Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.
Agreed - working as intended, and it’s not just LDS. I’m in FL and churches here have been opposing publicly funded safety nets for my whole life, in favor of voluntary, often church-led, donations.
They appear to have set it up that way on purpose.
A single mother of one here is eligible for $399 a month in state assistance, and only if she has a net income of $456 a month or less.
Utah doesn’t do more for those in need in part because a contingent of its lawmakers, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latter-day Saints themselves, assume the church is handling the poverty issue; they also are loath to raise taxes to do the state’s share, a review of Utah’s legislative history demonstrates.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !politics@beehaw.org
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it’s a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
Where possible, post the original source of information.
If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
I don’t have an issue with the fact that the church decides whom they help.
But that the state has so little in the way of social security that they instead have to forward people to a church instead, that’s crazy.
3rd world country.
The LDS essentially owns the state of Utah, this issue is by design
Agreed - working as intended, and it’s not just LDS. I’m in FL and churches here have been opposing publicly funded safety nets for my whole life, in favor of voluntary, often church-led, donations.
They appear to have set it up that way on purpose.
us$10k/year
I doubt there is anywhere in the US where that is an adequate amount to pay for food and shelter. That is monstrous.