The problem with trying to determine the moral path through economic policies is rooted in unforeseen consequences. In almost any plan, there are hidden costs that somehow make inexpensive plans require much more funding than originally anticipated.
In college, I see this all over the place. I came to the University of Wyoming in 1999 on the Trustee's Superior Student Scholarship, which paid for tuition, fees, room, and board, so I didn't necessarily have to worry so much about costs (and therein lies a problem), but I could see how numerous costs were inflated due to good intentions, but poor policies.
In the dorms, where I lived for four out of my five undergraduate years, I had the opportunity to witness just how hidden costs keep hurting us. Now, the dorms at UW were operated fairly simply. There was a fixed cost of living in a dorm room, and that covered phone, electricity, water, heating, and internet services. There was a fixed cost of any particular meal plan for dining in the Washakie Dining Hall.
The idea behind fixed costs is that some use more and some use less, and it is more effective to charge the average. Thus you tend to lose out with some customers, but on others you gain back the difference. And fixed costs are attractive to people. I know nowadays when I page through the classifieds looking for a new place to live, the places where utilities are a fixed part of the rent seem more appealing, and for a good reason. If I don't have to worry about the electricity bill, I can use all the electricity I want without worry. If I don't have to worry about water or natural gas, then I can take all the long, hot showers I want.
Perhaps where I would like to focus my attention the most, though, is on the Washakie Dining Hall, because that is where I've seen the most waste. And it is telling. While any particular meal plan carries a fairly high cost per meal, once you're inside the hall, you can take as much as you want and keep going back for more, if you so desire.
What you tend to see, then, is people who grab the main course, or possible two, heap up their trays with all kinds of side dishes, pick at their food, and then send most of it back to the kitchens to be thrown away.
What was really interesting was that people actually justified their waste. "If Washakie is going to charge so much more a meal plan, then I need to make sure I'm getting my money's worth." Friends of mine would load up their trays with stuff they didn't want and let it all be thrown away in an infantile desire to "stick it to the man."
For some odd reason, the cost of meal plans kept increasing every year.
I know a number of universities will offer meal plans, but then have a price attached to each course a person could select, which provides incentive to only take what one could afford. In addition, those plans carried with them much less waste, as people realized if they didn't finish what they took, then they had wasted their money. There's obviously a hidden cost factor at play here. At UW, that hidden cost factor drives the cost of food up every year, but though the students grumble, they continue to waste, because a fixed cost is a fixed cost.
The question then becomes, is it immoral then to offer fixed cost plans when it is obvious that people abuse the system? Not necessarily. A fixed plan can be very beneficial to many people, both those who offer the plan and those who accept the plan. The immorality comes from those who would abuse the system. But this comes back to matters of restraint, which we Americans don't seem to have. The moral course of action is to not waste, even when we have the opportunity to waste as much as we want without repurcussion.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Why Obama Will Win
Susan Estrich, a Fox News contributor, has new article posted on the Fox News website regarding a friend of hers who will not be voting for McCain. I find Estrich's columns to be some of the most thoughtful, well-articulated, to-the-point left-wing writing I've ever said. After all the vitriol we tend to her in the left-wing news and blogsphere, coupled with a large dose of finger-pointing and idiocy from the right, it is refreshing to read her posts.
That being said, I think there's a subtle clue in this particular column as to why I think Obama will win. It isn't because he's the new face of change, or that McCain is a warmongerer, or anything like that.
I believe it is because Obama promises goodies. End of story.
Right now, we're in a bit of a financial crisis, and there's concerns of whether this crisis will continue to develop until we're in a widescale depression. On the minds of the people of the United States is not: "how am I going to work through this?" Instead, it is "how is the government going to save me?"
I understand very well that the government exists to protect us. It gives us our laws, it maintains a military against outside forces, it provides a legislative system to adjust laws to be fair, it offers an executive system to enforce those laws for our protection, and in even hands us a judicial system to ensure that disputes are settled, be they civil or criminal. This is all very moving, very touching, very assuring.
So the government protects us from outsiders (or at least it is supposed to), and the government protects us from our neighbors. But the big crisis in our nation, and why I think Obama now will win, is that many of us want the government to protect us from ourselves.
Now, Estrich raises legitimate concerns.
I don't necessarily understand the problem Rosie is going through. I have insurance and don't have any health factors that will greatly impede getting insurance. But my mother-in-law suffers from Rosie's problem. For a time she had some strange abdominal pains that no one could explain, and because of this health risk, insurance agencies won't cover her. She's lucky to be on her husband's plan, though it carries a huge deductable, but on her own, she's out of luck. That hardly seems fair, especially considering that in a crisis she could find herself facing backruptcy. No one with any amount of compassion would ever wish that on someone.
Politicians, especially those on the left, want to make sure everyone has insurance, as though health insurance is this magical entity that mystically reduces the cost of health care. But health insurance isn't a panacea by any means, and the idea of making sure everyone is covered ignores the very principles that makes insurance work.
Insurance isn't a basic right owed anyone. If any thing is a basic right owed, it might be the health care itself, which is a subtle distinction, and even then there are arguments to make about it.
Insurance is really just a business. People who started insurance noted that personal disasters can be devastating and practically impossible to recover from. But such disasters are relatively rare. Now, in normal course of events, back in the days when we actually cared about our neighbor and didn't have the government looking over our shoulders to ensure we played nice and fair, lest there be a lawsuit, if one of our neighbors fell into hard times, everyone (or at least a large number of people) pitched in to help. They provided food, water, and shelter, and contacted a friend who had a brother who knew a person who could employ the downtrodden unfortunate.
In some ways, though, this neighborliness can be inefficient and no effective enough. In a small community, no one is going to be able to provide the $6 million needed for the lifesaving operation to rescue the victim of a terrible accident from the brink of death. Thus it isn't necessarily effective. Furthermore, even if at some point in time the community could have afford the $6 million, there was no guarantee that $6 million would be at hand when needed. Thus it isn't necessarily efficient.
The insurance people then offered a service. They would regularly collect small donations that would be put into a fund. When disaster hit, disaster beyond the economic capability of the members, money would be drawn from that fund to aid the victim. It was more efficient because regular payments meant a continual, calculable, and immediately accessible source of money, and if it could attract enough customers, from many communities, then it would be more effective, as well. Of course, since the insurers are offering a service, a portion of those payments would go to salaries.
