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‘It Is Utterly Impossible to Be Rich without Committing Injustice'

paarsurrey

Veteran Member
‘It Is Utterly Impossible to Be Rich without Committing Injustice'

In the human history there have been people who became rich without committing any injustice to anybody, rather they established justice in the society.

Examples:
King David
King Solomon
Cyrus the Great
King Mansa Musa of Mali,Africa
There may be many others.
Right, please?

Regards
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I suppose one could argue that everyone commits some kind of injustice
just because living means interacting, making mistakes, lapses in ethical
judgment, & paying taxes to a government which occasionally does wrong.
Setting aside that broad failing....
Being rich need not mean having been unjust. Many of us make our money
from entirely voluntary exchanges, thereby bettering lives of those around us.

There...now that's settled.

Seriously. Everyone breathes too.
And everyone commits felonies, in the usa at leadt.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Although completely unsubstantiated with no proof whatsoever on my part, I tend to think every 1 percenter has wacked at least one person over their fortune.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
‘It Is Utterly Impossible to Be Rich without Committing Injustice'

In the human history there have been people who became rich without committing any injustice to anybody, rather they established justice in the society.

Examples:
King David
King Solomon
Cyrus the Great
King Mansa Musa of Mali,Africa
There may be many others.
Right, please?

Regards

Hmm, I'm not sure about that based upon the individuals in your list - with all due respect.

King David was a mass polygamist with hundreds of wives and concubines. The women don't appear to have been given much agency or say. He lusted after Bathsheba, a girl married to one of his closest friends and subjects. He conspired to have this faithful friend murdered so that he could have the guy's wife for himself and he subsequently fathered Solomon to this particular lady. Human lives appear to have been quite disposable to him.

Solomon had his brother Adonijah murdered because he feared he would be a rival claimant to the throne and he wanted to consolidate power for himself. In Deuteronomy 17:16–17, a king is commanded not to multiply horses or wives, neither greatly multiply to himself gold or silver. Solomon sins in all three of these areas. Solomon collected 666 talents of gold each year (1 Kings 10:14). So he wasn't a faithful Jew according to his own religion.

Cyrus was a canny propagandist who generally permitted conquered peoples to continue to worship their native gods. But he was also a bloodthirsty imperialist who died trying to expand his territory.

King Mansa Musa the king of Mali, made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325, with 500 slaves and 100 camels. He owned human beings as personal property.

Many people, historically, like Gautama Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi and Mahavira begun their lives with great wealth. However, they died having abandoned their riches as ascetics who devoted the remainder of lives to caring for those suffering psychologically, emotionally and physically. All three of them had a life-changing enlightenment experience in their late 20s - early 30s and turned away from their lives of power, pleasure and excess.

None of the men on your list did that and in my humble opinion it shows in their characters as history has brought them down to us in the extant source material.
 
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dianaiad

Well-Known Member
<snip to here>

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?

Is there a person or group of people whose moral character is so golden that they get to decide when someone ELSE needs to give away his superfluous money?

Who gets to decide what 'superfluous' means?

While I might personally think that someone else has too much money and should give a bunch of it away, I keep running into the wall of ..who died and made you God, that you get to decide how much is too much?

No matter how much that happens to be.
 

danieldemol

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
With respect, I consider your wording to be a tad troubling. There is perhaps an unintentional eugenical or socially darwinian-flavour to it.
I think you are reading more into it than what was presented.

Consider the words of the great John Rawls, “individuals with greater natural endowments and the superior character that has made their development possible”. Here he acknowledges greater natural endowment (ie genetic giftedness) and superior character, yet you didn’t accuse him of eugenics.

Moreover, who gets to set a "value" on which traits are 'genetically gifted' as opposed to those which are allegedly 'leas gifted' or inferior?

I don’t believe I was arguing for humans to assign a value to these things at all, consider my concluding words, “Therefore I vote to let the rich enter heaven whom God judges...”

Does our culture and economic system really reward the "best" people?
I think it rewards a mixture of people. I don’t really believe all rich people are sociopaths.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Is there a person or group of people whose moral character is so golden that they get to decide when someone ELSE needs to give away his superfluous money?

