How Do we Help?

Rick raises some good questions in his post responding to the statistics I cited.  Some initial thoughts on some of them:

First, although I do struggle with the question of how much it is appropriate to spend on myself vs. give away (especially when I make an expenditure I don't regard as a necessary one - e.g. buying a piece of Italian pottery), I don't think it is immoral to buy and eat an ice cream cone instead of giving the money to a water-treatment charity.  However, if one regularly indulges in lavish expenditures on oneself rather than engaging in a reasonable amount of charitable giving, I do think there is a moral problem.  I'm struggling with the right words - neither "lavish" nor "reasonable" really captures what I mean, but I think it is clear that we each have an obligation to think about how we are using the money we have.

Second, I think the same is true for the government.  I think the decision to spend on speculative stem-cell research should be judged in part by what we are not funding becuse of that funding decision. 

Third, I don't disagree with Rick that "how do we fix it" is a difficult question, and I wasn't trying to answer it in my initial post.  I do, however, think that, as Mark pointed out in a different context, "if CST is to mean anything, it must somehow guide or constrain our choices in a serious way."  And that means we have to seriously grapple with the how and can't just throw up our hands and say, "gosh this is hard." (I'm not saying that is what Rick was saying.)

I still haven't answered Rick's "rules, standards, or principles," but the difficulty here suggests the answer has to be standards or principles and not rules.