 Debbie Ramble, let me ask you to begin. Thank you very much, Jeff, and thanks everybody for being here. At Catholic Charities, when we think about our work, we think about justice, we think about compassion, we think about dignity for all. We believe in solidarity, our interrelatedness, and the importance and value we each have. We believe that we are our sister's keeper, our brother's keeper. We're a mission-driven organization. We're purpose-driven. We're committed to our anti-poverty work because we know that the playing field out there is just not level, that far too many of those living in our communities have challenges that they cannot overcome simply on their own. And we do our best to try and mitigate disadvantages for those that experience them. And we know we can't do this alone. So we look to like-minded people to help support our work. As a social justice agency of the Church here in Boston, we do this not because you are Catholic, but because we are Catholic. And we encourage and welcome all to join us. We can stop there, because there's gonna be more I know. Sure. Wow, it's gonna be hard for me to meet that time limit. You said a few minutes. I said a standard. Rand's position on charity can be understood without understanding her position more broadly on morality. Rand undoes 2000 plus years of moral thinking. She challenges the Judeo-Christian tradition. She rejects it. Her argument is that one's life is not owned by one's brother. You are not your brother's keeper. You are not your brother's servant. Your moral responsibility is not towards your fellow man. She rejects that in favor of a notion that your moral responsibility is to you, to your own life, to your own happiness, to your own success, to your own flourishing. That it's your, that the standard for all the decisions you make, all the moral decisions that you make is what impact is that gonna have on my ability to live my life to my fullest? Fullest capacity of joy and happiness. So her position on charity is not, you should never do it. Well, you should do it. It's, well, it depends. Charity has to fit in to this question of, is this consistent with my values? With the requirements of my life, the requirements of my happiness. Is this gonna lead me to have a better, more fulfilling, more complete life? If it is, then charity is fine. She says, she has nothing against charity. But it can be a duty. It can be a priming moral responsibility because then it's not about your life, it's about somebody else's life. And she, again, rejects that notion. I know it's hard. Anybody who's not read, I ran to even conceive of this because we are so steeped in the idea that morality is about the other. Everything about morality is the other. And she's starting from scratch and she's saying, she's asking the question of why? And if morality is a set of values, what do values mean if not in the context of your own life and the requirements for living? And we can get into what are those values and the emphasis here is that this is not some kind of subjectivist morality and you do whatever you please. This is about your long-term rational well-being and your long-term rational happiness long-term. So, and pursuing those kind of values. And I'm sure we'll get into the details of what all that means. So I try to keep it short too. Debbie, you began with such a short comment. I'm sure Yaron has said something that must be getting your hackles up or getting back to your neck bristling. What's wrong with the argument that he makes or the argument that Ayn Rand makes? Well, I think what's interesting when you think about people and their relationships is that really no one is an individual. If you're gonna describe an individual, when does that individual start? Is it as an adult person? Is it as a part of a family? Is it part of a community? And I actually think that when you say, everyone can make their own choice and there's freedom and certainly freedom to make your own choice and choose what you wanna do. That theory would suggest that I have the freedom to be charitable, if that's what I choose to do. And I think that combined that with the call that the Judeo-Christian traditions have to be charitable, to look out for one another, to keep each other's best interest in mind. It's not, they are not mutually exclusive. So there's no such thing as family. There's no such thing as society. There's no such thing as anything other than individuals. That's all there is. And we can abstract, this individual has a relationship with that individual and a relationship with that individual and we can call that family. But all we actually exist out there. The only decisions that are made, the only conscious faculty is held within an individual. Everything else is an abstraction that is convenience and is important that we use and we can use it effectively. But that's not what exists out there. An individual, you can see it. There's an individual, you can't see a family. A family is an abstract concept that unites individuals. Yes, as I said, you can choose to be charitable, but Rand would say it is an immoral choice. It is indeed a vice. To choose to be charitable if it's at your expense. So in this sense, and this is again, this is where she's radical. Self-sacrifice, and let's define what self-sacrifice is. So at least you know what I mean by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice means giving something and expecting what in return. Nothing or something of lesser value. So it's by definition a lose, win proposition and I'm not just talking about material things. I'm talking about in the total package of your values, material and spiritual. It's giving up something and getting something less in return because if you give up something and you get something more in return, what do we call that? A trade, it's not a sacrifice. She would say self, she said self-sacrifice is the essence and morality of evil of wrong. Because if morality is about life, if morality is about making your life better, then lose situations. Situations where you're losing are not good for you. They're the anti-morality, they're the opposite of what is moral. So charity is fine if you can conceive of it as a trade, as if you can conceive of it as my life in some way. I value human life and the cost is minimal to me. Or this person who I'm giving the charity to is a really good person that is gonna contribute in some way to my life in some way. Maybe even I don't know exactly how. But I know they're smart and they're virtuous. But charity's not a duty and it's a vice if it's consequences are a loss to you. What happens to a society? I'll put this to both of you. What happens to a society or what happened to a society in which that became the central organizing principle in which the only time people were expected to behave in a charitable way to make a charitable contribution was when they, or I presume this includes to donate time to be charitable in the broad sense, when the only time that they were expected to do it, when the only time they were taught to do it was when they felt that they would get something in return. What kind of a society would that lead to and why is that a society that we would all find ourselves more comfortable living in or better off being in if we would, as I presume you would say, and why not if, as some W would say, we wouldn't? I think it would be a wonderful society. It would be the most benevolent society that one could imagine and it would be an incredibly productive and positive society. But let me, I mean the way to think about this is not to think about a society in which nobody wanted to be charitable. What are they doing? What are they pursuing? What is the positive? It would be a society in which people pursued their own productive ability in which people went out and created stuff and built stuff and felt pride from doing so. I'd like to comment on Bill Gates maybe in this context. It would be a society of Bill Gates is producing wealth and producing profit and trading and a society in which every relationship we had we felt like we were growing and we were getting better as a consequence where there was no envy and resentment for the wealth of somebody else because you knew that the reason they got wealthy was by making, among other things, by making me better off. I'm better off on Microsoft. I'm better off at Bill Gates becoming a billionaire. So it's a society in which people have the personal responsibility and I don't mean in a superficial conservative way but the deep-held personal responsibility that their life matters and that they need to take care of themselves and that they need to work hard to make their life the best that it can be which leads to self-esteem and happiness. So to me, this is a society of builders and creators and makers. So the need for charity is minimal. Poverty exists but it's a trivial issue. Indeed, capitalism, free markets, you know, raise the poor up dramatically. So you need a lot more charity today in Africa than you do in the United States. There's a reason for that. You need more charity in the United States today than you needed in the United States a hundred years ago in my view when the country was freer. So when you have freedom you need less and then people are going to be charitable but they're going to be charitable for what I consider the right reason. They're gonna be charitable because in general, rational, self-interested people value human life. They value their own life. They value other people's lives because other people produce stuff. They