HRW “Quite frankly, capitalism thrives on “covetousness” and “envy”, its the motivation behind the creation of wealth. Perhaps its capitalism is the product of man’s fall not socialism.”

MM You miss the larger point. ALL people are afflicted to one degree or another with covetousness and envy. They are common sins of all men, whether you are a socialist or a capitalist. Those sins operate within both systems. I did not say that socialism was the product of man’s fall. Here is what I said (#202):

“This entitlement/demand mentality which you espouse is, quite frankly, the result of sin in the form of envy and covetousness.”

You approve of this mentality, i.e., feeling that you are entitled to what someone else has produced and owns. That has its roots in the sins of covetousness and envy. But what you and other socialists do is to dismiss that sin within socialism and recognize it only within capitalism, just as you have done on this thread. Marxist theory says It is wrong for a capitalist to claim private property because everything is “really” produced and owned by society collectively. Yet, at the same time, it is OK for an individual to demand his entitlement, his share of the community property. But the minute this claim is acted upon by an individual, what was community property becomes individual, private property. The end result is the same under both capitalism and socialism, yet in the socialist mind it is a sin only under capitalism.

A critical difference between socialism and capitalism, as practiced within the American system, is that our Christian founding fathers recognized the true nature of men and devised a system of government to allow for private property rights and competitive self-interest to both produce the maximum benefits for society and be self-regulating at the same time. It has worked wonderfully and has produced an economy that is the wonder and envy of the world. It is not a raw and unfettered capitalism, where the inherent selfishness of man is allowed to run amuck. It has internal controls in the forms of checks and balances and also the overall rule of law to protect the weak and disadvantaged.

Socialism, on the other hand, disregards private property and claims everything for the collective. It crushes personal incentive by robbing the individual of the products of his own work. The only thieves in the socialist mindset are those who believe in private property and who would therefore “steal” from the collective. Socialism turns everything on its head in contradictory and illogical ways. The entitlement mentality becomes one way of expressing the virtue of collective ownership where everyone supposedly owns everything equally. But to demand an entitlement is to demand ownership of a portion of the whole and that is against the concept of collective ownership. It makes no sense and is internally contradictory.

It also fails the practical test and just doesn’t work in real life—the economic failures of socialism are legion, not to mention the horrendous moral failures of the same. The practitioners of the Communist versions of socialism are responsible for more deaths in the last century than even the practitioners of the German brand of National Socialism under Hitler.

Yet we still have people like yourself and Obama who cling to the basic idea and dismiss all the failures with the idea that all the other socialists didn’t quite get it right, but you will. Sooner or later you will get this experiment right and then everybody will be happy. How many more wrecked economies, how many more lives is it going to take to get it right?

I think we have had enough. Socialism is not just a failure in application that will one day be corrected. It is a failure in its most basic principles and it will NEVER succeed because of it. It goes against the best aspects of human nature and cultivates the worst. It has a track-record of degenerating into the worst of tyrannies and should be resisted by every thinking human being who values life as God intended it.

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“a group of individuals” = community, community = society

Society creates wealth by establish the necessary structures for individuals to operate within. Given the low view of human nature held by evangelicals, you should agree without society we would live in Hobbesian world where life is nasty, brutal and short. Without contract law, law and order, and even informal agreements of common courtesy, individuals cannot create the wealth they do.

Bill Gates needs society to recognize and enforce patent laws. He needs a safe means of transportation of his goods both domestic and abroad and for that he needs society’s provision of law and order and international agreements.

is respect for each other as fellow humans created in God’s image

in secular terms this is our shared humanity. So we agree on how we should act to each other but not on the means to carry it out.

This entitlement/demand mentality which you espouse is, quite frankly, the result of sin in the form of envy and covetousness. Marxism and socialism cloak it in counterfeit talk of “concern for the poor,” but, at it’s core, it’s just plain covetousness and theft.

I’m a middle class professional making above average money. Other than universal health care and my daughter’s education, I’m not receiving anything and neither do I demand anything. I don’t covet anything either. My socialist attitude originates from two different types of motivation — one, I think its the morally responsible thing do and I gladly pay my taxes without resenting the poor who receive it. Secondly, I think the welfare state is the most pragmatic way to organize society, it allows for capitalism to thrive without its ill effects.

Quite frankly, capitalism thrives on “covetousness” and “envy”, its the motivation behind the creation of wealth. Perhaps its capitalism is the product of man’s fall not socialism.

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“Our shared humanity demands a shared entitlement. Society not individuals produce wealth.”

This “entitlement” talk is empty, Marxist-style rhetoric. Put some legs on it HRW and give me some specific examples of “society” creating wealth. Can you do that? I doubt it.

On the contrary, wealth is produced by individuals and groups of individuals banding together in productive businesses to build houses and whole cities, manufacture an infinity of products, plant and harvest food, drill for oil, mine for metals, etc. All of these are examples of individual enterprise creating wealth, not some Marxist society that illegally claims and steals what others have produced.

The important thing that our shared humanity demands is respect for each other as fellow humans created in God’s image and subject to His rules of conduct with each other. In no case does He give me the right to demand what someone else has—that’s predation and He didn’t design a predatory society. That is something produced by evil men.

