How is this kind of narrow minded comment allowed on HN mods?
Please don't take HN threads further off topic. If you see an egregious comment, flag it, as requested in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . You're also welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. Venting about it here doesn't help; we don't see most of the posts. All it does is lower the signal/noise ratio of a thread even further. The reason I know…
> We all have to do our part to extend safety nets to those in our spheres of influence ...or we can collect taxes and provide goods and services to those that need it the most, even when they are not lucky enough to be in the "sphere of influence" of somebody that is (a) well-off and (b) willing to share their wealth with them.
Easier then that, join a church. No need to wait for the Government to provide for you.
Joining a church requires money as most Christian churches expect or in some cases mandate a tithe. Furthermore, why should you be forced to join a religious organization that may have beliefs you don't agree with to get basic survival assistance? While my particular church doesn't require any particular beliefs or even that you're a member to receive basic necessities from our pantry, most churches I've been to are judgemental and terrible places full of people who go there just to prove they are better than everyone else. You don't even have to look far to see it, most churches discriminate against people of different sexual orientations, different religions, different choices regarding birth control, what you can eat, etc. I'm pretty much against churches being seen as a "charity". The Red Cross is a charity, churches are mostly am untaxed business.
Easier then that, join a church. No need to wait for the Government to provide for you.
Joining a church requires money as most Christian churches expect or in some cases mandate a tithe. Furthermore, why should you be forced to join a religious organization that may have beliefs you don't agree with to get basic survival assistance? While my particular church doesn't require any particular beliefs or even that you're a member to receive basic necessities from our pantry, most churches I've been to are…
Because church membership is voluntary there are no mandatory tithing. The closest you can come to mandatory tithing is if you are in the LDS church and want to go to one of the big white Temples. But even then you self-attest that you are tithing fully. Because there are many different types of churches with different peoples are beliefs you can pick one you like. When the dot com crash happened and I lost my job word got out and someone gave us $500 for Christmas. My children had a blow-out Christmas that year. We could have leaned on the church more but due to my self-pride we endured hardship instead. There is a benefit to hardship my children, now grown, do not take anything for granted they are entirely self-sufficient.
I lost interest after she states that she donated to charity.
Why? If you disagree with giving to charity, does that invalidate the rest of the article? Or are you suggesting that it was financially irresponsible to give to charity? If the second, I think that this is wrong. She had a 6 month emergency fund - the (presumably) relatively little she gave to charity is unlikely to extend that runway very much. I think (some of) the point of the article is that true poverty is livi…
Nothing to do with charity, poverty, socioeconomics, etc. I simply lost interest in her article after it began to read as a self-serving 'look at me, I donated to charity!' post.