income inequality...let's dwell on this statement....
what is income needed for? what's the value of the income? what is worth? what is rich? what is fair share? what is budgeting?
those who control the food supply control the masses those who control the water supply control the masses those who control the land control the masses
this is the freedom you fought for soldiers......
freedom for your neighbor to tell you your worth and what you can do with it...why? how?
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Pope attacks mega-salaries and wealth gap in peace message .
Reuters By Philip Pullella 2 hours ago
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.
In his message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, marked around the world on January 1, he also called for sharing of wealth and for nations to shrink the gap between rich and poor, more of whom are getting only "crumbs".
"The grave financial and economic crises of the present time ... have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy," he said.
"The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles," he said.
Francis, who was named Time magazine's Person of the Year on Wednesday, has urged his own Church to be more fair, frugal and less pompous and to be closer to the poor and suffering.
His message will be sent to national leaders, international organizations such as the United Nations, and NGO's.
Titled "Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace", the message also attacked injustice, human trafficking, organized crime and the weapons trade as obstacles to peace.
Anger at multi-million payouts for executives has swept across the globe as the economic crisis has deepened and the gap between the super-rich and the poor has widened.
But last month, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to cap the salaries of top executives at 12 times that of a company's lowest wage, heeding warnings from industry leaders that the measure could harm the country's economy.
CRUMBS
Francis said many places in the world were seeing a "serious rise" in inequality between people living side by side.
He attacked the "widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs", calling on governments to implement "effective policies" to guarantee people's fundamental rights, including access to capital, services, educational resources, healthcare and technology.
The new pope's style is characterized by frugality. He shunned the spacious papal apartment in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace to live in a small suite in a Vatican guest house, and he prefers a Ford Focus to the traditional pope's Mercedes.
A champion of the downtrodden, he visited the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy in July to pay tribute to hundreds of migrants who had died crossing the sea from North Africa.
Last month, in a document seen as a manifesto of his papacy, he attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny".
Since his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, the Argentinian has several times condemned the "idolatry of money" and said it was a depressing sign of the times that a homeless person dying of exposure on the street was no longer news but a slight fall in the stock market is.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
This Pope is funny. The Catholic Church brings in billions selling promises of an afterlife. Building cathedrals a lined with gold leaf. But capitalists are evil for making money selling earthly goods and services. I'm not sure the Catholic Church is in a position to preach about greed.
David Harsanyi: Pope wrong to blame markets for poverty
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Pope Francis' first apostolic exhortation, "Evangelii Gaudium" ("The Joy of the Gospel"), is a beautiful document and a joy to read. I'll leave its theological implications to those who live in the Roman Catholic Church. What's got many people praising the pope today, though, is not his plea for good works but rather his critique of capitalism.
You could always detect a pinch of socialistic seasoning in the church's theological stew. But in this case, the pope doesn't simply point out that the wealthy aren't doing enough to help alleviate poverty. He uses the recognizable rhetoric of the political left to accuse free market systems of generating and nurturing that poverty.
The pope condemns the "new tyranny" of "idolatry of money," reasonably arguing that economic systems should not be accepted with blind faith but also saying that "as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."
For starters, it's troubling that the pope fails to make any genuine distinction between Western poverty (terrible) and the poverty of the Third World (unimaginably terrible). But is it really true that "absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation" are the driving reasons for poverty and inequality? People in places such as Congo, Burundi and Mozambique live under corrupt authoritarian regimes where crippling poverty has a thousand fathers -- none of them named capitalism. The people of Togo do not suffer in destitution because of some derivative scheme on Wall Street or the fallout from a tech IPO.
"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially," the pope goes on to say, "so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few."
In truth, global inequality has been dropping for years. The World Bank estimates that global poverty was halved from 1990 to 2010. In fact, according to the World Bank, the United Nations' "millennium development goal" of cutting world poverty in half by 2015 came in five years ahead of schedule, despite a major global recession. The decline in poverty coincides, not coincidentally, with developing nations embracing more market-based systems.
Moreover, the pope falls into the trap of conflating inequality and poverty. Some countries enjoy income parity because most citizens are rich, and others do so because most citizens are poor. Put it this way: Egypt, Pakistan and Mongolia all enjoy more economic equality than the United States. The gross domestic product per capita here is $49,800. In Argentina, the pope's homeland, a place where wealth is more fairly distributed, it's $18,200.
Now, no reasonable person believes that any economic system is a cure-all. But how many reasonable people argue that market-based economies -- and the underlying morality that drives them -- haven't done more to alleviate poverty worldwide than any other system? For the most part, in fact, the more unfettered a nation's economic system is the more prosperous the population becomes and, consequently, the more it spends on charity and safety net programs. When we match up The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom with the World Bank's measure of per capita income, we find that the countries with the most unencumbered systems and the most financial "speculation" usually have the least amount of poverty.
Rather than credit those who do their best to balance this imperfect system that lifts millions out of impoverishment, the pope attacks them for the prevalence of imaginary economic Darwinists who callously keep equality from blooming. "Consequently," these people "reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control," Pope Francis contends.
Any form of control? Really? The Federal Register in this country regularly comes in at more than 60,000 pages. Or, to put it another way, it's longer than all 46 books of the Old Testament, the 27 books of the New Testament and every gospel the Council of Nicaea decided to toss, combined. And the United States, a place teeming with these economic Darwinists, also happens to be one of the most charitable places on the planet -- even before we begin counting per capita spending on safety nets.
David Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
When the last min. wage increased happened, how many poor people weren't poor anymore?
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Amazing how hysterical the Rabid Right become when a holy man in Rome mentions greed!
(sounds like collective 'guilty conscience!' )
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Amazing how hysterical the Rabid Right become when a holy man in Rome mentions greed!
(sounds like collective 'guilty conscience!' )
no rabid right...just know that humans on earth are humans on earth....even if they dress in robes and sacrifice their young they still are not gods....
no matter what the guy says....I'll pay attention when he is a woman....and then MAYBE....it's still just a fu(king institution of brain warp by a fellow human
HOLY man? really? that's what you call him? so the 'holy men' in the middle east that we think are bad are a lesser religion to you? we went to war to protect the world from other holy men and then developed the NSA/patriot act homeland security etc and call it freedom from some bad 'holy men'?????
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Amazing how hysterical the Rabid Right become when a holy man in Rome mentions greed!
(sounds like collective 'guilty conscience!' )
The holy man didn't address greed, he addressed wealth. Greed is in the heart. Plenty of American poor that are greedy. I don't know anything more greedy than somebody using the government to force money out of a persons pocket that earned it, and handing it to a person that did nothing but fill out the paperwork correctly. Then pay the government bureaucrat a salary and pension to be the middle man.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ― John Kenneth Galbraith
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ― John Kenneth Galbraith
We know folks who make 1/4 of a million a year! And we know folks who make $50K a year.
They all think they are wealthy....but are not greedy. They just do their job well and get paid for it AND live within their means.
And they are ALL very generous.
As far as the pope...........who really gives a crap? Unfortunately he overstepped his bounds by obviously forgetting that his job is to 'lead the catholic sheople' and not get involved in politics. It is just 'his opinion'....just like everyone else.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Amazing how hysterical the Rabid Right become when a holy man in Rome mentions greed!
(sounds like collective 'guilty conscience!' )
It's amazing how you communist leftists NOW give a sh!t what he says when he says something you like, while at the same time you belittle, intimidate, threaten and oppress Christians any chance you get.
So I'll ask again....
When the last min. wage increased happened, how many poor people weren't poor anymore?
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
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