create stuff. You know, their success is my success. This is not a doggy dog world. This is a trading world, a world in which your success benefits me. Let me jump in. Is he convincing you? No. I'm afraid because I'm a little stuck back at just the individual. You know, none of us just pop out ready to go. So the sense that there's not relationship that matters and there's that everyone has the capacity to be as successful as you suggest without good solid relationships surrounding them, guiding them, coaching them. You know, when we even look at folks at the research today about success. And young children and kids who, what makes the difference between a kid who lives in poverty able to succeed and a kid who lives in poverty able not to succeed? And the research points us, all the resiliency research points us to connection, important connection. And so to suggest that connection doesn't matter. I mean, I'm stuck way back there. Let me sharpen the question for a second. You are, you're in India. You're Mother Teresa. You're walking down the street. Where's she in India? Is she in Albania? She was Albanian, but she lived in India. She was in Calcutta. You're walking down the street and you see people who are desperately ill lying in the gutter hours or days away from death. There's no chance that there's anything productive that's gonna be added to the world if you give the money, if you take them in. The only reason to help people who are in extremists like that is because you wanna do something good for them. You said that the reason, you're on, you said that the reason people would give charity is because it's good for all of us to have a society in which we help each other since people are creative, people are productive. People will make new wealth. People will go on to do greater things. What happens about, what happens when the case is clear that these are talking about people who need help and there's very little likelihood that any of them are ever gonna do anything that would create new wealth or be creative? Well, if the world was dominated by people like me, then nothing would happen. Then they would live in the same condition they've always lived in. That is, the fact that they are poor, the fact that they are needy, the fact that they are desperate is not a claim against my life. It's not a reason for me to live less well. It's the reality that they're in that situation. Now, if I lived in Calcutta, right? If I lived in India and I had a business there and I had an interest in that world, then there are certain people that I would help, but not indiscriminately, not to anybody. And the fact is that nobody does. I mean, this is the whole notion. Nobody does that. We supposedly live in a very altruistic charitable, charity is the most important thing in the world. Luckily, that just isn't true, because the fact is that there are millions of people like that today. Indeed, there are tens of millions of people like that today in Africa and in India, and nobody does anything. And we have to remember that that's the state in which humanity exists without individualism, without freedom, without productiveness, without people going out there and working and creating stuff. That is unfortunately the state in which we live unless we have freedom and unless we use our minds to rise up. But the fact that they haven't risen up is not my fault. I don't feel guilty about it. And it's not my responsibility. It's not a claim against me. Where does that claim come from? Well, I don't think that charity comes from a guilt-placed position. I don't think that guilt is in the equation. I don't do the work that I do because I feel guilty that there are people out there who don't have maybe what I have. I do the work that I do because I have resources that I can bring to bear to help people do better, people who want to do better, do better. And so I don't think guilt fits into the equation really at all. I kind of go back to this connectedness. And you're talking about India. It's going to be India and China and Indonesia. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens in those countries as they're emerging markets and they're growing and businesses are growing. It's just going to be interesting to see what happens in the real abject poverty that's there and what changes might happen. Let me just say two issues you brought up. One is this about helping people. I love helping people. I mean, I'm a teacher. We're glad you hear that. But it's not a sacrifice. I'm conveying to them knowledge where they get valuable. I'm gaining from the fact I enjoy conveying the knowledge. I enjoy the fact that by bringing them that knowledge, I hope they become more productive. They become better people that rebound back on me. So again, this isn't about not wanting to help. It's about pursuing your own values. It's about making your values the primary and being guided by that. And I'm glad that you're not motivated by guilt. I don't think charity should ever be motivated by guilt. Again, I don't think it's moral if it's motivated by unearned guilt. If you've got unearned guilt, deal with it. Get rid of the guilt. Don't appease it. Appeasing the guilt is not the solution. So it's not about, I believe, and so we'll bring up Bill Gates again. I believe Bill Gates helped more people in Microsoft than he or any philanthropist or all the philanthropists put together in the world will ever help. The fact is that he has touched every life on every continent in the entire world. I'm not sure we would have an internet today without Bill Gates. He's created an amount of wealth that is hard to describe because you can't just deal with the wealth he's created for himself, but all the wealth he's created for other employees, shareholders, and so on. He's raised the standard of living of people everywhere in the world. Now, why do we put him in a different category? We put him in a different category because he benefited. We can see he benefited while he was helping people, right? But so what? I mean, isn't that a good thing that he benefited while he was helping people? Why is that different? Now he's doing charity. He's doing charity. So we say, now he's a good guy. So creating wealth, helping people, because that's how you create wealth. You create wealth by providing people a value where they are better off as a consequence. So creating wealth by helping people, that morally is suspect, generally, right? That we don't accept in our culture. But giving it away after you've created, that's okay. Even though it's incomparable the amount of good you're doing between the two. But again, if helping people is the standard, shouldn't we praise him for both? But we don't, because we want sacrifice. What we want is to see him suffer. I mean, I like to say Bill Gates really becomes a moral icon if he gave it all away and moved into a tent. And if he saw some blood in the process where he really hurt, that would be an advantage. That would make him a really virtuous person. Because then he could take out any element of self-interest. I'm struck by the tone that seems almost angry in the way that you- I'm angry at the culture, I am. I'm angry that we don't appreciate Bill Gates for the wealth that he created. Because I think it is, talk about justice. I think it is an enormous injustice. I'm not angry at him for giving away his money. I'm angry at the way he does it. But I'm not angry at him for giving away his money. I'm angry at the culture for not appreciating his genius and not appreciating the wealth he created and the benefit we all got from him. Debbie, let me ask you this. Can I ask you a question? I don't understand who you think doesn't appreciate Bill Gates. I mean, I have a computer. I'm thrilled to have a computer. I think that the product that he's brought to market and has been wonderful. And I think when we look to business, we hope that business is working for the greater good, whether they make, and hope that people make money. Everybody should be successful if they can be. Just look, just go back to the 90s and read the newspaper articles on Bill Gates. Watch the movies that portray people like Bill Gates. We live in a culture that, yes, we want to be like Bill Gates, but from an ethical moral perspective, we resent him and we're angry at him and we go after him and we write laws. We write a lot of laws and we encourage government to go out there and control him and take as much of his wealth away from him and break his company up if we can. We as a culture are filled with envy and resentment towards him and I find that incredibly unjust. And I think it comes from this notion that creating wealth is not moral, but that giving it away is. Isn't there a convergence between the two positions? Ideally, wouldn't there be a convergence between the two positions you express? Obviously, it's the case that before wealth can be given away, it has to be created. So shouldn't advocates of charity, shouldn't Catholic charity, shouldn't the archdiocese of Boston, shouldn't anyone who teaches or promotes or wants to create a culture of charity? Just as much, just as strongly wanna create a culture of freedom that will make possible the building of wealth. Shouldn't the Catholic Church, for example, be a strong advocate of capitalism as unbridled, as is politically possible? Shouldn't it be constantly urging that the shackles that hold wealth creators back be eased so that there can be more wealth creation? I'm not a theologian, I'm a social worker, but I'll take a stab at this. I do think that we