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@paninid The image features a black background with white text centered in the middle. The text reads: "It fascinates me that giving to charities is considered noble and praiseworthy, but creating a society that doesn't require charity is considered socialist and bad." The font is bold and sans-serif, making the text easily readable against the dark background. The overall layout is simple, with no additional images or graphics, focusing solely on the message conveyed by the text.
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Ask an Irish Catholic from back in the 1800s how well that works out.
Great point. A society filled with charities, and people needing charity shows (pretty obviously) that the economy is not working.
@paninid I had a big boss that would always wear high end fashion brands and probably made $$$$.
After we closed on the acquisition of a small company, she said to a small group of us: "You know what I'd like to be? A philanthropist. My work would just be to do good things!"
Younger me was thinking WTF you're rich as hell. But that was also when I realized that whatever she was being paid was nothing compared to her bosses and the truly, truly wealthy.
So yeah, we should tax wealth and make sure no one has to live in poverty.
@paninid Rich people--ie, the owner class--are *desperate* to be seen as benevolent saviours and also will fight with their dying breath to avoid being legally obligated to give their money to the poor.
Trump is just one particularly obvious example of this pathological state.
@paninid
"When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist."
- Hรฉlder Pessoa Cรขmara
It's what I call the Refrigerator Problem. Socialism works great with one refrigerator in a family.
But as the size of the cohort increases, soon enough, everyone starts in with "that's mine and you can't have it"
Look at these Nordic countries. They were exceedingly kind to many refugees, but now that load on the social network has increased - there is grumbling.
Now this is just my theory, having done some consulting for USDA, an agency much loved by rural America.
There's a USDA outpost in every farming county in the USA. It's not some faceless bureaucracy in "Washington" - in truth it has a large and hugely motivated bureaucracy in Washington and St Louis, but for the farmers, it's as close as the USDA office in the county seat.
It's a perceptiom problem.
@paninid Yeah that's because when you give to charity you get to decide who deserves help, and if help is offered indiscriminately people of whom one does not approve might get it.
I remember when the ACA was being introduced in the U.S., surveys said white people would rather have less good healthcare coverage themselves if it meant Black people didn't benefit.
@paninid A socialist society doesn't allow to show you are a good person by giving away a small percentage of your earnings.
In a socialist society you would have to *gasp* do some meaningful work to prove it!
Reminds me of Henning Wehn
@NovaNaturalist @paninid It can be dangerous to do it on your own too. You want to help homeless people out but some can get violent. Some aren't even in trouble and are trying to scam (I was stupid and stopped for someone needing "help" in Vegas). It really is something that the government should be doing. Tithing is a tax. We don't need to prop ourselves up by giving food to people in need and calling it "charity" do we? It really should just be expected or f-off.
Yeah, agree 100%.
@NovaNaturalist Die Tafeln: "eh..."