No. Government dole is contrary to LDS doctrine.
I would say this is correct, and quite so, given much of the criticism surrounding the New Deal programs that came from the mouths and pens of certain General Authorities during the 30s (although they never mentioned those programs by name or made any statements about political parties).
Premise 1: Neither KIng Benjamin nor King Mosiah, though they preached much about helping the poor, instititued government programs or heavy taxes for doing so but instead worked with their own hands and encourage individuals to do the same. In other words, the poor are helped by individuals and groups not connected to the government and they help themselves by going to work.
Exactly. Welfare, for Benjamin and Mosiah, was local and personal. It would have been decentralized and independent of central control just as our modern welfare storehouses are, and would have served such ancient Saints at various local levels. Benjamin and Mosiah would have had no conception of a centrally administered "welfare state" controlled and mediated by themselves and appointed bureaucrats.
It never would have crossed their minds (nor Peter's).
Premise 2: The fundamental principle of the Law of Consecration is the free use of it. Also there is the doctrine of no forced actions. Within the doctrine is the rejection of Socialism and public welfare as well as a rejection of the notion that the first Christians, in Acts 4, did not institute a communal system.
My suspicion here is that the situation in Acts 4 was some emergency among the Saints and/or the wider community that required a massive donation of goods and materials to alleviate those needs. The condition itself is simply not mentioned, but there is no evidence in the scriptures, or reason to think that this represented the inauguration of what David Bokovoy would call a "communitarian" (i.e., collectivist) social welfare system. It does not, in other words, represent an ancient Christian socialism, but only some temporary situation that required a heavy sacrifice among the Saints (unless one believes that the LoC requires LDS, including modern and future LDS, to enter into what amounts to a church-wide vow of poverty).
Jesus said "the poor ye always have with you". The question is will charity be denied and all be made poor under Socialism or will there be poor with the opportunity to rise or fall under free market capitalism and charitable individuals and groups as is the Gospel?
The age old question of the tension between quality and
equality. If there are no rich
or poor in a true Zion community, then whatever else is going on economically, we know that its not of a socialistic nature. Truly socialistic societies have never been able to sustain even modest middle class conditions for most, and democratic socialist societies just barely.
