It would seem that the memetic evolution in our culture of Christian teachings regarding helping the poor has lead us from feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, to making it a basic moral obligation to ensure that everyone has a little disposable income with which to splurge on the weekends:
The real selfishness here is on the part of the people who actually agree with Obama. Modern America has very little of what can be called real poverty. In most "poor" parts of the country, the average person still has a roof over their head, running water, indoor plumbing, food and access to free clinics for their medical needs. What Obama and his more ardent supporters are trying to do is turn the tradition of allowing a hungry man to quietly take a few ears of corn for him and his family into one in which he can steal some of the toys that belong to the farmer's children so that his children will have some nice toys to play with. Any reasonable person can see why this is nothing more than naked selfishness.
"The point is, though, that -- and it's not just charity, it's not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class -- it's that when we actually make sure that everybody's got a shot - when young people can all go to college, when everybody's got decent health care, when everybody's got a little more money at the end of the month - then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money, they decide maybe I can afford a new car, maybe I can afford a computer for my child. They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That's what happened in the 1990s, that's what we need to restore. And that's what I'm gonna do as president of the United States of America.The fatal flaw in this policy logic is that such a redistribution is guaranteed to introduce a lot of inefficiency in the allocation of economic resources. That's bound to happen when you take money out of the more productive classes, especially the entrepreneurial class, and give it to people on the lower end of the economic pyramid. It's really just shifting the Keynesian economic policies from having the government spend lots of money on "government things" to giving the poor and lower middle class a large chunk of change to spend at Wal-Mart or Target on equally frivolous items. Just as Keynesian policies have contributed to disastrous economic problems when run directly by the government, this approach by Obama would be doomed to failure since his target audience is, on averge, no more rational or productive in its use of capital than government bureaucrats.
"John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic," Obama continued. "You know I don't know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."
The real selfishness here is on the part of the people who actually agree with Obama. Modern America has very little of what can be called real poverty. In most "poor" parts of the country, the average person still has a roof over their head, running water, indoor plumbing, food and access to free clinics for their medical needs. What Obama and his more ardent supporters are trying to do is turn the tradition of allowing a hungry man to quietly take a few ears of corn for him and his family into one in which he can steal some of the toys that belong to the farmer's children so that his children will have some nice toys to play with. Any reasonable person can see why this is nothing more than naked selfishness.
I fail to see how it is "fair" that my money goes to someone else. I'll put it out there in the open for everyone. I made a little over 45,000 dollars last year. Of that 45,000 dollars, I donated roughly 6,000 dollars to organizations that do not enable the poor and the needy, but rather teach them how to remove themselves, (on their own,) from that situation.
The saying may be overused, but it's true: "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for a life time." Here's my version: Give a man some of your money and he will squander it away on the finer things in life. Teach him how to make his own money and he will spend it on nesesities.
What I'm getting at, is that the answer is never going to be to give these people more money. We need to educate them on how to make money and then on what to do with their money.
I guess I'm selfish.
Yes, you are selfish. You would rather a man learn how to support himself than have disposable income with which to buy a computer for his children or a new car. It's bad enough that you believe that he should have to learn how to support himself and live off of whatever he can earn. It's even worse that you put 131/3% of your paycheck toward that goal.
Shame on you. You can expect to hear from the local division of the Civilian National Security Force within the hour.
I was thinking the other day (and thinking of posting it but dont think I did) of how the OT tells us not to glean our fields. The purpose of this is to allow the poor to gather food for themselves.
From this Biblical model, we can see that G-d is indeed compassionate in making food available that they did not sow, but does not make that person weak or enslaved by simply giving them what they need. They still must work for it, tho at a much reduced amount of labor than those who planted and tended the fields.
Amazing how so many problems in the modern world have answers in the ancient world!
Does the principle of "The borrower is slave to the lender" apply here? If the poor and needy are dependant on the government for everything they have, are they not slaves to the government?
Absolutely, IMO.
Timm,
One of the beautiful things about Scripture is that the more important an issue is, the more often it is repeated, usually in a slightly different way so as to be sure we understand it. The principle of not gleaning the fields illustrates several direct statements throughout the Scripture. The reference you gave is but one. Taking care of the fatherless and the widow is another. there are more but I am sick and I am lightheaded and dizzy. No brain for it right now.
This is another excellent example of that last point. All one has to do to contrast the amount of harm that "modern thinking" has done to many parts of the law and politics is to look at how complicated the law is regarding sex.
I wonder how the Islamic no-fee/no-interest allowed view of lending applies here... ;-)