Now, insurance agencies cannot cover everyone. In order to survive, in order to be capable of helping its customers, it has to have a relatively large body of low-risk customers. It has to rely on the probability that most of the people who pay insurance in fact will never need the insurance. And this immediately creates tension. People at high risk of cancer--like my grandfather, who smoked like chimney and drank like a fish--are those who will most likely face expensive medical procedures beyond their economic capabilities. But these are the people insurance agencies want to cover the least, because they will in turn need large withdrawals from the funds. It is almost self-contradictory. Insurance exists to help people who have to pay enormous amounts of money, and yet if insurance covers those people, it risks going out of business due to have all its funds drained dry.
There are a lot of calculations that need to be made in order to determine, then, who to cover and who not to cover. The agency has to take on some amount of risk, for otherwise it cannot cover anyone. But how much risk is a difficult balancing act. If an agency discovers that 75% of smokers require expensive surgeries, respirators, or other medical services, that agency might decide that covering smokers is too risky. The payouts will be more than the pay-ins, and the company cannot keep afloat. But if the agency instead discovers that only 30% of smokers require expensive treatment, then it might be willing to gamble by covering smokers.
Obama wants to offer health insurance to every American, regardless of medical history. It sounds nice. Those like Rosie and my mother-in-law would finally be able to have insurance. It would certainly be a relief and a boon, especially as the financial crisis tightens budgets, increases unemployment, ruins retirement plans, and cast a cloud of doubt on the future. But the question becomes: if offering health insurance to everyone can be done, why hasn't it been done?
There are two potential answers. One is that the insurance companies are greedy and would rather rake in the money and never pay it back out. The other is that the insurance companies are already stretched as far as they can go, and taking on additional risk would endanger them. If too many risky customers demanded payments all at once, the company could go under.
You know, now that I mention it, that sounds remarkably like something else I've heard about just recently. What was it? Oh yeah! It had something to do with the Democratic government demanding that mortgages be offered to people that couldn't quite make the credit checks, down payments, and other factors required for qualification. When all those people couldn't meet their payments when the housing bubble burst and the economy slowed down, what happened to all those banks? That's right, they collapsed, forcing us to attempt a $700 billion bailout plan.
Of course, the analogy only works if the second case holds, the case where insurance companies are already taking on as much risk as they think they can afford. Who knows? Maybe Obama is right in thinking the insurance providers can take on unlimited amounts of risk and not suffer for it. It's a nice delusion.
The problem isn't that McCain is out of touch with the ordinary person. The problem is more that McCain doesn't have a satisfactory answer for the ordinary person. What is he supposed to say? If he toes the line Obama is, wouldn't he be saying "Well, I'll make sure you get insurance at the risk of the whole system collapsing in ten or fifteen years, just like the mortgage agencies"? Or maybe, "I'll make sure you get insurance, but at the cost of thousands of people losing their jobs as high taxation slows the economy down and forces companies to lay off their workers?" If he follows his principles, could he possibly hope to win by saying, "Sorry, but I can't make thousands of people suffer just for your benefit, so you'll have to regretably fall through the cracks" or "the reality is the government simply can't guarantee you insurance, so you'll have to rely on providence and your neighbors"? Of course he can't say anything like that. But that doesn't mean he's out of touch.
But Obama offers the goodies, which must mean he's in touch with the ordinary person. And that, of course, is why he'll make the presidency.
That being said, I think there's a subtle clue in this particular column as to why I think Obama will win. It isn't because he's the new face of change, or that McCain is a warmongerer, or anything like that.
I believe it is because Obama promises goodies. End of story.
Right now, we're in a bit of a financial crisis, and there's concerns of whether this crisis will continue to develop until we're in a widescale depression. On the minds of the people of the United States is not: "how am I going to work through this?" Instead, it is "how is the government going to save me?"
I understand very well that the government exists to protect us. It gives us our laws, it maintains a military against outside forces, it provides a legislative system to adjust laws to be fair, it offers an executive system to enforce those laws for our protection, and in even hands us a judicial system to ensure that disputes are settled, be they civil or criminal. This is all very moving, very touching, very assuring.
So the government protects us from outsiders (or at least it is supposed to), and the government protects us from our neighbors. But the big crisis in our nation, and why I think Obama now will win, is that many of us want the government to protect us from ourselves.
Now, Estrich raises legitimate concerns.
[Rosie] does not believe [McCain] will help people like her: People who are "lucky" to be covered by an HMO where the lines are endless and the care is too often haphazard. It was not her first choice, it was the only insurance she could get. Blue Cross twice rejected her, the first time because she took medication for gastritis. Gastritis? She was lucky to get coverage by the HMO. If she tried now, with arthritis and high blood pressure, not to mention a fussy stomach, even they would turn her down.The problem of getting health care to those most in need is one of the hot topics in this presidential debate. Who should have insurance and how much that insurance should cover are vital questions. The answers people want is "everyone and everything." Obama wants to promise that; McCain doesn't. And for this, Obama is heralded as a savior, and McCain out of touch with the common person.
I don't necessarily understand the problem Rosie is going through. I have insurance and don't have any health factors that will greatly impede getting insurance. But my mother-in-law suffers from Rosie's problem. For a time she had some strange abdominal pains that no one could explain, and because of this health risk, insurance agencies won't cover her. She's lucky to be on her husband's plan, though it carries a huge deductable, but on her own, she's out of luck. That hardly seems fair, especially considering that in a crisis she could find herself facing backruptcy. No one with any amount of compassion would ever wish that on someone.
Politicians, especially those on the left, want to make sure everyone has insurance, as though health insurance is this magical entity that mystically reduces the cost of health care. But health insurance isn't a panacea by any means, and the idea of making sure everyone is covered ignores the very principles that makes insurance work.
Insurance isn't a basic right owed anyone. If any thing is a basic right owed, it might be the health care itself, which is a subtle distinction, and even then there are arguments to make about it.
Insurance is really just a business. People who started insurance noted that personal disasters can be devastating and practically impossible to recover from. But such disasters are relatively rare. Now, in normal course of events, back in the days when we actually cared about our neighbor and didn't have the government looking over our shoulders to ensure we played nice and fair, lest there be a lawsuit, if one of our neighbors fell into hard times, everyone (or at least a large number of people) pitched in to help. They provided food, water, and shelter, and contacted a friend who had a brother who knew a person who could employ the downtrodden unfortunate.
