Greg: Another Try

Jack,

I'm going to give this another try.  I think you're right that I didn't address the points you were making as directly as I could have.  In my defense, it was very late and my brain was throwing fits that I was trying to make it write to you that evening.  Nevertheless, I do think much of what I had to say is relevant, if perhaps tangential.  For example, the statistics that I shared with you about how only 7% of those on welfare have stayed there chronically speaks to how "efficient" and "effective" welfare actually is -- presumably it is doing what it is supposed to do (i.e. provide people with a temporary safety net until they can get back on their feet).  It also presents evidence against your claim, "When poor people come to depend on government support, they sometimes set up multi-generational behavior patterns and forget what it might be to be a productive, self-supporting person."  If my professor's data is correct, that is a far smaller problem than you make it out to be.  But, you say, that is not the heart of your argument.  Fair enough.  Let's address your argument.

The core of what you are saying seems to be:  welfare is inefficient.  It would be more efficient for the poor to be cared for by the private sector.  To quote you again, you say, "I think history shows that the private means would address poverty more efficiently and effectively. (and permanently!)"  Now that's a fascinating statement to me.  If that statement were true, then why do we in America have such an obscene level of poverty in our nation?  This is the most unregulated and least taxed free market in the developed world. I've included a cart below that illustrates how low our taxes really are in the U.S. when compared to the GDP.

Corporate tax rates are also comparatively low in the U.S. (especially once you consider all the loopholes that are available.  See examples here:  <http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/slideshows/top-10-corporate-tax-breaks>).  And yet in this nation that so values the unregulated market, what do we find?  Massive unemployment, severe poverty, homelessness, sick children left without insurance, and the like.  One would also expect, according to libertarian theory (and I believe what you are arguing for), that an unregulated economy like ours would witness wealthy philanthropists, profitable corporations, and the private sector freely utilizing their funds to eliminate poverty, but that is very far from the reality on the ground.  (I do not mean to dismiss the incredible generosity of some wealthy philanthropists.  My point is that what is given does not meet the level of need.)

And this is a nice segue into another of your points.  You mention how the work of my former church in the inner city illustrates the effectiveness of voluntary poverty alleviation efforts, even without lots of funding.  Well, you're certainly right about that -- we had almost no funding!  Know why?  Because the wealthier Christian businesswomen and men that I pleaded with to help save our little preschool -- the one that we had to close -- simply couldn't allocate the resources for it.  Their cash was tied up in capital used to grow their businesses.  Because, as you know, to compete in today's marketplace you gotta keep spending money to make money.  (I've never been quite sure about this: when does a business have enough?  When do corporations get to a place where they are content with their current level of profit?)

Were we effective in what we did with little to no money?  Yes, we were.  We were extraordinarily efficient with the money that we had -- and I know that you love efficiency.  However, we simply lacked the resources to make a large-scale difference.  We couldn't provide housing, clothes, jobs, food, health care, legal advice, psychological services, low-interest loans, utility assistance, transportation, education… we were, after all, a church of 70 people.  The only way to provide those vital services would be to tap into a massive source of income.  

Let me illustrate with one story from my time as pastor.  And this is just one story among hundreds.  One Monday morning in food pantry, a middle aged woman came to me to ask if we provided financial assistance with paying for medication.  I told her sadly that we could not afford to do that.  I told her that our little church channelled its limited funds into the food pantry that had brought her there that morning.  She was understanding and did not make me feel guilty in the least, but she did start to cry.  I asked her what was going on and she told me a bit of her story.  She had been a working woman up until the recession that hit in the fall of 2008 (thanks to the greed of unregulated banks -- but that's for another email, isn't it?).  When she lost her job, she also lost her health insurance (because, you see, in this country we have this funny system where your health insurance is tied to your job.  Weird, isn't it?).  And yet she had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  My memory is foggy here and I cannot recall exactly what she had, but I think it was cancer.  The illness was treatable, but she could not afford the treatments and medication.  She did not quality for medicaid because her income had been too high on the year (since she had until recently had a decent job).  And so she was stuck.  Here was a medicine that she could take that would literally save her life, but she didn't have the money to buy it.  She had spent weeks on end going from one charitable organization to another -- even to some based in hospitals -- begging for the funds to purchase the treatment she needed, but to no avail.  When I asked her, out of curiosity, how much money we were talking about, she gave me a figure that was larger than our annual church budget -- and that amount was what she needed monthly!  What could I do?  I prayed for her and told her I would continue to pray that she would find the help she needed.  But after she left I became angry.  Here I live in the richest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world and yet we had in our midst a woman in her late forties who was dying from a treatable illness for lack of funds.  No one was there for her, but my little church.  And our little church simply could not meet that need.  It was far too big, and we were far too small.  If that woman is to live, there has to be funding from somewhere.  And that somewhere wasn't coming from the private sector (or from the public sector, for that matter, but that's because we don't have universal healthcare here).  I share that story simply to illustrate the constant struggle that workers in the inner city face:  vast human need and a paucity of resources to meet that need.  