benefit from the wealth that people have created for themselves. They are donors to our work, as well as donors to charitable work everywhere. And I think that that's wonderful and remarkable. I think that sometimes the regulation that you talk about and the government, which you might consider interference in businesses' abilities to grow, happen, and I'm not a politician either, but happen when there's a sense that there's been a lack of trust in the process of how someone grew their wealth. And so if you're growing your wealth in a way that disadvantages other people in the process of growing it, if you're not telling the truth, if you are not honest in your dealings, if you don't pay people a fair salary for the work that they've done, then I think that's when people get angry with people who make a lot of money. I understand that you're not a theologian, and I don't mean to make you a spokesman for the Catholic Church. Thank you. But I still find myself wondering, since there has to be wealth before there can be charity, shouldn't we be surprised that you don't hear the preachers and the pulpit, or for that matter, the rabbis and the synagogue or the imams in the mosques? Speaking much more vigorously and much more frequently and much more enthusiastically about the importance of creating wealth and the importance of the freedom that's required for wealth creators to be able to go out and do it. Instead, there's much more of what you just alluded to. The restrictions, the need to control, the need to have regulation, the need to keep people from doing wrong things. But let's stipulate that both are necessary. I don't know if your own would stipulate that, but let's stipulate for the moment that both of them are necessary. I wonder what we don't hear equal enthusiasm from religious leaders who want to see more charity for more wealth creation and the freedom that makes that possible. If I could just take a step back, I think that not all charity is dollars. There's a charity of relationship, there's charity, as Yaron suggested of education, there's lots of different kinds of charity and it's not just all dollar driven. So I think from the perspective of relationship, it's really not all about money. Yaron, would you feel differently if you wandered into a church or into a synagogue and heard full-throated argument in favor of freedom? You find certain evangelical churches claiming that Christianity's all about making as much money as you can as an individual and so on. So there are churches in which this is, the attempt is being done. But no, I don't find that reassuring. But of course, I don't think it's consistent, right? I don't think that religion can go with it. I think some marginal churches can do it but I don't think most religion can do it because again, this goes back to the central ethical point. Capitalism, freedom, creating wealth require a certain ethic and that is an ethic focused on individual achievement, individual success. It requires an ethic of self-interest. And the ethic, as I understand it, I'm not a theologian either, of religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition is an ethic of self-sacrifice, of denial of self. I mean, I grew up in a good Jewish household. We were told, my mother taught me, to be selfless, to think of yourself less. Now, I don't think she actually meant that but that's what we are taught, that is the ethical standard. So you can't have your cake and eat it. You can't advocate for an ethic of selflessness and then tell people go be selfish in order to create wealth and this is indeed the problem with people like Adam Smith and the problem with many advocates of capitalism who come from, I think, the Judeo-Christian tradition, they try to have their cake and eat it too and nobody believes them. Nobody believes that it's okay to be self-interested because that way you create a lot of wealth so that you can give it away afterwards. You know that? So a lot of vice added together is virtue. Rand rejects the idea that the standard is other people's well-being. It's about the virtue of self-interest and capitalism is about whether we like it or not. Capitalism is about self-interest and I think that people who reject the idea of morality of self-interest cannot be true advocates of capitalism. You said earlier that you think America would require less charity today and that you believe that less was required back when it was a freer society if there were more freedom today. I wonder if, from the perspective of freedom, if it's not a little bit dangerous to be deriding the charitable impulse, you remember from your Tocqueville, talking about democracy in America, traveling in America, I think it was in the early 1820s or the late 1810s and describing how for virtually every action, every good thing, every goal that was perceived, there were private institutions that were coming together. There were this charitable form of volunteerism, donors. Isn't that impulse, that impulse to help others, to do for others, to come together, to sacrifice for a larger cause, for societal cause, whatever that cause might be, whether it's Catholic Charities or whether it's the Ein Rand Institute, which I assume was a 501 C3 organization. Absolutely, absolutely. As I said, I'm not against charity. Aren't those two together? I'm not against charity. I'm against an impulse for charity. I don't know what that means because I don't think we have that kind of impulse. I'm for charity when it's rational, when it's in pursuit of your values and I believe that a free people are the most charitable people in the world. Under freedom, people are more charitable. A, they have more wealth. B, they're more benevolent because their life is good because they are free. And C, they value other people. So yes, in 19th century America, people helped their neighbors out because they knew that their neighbors were pretty good people and if they helped them out, they would do something good and we bound on them that at the end of the day, they were building a world that was better for them through their charity. But the charity was not the center of their life. The center of their life was, as it should be, their productive work, their achievement, what they were doing. Charity, as Ein Rand said, she said in the quote you gave. She's not against charity. She just says it's not a major virtue. It's a minor issue. It's an issue that once I'm taking care of myself or my family of the things that are most important to me and there's a neighbor across the street who needs my help, show why wouldn't I go and help him put up the roof or if his house burned down, go help and build another house. If he's a good guy, you know if he's a bad guy, I'm not going to do it. It's based on my values and my choices. And again, I think the example of America is such a free people, incredibly benevolent and benevolent people help each other out when it's in their self-interest. Should young people be taught to be benevolent? If you're raising kids and one of them is just a naturally gregarious, loving child who always wants to share his candy and his toys with others and the other is a grumpy, surly... Horder. Adolescent in training. Does this sound like it cuts us to home for me? They're all teenagers in the end, right? Should young people be taught that there is a... No, so I find it horrific, the idea of kids being taught to share. I know, it's... So Johnny's playing in a sandbox and a stranger, Mike, comes over and says, I want to play with your tractor. And the parent jumps up and says, do it, do it. You gotta do it. And why? Why should he do it? I mean, I'm all for teaching Johnny to trade. I'll give him my tractor if you give me your backhoe or whatever. But note the hypocrisy, because this is incredibly hypocritical. And the child knows it and we live in an unbelievably hypocritical society. The child knows that if a stranger came up to mommy and asked for the cockies, mommy wouldn't give it to them. But he's expected to, but there's a reason that exists. But mommy might give them a ride. Might or might not, depending on who the stranger was and how he looked and how we approached. Again, it depends. Or how to find the bus or some other alternative route. But why should it depend? You've got a car, you're driving down Kamev, it's pouring rain outside. There's a person there who didn't take a raincoat and doesn't have an umbrella, got caught unexpectedly in the rain. You're going down the street anyway and even if wherever that person needs to go, it's a little bit out of your way, you've got a car and she doesn't. How are you diminished? How is the community diminished? By not stopping and saying, can I give you a lift? You're gonna get soaked if you stand this. So I'll stop by saying, I don't understand what it means by the community being diminished. But how am I diminished? Well, it depends, right? It depends on, you know, what this person is like. Do they look dangerous? Are they not dangerous? Are they friendly? Are they not friendly? Am I in a hurry? Am I not in a hurry? All of these are factors. I'm not saying right now, I wouldn't give them a ride. But I'm not saying what I'm rejecting is the idea that I have a more obligation. Why might you give that person a ride? Well, again, because... So not dangerous and assume, you know, because all the other things being... Because again, human life is a value to me and if it doesn't cost me a lot, I'm always, you know, I hold the door to some stranger, right? To, you know, I'd give somebody a ride under certain