In some ways, though, this neighborliness can be inefficient and no effective enough. In a small community, no one is going to be able to provide the $6 million needed for the lifesaving operation to rescue the victim of a terrible accident from the brink of death. Thus it isn't necessarily effective. Furthermore, even if at some point in time the community could have afford the $6 million, there was no guarantee that $6 million would be at hand when needed. Thus it isn't necessarily efficient.
The insurance people then offered a service. They would regularly collect small donations that would be put into a fund. When disaster hit, disaster beyond the economic capability of the members, money would be drawn from that fund to aid the victim. It was more efficient because regular payments meant a continual, calculable, and immediately accessible source of money, and if it could attract enough customers, from many communities, then it would be more effective, as well. Of course, since the insurers are offering a service, a portion of those payments would go to salaries.
Now, insurance agencies cannot cover everyone. In order to survive, in order to be capable of helping its customers, it has to have a relatively large body of low-risk customers. It has to rely on the probability that most of the people who pay insurance in fact will never need the insurance. And this immediately creates tension. People at high risk of cancer--like my grandfather, who smoked like chimney and drank like a fish--are those who will most likely face expensive medical procedures beyond their economic capabilities. But these are the people insurance agencies want to cover the least, because they will in turn need large withdrawals from the funds. It is almost self-contradictory. Insurance exists to help people who have to pay enormous amounts of money, and yet if insurance covers those people, it risks going out of business due to have all its funds drained dry.
There are a lot of calculations that need to be made in order to determine, then, who to cover and who not to cover. The agency has to take on some amount of risk, for otherwise it cannot cover anyone. But how much risk is a difficult balancing act. If an agency discovers that 75% of smokers require expensive surgeries, respirators, or other medical services, that agency might decide that covering smokers is too risky. The payouts will be more than the pay-ins, and the company cannot keep afloat. But if the agency instead discovers that only 30% of smokers require expensive treatment, then it might be willing to gamble by covering smokers.
Obama wants to offer health insurance to every American, regardless of medical history. It sounds nice. Those like Rosie and my mother-in-law would finally be able to have insurance. It would certainly be a relief and a boon, especially as the financial crisis tightens budgets, increases unemployment, ruins retirement plans, and cast a cloud of doubt on the future. But the question becomes: if offering health insurance to everyone can be done, why hasn't it been done?
There are two potential answers. One is that the insurance companies are greedy and would rather rake in the money and never pay it back out. The other is that the insurance companies are already stretched as far as they can go, and taking on additional risk would endanger them. If too many risky customers demanded payments all at once, the company could go under.
You know, now that I mention it, that sounds remarkably like something else I've heard about just recently. What was it? Oh yeah! It had something to do with the Democratic government demanding that mortgages be offered to people that couldn't quite make the credit checks, down payments, and other factors required for qualification. When all those people couldn't meet their payments when the housing bubble burst and the economy slowed down, what happened to all those banks? That's right, they collapsed, forcing us to attempt a $700 billion bailout plan.
Of course, the analogy only works if the second case holds, the case where insurance companies are already taking on as much risk as they think they can afford. Who knows? Maybe Obama is right in thinking the insurance providers can take on unlimited amounts of risk and not suffer for it. It's a nice delusion.
The problem isn't that McCain is out of touch with the ordinary person. The problem is more that McCain doesn't have a satisfactory answer for the ordinary person. What is he supposed to say? If he toes the line Obama is, wouldn't he be saying "Well, I'll make sure you get insurance at the risk of the whole system collapsing in ten or fifteen years, just like the mortgage agencies"? Or maybe, "I'll make sure you get insurance, but at the cost of thousands of people losing their jobs as high taxation slows the economy down and forces companies to lay off their workers?" If he follows his principles, could he possibly hope to win by saying, "Sorry, but I can't make thousands of people suffer just for your benefit, so you'll have to regretably fall through the cracks" or "the reality is the government simply can't guarantee you insurance, so you'll have to rely on providence and your neighbors"? Of course he can't say anything like that. But that doesn't mean he's out of touch.
But Obama offers the goodies, which must mean he's in touch with the ordinary person. And that, of course, is why he'll make the presidency.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Vampires
For a while now, I've had the urge to write about vampires. But then, so has every would-be writer out there. The literature is rife with vampire stories, many of them absolutely atrocious. Of course, if you really want to see bad vampire literature, check out any of the creative writing forums. There's usually a vampire post every few days, and most of them will have your eyes rolling as you think, "oh, please".
If I were to write about vampires, how would I escape the terrible vampire writing that is so prevalent? This is actually quite a daunting task, especially in light of the typical trend towards "good" vampires. You know, the ones that only suck blood of willing victims, or ones that only take their blood from hospitals, or ones that try to get by without drinking blood at all. Part of the reason we see this trend is because historically, vampires have been absolutely evil, and typically only appear in the horror genre. In order to really work with the romantic aspect of the vampire, though, especially if you want to justify your protagonist throwing herself at a vampire, then there has to be some leeway towards goodness. Yet I don't necessarily agree with that trend, because the very concept of a vampire seems to require insurmountable innate evil.
I come to this conclusion because I see vampires through a Catholic lens. Let's see what we can deduce from Catholic teaching applied to some of the common details surrounding vampires. Vampires are undead, drink the blood of the living, and are usually vulnerable to holy relics in some form, sunlight, a stake through the heart, and perhaps even garlic.
Let's look at the undead aspect, of which we first need a good working definition. What does it mean for a creature to be undead? Some might try to describe "undead" as both dead and alive, or neither dead nor alive. In the first case, we see something more akin to one who has died and yet remains supernaturally animated, whereas in the second, one is somehow in a limbo between life and death, with death somehow not complete, but full life somehow incapable of being restored.
Catholic doctrine tells us that the soul is the form of the body. It is the life force, the animating factor. Without the soul, the body is nothing but dust; it is dead. Human beings are a union of body and a spiritual soul; in other words, our animating force is not some material thing, like the souls of plants and animals, which can break down and decay. Our souls are eternal, lasting beyond the death of the body.