Just imagine what we could do if we did have resources!  Imagine what a First Church could do if, instead of having an annual budget of $65,000, it had the annual budget of, say, a Greenville Free Methodist Church (I often dreamed of this).  The sad thing is, there isn't that much interest out there in finding out what would happen (and, believe me, it isn't for lack of trying to drum up interest).  So if even Christians -- Christians! -- are unwilling to make radical financial sacrifices to alleviate the poverty that exists right in their own backyard (and within their own little denomination), then how can we expect that the general populace will voluntarily pony up the cash to eliminate poverty in the world as we know it?  No, my doctrine of original sin teaches me that we as humans are not prone to generosity, but to selfishness.  And while some wait around for people to open their wallets voluntarily and out of free will, others starve.  The free market has simply not met the demand.

And so I judge a progressive tax which coerces money from the hands of those who benefit greatly from this system to be worth it if it feeds those starving people and pays for their life-saving medication.  Call it the lesser of two evils.  Prying taxes away from people is less evil than watching people starve.  Of course, I wish we didn't live in a world where that was necessary.  I wish we lived in a world where the rich really did live by the principle "live simply so that others may simply live," but we don't.  Heck, I wish even Free Methodists lived by Wesley's dictum to "gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can," but we don't.  Today Christians (to say nothing of non-believers) build for themselves huge mansions with swimming pools and three-car garages while others on earth sleep on the streets.  It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

I'm being too verbose.  So let me sum up for the sake of clarity lest you conclude that I've not addressed your points.

Your claim:  The private sector is more efficient than the public at eliminating poverty.  Or, in your words, "People operating voluntarily, alone or in company with others, Christians as well as others, have demonstrated both great generosity and efficiency in helping the poor."

My claim:  Yes, but those of us in the private sector who commit our lives to doing just that do not have the resources necessary to carry out the task.  If we wait for "voluntary" giving, it doesn't come -- at least not in the amount needed to meet the demand.  Therefore, even if the government is less efficient, at least the job gets done, or partly done.  It's better as a poor person to have some inefficient help than to have no help.

Your claim:  The free market, by creating incentives to work and by rewarding innovation, will lift people out of poverty.

My claim:  But that isn't happening in America's inner cities.  Sure there are the occasional rags-to-riches stories but, it simply isn't happening on a grand scale.  In this nation -- the freest market in the developed world -- we still see masses of the poor who try to climb out of poverty and cannot.  There needs to be a modified free market, a "free market plus" so to speak, since the free market alone isn't doing the job.

I realize I have not addressed everything, but I hope I have at least addressed some of what you write.  I appreciate your patience and willingness to carry on this dialog because, as you can see, I care about these things a lot.

Blessings,

Greg

Jack: Try Again

Hi Greg--

You are correct that some people, not all of them conservatives, have at times stereotyped the poor based on the derelict behavior of a few.  However, we could point out that some relief programs, by their very structure, do encourage that kind of dereliction.  But that's not where my arguments have centered.  If you lump me in with these anonymous "conservatives" who do this stereotyping, doesn't that open you also up to the charge of stereotyping us conservatives based on the careless comments of a few?