circumstances. Human life is a value. Other people create stuff that provides me with good stuff. I don't mind sharing, right, in those contexts with them, but it has to be a context that does not diminish my life. If it diminishes from me, if it's a sacrifice, I won't do it. David, let me ask you one last question and we'll turn to the audience. Okay, but I was gonna ask you to define sacrifice. As I said, it's doing an act where you lose. That is, you give something up and get something or expect to get nothing or something less in return. And not just material stuff. So I, for example, don't consider... So I have two boys and I did not... I didn't teach them to share and they turned out okay. They might have learned someplace else. And I, you know, and I didn't sacrifice for them because you know what, I really love my children and they're an incredibly high value. So when I didn't go to the movies and stayed at home with my kids, it's because they're more important to me than the movies. So that's a whole, you know, that to me is not a sacrifice. Sacrifice is losing, is being worse off as a consequence, expecting to be worse off as a consequence. Because sometimes you make mistakes and you're worse off as a consequence. But the anticipation, I'm doing this knowing that I'll be worse off as a consequence and that's what makes it a value. That's what I think sacrifice means. Last question from me. Let me put this out and then we'll turn to the audience and those of you with questions ready, please, by all means line up behind the microphone. There's a lot of research that shows that levels of personal happiness correlate with levels of charitable giving. Why is that? If, as you say your own charity means losing something, charity means diminishing yourself, I would think that more charity would mean less happiness. So first I didn't say that. So let's be clear on what I said. I didn't say charity is necessarily a sacrifice. I think it can be a sacrifice, but being charitable can be a positive thing, can be a value added thing. So again, I'm not against charity. I'm just against charity as a duty and I'm against charity where you are sacrificing. Now why are people happier? You know, I guess I'm suspicious of happiness studies. I've read a lot of them. I've looked at the data. They're very subjective. There's no definition of happy. Nobody defines the term. I think the reason is that people are taught that this is what they have to do in order to be a good person. That this is a requirement of being virtuous so that they can only think of themselves as being good, happy in some sense, if they be charitable. So I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. But again, I'm suspicious generally of happiness studies. Even if you showed me the reverse, I'd be suspicious of it. And there are studies that show other stuff that supports my claim. I'm still suspicious of them because of the way they're conducted and what they do. Again, but the point is, I think most Americans in a big chunk of their life, not in all of their life, are generally self-interested, generally try to pursue their own self-interest. And in some of their charity, even that is true in some of their charity, not in all of it. In some of it is driven from guilt and some of it is driven by a sense of moral duty. And I'm generally against moral duty to others. David, do you wanna take a crack at that before we turn to our audience? Well, I guess I'm struck by this notion of sacrifice as always being a loser, that in all sacrifice, you've lost. And I just don't think that that premise- What was the definition of sacrifice? Well, I was gonna ask you that. Well, I just, that's my definition. Well, how would you define it? Well, I think sacrifice, if you say choosing not to go to the movie so you can stay home with your children, that's a choice, not necessarily a sacrifice that makes you a loser, right? So what is a sacrifice? A sacrifice might be doing without something so that somebody else can have it, but it's very similar to choosing to stay home with your children and not go out. So to me, it would be choosing not to have something in order for somebody else, whether it's a sacrifice or not, would depend on why you did it and who that person is. So if I choose not to, if I choose to give my money to make this extreme to a murderer and therefore put my life at risk, that is a sacrifice, right? If I choose to give my money to a good friend of mine who's having a hard time right now and who I love and respect and I think is a good person, that's not a sacrifice because they're more important to me than the money I gave them. So it's not the action, it's why you're doing it and it's what you expect the consequences to be. Let's turn to our illustrious audience. Go ahead, can we get the, I need to get the house lights up a little bit. It's, can't see faces from where we're standing. Deborah, you're involved in the Catholic church and it's doings, which is an organization which seems to have a tendency towards big government. Do you agree that we should have a larger and larger government which hands out so-called charity programs, social programs or are you in favor of cutting back on those which would be not characteristic of the usual Catholic? See, how about letting us keep more of our money, Deborah, so that we can give more to charity? Isn't that a moral act? More moral than government at gunpoint extracting our money in the name of charity. Well, I think that whether government is big or small, government needs to be smart and I certainly am in favor of as smart a government as we can have and I also believe that the way our life is today that charity can't take care of all the problems that exist in our world. Government can't take care of all the problems that exist in the world and there needs to be some combination of effort between the two. So I would, you know, I would reject the notion that either side could do everything. Sir, yes, Iran, you did make a statement, I agree with 100% and that is the value of a person like Bill Gates that he, you know, by creating the computer, the personal computer, he has done tremendous amount of good for the world. I would tell you that his worth is more than 1,000 mother Teresa's. However, let's look at the other side of the coin. In his achieving what he did, he destroyed a lot of companies. A lot of people who were creative and he just, you know, his, Microsoft just bullied everybody and you've got, but I think the big thing that they're concerned with is a particularly financial situation that we have today where banks loan money to people who never should have been loaned, have the money loaned to them and then of course the financial institutions packaged them together and sold them off as AAA securities when they were total garbage. And this is a person who is, you know, these are people who are supposedly, you know, self-interested, self-devolgent and this is supposed to be for the good of developing wealth. I mean, every one of us in this room has had help from somebody. I mean, we just weren't born and then left to our own devices and growing up we've had probably have help from everybody. So I would like to know what, I would like your comment on this aspect of the downside of your particular philosophy and how it is to be corrected and how this is going to work. So two years ago, I did a debate here at the Fort Hope Forum on the financial crisis. It's up on their website. I encourage you to see it and you'll get my full position on the financial crisis, which is a crisis caused from beginning to end at every step and at every level by government, by government regulations, by government control and by government incentives that created the kind of behavior that you, that kind of behavior would have never existed in a true free market. But let me get to Bill Gates and let me get to the question you asked which is related to something was mentioned earlier. Yeah, I mean, in competition, some companies go out of business and some companies succeed. That is the marketplace. That is not, Bill Gates didn't use force on anybody. He didn't destroy anybody. He built something. Other people couldn't compete. He succeeded, they lost. That's the nature. They benefited at the end of the day from the fact that he succeeded. They're better off. They went to work for Google or they went to work for Amazon or they went to work for some technology that without Bill Gates would have never been invented. But your point is, and this is the interconnected point, right? Somebody helped you, we're all interconnected. Yeah, of course we're all interconnected in a sense, right? And I admitted that and I stated the principle by which I believe we should be interconnected. And that's the principle of trade. Yeah, I help my kids. I'm getting something back. It's not a sacrifice. And I hope to get more out of it back. I mean, I might be wrong. My kids could turn out awful and I could regret helping them which would be very, very sad and very, very tragic. But that's not my intention, right? So, I'm trading with people. Bill Gates, yeah, he couldn't have built it without his employees. Wait, who are you trading with? My kid. You said that you hope that your child will turn out well. Yes, no. But how's your child? I consider investment a trade. So I'm investing in the future, right? So, you know, you get the trade right then and there by the fact that they're cute and funny and friendly and so on. But some of it is clearly an investment in the future and the fact that, you