"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Rick Warren appeared on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday and spent the interview offending (his) G-d. Warren used his holy book to denigrate the poor and needy in this country, and outright lie about who is responsible for the plight of the working class in America.
Rick Warren: ‘Inability to Delay Gratification’ at Heart of Economic Woes
WARREN: Well, certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor. There’s over 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. And God says that those who care about the poor, God will care about them and God will bless them. But there’s a fundamental question on the meaning of “fairness.” Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation …
For a pastor to make a statement like that is breathtakingly offensive. It is an intentional distortion of the position of democrats/liberals/progressives. And it is stunningly ignorant of the actual teachings of the Bible — either Testament; Old or New.
Job 34:17-19 "Can he who hates justice govern? Will you condemn the just and mighty One? Is he not the One who says to kings, 'You are worthless,' and to nobles, 'You are wicked,' who shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor, for they are all the work of his hands?”
And yet he advocates for the kings and princes in America to receive greater and greater favor in our tax code — to heap greater and greater rewards on those whose cups already runneth over.
WARREN: But regardless of all the problems that we see out there, I think they all have at their root a spiritual cause. And we have overspent… We have not been a responsible — we’ve bought things we didn’t need with money we didn’t have to impress people we didn’t even like. And now we’re paying the piper. And you cannot ignore the principles of finance that are in God’s word, and they are in the Book of Proverbs. It’s quite clear, they’re principles of business, principles of economics that are actually in the Bible.
WARREN: And when you ignore these things, then we’re going to get deeper and deeper into debt, and then we can’t blame God for that… The biggest problem for all of our economic problems is our inability to delay gratification. I want it and I want it now, and I’m going to buy it even if I can’t afford it. And not only have people done that, the government’s done it.
Shame on Rick Warren. He'd better hope (his) G-d shows him mercy, or surely he will spend eternity in the fiery pits of Hell.
Let me illustrate why there has become such an enormous dependence upon credit in this country. ...
So what does Rick Warren's Bible say about this?
Jeremiah 22:3 "This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed."
Workers in America have been robbed of the fruits of their labor by the wealthy and powerful in this country for half a century. Half a century. We have been working harder and harder, putting in more and more backbreaking hours, taking second and third jobs, working weekends ... all for naught.
Every single penny of increased profits from our labor has been stolen from us by our oppressors. And I am not afraid to call them that. An honest person will acknowledge that we are oppressed by powerful business interests who have intentionally created a market environment where our labor is of little to no value. They've farmed out our jobs to overseas nations with no respect for workers' rights, so that they can claim "the market will bear" only pennies on the dollar as compensation for us here in America. They create the market, then blame the very market they created for the level of our wages, as if it happened in a vacuum and their hands are clean.
Their hands are dirty. Filthy dirty.
Billionaire business owners like Wal-Mart have built their individual wealth not only off the backs of their employees, but the backs of all taxpayers who are forced to subsidize their employees' paychecks with taxpayer-paid food stamps and health care, even though their employees are working full-time. The Wal-Marts of this country literally aren't bothering to pay a living wage because they can get away with it knowing taxpayers will have to pick up the difference!
So who is it that's really getting "government handouts"? I submit it is the big corporations who refuse to pay a living wage, and not the individuals who literally cannot find work that pays a living wage in this country. The Wal-Marts and other Big Corporations are robbing the poor and robbing taxpayers to line their pockets with gold.
And then there is the lie that the wealthy (who have only achieved that status as a direct result of stealing our labor) are "job creators" at all. They are not. They may do the hiring, but the jobs don't exist because they've "created" them. They exist because middle class and poor Americans create a demand for their products. Without demand, there is no need for jobs. And rich people don't individually buy 3,000 cars a year.
It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.
Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false. ...
It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do.
That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer. ...
~ Nick Hanauer, venture capitalist and entrepreneur
It's past time for our leaders in the Democratic Party to push back on the lies of Rick Warren and his Republican ilk.
The Middle Class are the job creators in this country.
Billionaires are receiving government subsidies they're using to supplement their employees' pay.
Rick Warren is a liar and an affront to G-d.