Could you indulge me by re-reading my last note to you, attached below--where I listed your questions (and got your approval of the list) and then dealt with each one? I think that I gave a good explanation about why "government programs aimed at poverty alleviation actually make matters worse."  I didn't dwell on the reduction of incentives--though it's a reality--nor did I suggest that the poor are just chiselers, nursing on the public breast.  I emphasized--go read it and see--that the problem is that when the government funds these programs, it diverts--by force--resources that otherwise could be used to address poverty by private means.  And I think history shows that the private means would address poverty more efficiently and effectively. (and permanently!)

You actually supported that latter point (without acknowledging it) in your description of the fine things you've done to help set up programs to help the poor.  With (I presume) very limited resources, you managed to buy clothes for a job interviewee; advocate for a library branch and public transit systems (neither of which is a government anti-poverty program); spread the word about job openings; help maintain a food pantry; help set up (or was it your co-worker?) a program to educate poor people on how to dress and act in applying for and getting a job; and distribute a list of employers willing to hire felons.  

Greg, consider how modest was the dollar investment in your efforts, even including a portion of whatever salary you were drawing.  Then imagine how little a government agency would accomplish, pursuing those same goals, if limited to such a small amount of money to spend.  The government agency would require a far larger budget; and I suspect would do a much poorer job of establishing one-on-one relationships with the people being helped.  By having you do it, fewer resources were diverted from other good things.  It wasn't free; but it was very efficient.  When government does things, it is also not free; but it is less efficient.  Now imagine a world in which the government ceased to tax or borrow resources out of the economy for poverty programs, so that taxpayers had more left over to fund the efforts of people like you.  

Of course, then people could pick and choose which charitable efforts to fund; and one that starts looking wasteful gets cut off almost immediately in favor of others that the donors are more satisfied with.  None of this can happen easily with a government program.  They turn into embedded fiefdoms, using their shortfalls of performance to justify more funding--the very opposite of the fate of private charities (and businesses) when they perform poorly.

Again, I'd appreciate your reviewing what I wrote last time; I think some of your comments really may have been directed toward another correspondent.  I offered numerous points, with some thought, that I thought you would appreciate.  And I'll look forward to your differentiating between taxation and theft. (I'm not saying you can't do it; I'm just interested in how you will do it.)

Jack

Jack: Government's the Problem, Not the Solution

So here we go:

1.  "What's the better solution (to the problem of poverty)?"  also "I just hear them taking cheap shots at our nation's efforts (pitiful as they may be) to actually DO something about the issues people are facing."  which asks, Why not support these efforts, even if they are inefficient?

You've essentially conceded that government does almost anything less efficiently than private entrepreneurs in a free market.  But their intentions are good, even if relatively ineffectual, right?  However consider this:  What if, beyond being ineffectual, those government programs, in many or most cases, actually increase the difficulties faced by the poor?  If the programs not only fail, but make the problems worse, then we'd want to stop them even if we had nothing else in mind.  This is mostly in response to the second part of this question.  Good intentions don't guarantee good results.  

I'm referring partly to the destruction of incentives to learn how to produce.  When poor people come to depend on government support, they sometimes set up multi-generational behavior patterns and forget what it might be to be a productive, self-supporting person.  But also I'm referring to the waste of resources involved in most government relief programs.  Those resources had to be diverted (by force!) from uses that may have helped the poor more.  Such uses would include the creation of industries that would have employed these people in ways that rewarded their productivity and self-improvement.  And another use would be the donation of these resources to private relief agencies.  Finally, there is the unfair competition, faced by indigenous startup businesses, when our government shows up with free goods to distribute, stifling the fledgling businesses.

So back to the first part of the question:  What's the better solution to the problem of poverty?  A good general answer is to (1) teach people to produce things that other people want, so they have something to trade; and (2) establish Rule of Law and property rights, so that such entrepreneurs can keep what they produce, or what they trade it for; and also keep the property they create for productive purposes.  If these can be expropriated/taxed away/stolen, then they have no incentive to produce in the first place. People are very creative when they can keep what they make.

2.  "Can you point me to a conservative solution to poverty that provides an answer not only for individuals, but that also addresses larger systemic causes of poverty?"

