Re:Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
by paulryanrogers on Sunday July 26, 2020 @08:52AM
(#23956716)
How many trillions are churches spending, in dollars and hours, to provide basic services? And that with a dose of magical thinking, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and appeals to authority.
IME even the most progressive churches can do a lot of 'soft' damage to already hurting people. Secular services certainly have their own faults, but at least they don't have so many invisible strings attached.
Please also keep in mind that secular services compete for resources and mindshare against religious institutions. It becomes a self reinforcing argument on the right that we need to keep the latter because the former is so bad.
Being handed everything by a welfare state is de facto charity for the recipient. The biggest difference is that charity is morally superior because it's voluntary.
Besides, the US has a very large welfare state. I get a big kick out of people pretending the US doesn't have an epic scale, highly dysfunctional, poorly operated, welfare state, that doesn't spend trillions of dollars per year. I just can't figure out what they're spending $8.1 trillion on every year. Must be roads and military. Where'd all that magic trillions of dollars in stimulus spending come from? That laissez-faire Capitalist US system surely. Those free market $1,200 checks raining from the sky.
Without exception every welfare state - including the US, which has one of the most progressive tax systems - heavily relies on rich people to pay an extremely outsized share of taxes.