With this in mind, we turn to death itself. Death is the complete separation between body and soul, which is obvious since the soul is life force. When the soul leaves, the body cannot be alive. While the soul remains, the body is alive and could potentially be resuscitated. This seems pretty clear-cut. But where could the undead enter? It seems to me that with such a distinction, it makes it hard to argue about a state between life and death, in which life pretty much over but death not quite complete.
What then about the other option? We know from Hebrews that we die once, and after that are judged. What we don't know is exactly what transpires when a soul leaves the body. We know that it goes to Hell if it is in a state of mortal sin, and we know it goes to Heaven if not, maybe via Purgatory. But, given that souls are not spacial entities, what does it necessarily mean for a soul to go to Heaven or to Hell? It is difficult to conceive of these things without any spacial references. Nor do we know how a soul can or cannot interact with the material world once in Heaven or Hell. It certainly seems that entities in Hell have some limited access to the material world. At least, if we believe that the Devil is in Hell, and has been since the rebellion, it seems that he and his legions of fallen angels have some interaction with the material world.
If being undead means having died and then somehow becoming reanimated supernaturally, then it seems that it must follow a procession like this: A person dies, and at the moment of death is judged (his position fixed in eternity), but due to being capable of interacting with the material world, before reaching Hell somehow latches onto his former body and through some supernatural process re-inhabits it. Perhaps the only fictional part of this process is the reestablishment of the soul in the body, which pretty much contradicts Church doctrine.
So which do we pick? Do we suppose some potential interim state between life and death, a point where we can claim that there is no longer life, but death hasn't quite taken complete control, or do we suppose that the soul somehow returns to the body, however imperfectly? The difference, of course, is important in the way that the vampire is ultimately handled. If the former is permitted, then the vampire always stands a chance of redemption, and could potentially be moved by grace. If the latter is to be the case, then vampire is beyond redemption, having already been damned, and yet somehow lingers in the world.
In my humble opinion, the latter seems the easier swallow. We have Biblical evidence of demon possession of living creatures, both human and animal. While there's not anything to say that demons possessed dead or nonliving things, this still gives us the idea that the damned can potentially interact with the world in a more physical sense than just tempting the faithful into sin, and that they can somehow inhabit a material form. It isn't a stretch to apply that to a soul seeking to take back its own decaying body. Whereas to suggest a state between life and death really stretches the notion of the role of the soul as the animating force and the nature of death.
In my next posts, I'll work with the notion that a vampire is a being that died and is attempting to reanimated its former body, and how that works, in a Catholic sense, with some of the other legends surrounding vampires.
If I were to write about vampires, how would I escape the terrible vampire writing that is so prevalent? This is actually quite a daunting task, especially in light of the typical trend towards "good" vampires. You know, the ones that only suck blood of willing victims, or ones that only take their blood from hospitals, or ones that try to get by without drinking blood at all. Part of the reason we see this trend is because historically, vampires have been absolutely evil, and typically only appear in the horror genre. In order to really work with the romantic aspect of the vampire, though, especially if you want to justify your protagonist throwing herself at a vampire, then there has to be some leeway towards goodness. Yet I don't necessarily agree with that trend, because the very concept of a vampire seems to require insurmountable innate evil.
I come to this conclusion because I see vampires through a Catholic lens. Let's see what we can deduce from Catholic teaching applied to some of the common details surrounding vampires. Vampires are undead, drink the blood of the living, and are usually vulnerable to holy relics in some form, sunlight, a stake through the heart, and perhaps even garlic.
Let's look at the undead aspect, of which we first need a good working definition. What does it mean for a creature to be undead? Some might try to describe "undead" as both dead and alive, or neither dead nor alive. In the first case, we see something more akin to one who has died and yet remains supernaturally animated, whereas in the second, one is somehow in a limbo between life and death, with death somehow not complete, but full life somehow incapable of being restored.
Catholic doctrine tells us that the soul is the form of the body. It is the life force, the animating factor. Without the soul, the body is nothing but dust; it is dead. Human beings are a union of body and a spiritual soul; in other words, our animating force is not some material thing, like the souls of plants and animals, which can break down and decay. Our souls are eternal, lasting beyond the death of the body.
With this in mind, we turn to death itself. Death is the complete separation between body and soul, which is obvious since the soul is life force. When the soul leaves, the body cannot be alive. While the soul remains, the body is alive and could potentially be resuscitated. This seems pretty clear-cut. But where could the undead enter? It seems to me that with such a distinction, it makes it hard to argue about a state between life and death, in which life pretty much over but death not quite complete.
What then about the other option? We know from Hebrews that we die once, and after that are judged. What we don't know is exactly what transpires when a soul leaves the body. We know that it goes to Hell if it is in a state of mortal sin, and we know it goes to Heaven if not, maybe via Purgatory. But, given that souls are not spacial entities, what does it necessarily mean for a soul to go to Heaven or to Hell? It is difficult to conceive of these things without any spacial references. Nor do we know how a soul can or cannot interact with the material world once in Heaven or Hell. It certainly seems that entities in Hell have some limited access to the material world. At least, if we believe that the Devil is in Hell, and has been since the rebellion, it seems that he and his legions of fallen angels have some interaction with the material world.
If being undead means having died and then somehow becoming reanimated supernaturally, then it seems that it must follow a procession like this: A person dies, and at the moment of death is judged (his position fixed in eternity), but due to being capable of interacting with the material world, before reaching Hell somehow latches onto his former body and through some supernatural process re-inhabits it. Perhaps the only fictional part of this process is the reestablishment of the soul in the body, which pretty much contradicts Church doctrine.
So which do we pick? Do we suppose some potential interim state between life and death, a point where we can claim that there is no longer life, but death hasn't quite taken complete control, or do we suppose that the soul somehow returns to the body, however imperfectly? The difference, of course, is important in the way that the vampire is ultimately handled. If the former is permitted, then the vampire always stands a chance of redemption, and could potentially be moved by grace. If the latter is to be the case, then vampire is beyond redemption, having already been damned, and yet somehow lingers in the world.
In my humble opinion, the latter seems the easier swallow. We have Biblical evidence of demon possession of living creatures, both human and animal. While there's not anything to say that demons possessed dead or nonliving things, this still gives us the idea that the damned can potentially interact with the world in a more physical sense than just tempting the faithful into sin, and that they can somehow inhabit a material form. It isn't a stretch to apply that to a soul seeking to take back its own decaying body. Whereas to suggest a state between life and death really stretches the notion of the role of the soul as the animating force and the nature of death.
