Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"

[Akavit]

I think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever

Lamda, you will appreciate this.  There is a story going around on the internet that goes over how Snowden escaped.  It points out that he hid out in the worst slums of Hong Kong.  The author of the article was trying to show how horrible it was for these people to live there, and yet they let him into their hovel, so what great people, salt of the earth.  It was the human interest piece of the article.  I have no problem with it, it sells.

The funny part is in the article it is revealed that these poor people living in squalor have: 1. an air conditioner, a refrigerator, running clean water, and a toilet.  The author informs us about the "rattling window unit" because he probably has bad memories of staying at a relative's vacation camp and how horrible it was to try to sleep with the rattling old air conditioner.  And he is appalled that the refrigerator is "small".  We also find out that Snowden sent the dude to the corner to pick up chicken at McDonalds.

I can only laugh.  Only a westerner would consider this a slum.

I must be living in squalor as I don't use air conditioning and my phone is outdated.  I've also been known to drink water from the tap on hot days instead of clean, bottled water.

Life is unbearable.  Hopefully Hillary will get better so she can expand the ObamaPhone program so all of us can enjoy living again.

[mikemac]

Also, social teaching must be taken as a whole. While Rerum Novarum does not discuss a "minimum wage," several other pre-conciliar encyclicals do indeed discuss a just wage,

Non sequitur.  No one is denying the concept of a just wage.  I am advocating the Catholic solution of using collective bargaining to determine it to avoid undue interference from the state.  You advocate setting up soviets to run the economy.

Collective bargaining can be a problem itself too.  For example the Canadian Auto Workers' at General Motors in Oshawa demanded 3% wage increase per year for a long time while the going was good.  They said they'd walk if they didn't get it.  What the CAW wasn't telling the union workers was that since NAFTA the Auto Pact was abolished.  The Auto Pact protected their jobs from leaving Canada.  Since 2008 and the Auto bailout the wages for new workers at GM in Oshawa have decreased considerably.  My brother who was not effected was making about $30 an hour before he retired.  Now a new GM worker in Oshawa will not make over $15 an hour.  It doesn't end there either.  Between all the collective bargaining high earning baby boomers that are either retired or about to retire (not just GM) and the immigration policy it's basically destroyed the economy here in Canada.  The collective bargaining high earning baby boomers are selling their over priced homes in the larger communities like the Greater Toronto Area (which includes Oshawa) to the immigrants and moving to other communities where they can scoop up houses that they consider cheap compared to what they get for the houses they sell to the immigrants.  What this has done has increased the price of real estate in the other communities considerably.  To the point of a real estate agent telling me that locals will have to move up north to find real estate that they can afford.  Collective bargaining can be very detrimental some times.  In this case collective bargaining high earning baby boomers have basically screwed younger generations.

[LouisIX]

True, but he also does say this:

14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

"Extreme distress", "UTTERLY deprived", "extreme necessity".

So we adopt economic statism, tax the crap out of people, destroy work through regulations, make it basically impossible to have true Catholic hospitals, and Catholic relief societies because the government is sucking up all the tax money.  So the poor no longer are helped by the local community, and we say, "See, Pope Leo is all for getting the State to help these people".

That's your point?  Seriously?

So in a society where you have Catholic charitable hospitals and Catholic relief, how are people "utterly deprived"?

If you visited a few poor cities in this country you would see extreme necessity.

My point, however, is that discussion of governmental solutions is based in prudence. So far in this thread you've equated economic help and the State as socialism, full stop. Obviously this is not a principle seen in the actual papal texts. On the contrary, the Church speaks explicitly about the possibility of State help and guidance. So, by all means, you may argue that this particular circumstance is decidedly not the one referenced in Rerum Novarum, and to act as such would be greatly imprudent. However, to just go around labeling people who do espouse it in this particular circumstance as "socialists" is to ignore the papal text and to dogmatize against that which is in them as an approved principle.

[Prayerful]

I think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever

Lamda, you will appreciate this.  There is a story going around on the internet that goes over how Snowden escaped.  It points out that he hid out in the worst slums of Hong Kong.  The author of the article was trying to show how horrible it was for these people to live there, and yet they let him into their hovel, so what great people, salt of the earth.  It was the human interest piece of the article.  I have no problem with it, it sells.

The funny part is in the article it is revealed that these poor people living in squalor have: 1. an air conditioner, a refrigerator, running clean water, and a toilet.  The author informs us about the "rattling window unit" because he probably has bad memories of staying at a relative's vacation camp and how horrible it was to try to sleep with the rattling old air conditioner.  And he is appalled that the refrigerator is "small".  We also find out that Snowden sent the dude to the corner to pick up chicken at McDonalds.

I can only laugh.  Only a westerner would consider this a slum.

I must be living in squalor as I don't use air conditioning and my phone is outdated.  I've also been known to drink water from the tap on hot days instead of clean, bottled water.

Life is unbearable.  Hopefully Hillary will get better so she can expand the ObamaPhone program so all of us can enjoy living again.

Given HRC's bellicose attitude to Russia, the phones might be a bit useless in the times after her accidently triggered nuclear apocalypse.

Mikemac does make a decent point about collective bargaining. There are so many examples of older workers basically selling out new starters to keep their insupportable wage packet.

Collective bargaining is useful is ensuring a sustainable going rate for work. Hopefully a President Trump will be able to end, well reduce or tame wage arbritage by ensuring that trade agreements work to support employment, rather than enrich the Goldman Sachs and George Soros' of this world. It was one of the bases on which baby boomer prosperity was built. It is noteworthy that US Unions will likelier use the dues of their members to support a Presidential candidate whose likely trade policies would mean the extinction of the unionised industrial worker. Trade Unions could do well to consider their members pay and conditions rather than supporting the latest leftwing social agitation.

[Akavit]

Pensions are probably the biggest culprit.  Current workers use their Union muscle to extract promises of future checks.  Company leaders make promises they can't keep since they'll be gone before it's a problem.  Future workers have to deal with the mess.  If people are earning a good salary, they ought to be in charge of their own retirement plans.

The only people that should get pensions are those who are forced into early retirement by a crippling injury.

[james.rogerson]

Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd let anyone who might be interested know that Mark D. Popowski’s The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, the book mentioned on page 1 (which is available for $110 on Amazon) is actually a version of Popowski's PhD thesis. Anyone who has access to ProQuest or academic libraries can get a PDF as I have done.

[Jacob]

Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd let anyone who might be interested know that Mark D. Popowski’s The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, the book mentioned on page 1 (which is available for $110 on Amazon) is actually a version of Popowski's PhD thesis. Anyone who has access to ProQuest or academic libraries can get a PDF as I have done.

Any thoughts on the dissertation's subject matter?  I started a new thread.