Income Inequality?

[Cow Poke]

Hold on, there, cowboy. We're taking this one step at a time.

Ah, getting too old and crochety to multitask, eh?

[rogue06]

Remember when gas stations were full service instead of self service?

And you got S&H Green Stamps with your purchase along with your windshield cleaned, tires and oil levels checked.

[Sparko]

Exactly Now, let's stop trying to define each others' positions and listen, 'k?



It's not just about improving the lives of workers (or the stockholders, for that matter), but of everyone in society-- that's what I mean when I say a business is about contributing to the common good.

It's not that it's wrong to derive some creature comforts (i.e. enjoy at least a marginally higher standard of living) from a job well done, but that the rewards we give our CEO's seem to be far beyond what we can say is truly just.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start by making sure we're on the same page r.e. avarice, if that's OK with you.

You still didn't give a clear definition of "avarice"

Your whole "common good" idea could come directly from Marx and Lennon and socialism. And you know how THAT turned out.

[Bill the Cat]

Excuse me? They also make the same assumption when calculating increased Social Security payouts:


So isn't the estimation of the increase in Social Security payouts based on "pure and unadulterated conjecture" too?

Not nearly as much because the amount to be paid CAN be quantified to a reasonable degree. The only real areas they admit to pure speculation is with regard to Medicaid and inheritance taxes.

I must have missed you answering this earlier. So we are agreed that the government has some power to protect citizens to some extent from certain forms of avarice, and it does intervene at times to exert this power, contra your earlier claim that "Avarice is a personal issue where a single person fails in a moral decision which results in potential harm to a segment of society (with no government intervention or responsibility)".

Boy, you missed what I was saying. Avarice is a personal sin that the Government can not legislate you out of. They can protect some others some of the time from your sin, but they can not make you stop.

Surely you jest.

I don't jest. And stop calling me Shirley.

[Bill the Cat]

Indeed. But since he gave up his riches, he was no longer rich when he led Israel, was he?

All the different cycles of legends agree in saying that Moses was very wealthy, probably on the basis of Numbers 16.15 (compare Nedarim 35a, where this interpretation is regarded as uncertain); they differ, however, as to the source of his wealth.[30] According to one, he derived it from the presents and treasures given to him by the Ethiopians when they took the crown away from him ("D. Y." l.c.).[30] According to another, Jethro gave him a large sum of money as dowry when he married Zipporah ("Midrash Wayosha" l.c.).[30] Still another story relates that Moses received a large part of the booty captured from Pharaoh and, later, from Sihon and Og (Leviticus Rabba 28.4).[30] In contrast to these versions, according to which Moses gained his wealth by natural means, there are two other versions according to which Moses became wealthy by a miracle.[30] One of these narratives says that Moses became rich through the breaking of the tablets, which were made of sapphires (Nedarim 35a); and the other that God showed him in his tent a pit filled with these precious stones (Yalk., Ki Tissa, 39b)

[Bill the Cat]

You have no case.

What the hell is up with you lately anyhow? It's like you wake up with a chip on your shoulder, trying to piss off as many fellow Christians as possible.

Spartacus and I were having a good discussion and even though we disagreed we are still friends and the discussion was productive. You jump in, make asinine comments and drag the whole thread off topic and can't even recognize how stupid your comments are and unproductive to the thread.

Go back to bed and get up on the right side.

Are you even the same Paprika that was on tweb before the reboot? Because you sure as hell don't act like it.

He's the same pedantic ass he was before. I am actually breaking my own rule of not talking to him. Because he is an ignorant instigator.

[Jedidiah]

So, the three partners who started up the gas compression company I worked for -- who gets to decide how much is "enough" for their salaries?

That is indeed the rub.

[Sam]

And here we go... the first response to demanding higher wages for fast food workers... cut costs by eliminating jobs altogether.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/socie...mated-cashiers

[Jedidiah]

It is interesting to me that I have never known of anyone who openly admitted to wanting the huge income inequality. I know there must be many such, but not that I have met or read. The question is do we have things better for the poor under the ultra liberal society we now have, or have things gotten worse?

There will never be an end to problems in society. But let us admit that to date government help has mostly (not entirely) made things worse. The old "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," is a clear outgrowth of this fact.

[Sam]

It is interesting to me that I have never known of anyone who openly admitted to wanting the huge income inequality. I know there must be many such, but not that I have met or read. The question is do we have things better for the poor under the ultra liberal society we now have, or have things gotten worse?

There will never be an end to problems in society. But let us admit that to date government help has mostly (not entirely) made things worse. The old "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," is a clear outgrowth of this fact.