The billionaire's conscience should be the first port of call. If he/she has one, that is (most people do, pardoning about 1% of the human population on the anti-social personality spectrum).

But we have a taxation system with bands - lower rate, higher rate and additional rate. So government has its role here to regulate for the public good, as well as social pressure on the conscience of the individual.


Against Inequality: Why These 169 Millionaires Ask Governments For $8 Trillion More Taxes


During the Davos 2020 meeting of the World Economic Forum something remarkable happened. A group of more than hundred millionaires, calling themselves “Millionaires against Pitchforks” spread a letter to governments in which they ask for more taxes. What drives some of the richest people on this planet to do this? As we infer from the pledge, it is their contribution to solving the inequality problem.

The richest 1% own nearly 40% of all the wealth, but pay only 20% of all the taxes. This is unsustainable.


Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891) | LEO XIII


(13) But, when what necessity demands has been supplied , and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over...

(37.) When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State . And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.


"…Government officials, it is your concern to mobilize your peoples to form a more effective world solidarity, and above all to make them accept the necessary taxes on their luxuries and their wasteful expenditures, in order to bring about development and to save the peace…

The struggle against destitution, though urgent and necessary, is not enough. It is a question, rather, of building a world where every man, no matter what his race, religion or nationality, can live a fully human life, freed from servitude imposed on him by other men or by natural forces over which he has not sufficient control; a world where freedom is not an empty word and where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man. This demands great generosity, much sacrifice and unceasing effort on the part of the rich man.

Let each one examine his conscience, a conscience that conveys a new message for our times. Is he prepared to support out of his own pocket works and undertakings organized in favor of the most destitute?


Is he ready to pay higher taxes so that the public authorities can intensify their efforts in favor of development? Is he ready to pay a higher price for imported goods so that the producer may be more justly rewarded? Or to leave his country, if necessary and if he is young, in order to assist in this development of the young nations?.."

- Pope St. Paul VI (Populorum Progressio), 1967 (#84)


The great scholastic commentator of the Summa, Cardinal Cajetan, also reiterated the same teaching circa. 1527:


“…Now what a [government] can do in virtue of its office, so that justice may be served in the matter of riches, is to take from someone who is unwilling to dispense from what is superfluous for life or state, and to distribute it to the poor . In this way it just takes away the dispensation power of the rich man to whom the wealth has been entrusted because he is not worthy.

For according to the teaching of the saints, the riches that are superfluous do not belong to the rich man as his own but rather to the one appointed by God as dispenser, so that he can have the merit of a good dispensation…as Basil said, it belongs to the indigent …”


- Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on the Summa Theologica,” vol. 6, II-II, 118.3



Hopefully, Bernie Sanders or an acolyte of his will see it done in America in the foreseeable future. I live in hope.
 
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Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
I think you are reading more into it than what was presented.

If so, my apology.

Consider the words of the great John Rawls, “individuals with greater natural endowments and the superior character that has made their development possible”. Here he acknowledges greater natural endowment (ie genetic giftedness) and superior character, yet you didn’t accuse him of eugenics.

To be fair to him (and I should have explained this), he wasn't declaring these people actually gifted but working within the logic of his imagined interlocutors who regarded them as such, for the purpose of the thought experiment he was presenting.

I don’t believe I was arguing for humans to assign a value to these things at all, consider my concluding words, “Therefore I vote to let the rich enter heaven whom God judges...”

Fair enough, I only took exception to the implication which seemed to imply that you regarded billionaires as more genetically gifted and poorer folk "uneducated". I understood this to be an assignment of value to entire classes of people, respectively, based upon their socio-economic status with assumptions made about their genetic potential.

Again, apologies if I misunderstood the import of your words.

I think it rewards a mixture of people. I don’t really believe all rich people are sociopaths.

Nor do I, hence why I referenced George Soros in the OP and also an article on a (admittedly rare) group of progressive millionaires asking for higher taxes to help combat income inequality.

