[Arthur Brain]

Originally Posted by Wile E. Coyote

That's what the Church is for. It is not the role of Government which is good only to give the charity part but not to teach dependence. I was a volunteer worker for the Salvation Army for several years and they give both the charity and they each how to be dependent. The Government can't do charity right.

Please explain how taking away welfare/benefits systems could work in modern society where the poor would have to rely on charitable handouts? Kudos for your volunteer work but that doesn't address how such could work in and of itself. Even with the safety net of a welfare system there's those who fall through it.

Very few if any who are on the government system turn out to be productive citizens.

That's nothing but a cheap soundbite Wile. Many find themselves on benefits at some part in their life even if they work more overall.

There is much more to humanitarianism than the belly AB.

Who said there wasn't? You have to take care of the essentials first however.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Originally Posted by Arthur Brain

Please explain how taking away welfare/benefits systems could work in modern society where the poor would have to rely on charitable handouts?

Are you saying that the welfare/benefits system is not a handout?

Kudos for your volunteer work but that doesn't address how such could work in and of itself. Even with the safety net of a welfare system there's those who fall through it.

How many decades can we have a welfare/benefits system until we're flat broke? We're never going to be able to help everyone.

That's nothing but a cheap soundbite Wile. Many find themselves on benefits at some part in their life even if they work more overall.

You wrongly assume the best about the poor. Many don't know how to be productive or lack the initiative and the government just caters to that. The Salvation Army and other chatities that share the same philosophy employ the receipients of their charity. They teach them the skills they need to pick themselves up.

Who said there wasn't? You have to take care of the essentials first however.

You don't get to define the hierarchy of "essentials." The professionals do. The belly is not the primary thing and to make it the primary thing results in dehumanizing.

God ordained the government to keep law and order and to protect its citizens from evil doers. He ordained the Church to do the charity. Maybe if we did it God's way there would be less poor among us.

[Arthur Brain]

Originally Posted by Wile E. Coyote

Are you saying that the welfare/benefits system is not a handout?

If you want to look at it that way then fair enough. Given the alternative would be individuals and children going without food and shelter without it, then a label doesn't really mean that much.

How many decades can we have a welfare/benefits system until we're flat broke? We're never going to be able to help everyone.

There's no good reason why that should happen, and what's your proposed alternative? At least with a regulated safety net there'd be far fewer who fall through it than with a church charity service reliant on personal contributions. Realistically many many many more would suffer.

You wrongly assume the best about the poor. Many don't know how to be productive or lack the initiative and the government just caters to that. The Salvation Army and other chatities that share the same philosophy employ the receipients of their charity. They teach them the skills they need to pick themselves up.

No I don't. I simply don't care for cheap soundbites that make an overall generalization as if such becomes fact. For sure there's those in the system that need help with attaining skills and a different attitude but applying that across the board to those who've been on benefits as a rule is just ignorant.

You don't get to define the hierarchy of "essentials." The professionals do. The belly is not the primary thing and to make it the primary thing results in dehumanizing.

Oh please come off it. Food is an essential requirement to live so without that being taken care of any such 'education' is meaningless. It hardly requires a 'professional' to point that out, else try teaching a starving man without sustenance the importance of budgeting and see how far you get.

God ordained the government to keep law and order and to protect its citizens from evil doers. He ordained the Church to do the charity. Maybe if we did it God's way there would be less poor among us.

Has it occurred to you that these ordainments would have been directed at close knit communities and communes as oppose to sprawling urban cities where such would be practically impossible to implement?

[99lamb]

IF concern for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek to dicover their cause. One would not fail to ask "Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieve material abundance, while others have remained stagnent in subhuman misery? History, and specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the ninteenth century,would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance and the key to capitalism is individual freedom.
Ayn Rand - 1967

[Morpheus]

I find it strange that so many can decry the virtues of equality in the same sentence with capitalism. Capitalism is hierarchical by design. Capitalism is more closely related to feudalism than we care to admit. I find it even more strange, and disgusting, that professing Christians in the U.S. have bought into this self-aggrandizing, me-first economic philosophy. If you find Rand even the slightest bit tolerable then remember, " “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Luke 16:13.

[99lamb]

the principle of man's individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system- as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.
Ayn Rand -