In my next posts, I'll work with the notion that a vampire is a being that died and is attempting to reanimated its former body, and how that works, in a Catholic sense, with some of the other legends surrounding vampires.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
NFL Week 5 picks
TEN @ BAL: BAL (Maybe I just have something against TEN. But BAL's defense is pretty good, and Flacco is pretty impressive. 20-16)
KC @ CAR: CAR (DEN made KC look like Super Bowl contenders, but it is still KC. 24-10)
CHI @ DET: CHI (Da Bears. 20-6)
ATL @ GB: GB (Defensively GB should do well, and as long as Rodgers is good to go, the offense should move the ball. 23-17)
IND @ HOU: IND (The bye hopefully rested IND players enough to start patching things back together. 28-20)
SD @ MIA: SD (MIA might think they're explosive after drubbing NE, but SD is getting back the confidence. 34-30)
SEA @ NYG: NYG (SEA just doesn't have it together this season, and they're on the road. 21-17)
WAS @ PHI: PHI (Defense and McNabb. It will be harder for PHI if Westbrook is still out, but I think they'll manage. 24-20)
TB @ DEN: DEN (Though Griese has shown himself capable of winning against former teams, I think DEN should have its act together for this one. 24-20)
BUF @ ARI: ARI (No feel on this one. 22-17)
CIN @ DAL: DAL (Surely DAL won't lose this one. 30-15)
NE @ SF: NE (Coming off a bye might be the only good thing to say about NE. 21-20)
PIT @ JAC: PIT (JAC is struggling, but the PIT defense is still very strong. Probably another low-scorer. 19-12)
MIN @ NO: NO (MIN tried to be resurgent and didn't do much, but expect a good running game. 21-17)
Strength of confidence: 10-4
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4
KC @ CAR: CAR (DEN made KC look like Super Bowl contenders, but it is still KC. 24-10)
CHI @ DET: CHI (Da Bears. 20-6)
ATL @ GB: GB (Defensively GB should do well, and as long as Rodgers is good to go, the offense should move the ball. 23-17)
IND @ HOU: IND (The bye hopefully rested IND players enough to start patching things back together. 28-20)
SD @ MIA: SD (MIA might think they're explosive after drubbing NE, but SD is getting back the confidence. 34-30)
SEA @ NYG: NYG (SEA just doesn't have it together this season, and they're on the road. 21-17)
WAS @ PHI: PHI (Defense and McNabb. It will be harder for PHI if Westbrook is still out, but I think they'll manage. 24-20)
TB @ DEN: DEN (Though Griese has shown himself capable of winning against former teams, I think DEN should have its act together for this one. 24-20)
BUF @ ARI: ARI (No feel on this one. 22-17)
CIN @ DAL: DAL (Surely DAL won't lose this one. 30-15)
NE @ SF: NE (Coming off a bye might be the only good thing to say about NE. 21-20)
PIT @ JAC: PIT (JAC is struggling, but the PIT defense is still very strong. Probably another low-scorer. 19-12)
MIN @ NO: NO (MIN tried to be resurgent and didn't do much, but expect a good running game. 21-17)
Strength of confidence: 10-4
Week 4: 7-6
Week 3: 12-4
Finger Pointing
If there is anything that is a bi-partisan measure, it is passing the buck. Regardless of where one might stand on the issue, it is still abhorrent how politicians point fingers, cast off blame, and try to score political points.
On the left, Nancy Pelosi tried to use the necessity of passing the bailout package as an advantage to grandstand and point fingers at the Bush Administration for bringing us here. As far as she is concerned, she is both right and wrong. This government failed to read the writing on the walls and thus curtail bad policies that had been implemented in past administrations. However, Bush's economic policy raised federal revenue to levels previously unseen by cutting taxes to the wealthy and to corporations. On the other hand, Bush's administration did also raise spending to heretofore unseen levels, which also carries part of the blame.
On the right, Republicans in the House used Pelosi's grandstanding as an excuse not to vote for an unpopular bill.
On both sides, there were a large number of Representatives that hoped that they could vote "no" and still have the bill pass. In part because they felt they could score political points, and in part because they feared they would lose reelection if they voted "aye".
Overall, there was a complete failure of conscience, a willingness to place pride and ego ahead of what needed to be done. Now, I think the measure should have failed, and I think we can make it through this crisis without government intervention. There's no guarantee that government intervention will avert crisis in the first place, and though there is precedent that this might actually work, there are so many factors involved that there is no way to predict what will happen. But if a Congressman is willing to vote "no" on a bill in order to secure reelection when his conscience tells him that he should vote "aye", there is a severe problem.
There are a number of things that we need to keep in mind when dealing with our political system. First, there is no divine mandate for the United States of America. God did not direct us to create this nation as He directed the Hebrews to create Israel. The USA is just one nation among many. Someday, it too may just be another chapter in a history book. True, there are many good things about the USA, many things that make it the greatest nation in the world. But that is today. That there is no God-given mandate means that there is no guarantee we'll be the greatest nation in the world tomorrow. The lesson here is that we cannot as a nation feel assured that we will always be on top, that fortune will always favor us, that we can do no wrong.
Second, there is no God-given mandate that we should be a democratic republic. If we cherish our system, we have to realize that we can lose it, that we can hand it over to people who will abuse it, that we can let fall apart through apathy. God won't intervene to save our democracy.
Third, there is no God-given mandate that any particular candidate should take office, no matter his credentials, no matter what office. Any person has only a finite span in office, can only accomplish so much once there.
The lesson here is humility. When we as a nation start speaking, "Our way or the highway," then we had better be sure that our way is the right way. Note: it is not necessarily wrong to say "my way or the highway", because my way might indeed be right. But I also need to act humbly when saying it, and I need to have good reasons for saying it. When we start saying "our way or the highway" for no other reason than other people, other nations disagree with us, then we have abandoned humility and fallen to pride.
When we starting forcing our governmental system on other nations, we need to watch out. We may be right in suggesting they change, but then, we might be wrong as well. We need to make sure our reasons are something more than, "It's what we do."
