• Jaysyn@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • Surp@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Hey I’m all about shoving this down religious zealots throats but can you site some proof so I can do just that lol 😜

      • Fondots@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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        That figure is over a decade old at this point though and so likely outdated (if it ever was accurate at all, which is questionable at best,) I’m seeing other sources saying that the true price to end homelessness would be at least $300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.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Libertarians are always certain religious charities will foot all of the bills though.

      Like if humans were perfect and weren’t greedy assholes.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Probably, especially these days, but the #GOP has to actually be come a minority party before that can happen.

        • Jonna@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

      • Welt@lazysoci.al
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        11 months ago

        It’s not about faith. It’s about corporations. Religious, commercial or government, none of them are working for us.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

    • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      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.