Posted on 04/09/2017 10:27:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This is exactly backwards, and characteristic of the way these two morons (0, and the author of this piece) both think. If it is immoral to be other than a beggar, we will all be begging. When we are all begging, the problem will solve itself; we'll all be starving, too.
The truth is, unless you're too stupid to be functioning at an adult level, or in some other way incapacitated, it is immoral to be poor, except temporarily.
Have you ever heard one interpretation of that passage? That the “eye of the needle” referred to a small gate in the city of Jerusalem wall. And that a camel could fit through it, but it had to be fully unloaded first. Therefore a rich man could get into heaven, but he had to give away all his riches.
CC
The guy’s assumption is wrong on so many levels but can be boiled down to he doesn’t know what money is.
The fact that Bill Gates has 40 or 50 billion no longer means that I can’t have enough money.
If money were still gold and silver coins then maybe - assuming that people were to stupid to barter firewood for chickens the argument might have some validity. But, even then it is a stretch.
That was the “Ten years after” song that Kickass Conservative mentioned upthread.
My boss came from Africa 30 years ago - escaping from a dictator. Our government tried to get him to take a job as a dishwasher because the pay was low enough that he could still get benefits. He refused this and was told he could just have his family on benefits and he said no...no benefits. He worked 2 jobs, went to school, and now is my boss at a Fortune 500 company and has accomplished children with degrees and good lives. He told me the other day that there are people who came here the same time he did are still on benefits and working at the same very low level jobs. My boss finds this shocking and disgusting.
Which would fit with the parable of the rich young man.
I’m against the concentration of wealth and would like to see steps against it, for example limits on CEO compensation. But I find it strange that this talk comes up when billionaire Trump is prez.
“The guy’s assumption is wrong on so many levels”
True.
I critiqued the first sentence, which was dramatically illogical.
After I posted, I realized that the very next sentence committed grave new logical errors. Upon scanning ahead, I was shocked by the logical wasteland that is that author’s mind - totally unmoored from rationality, yet seems to have confidence that he is is making a rational argument.
Fool or Knave? I bet both.
An idiot speaks
...and speaks, and speaks. Ever notice the further Left, the longer it takes them to say anything. This column is a perfect example.
Then it’s also ...
Immoral to be intelligent in a world with so much stupidity
Immoral to be fit in a world with so much obesity.
or for that matter ...
Immoral to be moral in a world with so much immorality!
After all, there’s only so much morality to go around, so we shouldn’t be hoarding all of that morality for ourselves, now should we?
Socialism and its twin communism are the greatest cause of poverty in the world today.
Best counter-argument yet in this thread!
Regards,
Equally immoral to hate and steal from “the rich”, IE others.
Its also immoral to demand others take care of you, and believe you have a moral right to their stuff.
Coveting others homes and goods and spouses is immoral too.
Plotting “revenge” and taking the law into your own hands is immoral.
Frankly, such people must be given a term of living in a socialist society. Venezuela or Cuba aren't so far away. America is the least socialist society among the developed ones, and Americans are like a fish which doesn't know it's in water.
...Because every dollar you have is a dollar you’re not giving to somebody else, the decision to retain wealth is a decision to deprive others...
This author has no idea about money and how rich people use money. They do not keep their money in vast vaults where they can swim in piles of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. Most of their money is invested in businesses, stocks, bonds, etc. By making investments, the rich person is already circulating their money to places where it can do good by increasing economic activity. Their money is already connected to the rest of the economy doing good.
It’s one thing to argue that you got rich legitimately. It’s another to explain why you feel justified in spending your wealth upon houses and sculptures rather than helping some struggling people pay their rent or paying off a bunch of student loans or saving thousands of people from dying of malaria.
What about construction workers and sculptors? Don't they pay rent and student loans? I actually know a family that built houses exclusively for the rich. They did very well for themselves as well.
If we find it appalling that there are so many rich people in a time of need...
I dispute this assertion. The world is the wealthiest that it has ever been. Just the increase in living standards after the Berlin Wall fell, as Asia and the former Soviet block embraced capitalism, has seen the largest number of people, literally billions of people in history, lifted out of extreme poverty and into a middle class life.
And in this day and age there is less effective difference between rich and poor than there ever has been. A billionaire has more expensive clothes than I do, but are they really that much better in quality to justify the cost? How about cars? My used car still gets me where I want to go. Airplanes? Yes they have their own airplanes, but I can rent a seat on one for far cheaper and go anywhere in the world. My grandparents could not do that. I go to the local grocery store and fresh food is available at any time of year thanks to a long logistics supply chain built by rich people. My grandparents could not get fresh fruit in the winter, now even the most poor person can.
To take a U.S. example: white families in America have 16 times as much wealth on average as black families. This is indisputably because of slavery, which was very recent (there are people alive today who met people who were once slaves). Larry Ellison of Oracle could put his $55 billion in a fund that could be used to just give houses to black families, not quite as direct “reparations” but simply as a means of addressing the fact that the average white family has a house while the average black family does not.
I'll dispute that. The reasons most poor people stay poor is because of bad economic choices that they themselves make. Stealing Larry Ellison's money, putting it into a fund and distributing it to black families will accomplish absolutely nothing to help these families. What would happen is these families would spend it on goods, and the money would go to companies, most of whom have computers, and therefore databases, and since Larry Ellison is the CEO of the most popular database company, would get his money back.
Instead of redistributing wealth, it would be far better to teach poor people basic economic literacy. Pay off your credit card balance, start a savings account, spend lees than you earn, don't get on drugs... etc. The poor people can lift themselves out of poverty already with basic economic literacy within a generation.
Blacks in america have only themselves to blame.
Most piss away their time in school, believing its too white to study and do well.
You don’t get jobs just sitting on your asses. And you can’t get good jobs if you haven’t educated yourself.
Most do not want to do the hard work of investing in themselves. They don’t have a concept of hard work and delayed gratification for bigger things in the future. And it’s rubbing off on other demographics too.
So says the jackasses who all want to be rich but don’t want to have to work for it. This is commie garbage.
From Wikipedia: " The first modern epinephrine autoinjector, the EpiPen, was invented in the mid-1970s at Survival Technology in Bethesda, Maryland by Sheldon Kaplan and was first approved for marketing by the FDA in 1987."
The author of the article, A.Q. Smith, is described as "a progressive journalist".
I have relatives who work with medical devices and the FDA. If such a person were limited to the salary of a "progressive journalist" I cannot imagine that they would have any interest whatever in jumping through all the regulatory hoops required to get a medical device approved for sale, especially if the alternative was to periodically write several paragraphs of economic drivel.
That would leave this immature, overpaid "journalist" to create the medical products that benefit us all.
Since the author uses Biblical references to justify his opinion, I offer the following: ""For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me." Nothing in there about dictating economic morality to others. Nor is there any suggestion that poverty will ever cease.
The author of the article need look no further than Venezuela to see the error in his thinking. The dire circumstances there can in no way be blamed on the fact that there is wealth in the world.
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