When we start falling for the mentality that this candidate or that candidate must or must not attain office, we start falling to pride. We, not God, are the ones who know everything, and thus can definitively state that candidate A will bring ruin and wreckage, while candidate B will save us from all sins and bring us to everlasting toys, Amen. Now, we might have very good reasons to believe that candidate A might do terrible things while in office. But he is still one man, and can only do so much. We might have very good reasons to believe that candidate B will issue in an era of prosperity, and that would be nice, but he is still only one man. His era will be finite, and he will probably do other things that will tick us off.
The problem I see in Congress is this. A person runs for office, wanting to make a difference. He finds he has to cater to the voters if he wants to get elected, and so he has to compromise his policies to make it in. Once he's in, he finds himself in a dilemma. Accomplish his agenda, or accomplish what his voters--especially interest groups that funded his campaign--want him to do. Sometimes that isn't too difficult, when policies and agendas coincide. But when there is conflict, we start to see just how our system corrupts our politicians.
It starts out so simply. A candidate thinks that he cannot make a difference if he isn't elected, and so he changes his tune to attract the most voters. Once he's in, he faces the dilemma that if he doesn't please his constituents, then he can't stay in and effect change. Thus he can either keep compromising his policies, perhaps even against his conscience, or he can keep to his conscience and risk losing the next election. It seems like a double bind. He's damned either path he takes.
It reminds me a little of the musical version of "Les Miserables". Valjean sings: "If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned." In this scenario, Valjean, a convict who broke parole and disappeared, only to later establish himself as first a successful businessman and then mayor, faces the horror of learning of some other man accused in his place, accused of being him. If Valjean speaks out, he'll lose his business, and the whole town will return to the economic shambles from which he raised it. He sings: "I am the master of hundreds of workers. They all look to me. Can I abandon them, how will I live, if I am not free?" And yet he eventually comes to the right conclusion.
There was no God-given mandate that the town should be economically prosperous, that Valjean should be mayor, that Valjean should be the savior of all those people. There was a God-given mandate to seek the redemption of his own soul, and there was a God-given mandate that one cannot use evil means to seek a good end. Thus the choice to forsake the town and reveal himself as the true escaped convict was the only one Valjean could justifiably make.
The same situation applies to Congress. No single candidate is our savior. At least, I don't see any of them dying on a cross to redeem our sins. Thus no single candidate has the right to claim the importance of staying in office over doing what is right. Perhaps there is some justification of doing wrong if the Congressman's conscience tells him that the wrong act is somehow right, but that's as far as it can extend. No Congressman is justified in voting against his conscience in order to gain political points and hold onto his office.
It is pride that leads one to believe that somehow the fate of all the nation, perhaps even all of mankind, hinges upon him remaining in office. And yet such a person should be humble. He has been entrusted with an enormous task, that of guiding a nation of hundreds of millions of people, in trying to craft legislation that is good for the nation, and in trying to defeat legislation that he believes will hurt the nation. He should be humble, for he has been given a chance few people ever get. He should be humble, for only then will he be capable of setting aside partisan politics, politics as usual, scoring political points, and so on. He should be humble, do what he believes is right, regardless of party lines or popularity. If he loses office by doing so, then so be it. He did what he could, and if people won't accept what he did, then that's that.
God Himself only showed us the way. He didn't force us to take it. Our politicians should be so humble.
On the left, Nancy Pelosi tried to use the necessity of passing the bailout package as an advantage to grandstand and point fingers at the Bush Administration for bringing us here. As far as she is concerned, she is both right and wrong. This government failed to read the writing on the walls and thus curtail bad policies that had been implemented in past administrations. However, Bush's economic policy raised federal revenue to levels previously unseen by cutting taxes to the wealthy and to corporations. On the other hand, Bush's administration did also raise spending to heretofore unseen levels, which also carries part of the blame.
On the right, Republicans in the House used Pelosi's grandstanding as an excuse not to vote for an unpopular bill.
On both sides, there were a large number of Representatives that hoped that they could vote "no" and still have the bill pass. In part because they felt they could score political points, and in part because they feared they would lose reelection if they voted "aye".
Overall, there was a complete failure of conscience, a willingness to place pride and ego ahead of what needed to be done. Now, I think the measure should have failed, and I think we can make it through this crisis without government intervention. There's no guarantee that government intervention will avert crisis in the first place, and though there is precedent that this might actually work, there are so many factors involved that there is no way to predict what will happen. But if a Congressman is willing to vote "no" on a bill in order to secure reelection when his conscience tells him that he should vote "aye", there is a severe problem.
There are a number of things that we need to keep in mind when dealing with our political system. First, there is no divine mandate for the United States of America. God did not direct us to create this nation as He directed the Hebrews to create Israel. The USA is just one nation among many. Someday, it too may just be another chapter in a history book. True, there are many good things about the USA, many things that make it the greatest nation in the world. But that is today. That there is no God-given mandate means that there is no guarantee we'll be the greatest nation in the world tomorrow. The lesson here is that we cannot as a nation feel assured that we will always be on top, that fortune will always favor us, that we can do no wrong.
Second, there is no God-given mandate that we should be a democratic republic. If we cherish our system, we have to realize that we can lose it, that we can hand it over to people who will abuse it, that we can let fall apart through apathy. God won't intervene to save our democracy.
Third, there is no God-given mandate that any particular candidate should take office, no matter his credentials, no matter what office. Any person has only a finite span in office, can only accomplish so much once there.
The lesson here is humility. When we as a nation start speaking, "Our way or the highway," then we had better be sure that our way is the right way. Note: it is not necessarily wrong to say "my way or the highway", because my way might indeed be right. But I also need to act humbly when saying it, and I need to have good reasons for saying it. When we start saying "our way or the highway" for no other reason than other people, other nations disagree with us, then we have abandoned humility and fallen to pride.
When we starting forcing our governmental system on other nations, we need to watch out. We may be right in suggesting they change, but then, we might be wrong as well. We need to make sure our reasons are something more than, "It's what we do."
When we start falling for the mentality that this candidate or that candidate must or must not attain office, we start falling to pride. We, not God, are the ones who know everything, and thus can definitively state that candidate A will bring ruin and wreckage, while candidate B will save us from all sins and bring us to everlasting toys, Amen. Now, we might have very good reasons to believe that candidate A might do terrible things while in office. But he is still one man, and can only do so much. We might have very good reasons to believe that candidate B will issue in an era of prosperity, and that would be nice, but he is still only one man. His era will be finite, and he will probably do other things that will tick us off.
