[sweetjazz]

M^6...thanks for the nice thoughtful and insightful post. I think you are in correcting my statement about bringing God's Kingdom to earth, as there is clear evidence that this cannot literally be accomplished.

At the same time, there are scriptural remarks which can be interpreted as suggesting that there is some value in trying to bring God's Kingdom to earth, even though this cannot be literally accomplished. The Lord's Prayer is probably the most salient example: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." It seems possible to interpret the latter phrase as only pertaining to the Lord's will and not his Kingdom, but that does not seem natural to me. But I am certainly no expert.

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nate...thanks for clarifying your point about capital gains tax. I agree with you about the value of creating jobs and do think that lowering captial gains tax can be the best thing for society when certain economic conditions hold. I am a bit skeptical about your claim that lowering capital gains taxes always creates more jobs, or at least don't create enough to make them more valuable to the poor than other programs that would be equally expensive. (I use the economic defintion of cost here to mean the amount of revenue lost to the government due to the capital gains tax reduction.) But I am also no economics expert.

There are also issues of poverty that job creation doesn't address, namely the fact that people with low-wage jobs do struggle just to make ends meet (let alone provide resources for their children to be able to escape poverty).

But while I might disagree with you on specifics, I do agree that finding ways to increase availability of jobs is one way to try to tackle poverty, and in some circumstances, one of the best ways.