Certainly, and at two levels.  First, humans tend to truck, barter, specialize, and serve each other's needs if they know they can keep what they make.  Because of this fact, the "conservative solution," which is freedom and property rights, tends "like an invisible hand" to guide and entice people into activities that relieve poverty.  Really, this is the only thing that has ever solved the problem.  But it does not necessarily make them aware that they are doing this.  They think they are helping themselves; but really they are helping each other.  (The two, of course, are not contradictory.) And this is large-scale, addressing what you called "systemic" poverty.  The Systemic poverty occurs where, try as they might, people cannot break out--because of crony capitalism, government brigandry, or the psychological imprisonment of a welfare system that keeps them just above subsistence without their doing anything.  (Consider what we've done to Native Americans--we couldn't have crippled them more if it had been our sole intention.)

But I know you want a conservative solution that involves actual intentions to help people, entirely aside from making a profit doing it, and focusing on people who currently are at the lowest level of productivity and can't yet bring much to the marketplace.  For that I could go back to many entrepreneurial efforts over the last several centuries in which business people intentionally located their businesses near poor people in order to hire them.  It was good for both sides, since the business owner got low priced labor and the new workers got the best pay they'd ever had.  They're both exploiting each other; but for some reason only the employer is accused of "exploitation."

In addition, let me refer you to povertycure.org, a newer organization founded by Christians for the purpose of conquering poverty in developing nations.  They engage in business education as well as small-scale equipping and funding, like the "micro-lending" agencies started by mission organizations and other not-for-profits.  I've seen them at work in the Philippines, and many people are prospering and flourishing.

3.  What do we/I/you mean by "we" or by "society"?

I'm fine with the idea that individuals can and should do things together.  They may identify as a community, or a village, or a church, or even a society.  But none of these necessarily imply the use of force, which Christ never authorized.  I'm fighting back against this common assumption that government is the best, or even the only way a group of people can combine their efforts to accomplish something.  In a free country (which is what a free market amounts to) people can combine and coalesce whenever it helps them do what they want to do.  One way they do it, of course, is simply to hire each other to allow specialization in tasks--this is why we have companies.  If the market is free, then these companies survive and thrive only so long as they are an optimal way to produce a product or service efficiently.  If they become slack and wasteful, competition overtakes them and they decompose.  Then their participants are free to combine in new ways.

4.  Whose job is it to alleviate povery--government or the church?

Well, it's the job of people.  When Christians get together they call themselves the church, which neither increases nor decreases their moral obligation to care for the poor.  The Church may find ways to do it that are more efficient than the aggregate efforts of individuals--such as the micro-lending mission organizations I mentioned.  As far as Coercion--which is what government is--this is none of the business, at least, of our national government, since as far as I know there's nothing in the US Constitution that charges them with doing it.  Some of the States may have such duties built into their constitutions, which just means they'll inevitably have to cope with the burden of an interfering, wasteful government entity getting in the way of the poor and of those who might otherwise help them.

5.  Can "the free market alone address, or has it ever addressed, many of the the social and economic ills that our nation currently faces?"  Also, if "we" don't collectively take action, will a problem remain unaddressed that will eventually destroy not only the poor, but everyone."  [slight paraphrase of your words]

I hope I addressed the second part under #2 above.  But I would argue that in our nation's history, the "free market alone" is the ONLY thing that has addressed economic ills, starting in earlier centuries when those ills were far worse than they are today.  How else can we account for the reduction in suffering, the increase in opportunities, and the huge increase in life expectancy that have taken place here?

As far as social ills, the free market has, where allowed to function, addressed many of them.  If you look at the most current ones, you can trace them directly to government's efforts to use force to reshape society.  A partial list:  exploding illegitimacy, welfare dependency, urban crime, expanding prison populations, STDs, the near-sacred status of the crime of abortion, family dissolution.  So much of this has grown over the past 40 years, following the "War on Poverty" by the federal government.  I wonder sometimes, who has hurt our society more--LBJ or Hugh Hefner?

