Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

montreal.ctvnews.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 335 posts

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#101

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

moralestapia wrote: post #68
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

>Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity. Grow up, there is no utopia and whatever works already is better than nothing.

Yeah, let's just give up on making the world a better place. We might never reach Utopia, but we can for damn sure get closer especially if we free ourselves from dogmatic thinking. Do you really want to settle for better than nothing?

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#103

Post by [deleted] »

ranman wrote: post #97

Everyone commenting about how great churches are? You’re absolutely delusional. The gross majority of these organizations are bigoted and racist. I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. I don’t care how great your church is. Give me 20 minutes with your congregation and I’ll find the racists and bigots. These assholes promote terrible mental and physical health. They don’t beli…

[deleted]

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#104

Post by hrktb »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #96
jsmeaton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?

>> Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax? Land and buildings for one could be taxed. Churches bought or were given land ages ago, before there was a Manhattan or Boston, as we today know it. Go ahead and pay property tax on land worth $250 Million when you barely make income to keep the lights on.

A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall.

That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#105

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

juskrey wrote: post #93
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some Soviet community centers before Could you elaborate?

I was born in the exUSSR and there, if you want to find the most apocalyptic, neglected, boring and useless building which lives by renting out itself to some strange businesses (if at all), you can ask for the local community center.

I thought that would be the reply, but a community centre isn't a building but a function (that happens to need a building), but they're not the same.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#106

Post by cosmodisk »

juskrey wrote: post #75
ggggtez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where people connect with the spiritual world In the USA, this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion. Regular church attendance is down from 70% to just over 50% in the last 20 years, according to Gallup. People are leaving the churches. The real question is what will replace them. If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to prov…

You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything. USA is highly uneven. In some states like Florida you can see churches on every other corner, and they are very active and developing, serving not only as community centers, but also as halls, child day care, hospitals, schools, galleries etc. No freaking "community center" can replace that.

>You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything

The concept was good and they did work. In many towns, it's usually the only place where you could run cultural evens,some more important community gatherings and so on. What did happen once the Soviet occupation ended, was the lack of funding of these places. The town I grew up in, 15k population and the culture center large enough to be suitable for a pretty large city,so the maintenance costs are substantial. That's where people go for theatre,concerts,and so on.

As for the churces, they do a lot of charitable work, however my own experience with churchgoers in many countries is that it's too often ' It's our way or no way at all'.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#107

Post by onetimemanytime »

hbarka wrote: post #48

I acknowledge this is anecdotal but in the Bay Area CA I drive by many churches (of different faiths) occupying large areas of land on prime hilltop real estate. I’m astonished by this.

Churches are almost a 2000 year old thing. Back in the day, rich person wanting to have the papers in order for the life after, would donate his fortune along with 45,000 acres to the church. Now there exists a major city and an acre goes for $50 million or whatever.

And so on...if we could turn the clock back and buy land on Manhattan or Las Vegas we'd be rich (on paper at least too)

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#108

Post by seesawtron »

mmglr wrote: post #72

IMO this post should not be on HN. Per the guidelines [1] "stories about politics" are off-topic. I would consider this political for obvious reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Here's the complete guideline:

"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon"

Did you purposefully leave out the full sentence? I would argue it is/was a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, would like to hear why you think HN should be exempt from political discussion anyways? We see thought-provoking discussions here each day. This is one of the positive aspects of HN that I value that it allows you to be politically and socially aware of ideas to get you out of your role as an "engineer" or "hacker".

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#109

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

danielheath wrote: post #88
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

“I don’t like the design of your pacemaker; mind if I take it out and use the parts to build you one I approve of” is not a sales pitch that works often.

Makes me sad that anyone would compare religion to a pacemaker, if this is true then your country surely is lost

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#110

Post by stormdennis »

ranman wrote: post #97

Everyone commenting about how great churches are? You’re absolutely delusional. The gross majority of these organizations are bigoted and racist. I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. I don’t care how great your church is. Give me 20 minutes with your congregation and I’ll find the racists and bigots. These assholes promote terrible mental and physical health. They don’t beli…

I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. They’re universally bad.

How many churches are you an expert on, exactly?

Post reply on HN