On the contrary, He originally designed a society of love and cooperation where people VOLUNTARILY help one another, not demand from one another. This entitlement/demand mentality which you espouse is, quite frankly, the result of sin in the form of envy and covetousness. Marxism and socialism cloak it in counterfeit talk of “concern for the poor,” but, at it’s core, it’s just plain covetousness and theft.

The USSR and Mao’s China are prime examples of this mentality taken to its logical end—murder and theft on a mass scale that produced literal hells on earth.

“Our shared humanity demands a shared entitlement.”

Yeah, a shared entitlement to hell.

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This is a problem which arises from a failure to universalize benefits of the welfare state. In the last 10-15 years both conservative and liberal gov’t in Ontario addressed that very question. One of the things keeping people on welfare was a prescription drug card and free dental for children. Most jobs offered to welfare receipts don’t include benefits so the gov’t offered to maintain these benefits for two years or more. Child benefits are universal in Canada and contingent on income. Working then is encouraged by the gov’t. What you see in your area is bad management, demand good management of the welfare system not abolition.

Like you, I teach in a neighborhood with several housing projects. However, I see single mothers returning to work part-time increasing the time as their children age; many also volunteer, others go back to school and then return to the work world — very few promote generational welfare. And I hardly think the Canadian poor are more noble than the American poor.

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I should have added the caveat “except for single mothers” but I thought most would admit that its reasonable to expect retention and recidivism.

A quick google search reveals a study in North Carolina which documents that only 17 – 20 percent remain on welfare after two years.

http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/dss/stats/docs/chapter_6.pdf

However, looking further I only found an 1988 survey which found white women stayed on welfare 22 months and black women 45 months. Most of the other research was written in the 90s when welfare reform was a hot topic focusing on factors keeping people on welfare not length of stay.

It is interesting to note that length of stay has little input on the chance of of intergenerational welfare.
. The results show that there is no causal effect of length of exposure on future welfare dependency, nor on teenage childbearing. Conditional on teenage childbearing, there are no effects of length of exposure on adult welfare dependency either, but this dependency is almost three times larger for teenage mothers than for non-mothers.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/mia/wpaper/0715.html

My initial claim was based on research in Ontario about 10-15 years ago which had similar data as North Carolina — @ 20% stayed on welfare over two years and majority of these were single mothers.

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I agree with your point:

“Voters don’t like being lied to, conned and victimized by thieving politicians who promise one thing and do the opposite. ”

and as noted in the Elder article, it appears that conservatives sometiomes have trouble understanding this.

At this time the Republican brand is at a very low level (do we need statuistics here?) and Obama’s is very high. The stimulus money will be hitting in full force as 2010 begins and there appear to be a large number of Republican retirees from congress.

I suggest that it does not look good for Republicans, and by inference conservatives, in 2010.

2012 will depend, as Obama notes, on the state of the economy.

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when you say:

“The Massachusetts plans will inevitably be refused by many of the youth they are intended to benefit. Why? Because it involves some out-of-pocket expense for them.”

Early indications appear to be because there is a mdnadte to have health insurance, that youth are getting insurance, but what statistics there are are still apparenlty sketchy.

The following articel apepared to be the most credible articel on the Massachusetts plan I could find:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/27/4/w285

but it does not specifically address the youth participation.

I will keep looking.

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The Massachusetts plans will inevitably be refused by many of the youth they are intended to benefit. Why? Because it involves some out-of-pocket expense for them. Their current priorities are centered on youthful self-indulgence. They can pay for what they need, they just don’t want to because it would mean one less party, one less cigarette, one less beer, one less “snort.”

They will accept the plans only if they are free, i.e., someone else pays for them. So, there is a vast difference between the truly needy and the greed of self-indulgence practiced by those who can pay, but wont. Conservatives are more than willing to help the truly needy. Elders has helped us have a sense of their true numbers and they are NOT the inflated, unadjusted figures cited by the Obama gang and dutifully swallowed by their drones.

We will see as the legislature deals with this issue. Will it be railroaded through without adequate debate and realistic solutions as was the Stimulus monstrosity? If your brand of non-thinking prevails, that will be the case—ignore the data and/or brush it aside regardless of the consequences.

However, there are encouraging signs that some Americans are waking up to the scam. Obama’s poll numbers are beginning to drop and a growing number of Democrats are getting nervous about the election of 2010. Voters don’t like being lied to, conned and victimized by thieving politicians who promise one thing and do the opposite. The stimulus plan has not worked as advertised, unemployment is rising, taxes are going up, and inflation rates of 15-20% are forecast for the 2010-2012 period. Nationalized health care, if rammed through by the Obama gang, will only add to all of that. Democrats are drunk with power and overreaching in a big way. Naive Americans who voted for Obama, thinking they were going to get “Change” for free, are beginning to feel the cost and waking up to the deceit of those who so easily duped them.

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but if Elders’ data is even clpose to correct,he argues that the unemployed, who at least form a health insurance perspectvie would seem to just need a hand until their next job, are of the same order of size as the core uninsured (again using Elders’ numbers).

And therefore these people do not deserve a hand with health insurance while they transition between jobs????

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