The wrongness of this being an "ultra liberal society" is the immediate stopper to that train of thought. Consider that an argument being made here by the liberal side is that income inequality has increased partly because the minimum wage has not even matched inflation over the past 40 years. Someone earning minimum wage in the late Sixties was earning ~$10/hour, about the same wage that many liberals are currently pushing the federal government to adopt. So there's no use arguing there that an "ultra liberal society" or government has perpetuated this discrepancy. Likewise, welfare benefits now are less than they were in the mid-1990s before the Conservative Congress led by Newt Gingrich pushed Clinton to help pass welfare reform. Reagan came before that, cutting taxes for the wealthier (and wealthiest) Americans while deregulating the financial sector, allowing the 0.1% (and especially the 0.01%) to accumulate wealth to a much greater degree than before. After Clinton came G.W. Bush, who tried to do the same things that Reagan did, with consequences that were so immediately disastrous his entire economic policy history is spoken in whispers by the Conservative bloc to this day.

No, we are by no means in an "ultra liberal society," especially if you compare the present-day USA to European countries or yester-day USA.

[Truthseeker]

The question is whether wage floors do more good than bad. Yet some readers of this thread want to argue over other topics, such as whether the ultra wealthy are wrongly accumulating wealth while the rest of the world lag further and further behind them.

I've tried to argue that wage floors do more bad than good. I would welcome critiques such that they can be used as guides ways to improve the case against wage floors.

[Spartacus]

You still didn't give a clear definition of "avarice"

Because I was on my way out the door when I posted. Patience, grasshopper

Your whole "common good" idea could come directly from Marx and Lennon and socialism. And you know how THAT turned out.

It comes from the Catholic Church, actually, but we can get to that later. But just for accusing me of being a communist (and for not knowing the difference between Vladimir Lenin and John Lennon), you're gonna have to wait until tomorrow to get my explanation of avarice*

*actually, I want to dig up Augustine's sermon on the parable of the rich fool to quote-mine. If it's not available online, I probably still have it printed out from my class on Christianity and commerce from this past spring. Either way, you have to wait

[Tassman]

Which nation is that?

The US remains the only nation in the developed world where Christianity can still effectively influence the national discourse. It is sidelined to the point of irrelevance in Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Source: HuffingtonPost

The United States climbed from fifth place to the rank of most generous country in the world, according to a recent global study.

In its second annual study of 153 countries, the Charity Aid Foundation concluded that the U.S. has demonstrated "strong" behavior across all three criteria measured -- volunteering, helping strangers and donating money. The U.S. has increased its charity by 3 percentage points this year, up to $212 billion.

"The point to leave with American leaders is the world really needs America; it needs its generosity, its resource and spirit, and though times are really hard, this is the time we need to keep giving as much as we possibly can," Richard Harrison, director of research at the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation told The NonProfit Times.

© Copyright Original Source

So, you're advocating that the most charitable nation on the planet should learn from countries who are LESS charitable?

"Charity begins at home". 1 Timothy 5:8: "But if any provide not for his own, & specially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith, and is worse then an infidel". The fact is that the overtly Christian US has, by a large margin, the most grossly inequitable distribution of wealth of any developed nation. "In the U.S., the bottom 90% of the population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth, whereas in most of the developed world, the bottom 90% own around 40%".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-z...b_4408647.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...t-of-the-world

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Arti...rceration.aspxOR Christianity doesn't have any effective influence on the people that adhere to it. Which is it?

[Sam]

The question is whether wage floors do more good than bad. Yet some readers of this thread want to argue over other topics, such as whether the ultra wealthy are wrongly accumulating wealth while the rest of the world lag further and further behind them.

I've tried to argue that wage floors do more bad than good. I would welcome critiques such that they can be used as guides ways to improve the case against wage floors.

If people struggle to subsist and thrive on the current wage floor, lowering that wage floor will make that struggle more difficult. This is almost axiomatic. Eliminating wage floors therefore only makes sense if the society is willing to supplement below-living wages with corresponding welfare.

Since the topic of the ultra-wealthy and the topic of whether a living wage can be afforded by a society are co-mingled, it's fitting to discuss both, especially if the rich continue to get disproportionately richer, compared to history, and the poor continue to get disproportionately poorer.

[Paprika]

Not nearly as much because the amount to be paid CAN be quantified to a reasonable degree. The only real areas they admit to pure speculation is with regard to Medicaid and inheritance taxes.

So what is your estimate of the revenues? Aren't you speculating that they will be low, relative to increased expenditure?

Boy, you missed what I was saying. Avarice is a personal sin that the Government can not legislate you out of. They can protect some others some of the time from your sin, but they can not make you stop.

No one has claimed that avarice is people that has been legislated out of, but that it can and does cause harm to society, the government can and does pass legislation to ward off some of its harmful effects; ergo there is a place for appealing to Christian values and morality with regard to public policy regarding avarice.