The problem I see in Congress is this. A person runs for office, wanting to make a difference. He finds he has to cater to the voters if he wants to get elected, and so he has to compromise his policies to make it in. Once he's in, he finds himself in a dilemma. Accomplish his agenda, or accomplish what his voters--especially interest groups that funded his campaign--want him to do. Sometimes that isn't too difficult, when policies and agendas coincide. But when there is conflict, we start to see just how our system corrupts our politicians.
It starts out so simply. A candidate thinks that he cannot make a difference if he isn't elected, and so he changes his tune to attract the most voters. Once he's in, he faces the dilemma that if he doesn't please his constituents, then he can't stay in and effect change. Thus he can either keep compromising his policies, perhaps even against his conscience, or he can keep to his conscience and risk losing the next election. It seems like a double bind. He's damned either path he takes.
It reminds me a little of the musical version of "Les Miserables". Valjean sings: "If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned." In this scenario, Valjean, a convict who broke parole and disappeared, only to later establish himself as first a successful businessman and then mayor, faces the horror of learning of some other man accused in his place, accused of being him. If Valjean speaks out, he'll lose his business, and the whole town will return to the economic shambles from which he raised it. He sings: "I am the master of hundreds of workers. They all look to me. Can I abandon them, how will I live, if I am not free?" And yet he eventually comes to the right conclusion.
There was no God-given mandate that the town should be economically prosperous, that Valjean should be mayor, that Valjean should be the savior of all those people. There was a God-given mandate to seek the redemption of his own soul, and there was a God-given mandate that one cannot use evil means to seek a good end. Thus the choice to forsake the town and reveal himself as the true escaped convict was the only one Valjean could justifiably make.
The same situation applies to Congress. No single candidate is our savior. At least, I don't see any of them dying on a cross to redeem our sins. Thus no single candidate has the right to claim the importance of staying in office over doing what is right. Perhaps there is some justification of doing wrong if the Congressman's conscience tells him that the wrong act is somehow right, but that's as far as it can extend. No Congressman is justified in voting against his conscience in order to gain political points and hold onto his office.
It is pride that leads one to believe that somehow the fate of all the nation, perhaps even all of mankind, hinges upon him remaining in office. And yet such a person should be humble. He has been entrusted with an enormous task, that of guiding a nation of hundreds of millions of people, in trying to craft legislation that is good for the nation, and in trying to defeat legislation that he believes will hurt the nation. He should be humble, for he has been given a chance few people ever get. He should be humble, for only then will he be capable of setting aside partisan politics, politics as usual, scoring political points, and so on. He should be humble, do what he believes is right, regardless of party lines or popularity. If he loses office by doing so, then so be it. He did what he could, and if people won't accept what he did, then that's that.
God Himself only showed us the way. He didn't force us to take it. Our politicians should be so humble.
Week 4 Results, with Soapboxing
Well, as predicted, I only scored 7-6 this week in my picks. The question one might ask: if I could guess that I would only succeed 7-6, why not change my picks to something stronger? The answer: some of these defeats I just couldn't see.
To be perfectly honest, I suppose I could have conceived of Kansas City toppling Denver, since I knew Denver has historically had problems in Arrowhead Stadium, but the Chiefs have been particularly bad this year, whereas Denver at least had an explosive offense. We will see if that continues. Dallas, too, was supposed to be so strong that there was never any hope for Washington, but they, too, were upset. I did call the Jets beating the Cardinals, though certainly not in such a devastating fashion; I did call Tampa Bay over Green Bay; I did call Carolina over Atlanta; likewise Chicago over Philadelphia. The reason I mention those is that they were risky games, ones that I either couldn't call one way or the other, or was taking a gamble. I will admit that picking Houston over Jacksonville and Minnesota over Tennessee were big gambles I made that didn't pay off, but the lesson is this: any given Sunday, anything can happen. A titan will continue plundering or will fall. A weak team comes together for a few brilliant moments to make an upset, or continues playing poorly. Close teams battle it out to the last nail-biting seconds. Games go into overtime and are largely decided by the coin toss.
As Chris Burman says, that's why they play the game.
I was happy to lose my pick last night on Monday Night Football, but in a sense I still feel justified in my choice. A touchdown--finally, after 11 quarters without a touchdown--seemed to bring Pittsburgh back into the game, but then sacking rookie quarterback Flacco, forcing a fumble that was returned for a touchdown, placed the game firmly into the Steelers' hands. Just like that, a game that had gone all Baltimore had become all Pittsburgh. Of course, that didn't mean the game was over--they fought hard for the rest of the half, and then battled it out in overtime. I like Pittsburgh, and so I'm happy they managed a much-needed win.
There's a lesson to be learned from this, though. In games, the tides can turn quickly. In real life, the tides can turn quickly. When we look at the political sphere, a couple of changes in the nation's fortunes can turn the voters from tending to the right to tending to the left, just as a terrorist attack can swing them back right.
The difference: football is game. Yes, some jobs are at stake, but those predominantly are the coaching positions and starting lineup. Politics, while people seem to treat it like a game, is real life. It is deadly serious. Right now, national politics affect some 300 million people.
When we watched the candidates debate, we see them struggling to maintain a good outward appearance while trying to tear the opponent to shreds. It is all about making cheap political points and not giving any away. In this sense, campaigning and legislating and so on is treated as a game, and that is dangerous. If politics is just a game, then the mentality easily becomes that we're not dealing with real people, real money, real problems.
The economy doesn't crash when Kansas City topples Denver 33-19. It does when bad bills are passed in efforts to score political points. When governing this nation is all about posturing, making a better show than the other guy, and trying to benefit a small target constituency rather than doing what is right, then it does seem like a game.
A game we all lose.