But I think there is evidence to suggest that whilst not all rich people are sociopaths, high-functioning sociopaths are finding our modern societies more amenable to their interests and skill set than in hunter-gatherer ones, where the reverse dominance hierarchy principle stymied them.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
In his Homily on 1 Timothy 12:3–4,71 the early church father St. John Chrysostom (died 407 CE) made the bold statement that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without committing injustice" (οὐκ ἔστιν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ἀδικοῦντα πλουτεῖν) and moreover said that wealth is tantamount to theft, for ‘its origin must have come from an injustice against someone’, an ἀδικία (Timothy 1, 3, v.3, v. 8; 6, v.10; John Chrysostom in Schaff, 1886, Vol. 13, p.447). He then poses a rhetorical question: ‘Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?’, finally concluding: "Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs" (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5).

Arguably, if you earned $5,000 a day every day, beginning in 1492 when Columbus discovered America, you would probably still have less money than Jeff Bezos. The richest 26 people in the world have as much wealth as the 50% most economically disadvantaged of the global population - all 3.5 billion of the planet's poorest. Jeff Bezos has personal income equivalent to the GDP of a number of sovereign countries, such as New Zealand.

Surely an economic system that enables such gross income disparities to not only exist but widen with every passing year, often to the detriment of the environment to boot, is an inherently 'unjust' one?

The counter-argument, from libertarian free-marketeers, is that the financially well-endowed are specially-talented wealth creators. Jeff Bezos created a service that billions of human beings wanted and so he reaps the dividends.

But the question of acquiring wealth and the question of keeping it are distinct. 'To be rich' is not just about acquisition but retention. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $130 billion, George Soros has "only" $8 billion because he has donated more than $32 billion to philanthropic causes.

It’s one thing to claim you ascended the ranks of the 0.01% through talent, thrift and graft. It’s quite another to justify using that wealth for one's own private luxury, with plush houses and greco-roman sculptures of oneself rather than giving aid to people living hand-to-mouth in an effort to pay their exorbitant rents or dying without medical coverage from untreated malaria.

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?
I can't stick around to read replies, but will be back towards end of month. I apologize for this jab and flee post:

St. John Crystosom speaks out against wealthy clergy, and that is admirable, however... At the same time don't assume that physical wealth is the most important kind of wealth that needs sharing, so Crystosom brings truth out of the NT but isn't giving us a round understanding of this subject as the NT writers intend. Among NT authors there are references to the vast inheritance in Christ which point out that Jesus parables often expand the meaning of wealth to something more than gold. The way that we refer to 'Our Father in Heaven' implies we are heirs to a stunning fortune -- the same fortune as Jews according to Paul, and this wealth is our community. We are 'Joint heirs' say the NT letters. This is speaking to the age-old question about assimilation. "When is close too close? How can we help strangers without mixing ourselves into their backward practices, and what if we become contaminated?" Jesus argues the Jews should share themselves and not be greedy. They should, as in the parable of the talents, invest themselves in order to gain a return. St. John Crystosom doesn't seem aware of this in the OP or in the Wikipedia article about him; so maybe he is speaking to a particular problem in his time and shouldn't be the sole explanation of how Christians should read passages about the poor in the NT. I don't disagree with him that the clergy ought to be reigned in, but this is not advanced NT material but the basics plain in the Torah itself which teaches in plain letters to care for the poor, which these Jews in Jesus time are already doing. Its not enough he says. They must see the kingdom of God around them in the Romans that live among them.

Many parables such as the parable of Lazarus are likely not intended as a lesson about physical wealth, because the people are already aware of problems with too much wealth disparity. The parables build on this awareness which comes from the Torah, so they extend the concept of wealth from mere gold to the cultural wealth and wisdom. It is about Gentiles and Jews. This parable is about the spiritual poverty of Lazarus and the way that the 'Rich man' walks by not sharing it. Lazarus is like us trying desperately to become righteous people, and the rich man is someone who won't help us. Jesus is making the Jews who keep themselves out to be like the rich man. This is the situation Jesus is talking about in this specific parable. Its true that physical wealth disparity is a problem, and its true that greed is the root of all kinds of evil. Its also true that Jesus is speaking in the gospels to men who already know this and who already tithe and who already give to the poor and oppose wealth disparity, but he says they should be sharing spiritually. He's saying they are being greedy with their spiritual gifts, because they don't want to mix with the Romans. He is teaching them that they should be sharing their wisdom by investing themselves into the gentiles. Similarly they are afraid of spiritual leprosy, but Jesus isn't. They are seeing the Romans as potential Delilahs and potential Balaams etc. They're being picky about who they teach things, and Jesus is opposing these and framing it as greed.

