have you heard about a mom in china killed her 4 kids because of the poverty and rich people like you never shows grace to them .... please read a america story and do something to help your brothers and sisters
In the middle of the Great Depression, New York City mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, strived to live with the people. It was not unusual for him to ride with the firefighters, raid with the police, or take field trips with orphans. On a bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told the mayor that her daughter's husband had left, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving.
However, the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous hat, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."
The following day, New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the grocery store owner himself, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.
Thanks for this touching story, it really is heart breaking!
It would be wrong to assume that I am rich, or that I am oblivious to the needs of the impoverished.
In China, society doesn't function quite the same as the Western societies. We don't have a very good welfare system here. In fact, it doesn't really exist at all. If you have no income, then you are not given any help and the government turns it's back on you.
In western countries, there are established welfare systems which help to reduce the number of people that turn to crime or become homeless. They also help to reduce the number of people turning to suicide or desperate actions like you mentioned.
These systems are not perfect but they do help a-lot of people. However, there are often debates about the welfare system and it's fairness. For example, how does a government support someone who is currently out of work and has no income such that the individual can get back to working? For those with good job prospects and expectations of higher income, it is unlikely that they would settle for the welfare payments.
But on the contrary, there are people who are constantly below the poverty line who may actually prefer to live off the welfare payments indefinitely. It simply works out better for them. They don't have to work 40+ hours a week, only to get paid minimum wage and then pay it all out to rent, council tax, service charge, national insurance, household bills. Instead, they could indefinitely look for a job, whilst have their rent paid for them by the govt. and on top of that have a small bit of money paid to them regularly to live on and not have to spend 40+ hours a week working.
Often, it's due to these situations that people feel the system is in some ways unfair. Why should someone who earns just a little above minimum wage have to contribute towards welfare systems and leave themselves with no time and no money just to pay a number of people who for whatever reason cannot contribute to society?
In China, society is more a kin to survival of the fittest. Society is still in the stage of development and any surplus resources are allocated to help the country become more competitive on the world stage.
It would be difficult to tackle the problem of welfare through policy because it is innately a philosophical issue that has to be viewed as a spectrum. To assume that individuals who belong in the rich category are responsible for the well being of those who are poor is not a good way of looking at it, because yet again, wealth is a spectrum too.
If every person who was considered rich owed all of their surplus wealth to those who are poor because people like you consider rich people's moral compasses to be off, then what will happen is the rich people who are largely responsible for creating opportunities for society, are no longer going to try as hard because their wealth get's distributed 'fairly' anyway. Slowly, the people who do nothing get a better deal, and the people who contribute alot to society get a worser and worser deal to the point that they just don't bother. How would that benefit society as a whole?
I would urge you to retract your accusation of me not showing grace to those in poverty. Because from a philosophical stand point, you have no right to bear that responsibility on me in the first place, and secondly you don't know enough about me to know whether I do in fact help those in need or not.