know, that they will grow up to be people you admire and respect and have a loving relationship with. It doesn't always turn out that way. I mean, and that's sad that it doesn't, but that's the intention. So sometimes investments go badly, but the point is that you're investing in a person, you're investing in people. And again, Bill Gates needed his employees, sure he did. He paid them. So again, it was a trade. The way in which we're interconnected is through these trade relationships. I give, I get. And I think, I think, yeah, I don't want to live in a desert island. Life would be horrible in a desert island in the middle of the woods. I want to live in a civilization, but not in a civilization where we each feel like we're morally obligated to somebody else that my life is not mine. I am, from the moment I'm born, my moral duty is to help you, is to serve you, is to fulfill your need. There's somebody in India who's starving right now. I need to send a check. There's always going to be somebody who needs something from me. I don't want to live in a world like that. I want to live in a world where I can pursue my dreams. You pursue your dreams. We choose to interact through a trade relationship. You get into trouble. You come to me, you ask for help. You don't force me to help. You don't guilt me into helping. If I can, and you're a good person, I will help you, but I might not be able to help you. Debbie, thoughts? Well, actually, you know, you said that the financial was because of the government. It was because of lack of government regulations. Yes. There's too much government regulation. But again, I don't want to re- We're not going to do the financial crisis here. Focuses on charity and donations. I do think it's interesting to hear you talk about human relationship in terms of business terms, the trade, return on investment. You know, it's just a different language and a different way to look at the world. And also, I think this, the thing that you talk about, that's the expectation that you, Yaron, have to send all your money to India to help the poor people in India. It's just not accurate, I don't think, to say how people feel about our responsibility for others. Let's have another question, sir. Well, this actually nicely leads into my question. So, Mother Teresa was mentioned earlier in the debate, and of course she's a major Catholic figure, so I'd expect you to admire her. But I think most people do admire her, and she's a kind of symbol of this idea that we should be charitable. So, I want to ask about what I think is one of her most famous statements, and really kind of, I think captures what she was all about, which is the idea that you should give until it hurts. And the way I interpret that isn't as soon as it hurts, you should stop giving. Don't, which sounds more like what something you're on might think. But rather that you're not giving enough unless it's hurting, that important to what's good about giving is that we suffer as Jesus did for others. And is that something that you think is admirable? Is that something that's part of what it is to have a more responsibility to be charitable, or not? And, Joanne, also your comments on that, I'd like to hear. I think that, you know, far be it for me to argue with Mother Teresa. Oh, go ahead, we won't tell her. It's going to be on the internet. It'll be everywhere. You know, I think, so a fine theologian did say to me once, if the left and the right can't find common ground, it's not a good space to be in. There is common ground, we have to learn how to work together. So this notion of giving till it hurts, I think translated to me is given a way that matters, given a way that's smart, that makes a difference, that makes sense, not give that you're in abject pain, but given a way that makes sense, that's going to make a difference. I mean, I think Mother Teresa was serious and I think she identifies a key to what makes in the minds of many people, to what makes charity virtuous and that is that it involves pain, that it involves suffering. You know, if you look at who becomes the saint, it's often those who suffer the most. They are the most revered, they are the most virtuous, they are the most moral because we measure morality in the culture. We measure it based on how much you've given of yourself and the ultimate that you can give yourself is your life, two others. And again, this is exactly what I'm rejecting. I'm rejecting the notion that morality is measured by your suffering and somebody else's gain. Morality should be measured by how good your life is and how much you do for yourself. And to the extent that it involves helping others, great, but only to that extent. Let me take a stab at the sainthood because I do believe that most of the saints in our church are saints because they were persecuted for what they believed and their suffering came from having a set of beliefs, not from the charity that's painful in the way that you describe. Even the notion of Jesus' sacrifice is, it's not that he was persecuted for what he believes. That's not what makes Jesus Jesus. It's the fact that he suffered. He died the most horrible death you can imagine. Have you ever read the details of what a crucifixion is like? You can't imagine dying in a more painful way. But that is, but he died for us in that painful way. It's the fact that it's the sacrifice to us that elevates it. Now, it's true, a lot of the saints did sacrifice for an idea. And you could argue whether that idea was worth it or not. But you could say the same with Jesus. I suddenly think, yeah. This is on sharing and on a comment that you made earlier about connection and that you're on made about the individual. With sharing, when my kids were quite young, little tykes, they went to a Burger King play yard and some gentleman came up to me and said, how did you do it? How did you get your kids to take turns and to be so kind and generous? And I just looked at him without skipping a beat and I said, I taught them they never had to share. And that genuine benevolence came from just not looking at people as a threat. Your swing isn't going to be taken away. And so that gets to the next point, which is the value of connection. I know when earlier on you said, you interpreted Iran saying that there are no families as connection doesn't matter. And I think I would like you to hear from Iran on a concept that Ayn Rand had on psychological visibility and talking about the connection between individuals and do they matter or not? And if you wanted to comment too, that would be great. I mean, I'll just say that my conception of trade is far broader than as a economic activity. I think love is something that, when it's returned in a loving relationship is a trading relationship. You're not trading money, you're not trading goods. You're trading what Rand called personal visibility, your value in somebody else's eyes and their values and in their spirit. And you can get into psychology, but the point here is that there are spiritual trade going on all the time. You get value and enjoyment and pleasure and huge satisfaction from other people. As a teacher, I can tell you, I mean, one of the greatest feelings in the world is watching the students light come on in their eyes. They got something, they understood something. And that's wow, that's really cool. I did something, I get something in return. So it's a much broader concept in terms of human relationships. And I think it's one, you know, the trade principle is one trade is one that I think captures the essence of how I think healthy human relationships should exist. I just, would you never teach if in the trade you didn't get a light bulb going off? I'd quit teaching, I'd quit teaching. Hi. I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. I just wonder about the idea that you get something back and that trade is that much broader. Would you say that it's therefore also a form of trade if someone donates, behaves in a charitable way because the benefit that she expects to receive is credit in heaven, is a more elevated soul. Something spiritual in other words, something that isn't necessarily visible in the light in the kid's eyes getting multiplication for the first time or because a cute child and you feel a biological connection but because you believe or you've been taught to believe that that's meritorious to do so and that you see as a benefit. Would you regard that as a kind of trade as well? So let me first say that I consider seeing the light come on in somebody's eyes as spiritual. So I have, my concept of spiritual is there's anything of consciousness that's not material out there. So I don't grant that spiritual is only religious. It covers many, many human activities. No, I think this is a clever way to kind of provide people an incentive to do things that are not in their self-interest in this life because you promised them something in an afterlife. You know, I wanna deal with reality, not with stories or with the arbitrary suppositions about an afterlife. I think you live this life here, you've got this life, it's complicated enough to figure out what's good for you in this life. Right, that's you. That's what you think. But if somebody comes to Catholic Charities and wants to donate $50 every month because Because he gets them into heaven? Because he thinks that there's- I feel sad for them. Because they're- I do. Because they're not living the fullest life that they could live right here and now. And it's sad to me that they are sacrificing, giving up life here for