While I say the above I am not disagreeing with St. John Crystosom's criticism of the clergy. They shouldn't be examplars of wealth in a world of poverty stricken people. His quotations of the NT though should be taken with a grain of salt, because he's micro focused on physical wealth. That isn't the wealth that is most important to Jesus who is speaking to his own people (The Jews who have the wealth of the Torah and culture etc.). Sharing your money certainly does matter, but you can be physical poor and still be spiritually enriched and unsharing. You can be a fat pig who absorbs wisdom and never shares. Maybe you are afraid that other people will put pressure on you to sin, so you don't get close. Maybe you only are open with family members? I am not at all suggesting the people should feel guilty for not preaching or for not pestering people with their views. Goodness knows too many people think that arguing and shouting = preaching. I would take 99% of all preaching and bury it if I could, because its not preaching if you ask me. I'm saying that we should share ourselves not just our wealth, and so maybe in case its Jeff Bezos who is poor. Maybe Jeff isn't the one that this thread should be about? This is the thing Jesus speaks about to his people concerning the gentiles, so when he talks about wealth and the poor in parables just be aware that it may not be a teaching about gold.

I agree that wealth disparity is an evil, but its complicated evil built into life just as a clever talking Serpent is dropped for some reason into an otherwise innocent Eden. The question Bezos (from the OP) might ask himself is how can he use his organization for good, and its not a simple question. I have heard those reports of employee problems, don't like some of what I hear. I'm not going to give him a golden thumbs up, but I'm not going to criticize him for things I don't understand. I don't know what's going on beyond the rumors. I know this: that people in our country and around the world enable this by continually choosing whatever is cheapest and most convenient. It is a systemic problem, and like in the last century the structure will eventually need to be broken up...like Bell Atlantic or like the oil barron trusts or the train trusts. Things have to be broken up or too much wealth gets aggregated together. As much as I like lower prices, free shipping and so forth I know it can't continue.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
In his Homily on 1 Timothy 12:3–4,71 the early church father St. John Chrysostom (died 407 CE) made the bold statement that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without committing injustice" (οὐκ ἔστιν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ἀδικοῦντα πλουτεῖν) and moreover said that wealth is tantamount to theft, for ‘its origin must have come from an injustice against someone’, an ἀδικία (Timothy 1, 3, v.3, v. 8; 6, v.10; John Chrysostom in Schaff, 1886, Vol. 13, p.447). He then posed a rhetorical question: ‘Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?’, finally concluding: "Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs" (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5).

Arguably, if you earned $5,000 a day every day, beginning in 1492 when Columbus discovered America, you would probably still have less money than Jeff Bezos. The richest 26 people in the world have as much wealth as the 50% most economically disadvantaged of the global population - all 3.5 billion of the planet's poorest. Jeff Bezos has personal income equivalent to the GDP of a number of sovereign countries, such as New Zealand.

Surely an economic system that enables such gross income disparities to not only exist but widen with every passing year, often to the detriment of the environment to boot, is an inherently 'unjust' one?

The counter-argument, from libertarian free-marketeers, is that the financially well-endowed are specially-talented wealth creators. Jeff Bezos created a service that billions of human beings wanted and so he reaps the dividends.

But the question of acquiring wealth and the question of keeping it are distinct. 'To be rich' is not just about acquisition but retention. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $130 billion, George Soros has "only" $8 billion because he has donated more than $32 billion to philanthropic causes.

It’s one thing to claim you ascended the ranks of the 0.01% through talent, thrift and graft. It’s quite another to justify using that wealth for one's own private luxury, with plush houses and greco-roman sculptures of oneself rather than giving aid to people living hand-to-mouth in an effort to pay their exorbitant rents or dying without medical coverage from untreated malaria.

Is there a “maximum moral income” beyond which it’s inexcusable not to give away your superfluous money?

