid, education, etc etc. They still have a place to live, the vast majority of them, and many drive cars and have TVs and other modern appliances. Compare that to the poor in Haiti, or China, Brazil, Greece or France... Various levels of "being poor", right?
This characterizes about 15% of Americans.
My main point is that we didn't wake up one day and said: look how hard is their life, let's do something about it. What happened is some bureaucrat takes about 15% of the population and calls it poor, although, these same people, with the same resources, might be called filthy rich in China.
So, when are we ever going to cure poverty? Not as long as we can count 15%, which is... Never.
But, it has been a long standing strategy of the liberals in this country to capitalize on that ugly word "poor" and use it to advantage: talk about them, build huge, solidly middle class bureaucracies to "serve them," hold them down and count on their votes which are extracted from their dependency on the government.
The Repubs want everyone to have a job, some rich, some poor --- the Dems want to feed the poor for free (by borrowing money) and keep them hostage for political power's sake. How do they keep them hostage? Through subtle mechanisms that reduce welfare benefits when, for example, a single mother gets married to another "poor" person; welfare/unemployment benefits that amount to something very close to minimum wage (so, why start working?) etc etc. Not to mention allowing/encouraging thousands of new immigrants to stick to their native tongue "with pride", therefore delay ascension to the upper strata of our economic ladder, etc etc etc.
Yes, poverty is ugly, let's do something about it. First, get rid of the word. Then, help people get jobs, whatever they might be.
How about "nobody (almost) gets a free $ from the Government unless thay perform a service of some sort, like cleaning streets, guarding government buildings, planting trees or even sharpening pencils for some office somewhere?" Would that discourage people from thinking they can enjoy unemployment on the back of the taxpayers?
Btw, when my wife and I were in school together, our daily budget for food was $3, and we never felt poor.
Not so long ago, there was the case of that single mother with 4 children who managed to save some of her welfare money (a total of $3,000) through extraordinary skill and focus, hoping to be able to start some sort of business and leave the program. The welfare lady learned about it from the poor woman's bank and confiscated the money. Scary, right?
I am not sure that the original question has been answered. I suspect that RCGTrader is closest to what FD was thinking...
Perhaps I give him too much credit for some deep psychological and/or philosophical reason for what he said...I don't think the statement is accurate (I have way more history to draw on than he did), but something that is close to true even 50% true, in the human realm anyway, is worth understanding.
Perhaps I give him too much credit for some deep psychological and/or philosophical reason for what he said...I don't think the statement is accurate (I have way more history to draw on than he did), but something that is close to true even 50% true, in the human realm anyway, is worth understanding.
Sure I would like to make more...
I am making enough to support a family of six ... right now, but I am working hard for it.
Its my 4 young kids futures which cause me concern.
From that stand point our most crushing concern is the fact our politicans are crooked sobs selling out for the lobbying money.
its almost a guarantee the crooks in congress will continue to cause our standard of living to retreat.
Disagree. It requires that people do what human nature dictates. No faith required.
Socialism is indeed faithless, as is every other non-theological politico-economic framework that comes to mind. I must say that i find your hypothesis that a ghetto is an example of socialism laughably absurd.
Possibly. But does correlation equate to causation in this case? I think not. I would suggest that it is more likely that "faithlessness" and "socialism" are by-products of the emergence of rationalism and secularism out of the great enlightenment.
The main problem with socialism as I see it, along with other similarly high minded ideologies, is that they require a significant enough proportion of the population to think and act rationally for the model to work. That is not the case and may never be so.
Thx
D
Please explain how a "well run car insurance operation" is socialist? I want to see how far off beam your (mis)understanding of socialism actually is. I don't expect a reply but will respect any attempt at contriving an answer.
I do find it remarkably consistent how posters on these boards blatantly demonstrate complete ignorance of socialism (and liberalism too). Note that I am neither socialist nor communist (or a liberal for that matter). But surely to be able to comment on a subject one should first command a passing understanding of what it actually is first?
I must confess that these, so often repeated, demostrations of gross ignorance and irrational prejudice do become wearing after a while. And while I've made these remarks in relation to the quote above this is certainly not the worst offender.
Thx
D