mythology. I mean, that's how I would look at it. But how are they mutually exclusive? Well, if they're not mutually exclusive, then fine, then let's make them measure right here on earth. But the whole argument is that they are. You suffer a little bit here. I mean, this is, you know, just look at the book of Job, right? You suffer here. Not for you to understand even why you suffer, but suffer here. You should, you know, you should give, you should do whatever you're told to do because there's a promise of something else. No, I want to live good here. I want to be happy right here and now. I want this life to be the best, most successful, most flourishing life that I can have here. If I don't believe there is a heaven, I don't, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God, but there is a heaven and I land up there. You know, great. But it's this life that I'm interested in. But if trade is in the eye of the beholder, if the individual judges what value there is in trade, then those two things can exist together. Yeah, but if I see somebody going and buying a car for $20,000 and I know it's a lemon, then I feel bad for them. I'm sad. Because they're wasting their money. So I can evaluate somebody else's decision and say you're making a mistake in my view. Sir, come in. Hi, my question relates to the government's role in society in either depressing or promoting charitable giving. My position on charity is a bit extreme in that, you know, as a 29 year old, I consider social security and Medicare to be charity because I don't expect I'll ever see anything out of those programs when it's time for me to retire. So my question is that since I'm being basically forced to give the charity at the point of a gun, I feel no obligation whatsoever to give to any other charities. And I would argue that I'm not alone in that sentiment. And my question to both of you is would you, is that I would believe the government enforcing charity like this tends to depress charitable giving in a society, would you agree or disagree with that sentiment? I mean, I would agree. I definitely think that, you know, I don't even think about charity today. I mean, because, you know, every paycheck I get, 40% to 50% is out. And what's left, you know, is by, for me, my family, people I care about, I don't think about, I wouldn't even conceive of writing a check to a big charitable institution out there. Too much of my money is already taken off the top. If I could keep 100%, there are a lot of organizations I could think that I would be positively inclined to give to, because there are a lot of things that I value out there that I think they help, that they would provide help. But I think the bigger issue is not so much that. I think the bigger issue is the fact that if we didn't have government doing what it does, we would just live in so much of a wealthier society that we wouldn't, there wouldn't be need for as much charity as we need today. There wouldn't be need for as much assistance as is provided today. And if we lived in a culture that respected individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and living their own lives fully, there'd be a lot less demand for charity. People would want less, they would view, as they did, I think 100 years ago, they would view being on the dole, any kind of dole, as a black mark, as something you do temporality, to get back on your feet and to go out there and go back to work. I think our culture's changed because of government, not because of charity, but because of government. And I would just say that not all charity is cash, not all charity is money. Hold on, I have to press both of you on this. I'm not sure that, I don't say how your position holds water in your room. You say that because the government takes 40% of your income there and spends it on what we might, if it were being given voluntarily, would be considered charitable endeavors. Therefore, you feel no... How is that not the same as you're going home, you get mugged, somebody takes the 20 bucks that you had in your wallet, and when you get home, you tell your kid, sorry, you can't eat tomorrow because I already gave to the mugger. It's exactly the same. Why is there a connector? It's exactly the same. So I feel like every paycheck I'm being mugged, I'm literally mugged, I don't see a difference. I'm being mugged, 40% of my money's being taken away from me, and now all I've got to spend on me and my family and the things that I wanna buy is the 60% that's left. I have less money, so therefore I'm gonna do less with it. There are certainly things, for example, so if I have $1,000, there's certain things I wanna buy with that $1,000. If I have $2,000, there's a whole set of other things that I would wanna buy. Charity, whether it's cancer research, or whether it's a children's hospital, things that I care about down the stream of value, so I'm not gonna use the first thousand to do that. I'm not gonna use the second thousand, and I'm not getting to the third thousand because the government has taken it away once I get to the second. Well, I would completely agree with the premise of the question that the government takes a lot of money from us and spends on things that most of us would often not want it to be spent on. I don't understand how that leads then to the next point, which is therefore I've already done my part, and so that even charities that I would wanna give to, let's say the INRAN Institute, I'm not gonna write a check for because the government already got charity out of me. I don't feel like giving any charity back. I don't think you should write a check to the INRAN Institute if there are values more important to you than the INRAN Institute. So for example, so I have a hierarchy of values. I have things that are very, very important to me, and let's assume these all monetary things, these all things that I spend money on, things that are very, very important to me, and I spend my first dollars on those, and then things that are next, I spend those, and charity might be number 10. It might be number five, it might be number 100. The children's hospital or whatever. If I have enough money, I'll get to it. A saving is a value, right? Saving for my retirement is a value. So it's not that I have a pie, right? I have a thousand dollars, and no matter what happens, I'm gonna spend 20% of food, 20% of cause, no. There's a hierarchy, and I spend my first dollar here, and I'm not gonna get to the dollar of certain causes because I don't have it. I'm not sure what's... The sense that I got from the questioners, from the way the questioner framed it, was that he feels resentful that the government has taken this money from him, and therefore, he doesn't feel that he has any more obligation. See, but I don't feel an obligation to be in with me. That I understand. That I understand, but in the cases where you yourself would feel that you have an obligation, such as to take care of your kids, you wouldn't say, I'm so mad that the mugger got 20 bucks from me, you guys can't have supper tomorrow. No, but I would say, I'm not gonna buy the nice car that I've always wanted, that is really, really important to me to have a nice car. Right, that's simply because I don't have enough money left over for everything that I wanted to do. But that's the point. What I'm saying is the charity, for me, is, so if you have 100 things that you're gonna do, is further down on the list, and because the government's taking that money, I never get to that. To turn that question around, the questioner said, he feels he's not the only person who thinks that way, and he's absolutely right. And there's an enormous amount of data, I actually just wrote about this in a column a couple of months ago, you go state by state in states where tax rates are higher, where there's a more big government mindset that predominates, charitable giving is much, much lower. In states where the attitude, the prevailing political attitude is, we shouldn't turn to government for things, tax rates should be kept low, government spending should be kept low, charity is much more generously given. It seems to me that just reinforces the earlier point that several of us have brought up, that Catholic Charities and the Archdiocese and religious organizations, and anyone that wants to promote charity, ought to be in favor of reducing the size and the scope and the expense of government as much as possible, and increasing the understanding, the general idea in society that we should be doing things for ourselves, not relying on government in Washington or government of Beacon Hill to do it for us. Why don't those two go together in your perspective? Well, I think that if it were possible to overcome all that some people have to overcome to get to a level playing field, if our kids had equal access to good quality education, because education is such an important part of success in this country, certainly. And so if we had equal access for everyone to quality education, so kids could be more independent, be more responsible once they got their education to earn a good living. If everything was level, then I would see less of a need, certainly, for a role for government or charities. I would go back to charities not all about money. Certainly money is required to accomplish some things, but when you talk about relation, I mean, when you get at its base, it's its relationship. It's how we treat each other. It's how we care for each other. It's how we watch out for the other guy. It's more than just money. Is that a statement about