Some definitions are required. Precisely when are you rich? At what income level? at what asset level (they are different measurements) You could have lots of income but few or no assets, or lots of assets and low income.
Define how you are using the word "injustice".
Thanks!
 

Audie

Veteran Member
The billionaire's conscience should be the first port of call. If he/she has one, that is (most people do, pardoning about 1% of the human population on the anti-social personality spectrum).

But we have a taxation system with bands - lower rate, higher rate and additional rate. So government has its role here to regulate for the public good, as well as social pressure on the conscience of the individual.


Against Inequality: Why These 169 Millionaires Ask Governments For $8 Trillion More Taxes


During the Davos 2020 meeting of the World Economic Forum something remarkable happened. A group of more than hundred millionaires, calling themselves “Millionaires against Pitchforks” spread a letter to governments in which they ask for more taxes. What drives some of the richest people on this planet to do this? As we infer from the pledge, it is their contribution to solving the inequality problem.

The richest 1% own nearly 40% of all the wealth, but pay only 20% of all the taxes. This is unsustainable.


Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891) | LEO XIII


(13) But, when what necessity demands has been supplied , and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over...

(37.) When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State . And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.


"…Government officials, it is your concern to mobilize your peoples to form a more effective world solidarity, and above all to make them accept the necessary taxes on their luxuries and their wasteful expenditures, in order to bring about development and to save the peace…

The struggle against destitution, though urgent and necessary, is not enough. It is a question, rather, of building a world where every man, no matter what his race, religion or nationality, can live a fully human life, freed from servitude imposed on him by other men or by natural forces over which he has not sufficient control; a world where freedom is not an empty word and where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man. This demands great generosity, much sacrifice and unceasing effort on the part of the rich man.

Let each one examine his conscience, a conscience that conveys a new message for our times. Is he prepared to support out of his own pocket works and undertakings organized in favor of the most destitute?


Is he ready to pay higher taxes so that the public authorities can intensify their efforts in favor of development? Is he ready to pay a higher price for imported goods so that the producer may be more justly rewarded? Or to leave his country, if necessary and if he is young, in order to assist in this development of the young nations?.."

- Pope St. Paul VI (Populorum Progressio), 1967 (#84)


The great scholastic commentator of the Summa, Cardinal Cajetan, also reiterated the same teaching circa. 1527:


“…Now what a [government] can do in virtue of its office, so that justice may be served in the matter of riches, is to take from someone who is unwilling to dispense from what is superfluous for life or state, and to distribute it to the poor . In this way it just takes away the dispensation power of the rich man to whom the wealth has been entrusted because he is not worthy.

For according to the teaching of the saints, the riches that are superfluous do not belong to the rich man as his own but rather to the one appointed by God as dispenser, so that he can have the merit of a good dispensation…as Basil said, it belongs to the indigent …”


- Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on the Summa Theologica,” vol. 6, II-II, 118.3



Hopefully, Bernie Sanders or an acolyte of his will see it done in America in the foreseeable future. I live in hope.
What are you doing for the half of the world that lives on ten dollars a day?

Waiting for the Bernie who will never come?
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Some definitions are required. Precisely when are you rich?

Well, I'll use income as our metric here for simplicity's sake.

In St. John Chrysostom's time he would likely have had in mind the latifundia, the great landed-estate owners and the senatorial class who could boast on average between 400,000 sestertii and 1,000,000 sestertii. Also, the slightly less well-off equestrian class.

I'm not sure what this would be, adjusting for inflation, in today's terms but certainly in the millions, half a billion and billions of dollars-type territory.

Our mega-millionaires and billionaires are the super-rich, the 0.01%.

Although, to be among the top 1 % of U.S. earners, a family needs an income of at minimum $421,926.

But the simple principle Chrysostom enunciates is that whatever a person has in superabundance or superfluity, beyond what they need to satisfy their needs and live comfortably, belongs to the needy in his mind. If we hoard it and don't spread it out either through our taxes or philanthropy, then we're literally denying the indignant what belongs to them and committing theft on the poor.

The extent of this would, naturally, vary greatly between someone earning over £400,000 and someone earning £26 million and then again billions like Bezos.

