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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Reminder that the both the Mormon & Catholic "Churches" could feed, house & clothe every single homeless person in the USA indefinitely & it would only cost them a fraction of their net worth.
They had rather sit on their wealth like the Dragon though, regardless of the punishments for that described in their "Bible".
That's how you know they don't really believe in their own bullshit.
Churches need to pay taxes. It's unacceptable that they're the only ones who are officially exempt.
They aren't the only ones, though. The rich find more than enough write-offs.
How do you reckon we make that happen? Any hope, or are they as powerful as billionaires?
I'm far less worried about churches paying sales, property, and income taxes than people making tens of billions of dollars a year.
We'll get WAY MORE social benefit out of properly taxing the ultra-ultra rich than we will out of the hundreds of thousands of mini-churches who have volunteer receptionists twice a week or even the few hundred mega churches with jet-setting pastors.
Turn your ire on the bigotry and hypocrisy of a church that attempts to profess love and hate at the same time and out of the same mouth to your heart's content, but when it comes to money, we need to deal with the robber barons. They're the ones causing the economic problem.
What? Churches are specifically exempt from ALL taxes in the US. I clouding income, property, and all others.
Kind of seems like the person you're replying to is well-aware of that, and when they said "Churches need to pay taxes," they didn't mean it as "churches are currently legally obligated to pay taxes" but rather "churches paying taxes is something that needs to happen."
Not quite. Churches are exempt from many taxes, but not all, as a part of the separation of church and state.
Churches do need to pay their share of FICA, Social Security, and other income-related taxes. Clergy are also required to pay income taxes, though they are permitted some tax-exempt benefits, most notably church-provided housing.
That being said, I'd completely agree with removing tax-exempt status from churches that breach the separation of church and state, beginning with those that outright tell their members who to vote for.
Libertarians are always certain religious charities will foot all of the bills though.
Like if humans were perfect and weren’t greedy assholes.
Pretty sure it’s not that simple. They have projects all over the planet, and administrators that need their cut. Also need church renovations so that people feel their church is fancier than their own homes.
Hey I'm all about shoving this down religious zealots throats but can you site some proof so I can do just that lol 😜
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/10/sec-reportedly-probes-mormon-church-over-100-billion-investment-portfolio-allegedly-saved-for-second-coming-of-christ/
A simple Google search.
Literally 3 words.
Oh sorry Im having discussions on a discussion site. I just like talking to people so sorry I talked to people.
Hostility is not fertilizer for good discussion, it's just slinging shit.
Meanwhile this comment that I'm responding to is hostile to religion in a passive aggressive way...you guys are fucking dumb sometimes I swear.
Feel free to stop posting here any time then. No one will miss it.
No u
There's an often cited figure that it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness. As best as I can find, that figure is taken from an interview in 2012 with Mark Johnson who was with the dept of housing and urban development at the time, he wasn't directly quoted in the interview, it wasn't an official statement from the department, and by his own admission it was a rough estimate, I'm also not clear if that's a global figure or specifically for the US, though I suspect it's for just the US.
The wealth of churches can be a bit hard to quantify, between cash, investments, real estate, artwork, etc. across multiple countries and various legal entities, but either organization is worth, at the low end, easily 10s of billions of dollars, and possibly hundreds (I tend to see estimates for the Mormons somewhere between $100-200 billion) and in the case of the Catholic Church, they are almost definitely sitting on some properties and artifacts that could only be valued as "priceless," if the Pope, hypothetically, decided to sell off the entirety of Vatican City, how would the value even be determined for that?
So if we assume that 20 billion estimate is good, either church could handle it pretty easily.
That figure is over a decade old at this point though and so likely outdated (if it ever was accurate at all, which is questionable at best,) I'm seeing other sources saying that the true price to end homelessness would be at least $300 billion at the low end.
Which, again, may possibly be within either or both church's ability to pay for out of pocket depending on how they use their assets, but even if it's not, they could certainly put a very good dent in the problem.
You could also quibble about what it means to end homelessness and the appropriate ways to go about doing so.
So in short, they could maybe do it, but at the very least they could certainly afford to do a lot more than they are.
Reminder that the secular institution with the Democrats leading it can also fix homelessness with even less of a fraction of their net worth.
Atheism to the rescue again.
Oh. Wait.
Probably, especially these days, but the #GOP has to actually be come a minority party before that can happen.
There have been many spans of time when Democrats had enough control of government to push through what they profress. They don't use those opportunities.
Not arguing that the two parties are the same. They are better than the Republicans by far, but the Democrats are still not our friends. They either need to be destroyed or changed.
Since Eugene McCarthy, to the Rainbow Coalition, and then the campaigns of Kuccinch and then Bernie working inside has not worked. Of course, neither has working outside.
It's not about faith. It's about corporations. Religious, commercial or government, none of them are working for us.
His comment was about faith though.
I keep having to read the dumb narrative that le atheism would fix everything here on Lemmy and everything is the fault of religion but the atheist institutions are doing just as little if not less than the religious ones.
You’re telling me that the satanic temple is not doing as much as religious institutions?
Atheist institutions? You're trying to compare FAANG to open source. False equivalency. U dumb.