Giving people money never improves their economic status in life. All they do is spend the money, the money goes right back to those who had it before, and the poor stay right where they are.
“Giving people money never improves their economic status in life. All they do is spend the money, the money goes right back to those who had it before, and the poor stay right where they are.”
As a general proposition, quite true. However, there are still some things to say about it.
The Holy Father is not preaching redistribution of wealth by taking from Peter to pay Paul.
Distributism boils down to just about exactly what the US had in the 1950s. Many people owned houses, cars, boats, TVs, 40 acres for weekend getaways, farms...one man’s income was sufficient for a solid, middle-class life. There were opportunities to rise higher if you worked harder, and were lucky enough not to get knocked off the ladder. (After all, stuff does happen.)
People weren’t being given a living, but the jobs were there, and the schools prepared you for them. That’s Distributism.
Oh, and regarding your use of the word “never,” without my Navy pension and my disability, I’d be living in a cardboard box under an overpass.
Things have changed, just since I’ve been posting here. Then there were jobs; I worked hard, 60 or 70 hours a week, or more. Fairly recently I applied for a job cleaning out dog and cat cages. I didn’t get it.
There are still jobs, but they are few and far between. The actual unemployment rate has been around 25% for years now. I haven’t worked since 2010. We have little or no manufacturing. What are we going to do for employment, sit in a circle and sell a Coke to the person sitting to your right?