The Logic of Charity: Amsterdam, 1800–1850. By Marco van Leeuwen. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 242. $69.95.

2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1121-1122
Author(s):  
Lynn MacKay
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Compulsory Vaccination ◽  
Seasonal Demand ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One ◽  
Proper Values ◽  
Relief System

In this book, Marco van Leeuwen attempts to answer three questions about poor relief in Amsterdam during the period immediately preceding Dutch industrialization: “Which groups provided poor relief and why? Which groups received poor relief and why? What effects did poor relief have on society?” (p. 2). To answer these questions, van Leeuwen develops a model whereby the poor-relief system served as an “exchange mechanism” (p. 33). On the one side, the rich used the system as “a control strategy” (p. 3) to influence the behavior of the poor in ways advantageous to themselves. According to van Leeuwen, there were a number of ways in which the poor-relief system met elite needs. Economically, it allowed them to control the labor market by ensuring there would be a labor reserve on hand to meet seasonal demand. Politically, it helped legitimize the social order and prevent unrest. Medically, it helped prevent the spread of disease through compulsory vaccination schemes. Finally, the poor relief system helped to instil proper values in the poor.

Locke and the Fundamental Right to Preservation: on the Convergence of Charity and Property Rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Juliana Udi
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Principle Of Charity ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Relief System

AbstractLooking to the relatively recent “religious turn” in Locke scholarship, this paper argues for an interpretation that reconciles two apparently contradictory aspects of his thought: on the one hand, property rights, thought absolute by many of Locke's readers; on the other hand, Locke's notion of duties of charity. On the basis of a rereading of the “Essay on the Poor Law,” I argue that Lockean charity may ground coercively enforceable distributive obligations. Nevertheless, I contend that the redistributive poor-relief system grounded on the principle of charity does not infringe property rights. The reason for this is that the right to charity and the right to property are both based on Locke's theological commitment to the right of each man to the means of preservation.

The Daily Life of the Poor

2012 ◽  
pp. 187-225
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The One

This chapter highlights the various aspects of the daily lives of the poor. In Amsterdam, the poor among the Portuguese Jewish community ranged from the highly educated to the illiterate. On the one hand there were those whose sense of honour debarred them from asking for poor relief, and on the other there were those described as inveterate beggars. There were men and women; large, complete families and fragmented units; and there were people left completely on their own. Some were healthy or young or both, others old or sick or both, with all sorts of variations between them. Many applied for poor relief no more than occasionally; others relied permanently on outside help. The poor relief provided by the Portuguese community constituted no more than a supplement to income from work, private funds, and legacies, and help from friends, relatives, private charity, and other sources. Sephardi Jews who had no access to these sources, or who missed out in other ways, found themselves forced to seek their fortune elsewhere sooner or later.

Financing Charity

2012 ◽  
pp. 136-158
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Income Groups ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Supporting Element ◽  
Average Contribution

This chapter evaluates the financial support for poor-relief institutions in the Portuguese community, which continued for two centuries. This was made possible by a combination of measures: a constant process of ad hoc adaptation and revision; extracting promises of legacies from the rich; the productive investment of capital; and, finally, taking out loans from other charitable institutions and from individuals. Curbing expenditure and stimulating income became the basis of financial policy. Although the growing tax burden increased the risk both of losing affluent existing members of the community and of failing to attract the well-to-do from other parts, more income had to be generated by higher taxation. Private charity also constituted an important supporting element in the reception and relief of the poor. Contributions to charity were not confined to the elite, but came from various income groups. By and large, it would seem that the average contribution donated by non-Jewish philanthropists was far exceeded by that made by Portuguese Jews.

scholarly journals Invisible inequality leads to punishing the poor and rewarding the rich

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLIVER P. HAUSER ◽  
GORDON T. KRAFT-TODD ◽  
DAVID G. RAND ◽  
MARTIN A. NOWAK ◽  
MICHAEL I. NORTON
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Districts ◽  
New York School ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractFour experiments examine how lack of awareness of inequality affect behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to rewarding the poor. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants who played a public goods game – and were assigned incomes reflective of the US income distribution either at random or on merit – punished the poor (for small absolute contributions) and rewarded the rich (for large absolute contributions) when incomes were unknown; when incomes were revealed, participants punished the rich (for their low percentage of income contributed) and rewarded the poor (for their high percentage of income contributed). In Experiment 4, participants provided with public education contributions for five New York school districts levied additional taxes on mostly poorer school districts when incomes were unknown, but targeted wealthier districts when incomes were revealed. These results shed light on how income transparency shapes preferences for equity and redistribution. We discuss implications for policy-makers.

The U.N. and the (Economic) Education of Henry Kissinger

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Stalson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Countries

Something remarkable and of historic importance took place in New York during the first two weeks of September, 1975. At a Special Session of the United Nations the poor countries of the world, who have 70 per cent of its people and 30 per cent of its income, demanded that the rich, countries make some major changes in the international system. And the rich countries, including the United States, responded in new ways. Most reporters failed to notice how remarkable the events were, but the evidence is there.