political policy or is that a statement about personal behavior? I think it can be interpreted. When a politician talks about compassion and what he means when he says compassion is taxed, it should be raised so that the government can have. Well, I don't think that that's always true. No, no, but I'm saying in a case where a politician uses the word compassion in that sense, do you hear that and think, yes, he's right? That is a kind of compassion? Or do you hear that and think, hey buddy, compassion is when you reach into your own pocket and you take something out because you feel a personal connection to a person who has an evil? When I hear compassion from a government perspective and what I think tax dollars should be used for, when you think about people who suffer from certain kinds of mental illness, who have certain kinds of disabilities, for whom the playing field might never be level, then I think some combination of charity and government is required to try and help care for them. And who decides what that combination should be? Don't we all? When we vote? But yeah, we all do. That's how policy is made. But I'm asking you, in your hierarchy values and the way that you would, if you could frame the magic wand, how do you decide which needy person should turn to the government for help and which needy person should knock on Catholic Charity's door or combine to a philanthropy? I think that we have been deciding that over time and it changes over time and I think it's a, what government is responsible for and what private charity is responsible for swings on a pendulum. I do think that there was a time when it was all charity. And I think we've gotten to a place where it's some governmental responsibility and some charity responsibility. I gotta tell you one of the things that worries me most about some of the proposed cuts in domestic spending that are in the sequestering are what's gonna happen when the government stops paying for some of the programs and services that it pays for currently. Because I don't think that private charities or public charities have the capacity to pick up the slack. And so people who wouldn't necessarily be hurting are gonna be hurting. So when you look at government, we ask government to keep us safe in a lot of different ways. And that's their job, keep us safe. And I think we all have a role in choosing how that dollar gets spent. Sir. All right, first of all, before I get to the question, it should be noted that the record that Ann Rand accepted both social security and Medicare right to the end of her life in 1982. So she apparently had no objection to that herself. But Ann Rand was also an anti-Arab bigot. When she appeared at Ford Hall Forum in 1974, she referred to Arabs as quote unquote, primitive and savages, a tradition that's been carried on by the Ann Rand Institute. So doesn't this new gospel of yours selfishness lead to the kind of virulent bigotry that was exemplified by Ann Rand and her acolytes? Only softballs at the Ford Hall Forum. No, it doesn't. Because, because saying a people, saying a people who send their little kids strapped with bombs into cafes and turning them into martyrs to kill civilians. And no, you've asked your question. To kill civilians is barbaric. It is primitive. That is an objective statement of fact. That is not bigotry. Is it occupation? Is it occupation? Is it occupation freedom? Any culture that does that. Is F-15s, and I'll patch it. Any culture. Any culture is a better way to carry out terrorism. All right, you ask the question, he'll give the answer, and then let's bring it back to charity. I'd be happy to return to the forum to do an Israel-Palestinian debate. Any time, I think I'll take the Israeli side. I'm not sure what this has to do with charity, but it has to do with identifying objective truth about a people. And it's sad that they're that way, but that's the way they are. And identifying it, it helps solve the problem. Is there a, is it merely a coincidence that levels of charitable giving have traditionally been so high in the United States as compared with other countries? And that the United States is the most, or one of the most productive and freest societies and industries? Is it just a coincidence of those two? No, I think there's definitely a correlation between freedom and being charitable. I think that free people are more benevolent people. I think people who are not doing it out of a sense of guilt, who are not doing it out of a sense of moral duty and moral obligation are going to be more charitable. But I also think, you know, so I think that is the core reason why in the past. And just to your question before, I guess we were speaking over each other, I don't get it, because isn't like almost all charity come from very wealthy people? So if you create- No, not at all. No, not at all. Okay. Not at all. That's how I could see it. So that to me suggests that it's, that there's something else driving it. To me, I conceive of it as, after I take care of all the things that are really, really, really important to me. And I have stuff left over. That's, in terms of money at least, that's where I would be willing to be charitable. You know, at Catholic Charities, we are blessed to have about 2,600 volunteers help us over the course of a year. Some for an hour long project on a Saturday morning. Some who come and mentor teenagers over time. 170,000 hours of volunteer time. And I would consider that certainly charitable, good work. And it doesn't require money. So I'm biased because it's the Ironman Institute. I mean, it does use volunteers and we use quite a bit of volunteers, but I'd say 86% of the, 80 to 90% of the amount of money we get comes from relatively wealthy individuals. We don't get large numbers. We get large amounts. I think that there's very little question. If you check the data, you know, giving USA and the group together, although large amounts of money come from foundations and from wealthy individuals, the great bulk of the money that's given comes as is often the case with taxes. These small donations from lots of people add up to... Think of the American Red Cross and their $10 cell phone contribution. Let's see if we can get another question. In 1964, President Johnson introduced legislation, started the war on poverty. Since that time, tens and tens of trillions of dollars, not only through the government, but also privately. And as to what you were just speaking of, I'm sure millions of man hours have also been donated towards the cause of poverty, yet relatively the percentage of individuals in poverty in this country, speaking solely in America, remains the same. I was wondering if you could speak to the fact, is there not enough being given by the people that freely donate or donate through their tax dollars? Or is it more to the fact of where yarn comes from, that maybe we're not taking the shackles off of our society enough to allow more people to prosper? I think that we're really just, it is tragic that as many people are living in poverty today as when the war on poverty got started in the 60s, I think it's a relative new number based on the recession of 2008 that more people who had been enjoying a middle-class lifestyle have slipped into poverty. So I think what we're looking at today is not the way it's trended. It's a result certainly of this great recession that we're just coming out of, hopefully. I do think that one of the things that we don't understand is intergenerational poverty and we're getting there, I think we're starting to develop better understanding, just like all of human behavior, we're getting better and better all the time at understanding how and why people behave. We're getting more sophisticated about the neuroscience of it. We're starting to understand better intergenerational poverty and the things that can help impact that. We know that our goal is, the gospel says the poor will always be with you. Our goal is that not the same people will always be poor. We're a nation of immigrants. We welcome people from all over the world. The people that come here start at ground zero. There's always gonna be a level of poverty that we have to deal with as people move here to build wonderful lives for themselves. But I'm not sure I exactly answered your question. Shouldn't there be a concern though to play off that question? If the government, if the war on poverty begins, didn't, it might have begun with that title in 1964, but obviously the government spending on welfare programs close back earlier, but if it began in 1964 and the government spending increases and increases and yet the level of poverty rises, the number of people living below the poverty level increases. Doesn't, isn't there at least reason to suggest, to speculate, to wonder whether it might be counterproductive to think that the good works that can help lift up people who need help is undermined when it's directed by an impersonal government that's taking the money mandatorily, setting rules that are supposed to be applied from top down. You say that charity is all about relationships. What relationship does anybody really have with a bureaucrat at the Department of Health and Human Services? Might it not be the case that there would be less need for charity, less poverty, less suffering? If we were keeping it all here at home within a community, dealt with through voluntary action and not through government confiscation? If there are believers, as Yaren are, not all that money would come into a charitable good work if it were in the community. So