As for the word "injustice": the very fact of extreme disparity in income, of massively uneven distribution of wealth, was itself proof of abuse for Chrysostom and he believed the law merely legitimated a profoundly unjust situation. If I may quote the scholar Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd:


"Chrysostom conceived the nature of ownership essentially as that of a dynamic function of sharing the world's wealth to meet he requirements of a life of dignity for all.

According to Chrysostom, human welfare depends upon an abundance of goods, the general peace and a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth. If these three conditions are satisfied, then one can commence the quest for an approximation of a welfare state (vol. 58, Homilies on the Psalms, 341B).

Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Priesthood stressed that love and friendship among men increase when there are no extreme inequalities in the distribution of possessions...


The Fathers, and especially Chrysostom, believed that the role of taxation was mainly the redistribution of income and wealth. He was in favour of progressive taxation, condemning the equal fiscal treatment of rich and poor"

(Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice (2000), p.195)

His contemporary, St. Augustine of Hippo dreamt of a future in which the landless poor would be maintained by social welfare distributed by the government via progressive taxation:


CHURCH FATHERS: City of God, Book V (St. Augustine)


....the admission of all to the rights of Roman citizens who belonged to the Roman empire, and if that had been made the privilege of all which was formerly the privilege of a few, with this one condition, that the humbler class who had no lands of their own should live at the public expense — an alimentary impost, which would have been paid with a much better grace by them into the hands of good administrators of the republic.


Chrysostom argued that the equal right of all to the use of the wealth of the earth was akin to their right to breathe the air:


CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 12 on First Timothy (Chrysostom)


Is this not an evil, that you alone should have the Lord’s property, that you alone should enjoy what is common?

Mark the wise dispensation of God. That He might put mankind to shame, He hath made certain things common, as the sun, air, earth, and water, the heaven, the sea, the light, the stars; whose benefits are dispensed equally to all as brethren.

We are all formed with the same eyes, the same body, the same soul, the same structure in all respects, all things from the earth, all men from one man, and all in the same habitation. Other things ... He hath made common, as baths, cities, market-places, walks.


(Schaff, 1886, 13, p.448).
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Is there a person or group of people whose moral character is so golden that they get to decide when someone ELSE needs to give away his superfluous money?

Who gets to decide what 'superfluous' means?

While I might personally think that someone else has too much money and should give a bunch of it away, I keep running into the wall of ..who died and made you God, that you get to decide how much is too much?

No matter how much that happens to be.

I guess when you are a Christian (or professing to be one in public) then taking care of the poor should be a duty, and a privilege if you have the means. The small acts of kindness mean so much, and if you have a huge surplus, make a difference in large ways...rather than giving the man a fish...teach him to fish.

Build hospitals and supply medicines and safe drinking water to those who are dying like flies for want of the things many of us take for granted.

2 Corinthians 8:11-15...
"So now, also complete what you started to do, so that your readiness to act may be completed according to the means you have available. 12 For if the readiness is there first, it is especially acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what a person does not have. 13 For I do not want to make it easy for others, but difficult for you; 14 but that by means of an equalizing, your surplus at the present time might offset their need, so that their surplus might also offset your deficiency, that there may be an equalizing. 15 Just as it is written: “The person with much did not have too much, and the person with little did not have too little.”

Is this too difficult a concept? Who decides how much is too much?....the homeless guy who has nothing to eat....the family who have fallen on hard times, living in their cars.....and the Christian walks by with their Starbucks latte and forgets what they are supposed to feel, and what they are supposed to do. o_O

James 2:14-17...
"Of what benefit is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but he does not have works? That faith cannot save him, can it? 15 If any brothers or sisters are lacking clothing and enough food for the day, 16 yet one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but you do not give them what they need for their body, of what benefit is it? 17 So, too, faith by itself, without works, is dead."

Isn't it simple? We came into the world with nothing and we go out the same way....you can't take it with you, so why not do good for others with your surplus? You can only drive one car at a time, when others have no means of transport at all....you can only live in one mansion at a time, when others are surviving under a bridge.

The reason why so many people are miserable today is because, as Jesus said..."there is more happiness in giving than in receiving".....its the givers who are happy, not the selfish hoarders of their wealth.

