So you don't believe in God or Christ...

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With world populations rising, and industry being all automated, there will become more and more impoverished and those in need.

The answer is a combination of communism and capitalism, which were already doing, just look at the food stamp and housing and medical programs. people may complain but its quickly becoming a necessity for those whom can not find work just because there is not enough work to go around. relief is on the way though, that is once we start travailing our soler system and harvesting from it resources.

The point of this thread is to draw attention to ways Christianity may lessen the debt burden of government through acts of charity regardless of what you think of the religion.

Remember, charity can also include volunteerism, not just handing over the keys to the wallet.

There was a time many of us (including me) cannot remember when hospitals were staffed pretty much by nuns, not nurses.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 15 Jul 2014, 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Since the alternative is austerity, YES!

It cannot be in the form of a blank check!

This is not really true. Government debt is not negatively impacting the economy in any way other than on a psychological level. Increases in federal debt actually provide quite a few sectors of the economy with extra cash. That is why the government should spend more in times of economic downturn and then cut spending carefully and slowly during economic progress. This is why austerity is extremely detrimental to the economy.

That's exactly what I've been trying to say in this thread. But for some countries it was definately a cause: Greece had a huge debt that made their interest go up to 14% at one point, and then the other EU countries had to bail them out.
For the other countries, definately no more austerity. But austerity is the official Eurozone policy. Politicians want to believe in the hoax that it was all because of deficit spending, and because southern Europeans somehow messed things up for us (they didn't).

No the original premise of this thread was the decline in faith has led to a decline in charity, some thing which you have yet to prove and a premise that the evidence suggests is BS.

I should not be surprised at your attempt at deceit as moving goalposts is a favourite debating trick of the religious

You are attempting to distract from the real issue. Can charities help cut deficits in government if enough people take the time and money?

Anytime you "cut" you are just taking money out of the economy, thus, shrinking it. US and Europe are mixed economies with elements of capitalism and socialism. Downside of not cutting is inflation. Things become more expensive and we see that in the stores. Food prices have increased quite a lot.

They only could if the deficit was caused by government spending on things that could be covered by charities. But it wasn't.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpol ... eficit.htm

The link gives four main areas of spending that contributed to the deficit:

1)

Charity doesn't intersect with tax cuts so not relevent there. There are some charities that help oiut of work people but the ones google found for me are for people who have considerable difficulties getting work in the first place because of various barriers. So that wouldn't reduce unemployment benefits. Some charities fund public works projects but these tend to be on a very tiny scale, like paying for a beloved park to be maintained, and aren't infrastructure. Trying to kick start the economy out of recession isn't really something that charity can do.

2)

Charity can't help there.

3)

There was this saying when I was young: That day will never come. War has never been and will never be paid for by charities. So not relevent.


4)

You can't replace Social Security with charity. People who have had Social Security deducted from their paychecks for decades are not going to suddenly say when they retire- "You know what? Don't send me that Social Security check. I'll just go to the food bank charity instead".

What charities really excel at- and all they should be expected to do- is to rescue people (or animals or structures*) who have fallen through the cracks of government programs. People who don't have food stamps for whatever reason suddenly find themselves having to go to a food bank. People who don't have medicaid find themselves having to do a community fundraiser for their child's uncovered illness. Researchers need more money researching a disease than they can get from federal grants and so medical charities for pretty much every existing disease try to take up the slack (although medical research tends to grow in direct proportion to what money is given to it, so it doesn't end unless the disease ends). This is all well and good and important but it has no effect on the federal deficit not could it ever.

*I added that when I suddenly realized that World Wildlife Federation and the Humane Society and other animal-oriented places that take donations aren't rescuing people nor are the ones that take donations to save historic buildings or clean up despoiled areas. Saving animals, historic buildings and nature is important, but doing so will not reduce the federal deficit one penny.

Last edited by Janissy on 16 Jul 2014, 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

Okay Janissy - one of the items mentioned requiring increased spending is longer unemployment benefits. This is definitely an area where charities can help alleviate some of the debt burden.


Another obvious area is medical - like with Medicare and insurance. If hospitals are run by nuns, they cost less to run then if they are run by nurses because nuns are required to vow poverty.

And I am not saying replace I am saying decrease debt burden. Big difference. I never said zero debt is a good thing. In fact, it's the opposite.

But the difference is that unemployment benefits are a right. If you make these people dependant on charity they have no security at all. Charities can just refuse people or stop paying when it is convenient.

Haha, trollman that's ironic because nothing about government and congress is stable.

I don't know how it is in the US, but in the Netherlands social security has been pretty much the same for decades I think. What worries me is that if an atheist or a Muslim ask a church for unemployment benefits, will they be refused or not? What if someone is a Catholic on unemployment benefits but he decides to quit church?

There are some charities that help people who are unemployed. Google found me several. Most seem to be in the UK (hmmmm...) but google did find me this

https://www.charities.org/news/how-chri ... ce-central




Good on them. They are trying to get Floridians back to work and every one that they help get a job is somebody no longer on unemployment. But the catch is that this removal of some people from the unemployment rolls is not going to be statistically significant to the deficit. The economy has to turn around in order for there to be enough jobs to get people off employment. This charity can help people make great resumes, give them skills classes etc. but the jobs need to be there for that to translate into getting off unemployment. Charity can't improve the economy- and improving the economy is what gets people off unemployment in bulk.



There aren't enough nuns for this to make any difference. And nun leadership is ending at Catholic hospitals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/us/21 ... d=all&_r=0



In any case, that only works in Catholic hospitals. And it only can be meaningful if lots of healthcare workers are nuns, which they aren't. The Catholic Church may have invented the concept of hospitals, but in the U.S. they are no longer staffing them.



It can't decrease it in an amount that will be even statistically noticeable.

I don't know if you have baby boomers over there. They are what has thrown the system off balance here. It works great so long as the population is relatively stable but how are you going to avoid either debt or increased taxes with it, eventually with even tiny, fractional population growth?