6.  What do I think about FDR's New Deal?  Don't "most historians" agree that it did help?

At the time of the Depression, FDR got credit for trying to "do something."  And many historians have continued to credit him with helping is to survive, and perhaps overcome, that event.  However, economists see it otherwise.  Much of the Depression was the result of government interference, making a normal recession into a deepening, recurring condition that really didn't heal until the late 1940s.  The Federal Reserve kept doing things with our money supply that pushed us backward every time we seemed to be making progress.  And Congress imposed tariffs and taxes that crippled whole industries.

And FDR pushed through the Minimum Wage, to please his Union supporters.  Unemployment immediately jumped among lower-skilled people, as it has done after every increase our Union-pleasing politicians have foisted on us.  Today the rate among Black teens who want jobs is over 40%.  Only a few brilliant companies, such as McDonald's and Wal-mart have devised systems that can use those with low skills to achieve a productivity level that is greater than the minimum wage.  This is why Unions provide all the energy to attack these companies.

7. What about God's mandate to care for the poor?

I think I addressed this above, and also in earlier letters.  I acknowledge this mandate, and I do lend my efforts and resources to obey it.  But I don't concede that we need to have a fumbling, wasteful, coercive government coercing people to contribute.  This always leads to filthy politics, as those wanting to protect their resources maneuver to avoid being taxed, while those who will benefit maneuver to get the largest share possible.

People operating voluntarily, alone or in company with others, Christians as well as others, have demonstrated both great generosity and efficiency in helping the poor.  The more disposable income we earn--and the more our government "allows" us to keep--the more we give.  To fail to see this is to overlook most of the successful charitable movements of the past century or two.

But in addition, people simply trying to trade with each other, focusing their generosity only on those closest to them, have done even more to help the poor to overcome their plight.  If you want to ask about Africa, Asia, Latin America, look at all their governments have done to prevent their peaceably producing and trading and accumulating.  As RR said, government's the problem, not the solution.  I suppose we could also point out that of all the murders perpetrated in the last century, the great majority of the victims were killed by their own governments!

Jack

Jack: What Do You Mean By "We"?

In this post, Jack has replied by interspersing his comments into the previous email.  If you have read the last post, you can skip all that is in blue (Greg's thoughts) and just read what is in black and italicized (Jack's thoughts).

----

Greg:

OK, I'll try inserting responses to your many questions--good ones, in my opinion:  

Jack,

The time has finally come for me to reply.  It's been a hectic few weeks.

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to try to summarize your main points.  You can correct me if I'm wrong.

1.  Humans CREATE wealth through their own work and effort and ingenuity.

2.  Since an individual creates his own wealth, he or she alone has the right to that wealth.  No one should be allowed to take that away.

3.  A proven method of attaining human happiness is through "earned success" (i.e. the rewards of hard work).  (By the way, I do not dispute that; I would dispute that it is the only or even the primary means to happiness).

I didn't mean to imply that earned success the only means to happiness; I just offered it as one where social scientists have been able to demonstrate a clear correlation--and one that seems to flow causally.

4. All of the great captains of industry created wealth out of thin air; they did not steal it from others.  Their actions are morally praiseworthy.

5. A free market system delivers greater justice and greater happiness to people than any other system.

I want to note, on this one, that no system delivers PERFECT justice and happiness; but freedom surpasses all others ever tried.

I realize that I've offered an oversimplification of your points, but I think that's the basic gist of what you're driving at.

I think you did a pretty good job.

So here are a few of my own thoughts.  First, are you willing to admit that there are some instances in history in which the rich gain their riches by oppressing others and using them as a means for their own end (i.e. increasing their wealth)?  An obvious example of this is slavery.  If you are willing to admit this, then the obvious follow up is "Is this still taking place today and what can be done about it?").  If you control the means of production and I do not have any capital of my own save the strength of my own muscles and the ability of my own mind, then you have me at a great disadvantage.  The starting line is not the same.  The scales are already balanced in your favor.  If I'm desperate enough, I will sell you my labor for a small amount of money in order to feed my family and, in the meantime, you profit greatly from my willingness to work for you for very little.  Thus, YOU have not CREATED the wealth; I have created the wealth and you have skimmed off all but a meager hourly wage that you must pay me -- just enough to keep me coming back.  This is, of course, what happens in Southeast Asia and throughout the world every day.  And, in order to increase your bottom line, you might skimp on maintaining the factory that I work in and after a few years -- boom -- a roof collapses and I die.  Without labor laws to protect me from you (the captain of industry), what power do I have?  Should not something be done in the name of justice and fairness to balance the scales?  

