(Originally published 10/17/2012 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 10/24/13.)
During the 2012 Presidential race, a Democratic party operative secretly recorded Mitt Romney’s remarks to potential donors at a private fund-raiser. Those remarks included that 47% of voters pay no taxes and thus have no interest in the Republican message. The release of that recording caused quite a stir. See “* We are the 47%.” There are other features of who Romney is and what he does with his money, that got far less media attention. Like, this one.
Without in any way defending the candidate, I have scratched my head all along at the controversy surrounding his tax returns. What about yours? What about mine? Is there no end to the invasion of privacy?
So he may have taken fewer deductions than he was entitled to. Tsk tsk.
A feature of his 2011 tax return that the media reported, but that the media and his opponents have otherwise ignored: he gave 30% of his income to charity.
30%.
How much did you give?
More than that, since job creation is a central issue in this Presidential race: a sizeable portion of that 30% went directly into jobs creation.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — the “Mormons,” or “LDS” — maintains a nationwide system of industries to employ its own members who are poor. For members, the church is substantially an employer of last resort. There is a network of farms where members can work in exchange for a share of the produce.
Thus these folk are provided for — with work — and without any opening for a self-image of “entitled” or “victim.”
It might be easiest and might be best for me to merely conclude this post here. Readers for whom what I’ve just said is news, can contemplate the ramifications for themselves. Any more that I might say now can only run afoul of the rules of political correctness and the prejudices of those who do not like religion.
Anyone with any awareness of the New Testament at all will recognize that this feature of the LDS is well consistent with that book’s teachings.
Can any such program be emulated on a larger scale, either in the private sector itself or in the public sector at all?
Things are possible within an intentional community that aren’t possible outside it.
And I have remarked before a significant minority of folk who “have a diseased concept of freedom, such that they will not follow anyone’s rules” (link) and are thus unemployable. No such program is capable of “helping” them.
And there is the inescapable, albeit politically incorrect, history of how this nation’s provisions for the poor came to the state they’re now in; beginning with the Christian movement known as “adventism” that spawned much of the 19th century’s social reforms, coupled with the mistaken notion of that time that the U.S. is or was a Christian nation. The death of Christendom finally removed Christian values and motivations from that equation, leaving the entire burden on the public sector.
Finally there would be the issue of how to fund it. The cost of Obamacare pales by comparison. The thing is impracticable unless we find large numbers of folk who are each willing to donate on the order of 30% of their income to the cause. on air talent, radio talk show, talk show host, the homeless blogger
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