How do governments ever hail their successes when they are such abject failures when it comes to caring for the most vulnerable among their citizens.....? Perhaps we could spend as much money on saving people as we do on killing them....?

Sometimes I am ashamed to be a member of the human race. :(
 

Wandering Monk

Well-Known Member
I think what this thread seems to be about is the apparent lack of philanthropy today.

So, in terms of charity of the rich, is it really less than in times past?

Don't know. Just asking.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
I think what this thread seems to be about is the apparent lack of philanthropy today.

So, in terms of charity of the rich, is it really less than in times past?

Don't know. Just asking.
The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage extremely wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. As of May 2019, the pledge has 204 signatories...
The Giving Pledge - Wikipedia

We could not assume though that others aren't doing charity, but only that these have joined this particular process.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
As a general principle, it seems to me inarguable that people are in some manner and degree morally obligated to other people. That is, so long as our own well-being in any way depends on other people, we are in some manner and degree morally obligated to them. The only question is in what way, shape, or form do we discharge that debt?

If I make 100 billion dollars selling poetry -- as seems very likely to happen, given the superb quality of my work -- does my poetry itself count as "discharging my debt to society"? After all, my poetry quite obviously vastly improves people's lives. So, does it by itself improve people's lives enough that I can say, "I have given back to society via my poetry everything I owe to it?" Or am I also obligated to give back to society something more than just my poetry?

Put differently, if I create a new heart medicine that saves lives and -- in the process -- makes me 100 billion dollars, have I given back to society everything I owe it via the benefits to people of my heart medicine alone?

I will not pretend to answer those questions for you, but is it not the case that answering those questions is of key importance here?

As for the thesis that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without creating injustice", I strongly suspect the thesis is based on a primitive and inadequate grasp of economics. Namely, it seems likely to me that John was assuming the only way for one person to get wealthy was to take his or her wealth from another person without returning to them something of equal or greater value. In effect, stealing from people.

Yet, to assume that you cannot make a billion dollars without effectively stealing from people is to imply that you cannot make a single dime without stealing from people. The principle whereby one might say that it is "utterly impossible to be rich without creating injustice" would, if it were true (and it is not), operate at all levels of an economy. Put differently, if John is right, then it is utterly impossible to even be poor without creating injustice, let alone be rich.

Just because one is a brilliant mystic and extraordinarily humane person does not mean one is a brilliant and humane economist.

By the way, there are serious issues with the huge and growing disparity between rich and poor in this world. Quite serious, in fact. BUT so far as I can see, those issues do not include that "it is utterly impossible to be rich without creating injustice".
 

Wandering Monk

Well-Known Member
Found this:

'While charities in the U.S. took in $427.71 billion in 2018 — an increase in total dollars from 2017 — giving by individual Americans dropped by 1.1%, a June 2019 Giving USA report found. The overall amount given to charity increased because donations from corporations and foundations — the charitable entities often established by wealthy families — increased by 5.4% and 7.3% respectively in 2018.'
The U.S. is the No. 1 most generous country in the world for the last decade
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
To add a twist to this conversation that has not yet been raised, if one really were seriously interested in the question of whether people can justly acquire and maintain great wealth, then shouldn't one also point out that it is "utterly impossible" to acquire great wealth without benefiting more people than just oneself?

Again, I see serious issues with the huge and growing disparity between rich and poor in this world, but I think those issues are only clouded by viewing the acquisition and maintenance of wealth as a win/lose game.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Found this:

'While charities in the U.S. took in $427.71 billion in 2018 — an increase in total dollars from 2017 — giving by individual Americans dropped by 1.1%, a June 2019 Giving USA report found. The overall amount given to charity increased because donations from corporations and foundations — the charitable entities often established by wealthy families — increased by 5.4% and 7.3% respectively in 2018.'
The U.S. is the No. 1 most generous country in the world for the last decade

Would there be a need for charity if the system actually worked for everyone?

There is a certain irony in corporations and wealthy families giving more to charity in an age when so many of those very same people are squeezing the economic life out of the middle class and poor via various and sundry means.
 
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