- Dec 31, 2008
- 10,706
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- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I wanted to answer this thread in the spirit of how the question was posed prior to reading any of the replies.
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"Do the wealthy have an obligation to help the poor?"
The idea of an obligation has been dreamed up in the mind of mankind. Obligations are nothing more than morals and as such are derived from either political or religious motives. The problem with any political or religious ideal is, no matter how fervently we believe, we may never know for sure if our belief is the correct one.
Either singularly or collectively man has made up laws to decide what is or is not acceptable morally. These morals are what set our obligations in the eyes of the law, our peers and what we are expected to live by. However, these obligations are fluid, think right of women to vote or slavery. If these obligations are fluid then how can we say with any certainty what is morally right or wrong (our obligations).
Today we hear talk of the obligations and expectations of us as members of “a civilized or a modern society”. An individual(s) will decide that other members of that society should now have a new obligation and force their opinion on them by passing a new law. Who is to say that this new law is correct or moral?
The wealthy have no obligation to help the poor or anyone else for that matter. However, all too often, the wealthy are lumped together and demonized as being greedy, immoral or somehow evil. The wealthy by means of business ownership whether wholly or partially provide jobs for others who are then able to purchase homes, cars, healthcare etc. For one example, we will see an article about an individual or a family giving a large sum of money to a college, a hospital or some such. We often hear how that money would have been better used perhaps to feed the local hungry rather than build a wing on a hospital with some family name attached to it. Do we fully think this through though? Do we stop to think about the medical advances that may occur or state of the art care we (the society) may receive in that wing?
Perhaps if we were to spend more time looking inward we would see what our obligations are and what others have done to help society as a whole rather that spending so much time telling others what to do.
_____________________________________________________
"Do the wealthy have an obligation to help the poor?"
The idea of an obligation has been dreamed up in the mind of mankind. Obligations are nothing more than morals and as such are derived from either political or religious motives. The problem with any political or religious ideal is, no matter how fervently we believe, we may never know for sure if our belief is the correct one.
Either singularly or collectively man has made up laws to decide what is or is not acceptable morally. These morals are what set our obligations in the eyes of the law, our peers and what we are expected to live by. However, these obligations are fluid, think right of women to vote or slavery. If these obligations are fluid then how can we say with any certainty what is morally right or wrong (our obligations).
Today we hear talk of the obligations and expectations of us as members of “a civilized or a modern society”. An individual(s) will decide that other members of that society should now have a new obligation and force their opinion on them by passing a new law. Who is to say that this new law is correct or moral?
The wealthy have no obligation to help the poor or anyone else for that matter. However, all too often, the wealthy are lumped together and demonized as being greedy, immoral or somehow evil. The wealthy by means of business ownership whether wholly or partially provide jobs for others who are then able to purchase homes, cars, healthcare etc. For one example, we will see an article about an individual or a family giving a large sum of money to a college, a hospital or some such. We often hear how that money would have been better used perhaps to feed the local hungry rather than build a wing on a hospital with some family name attached to it. Do we fully think this through though? Do we stop to think about the medical advances that may occur or state of the art care we (the society) may receive in that wing?
Perhaps if we were to spend more time looking inward we would see what our obligations are and what others have done to help society as a whole rather that spending so much time telling others what to do.