God’s Un-American View of the Poor and Why It Matters

[Jesus4Madrid]

There are severe methodological problems with the conclusions drawn by Brookings and your conclusions go further than theirs, not least is which is the matter of causality. It also ignores the point I made earlier about the proportion of the poor who are children, disabled, and elderly - they don't have anything to do with the success sequence but make up the majority of the poor. I'm not particularly interested in getting into these issues as these empirical issues are beyond the point of the discussion at hand, which is about theology. If you really insist on getting into it, here's the first article that turned up on google which properly identifies the main methodological problem with the Brookings assertions: The Success Sequence Is Extremely Misleading And Impossible to Code

You are just randomly searching for articles from unknown sources to try to disprove the Brookings study? Why? Because you don’t believe in personal accountability for poverty?

But then you do believe in personal accountability for riches? So if my sin makes me poor, we should blame others, but if my sin makes me rich, I am culpable?

That’s an egregious double standard.

 

[keith99]

It didn't start in a "few hands" and it had accumulated to even fewer hands...just like today.

All debts are cancelled and the property goes back to the tribes it was originally bequeathed to.

And what does that mean in practice? To the control of the patriarch of the tribe. Hardly a way of dispersing wealth.

 

[keith99]

Liberal think tank The Brookings Institute suggests that if you are poor you have done something wrong.

All you have to do in the US to join the middle class is to follow three simple rules:
1. at least finish high school,
2. get a full-time job and
3. wait until age 21 to get married and have children

Their research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year).

Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class

Brookings is not quite St Basil, but interesting anyway.

This is very misleading. 2 is not get a full time job, it is get and keep a full time job. With just a high school education that is not an easy thing to do. I remember a Football cliche. A decade ago it seemed like every time a coach got asked what they needed to do to beat the team that was steamrolling everyone they would say 'We need to run the ball to set up the pass'. They would conveniently leave out that no one had been able to run against that team all year. That or the other one that you see now (which the better announcers point out the flaw in) that the team has a much better win/loss record when they run for over 200 yards which it turns out they only do against a really weak run defense or when they are protecting a nice lead in the second half and running all the time to keep the clock running.

Getting and keeping a full time job is a measure of success already achieved, not a roar to success. If it were people would flock to getting jobs at McD's.

 

[nutroll]

But then you do believe in personal accountability for riches? So if my sin makes me poor, we should blame others, but if my sin makes me rich, I am culpable?

That’s an egregious double standard.

I think that rather than being a double standard, it points to the fact that very few people would choose to be poor if given a choice, but most people aspire to be rich. When a person is poor because of consequences for their sin (which is not always the case), we ought to look on them with pity because they were unable to choose what was right even to their detriment. When a person is rich because of the consequences of their sin (which again is also not the case), they have received the reward they sought after. I would say, however, that they should be pitied even more for they have traded a greater reward for earthly riches, and they have little incentive for repentance with a comfortable life.

 

[gzt]

You are just randomly searching for articles from unknown sources to try to disprove the Brookings study? Why? Because you don’t believe in personal accountability for poverty?

But then you do believe in personal accountability for riches? So if my sin makes me poor, we should blame others, but if my sin makes me rich, I am culpable?

That’s an egregious double standard.

No, I read it carefully. I had to evaluate whether it made the correct argument about the identifiability problem - which it did. It's hardly random, either, as the author's work is familiar to me. A lot of people's work in labor policy is familiar to me. I remember one amusing instance when somebody had a question about unemployment rate calculations and rather than answer it myself I pointed to an authoritative source - and it turned out to be the husband of a coworker of mine.

 

[RDKirk]

And what does that mean in practice? To the control of the patriarch of the tribe. Hardly a way of dispersing wealth.

The patriarch of the tribe was responsible for the members of the tribe, and they'd keep him alive when he got old.

 

[RDKirk]

This is very misleading. 2 is not get a full time job, it is get and keep a full time job. With just a high school education that is not an easy thing to do. I remember a Football cliche. A decade ago it seemed like every time a coach got asked what they needed to do to beat the team that was steamrolling everyone they would say 'We need to run the ball to set up the pass'. They would conveniently leave out that no one had been able to run against that team all year. That or the other one that you see now (which the better announcers point out the flaw in) that the team has a much better win/loss record when they run for over 200 yards which it turns out they only do against a really weak run defense or when they are protecting a nice lead in the second half and running all the time to keep the clock running.

Getting and keeping a full time job is a measure of success already achieved, not a roar to success. If it were people would flock to getting jobs at McD's.

And lots of poor people have full-time jobs that don't provide a middle-class life. And most of the people working two part-time jobs would love to have a full-time job.

 

[Jesus4Madrid]

No, I read it carefully. I had to evaluate whether it made the correct argument about the identifiability problem - which it did. It's hardly random, either, as the author's work is familiar to me. A lot of people's work in labor policy is familiar to me. I remember one amusing instance when somebody had a question about unemployment rate calculations and rather than answer it myself I pointed to an authoritative source - and it turned out to be the husband of a coworker of mine.

Forgive me if I have slightly derailed this thread speaking about the poor. It has been interesting—lots of great input— but I recognise that you didn’t want to go there. Mea culpa.

 

[ArmyMatt]

if the non-Orthodox wish to discuss this, could you all start your own thread somewhere else please?

 

[Babe Ruth]

God's Un-American View of the Poor and Why It Matters - Glory to God for All Things

A challenging article by Orthodox priest Fr Stephen Freeman ..how our country views poverty. God has a very different view!

Gzt, Hi.. I read the article, and personally didn't find it 'challenging'.. I thought it was unfairly slanderous, to be honest.
Americans have a long track record of being uniquely welcoming to impoverished refugees.. Americans have a well established record of giving generously to charities (numbers are easily researched). And those numbers don't even account for all the acts of unrecorded kindness, like cash contributions to homeless people in front of 7-11s, etc.
Americans focus on educating poor kids, providing free lunches, social saftey nets, programs & objectives that don't exist in many other countries.. I'd submit (on a sliding scale), we are imperfect, but have a pretty compassionate approach/view of poor folks.
It gets old hearing how much Americans (supposedly) suck..

 

[prodromos]

By insuring it always gets returned to those same few hands who held it at some point in time?

Those hands were many, not few.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I would also add I liked in one of St Basil's epistles where he asks the rich why they spend so much effort to get gold out of the ground, only to hoard it in a vault back under the ground.