Now, in your very first expository paragraph about the limitations of a free market, you have begun by describing conditions in which a free market has been eliminated.  Not such a good test of free markets.  

There are in fact three ways to gain wealth:  create it, steal it, or receive it as a gift or bequest.  Only the first increases the amount of wealth available for all; and free markets maximize that.  What you described fits the many kleptocracies that have always existed when the strong got away from taking from the weak. A free market by definition doesn't permit that, and needs structures in place (a "constitution") that will restrain those whose strength and lack of conscience enable them to exploit what others have created.

I stumbled across an interesting statistic the other day:  those who are born in the top 1% have a 99.87% chance of remaining right there in the top 1%.  How would you explain this fact?  Are those born in the top 1% that much more intelligent or beautiful or talented or strong than the rest?  I interpret it as a sign that our common notions of social mobility are a myth.

Your statistic may describe some societies in which people are not free to create, keep, and rise economically.  But it does not describe the US or any other western democracy.  Statistics from the US census show clearly that households in lower socio-economic levels will tend to rise to higher levels even after one decade.  You always will have households in the lower quintile; but they tend to be newer ones, headed by workers who have not yet learned to create wealth very productively.  We have a mobile society.

If we can agree that people do not all start with equal opportunity (do you agree with at least that?), then what do you propose ought to be a way that we even the scales?  Or is that even an effort worth undertaking?

I should pause to ask you to use first-person plural references as thoughtfully as you can.  When you say "we" should do this and that, do you mean you and I and other Christians or Americans; or do you mean the government by means of force?

Of course people start with different talents.  So equal opportunity can only try to restrain anyone from interfering with your best efforts to create with what you have.  Nothing will even the scales, unless you use force and discourage people from creating.

Turning to a more theological argument, I would ask you, "How are you able to create?"  You are right that our human ability to create is a function of our being made in the image of God.  But you run the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson when he prayed before a family dinner, "Well, God, I worked hard to make the money to buy this food so thanks for nothing."  We are able to create because we have brain and brawn.  Those are God-given.  You are able to be a professor because God gave you a good mind.  Thus, in what sense is the wealth that you create by using that good mind in any way your own?  You mind is on loan from God.  Of course, the implication of this is something that I think you will agree with:  we own nothing.  We are merely stewards of what God has entrusted to us.  And this is not mere wordplay or semantics or holy-church-speak.  This has implications for our understanding of property and what we are to do with our property.  I find in the Bible a God who is particularly concerned with the poor and who demands that his people care for those poor.  In fact, God cared about them so much that he established laws to ensure that sinful human nature did not forget or neglect to care for his beloved poor. 

Let me quote my earlier letter.  I didn't say that what I create is my own.  I agree that in the end, all our claims are subordinate to God's.  What I said about what you create was, and I quote, "you have first claim to, prior to the claim of any human who did not create it."  If you created something, I have no claim on it or right to take it from you.

Out of curiosity, in your view, if a human is created mentally handicapped, then how should she or he be cared for?  How much money should they make?  Do they CREATE wealth?  If not, what is our societal obligation to them?

Here's a good place to be careful about "we."  Some handicapped persons have little or no ability to create anything.  So they can't "make" money since they can't "make" anything to trade for money.  Does that mean they should starve, and I should or would let them?  Certainly not!

A free environment doesn't restrain compassion in any way.  In fact, it provides the means to enable more compassion, by producing many times more material goods.  But in such an environment, the decision to help the handicapped or unfortunate falls to those who produced the wealth.  They give voluntarily.  They don't sit and hang on to all they have until an Imperial "we" levies a tax to force them to practice compassion.