I think that, that no, your premise isn't always true and I think that, you know, while we all can point to a particular government program that we may or may not like, by and large, there's some combination of the public sector and the civil society need to work together to solve problems. So I would argue that, no, first of all we should, I don't see the necessity for having a significant level of poverty ever in society if it's free. I think what we have, the poverty we have today is a consequence of the government programs and it's worse than just the impersonal relationship that you're describing. Government programs, in a sense, institutionalize people into poverty. They create a poverty-like mentality. They create an entitlement mentality that is anti the kind of character that a human being needs to have in order to rise up and be successful and escape from, you know, from where they were born or from the set of circumstances that they had. What this country needs or whatever country needs, if you want to reduce poverty, what India needs, what I would advocate for those poor kids in India, who to some extent I care about, what I would advocate is more on land. I would advocate freedom. I would advocate capitalism. Capitalism will do more to help the poor in India than any social program, voluntary, or 100 mother-to-racist, a million mother-to-racist. If you just, and you're seeing it in India right now, more people have risen out of poverty because of capitalism than any program ever instituted. I mean, the whole concept of poverty didn't exist before capitalism because everybody was poor. I mean, if you project 250 years ago, there were some aristocrats over here and everybody else was poor. Today, the very fact that some people in middle class is an achievement of freedom and capitalism, government programs make this dramatically worse and if they went away, the need for those programs would disappear and the need for so much charity would disappear. Sir. Three quick questions, hopefully quick questions. One for Mr. Brook, one for Ms. Rambo and one a show of hands for the audience. The one for Mr. Brook is the astounding statement that he made about 100 years ago, America was a freer place and I was thinking of people who couldn't vote because of the color of their skin or couldn't travel or eat in a restaurant or marry the person that they chose. I was thinking of women who wanted to have terminator pregnancy but couldn't do so or even have birth control. I was thinking of people who couldn't get into a college. Your own family would have been either kept out of a, you'll because of your family's belief in a Bronze Age tradition would have been kept out of a college or significantly shortened in the number of people that go in. For Ms. Rambo, at one time Catholic Charities was a separate 501c3. It wasn't under the control of the church, it was truly charitable. It was before the Clinton Bush Obama faith-based funding program where money started going into faith-based organizations. There was no discrimination. You guys did a great job. Are you getting money now? From the government and the last question for the audience, just sort of curious, how many people in here identify as objectivists or libertarians or something like that by hand? It's a good audience for you. Thank you. Sure, Catholic Charities is a separately incorporated 501c3, though it is a social service, social justice agency of the church and the Cardinal sits on our Board of Trustees. We also do get a combination of private donations and state, federal, and local tax dollars to do our work. You wouldn't call all those dollars charitable, would you? I would say- The ones that you get from the government, would you qualify as a charity? No, we would call those earned dollars. What do I mean? The church in Boston at this point in time does not give us cash. We have some in-kind donations from the church in Boston, but I've got to say, our donor base, our private donor base is largely a Catholic population. We also, we serve more than 60% of our clients are not Catholic, our staff is a multicultural staff, except for the name on the door and some of the ethos that I think we bring, we could look like lots of other social service agencies. I do think that our belief that everybody needs to be treated with respect and dignity makes us a little bit different and we often go the extra mile to get work done. So it's a good question. How do you measure freedom and by what parameters? Yes, 100 years ago, I can't remember if women could vote 100 years ago or not. I can't remember the exact date. No, they couldn't. Yeah, so 1920 they started voting. Blacks were certainly, there was institutionalized racism in many parts of this country against blacks. There was hidden antisemitism or explicit antisemitism. It wasn't run by the state. So I think people are free to be bigots. It's a sad state when they are, but they should be free to be so. If I look at America 100 years ago, everything was trending in the right direction and the quality and quantity of the amount of coercive power that government exerted on society was relatively small. Granted, there were certain things that were horrible that you mentioned, but if you look at the amount of coercion in society, the amount of force being used by government on me, it was very minimal. We were probably the freer society that had ever been on earth. We were moving in the right direction. We were moving towards allowing women to vote. We were moving towards, it took a little longer, unfortunately, getting rid of state authorized discrimination and state authorized racism. That was the trend in which we were moving and we took a turn. We took a turn probably in the teens, so exactly 100 years ago, in terms of all other freedoms and they start disappearing, I think rapidly over the last 100 years. But if you just look at just a measure of how much income, how much of your time, and I don't agree with this idea there's money and then there's time. Time is money. I mean, these are fungible things. I could work more and make more money or I could spend my time. It's all, there's very much a fungibility there. 40% of my time today is spend funding the government, funding programs that I don't believe in. That's a big chunk of my time. It's a 40% of me is a slave to somebody else. That's a lot. That's a lot worse than it was back then. I can't start a business without having to, again, spend huge amounts of time appeasing bureaucrats. If I do have a business, a huge amount of time, I talk to CEOs all the time and CEOs spend, particularly if you're in a heavily regulated industry, CEOs spend four to five days a week dealing with regulators and lawyers because of the society we live in today. We are incredibly unfree. We don't realize how unfree we are because we're kind of born into it and it comes slowly in little dribs and drabs so it's disguised, but we're incredibly unfree. Just think of the amount of time. Let me stop you there, because I want to get one last question before turning the program over to our lovely and talented executive director to close out for us. Get the last question. And good evening, just one quick question. Me, as a person, I believe in helping myself before helping others. You, Ms. Deborah, as a president of a Catholic charity, do you try to invite people to become charitable and what reasons do you give them? What are you driven by? What drives you to become a charitable person? What drives me personally to do this work? Yeah, and how would you encourage people to become charitable? What drives me personally to do this work is, not very far away from some of what Yaron talks about in terms of personal satisfaction, from the intellectual curiosity about problem solving, about trying to make things work better. Our end purposes might not be exactly the same because I'm not so driven by the financial reward that that brings, but there's a satisfaction in seeing other people do well. So that call to serve that came in the 60s when I was growing up, certainly part of my ethos and part of what makes me me. We welcome people to be charitable and I can't define for you what you're gonna find as a charitable work. That has to be what works for you. That's not my job. You are responsible, I think, for that. Before I finish though, I just wanted to challenge Yaron's other comment about the 40% of his dollars. There's gotta be some things that government does that you find are useful. And so please don't say all of your 40% goes to useless tasks. There are some things that government does that we all pay for, that we all value, I think. Well, in my case, my tax rate is actually 45%, and it's a 5% of the somewhat value and the 40%, which is wasted. It's very little. I think government should do very little. And even that, because of the way the government is constituted, it doesn't do very well. But let me just make one. I just handed you that one. Yeah, thank you. I'm just gonna make one quick comment to the way you introduced the topic because I hear this all the time. So people say you need to help yourself before you help others, which is absolutely true. But the reason you should help yourself is not so that you can help others. The reason you should help yourself is because you are the reason you're alive. You are the reason you value. You are the reason you should live. You should help yourself for helping yourself. And then if you wanna help others, fine. Yaron, Brooke, Deborah Rambo, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.