The Vine and the Elm Tree: the Patristic Interpretation of Jesus’ Teachings on Wealth

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. McGuckin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Property Owner ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Original Message ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One

If patristic tradition on the subject of wealth and possessions often appears ambivalent in its attitudes, then perhaps one of the reasons for this is that this tradition grows from an exegesis of Gospel teachings on the subject that themselves are far from being straightforward, even though they are immensely forthright. Clement of Alexandria, for example, has frequently been accused of twisting the simple and immediately obvious demand of Jesus: ‘Sell all you have and give to the poor’ (Mark 10.21) and subverting a radical vision of Jesus into a comfortable exhortation that any pious property-owner, bourgeois or aristocratic, could be happy to live with. If the rich young man had understood Christ’s real message, as Clement would have it (not so much to renounce his ownership of goods as to free his heart from attachment to them), then he might not have had such a crisis about following Jesus. Whether or not Clement’s case is, in the end, convincing as an exegesis, it none the less successfully raises all the implicit problems of interpreting the New Testament teachings on wealth in any kind of universalist sense—as teachings that are meant to apply to all, and for all time. And there are, consequently, many dangers in being too ready to dismiss Clement’s allegorism as an anachronistic exegesis, not least the danger of reverting to a different kind of biblical fundamentalism than the one Clement thought he was attacking; for contemporary biblical criticism, as it attempts to separate out the original message of Jesus and the insights of his later disciples, and to locate the original words in their correct historical and sociological milieu, has rightly warned us against over-confidence in our historical interpretations of Gospel material.

scholarly journals Collections for the poor: monetary charitable donations in Dutch towns, c. 1600–1800

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIËLLE TEEUWEN
Keyword(s):  
Urban Population ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Charitable Donations ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTIn many localities in the Dutch Republic, charitable collections were the single largest source of income for relief institutions for the outdoor poor. This article takes into account both the role of the authorities organising collections and the role of the city-dwellers making charitable donations. It is demonstrated that people from almost all layers of urban society contributed to the collections. By means of thorough planning and exerting social pressure, religious and secular administrators of poor relief tried to maximise Dutch generosity. They presented making charitable donations as a duty of the rich as well as of the less well-off. In the Dutch Republic, not only the elites, but also the middling groups of society, who approximately constituted almost half of the urban population, were of vital importance in financing poor relief.

The Implication of Multinational Corporations in Poverty Eradication in Cameroon

2016 ◽  
pp. 1490-1514
Author(s):  
Kingsly Awang Ollong
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Profit Maximization ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Rich People ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One ◽  
Corporate Social

This paper explores business strategies and policies put in place by multinational corporations to alleviate poverty in Africa with specific examples from Cameroon. The world's population is rapidly increasing and the rich people are getting richer, whereas the poor people are becoming even more marginalized. During the era of economic liberalization the belief was that the opening up of economies to multinational corporations could lead to economic growth and, subsequently, economic development. The activities of multinational corporations have witnessed a tremendous boom since the advent of the twenty first century, that is characterized with advances in information communication technology, and the flow of capital have been the main proxy for MNC activity. MNCs are mainly motivated by opportunities that increase their profits, and the most important factors for MNCs are market size and access to resources. Nevertheless, as markets are getting saturated and MNCs are looking for new opportunities, innovative business strategies have been developed to provide dividends to their shareholders while making sure the stakeholders and communities in which they operate also benefit. This paper explores some business models that MNCs have used to make their products available, affordable and accepted in poor markets that are mostly found in Africa on the one hand and corporate social responsibility initiatives implemented by MNCs to alleviate poverty in the continent on the other. The paper concludes that though the principal goal of MNCs is profit maximization, corporations are making an effort to see that the poor benefit from the activities of these giant companies. To get to this conclusion the paper relied on both primary sources and the exploitation of the already existing literature in books and journals. Given that the sector of activities of MNCs is vast, the paper laid emphasis on fast moving consumer goods companies (FMCGs) in Cameroon.

A SHORT ESSAY ON CONTENTMENT READ BY AMERICAN CHILDREN IN THE 1780'S

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 845-845
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Children ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Divine Law

Early children's schoolbooks in this country leaned heavily On the belief that Divine Law foreordained a man's station in life. Not to accept this tenet led to discontentment and-even worse-pride and arrogance. The "contentment" that comes from accepting one's place in the social order is clearly described in a passage from one of the first children's readers written just after the American Revolution. Contentment Forget not that thy station on earth is appointed by the wisdom of the eternal; who knoweth thy heart, who seeth the vanity of all thy wishes, and who in mercy often denieth thy request; yet for all reasonable desires, for all honest endeavors, his benevolence hath appointed, in the nature of things, a probability of success. The uneasiness thou feelest, the misfortunes thou bewailest, behold the root from whence they spring, even thine own folly, thine own pride, thine own distempered fancy; murmur not therefore at the dispensations of God, but correct thine own heart; neither say within thyself, if I had wealth or power, or leisure, I should be happy; for know, they all of them bring to their several possessors their peculiar inconveniences. The poor man seeth not the vexations and anxieties of the rich; he feeleth not the difficulties and perplexities of power, neither the wearisomeness of leisure, and therefore it is that he repineth at his own lot. But envy not the appearance of happiness in any man, for thou knowest not his griefs. To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that encreaseth his riches, encreaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Heinrich Bullinger

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-111
Author(s):  
Esther Chung-Kim
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
City Council ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Church Leader ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
Chief Minister ◽  
Relief System ◽  
The City

Although Ulrich Zwingli started the Swiss Reformation in Zürich, his successor Heinrich Bullinger was the main stabilizer for the reform movement during his forty-plus years as chief minister from 1532 to 1575. Bullinger’s advocacy through his sermons and speeches (Fürträge) before the city council regularly reminded the politicians of their duty to care for the poor. Although the Zurich council circumscribed the role of ministers to spiritual matters, Bullinger believed that ensuring a proper poor relief system was an important part of the pastors’ ministry to the people. Because church funds were in secular control, Bullinger’s involvement in poor relief emerged from his development as a church leader in which he justified his social-political critiques against the lack of effective poor relief based on Scripture, church history, Christian ethics, and socioeconomic needs. His persistence urged the Zürich council to reconsider and revise its poor relief policies to include poverty prevention.

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