Does this happen?  Not in the theories of those who want a more powerful "we."  But in the real world, where do you find the most voluntary sharing of wealth?  The US.  How about Europe?  No, the government levies and redistributes, and the total sharing is far less.  When the typhoon hit SE Asia a couple of years back, the US was criticized by numerous Europeans because "we" didn't give as much as they did--in absolute terms, or per capita, or as a percent of GDP.  But what they overlooked was that so much of our aid for that disaster was from private giving; they had only counted government endowments.  When you include private giving (for every country) Americans were by far the most generous, as they have always been.

If you go back to 1900 or so, the US didn't have a lot of public tax-funded welfare programs.  But we did care for our poor, using church and community organizations to help them on a far more individual basis than you'd see now.  It was generous, especially considering that people had much less disposable income from which to share than w have now.  Much of this got supplanted by government programs as a result of the Progressive movement.  One remnant of these early organizations is the Salvation Army.

I think that the basic, foundational problem I have with your argument is how it assumes a rigid individualism.  In reality, we are all far more interconnected to one another than your model seems to assume.  The generation of wealth has many sources.  Yes, it can be hard work.  But other factors also come into play -- social structures, geography, inherited socio-economic status, laws, values, moral formation, social capital, etc.  

I don't think I argued that only hard work produces wealth.  It comes, in fact, more from entrepreneurship (broadly defined).  We spot a need and fill it in whatever way we can that's better than some other way to fill it.  Maybe that means developing a skill that others need and will pay for; maybe it means opening a retail business in a place where people need certain goods available; maybe it means developing a new means of transport or communication.  The factors you listed will affect how efficient a person can be at doing this, and how inclined he will be to do it.

I also have a host of theological and biblical questions for you.  For example, why does Luke teach us that communal property and sharing was normative among early church members?  How compatible is the Lockean language of private property ownership with this?  

Well, the early church didn't try to eliminate private property or freedom.  Ananias and Sapphira were under no obligation to share their property, and were not punished for their failure to do so.  But the Christians did voluntarily use their own created means to help one another.  I think that's fully compatible with Locke.

What do you make of Leviticus 25 and the Jubilee laws?  There are many others but those seem most relevant to our current discussion.

I find them curious--an interesting constraint on rights to real estate.  You couldn't make a perpetual assignment of your right to land granted to your family.  Therefore such an assignment--like a modern sale of land--would become more like a leasehold as you approach Jubilee year.  Again, it's interesting.  Am I correct in understanding that Israel never actually enacted it?

For the record, I am not a socialist.  I believe in much of what you believe -- the right to work hard and earn your keep.  But I also believe that society can and ought to take certain measures to curb the excesses and abuses of the free market.  

Here, look at your use of the word "society" and see if it falls into the warning I gave about saying "we" should do certain things.  Jesus and the Bible tell us, everywhere, to use our means to care for the poor.  But where does Jesus, or the Bible, tell "us" to take from others for the benefit of the poor?

I find the current distribution of wealth in our country to be morally reprehensible.  

I already addressed this.  The word "distribution" is cleverly passive.  It suggests that someone distributes the wealth, and is doing it unfairly.  So "we" need to use force to correct this maldistribution.  But wealth is not gained by access to a "distribution," but by creation.  Or by theft.  (That's how the Royal families got theirs, as do those who profit from government preferences.)

This is because my sense of what is right and wrong are rooted in the biblical themes of love, compassion, equality, fraternity, community, the interconnectedness of human life, and a concern for the common good.  I know that you may not list the same virtues and themes from your own reading of Scripture, but then we enter into the world of biblical hermeneutics which is a world I most certainly welcome us to enter if you so desire.

"The quality of mercy is not forced."  That is, a virtue is not a virtue unless practiced voluntarily.  An environment of freedom allows more voluntary action, and therefore more and better practice of any virtues.

Your turn.  (I actually don't like saying that because I don't believe we are having a competition here.  I'd prefer to think of us as cooperating with one another in seeking the truth.  But perhaps that emphasis on cooperation over and against competition makes me a liberal softie).

I agree with your idea of using point-counterpoint to clear away vague notions and zero in on the truth.  I like it.  So how are we doing?

Jack