To be perfectly honest, I suppose I could have conceived of Kansas City toppling Denver, since I knew Denver has historically had problems in Arrowhead Stadium, but the Chiefs have been particularly bad this year, whereas Denver at least had an explosive offense. We will see if that continues. Dallas, too, was supposed to be so strong that there was never any hope for Washington, but they, too, were upset. I did call the Jets beating the Cardinals, though certainly not in such a devastating fashion; I did call Tampa Bay over Green Bay; I did call Carolina over Atlanta; likewise Chicago over Philadelphia. The reason I mention those is that they were risky games, ones that I either couldn't call one way or the other, or was taking a gamble. I will admit that picking Houston over Jacksonville and Minnesota over Tennessee were big gambles I made that didn't pay off, but the lesson is this: any given Sunday, anything can happen. A titan will continue plundering or will fall. A weak team comes together for a few brilliant moments to make an upset, or continues playing poorly. Close teams battle it out to the last nail-biting seconds. Games go into overtime and are largely decided by the coin toss.
As Chris Burman says, that's why they play the game.
I was happy to lose my pick last night on Monday Night Football, but in a sense I still feel justified in my choice. A touchdown--finally, after 11 quarters without a touchdown--seemed to bring Pittsburgh back into the game, but then sacking rookie quarterback Flacco, forcing a fumble that was returned for a touchdown, placed the game firmly into the Steelers' hands. Just like that, a game that had gone all Baltimore had become all Pittsburgh. Of course, that didn't mean the game was over--they fought hard for the rest of the half, and then battled it out in overtime. I like Pittsburgh, and so I'm happy they managed a much-needed win.
There's a lesson to be learned from this, though. In games, the tides can turn quickly. In real life, the tides can turn quickly. When we look at the political sphere, a couple of changes in the nation's fortunes can turn the voters from tending to the right to tending to the left, just as a terrorist attack can swing them back right.
The difference: football is game. Yes, some jobs are at stake, but those predominantly are the coaching positions and starting lineup. Politics, while people seem to treat it like a game, is real life. It is deadly serious. Right now, national politics affect some 300 million people.
When we watched the candidates debate, we see them struggling to maintain a good outward appearance while trying to tear the opponent to shreds. It is all about making cheap political points and not giving any away. In this sense, campaigning and legislating and so on is treated as a game, and that is dangerous. If politics is just a game, then the mentality easily becomes that we're not dealing with real people, real money, real problems.
The economy doesn't crash when Kansas City topples Denver 33-19. It does when bad bills are passed in efforts to score political points. When governing this nation is all about posturing, making a better show than the other guy, and trying to benefit a small target constituency rather than doing what is right, then it does seem like a game.
A game we all lose.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Bailout Failure
So the bailout was voted down, and surprisingly not so much along party lines. The vote count was 205-228. Those voting "yeah" numbered 140 (of 235) Democrats, and 65 (of 199) Republicans, so a sizable portion of each party broke from party lines in regards to this bill.
I must say that I'm not particularly pleased that my own representative, Barbara Cubin, voted "aye", but then, I suppose I'm against the bailout plan.
The larger question is the impact on our nation at the failure to pass this piece of legislation. The headlines scream about plummeting prices on the stock market (Dow Jones down 600+!), and there is rampant concern about savings, job safety, and paying the bills. On the one hand, I think that this is the natural consequence of the bubble bursting, and in a short period of time (a matter of months, perhaps), the economy will stabilize and we'll start our merry way upwards once again. People find out that no too many jobs were lost, and that the "fundamentals" of the economy, i.e. that portion that is still connected to the real world, are indeed still strong.
In this sense, I'm more of a do-nothing economist. The markets will right themselves. And while I feel fairly justified on this position (keep in mind I'm a computer scientist, not an economist), there is still the worry that this does portend even more dire events to come. Certainly our government thinks that a failure to do anything will open the door to doomsday scenarios, but that could simply be that our politicians believe they at least have to make a show of doing something, have some piece of legislation to point back at and say, "See? We did something about this."
I think lancing this sore is good for us, and we can't just cover up the wound with bailout packages. But then, is the infection so widespread that the healing process of bloodletting will bleed us dry before the infection is purged?
I don't have any strong answer on that. I do know that tomorrow morning, I'll wake up at 6:00 AM, have breakfast, read a little from my Bible, come to work around 7:00, and proceed with my normal daily routines. Life will move onward. If the economy tanks, well, I'll handle that somehow. I'll take whatever employment I can get to pay the bills, maybe even work two jobs for insurance.
I do know this. God will provide. It may not be what we want, but it will certainly be what we need. If I can't get my dream $75,000 a year job, well, maybe I should learn to be content with at $15,000 a year job, and live much more simply. Finances will be tight, but I can manage. And if we're willing to quit sniveling and act responsibly, the rest of us should be able to manage, as well, one way or another.
I must say that I'm not particularly pleased that my own representative, Barbara Cubin, voted "aye", but then, I suppose I'm against the bailout plan.
The larger question is the impact on our nation at the failure to pass this piece of legislation. The headlines scream about plummeting prices on the stock market (Dow Jones down 600+!), and there is rampant concern about savings, job safety, and paying the bills. On the one hand, I think that this is the natural consequence of the bubble bursting, and in a short period of time (a matter of months, perhaps), the economy will stabilize and we'll start our merry way upwards once again. People find out that no too many jobs were lost, and that the "fundamentals" of the economy, i.e. that portion that is still connected to the real world, are indeed still strong.
In this sense, I'm more of a do-nothing economist. The markets will right themselves. And while I feel fairly justified on this position (keep in mind I'm a computer scientist, not an economist), there is still the worry that this does portend even more dire events to come. Certainly our government thinks that a failure to do anything will open the door to doomsday scenarios, but that could simply be that our politicians believe they at least have to make a show of doing something, have some piece of legislation to point back at and say, "See? We did something about this."
I think lancing this sore is good for us, and we can't just cover up the wound with bailout packages. But then, is the infection so widespread that the healing process of bloodletting will bleed us dry before the infection is purged?
I don't have any strong answer on that. I do know that tomorrow morning, I'll wake up at 6:00 AM, have breakfast, read a little from my Bible, come to work around 7:00, and proceed with my normal daily routines. Life will move onward. If the economy tanks, well, I'll handle that somehow. I'll take whatever employment I can get to pay the bills, maybe even work two jobs for insurance.
I do know this. God will provide. It may not be what we want, but it will certainly be what we need. If I can't get my dream $75,000 a year job, well, maybe I should learn to be content with at $15,000 a year job, and live much more simply. Finances will be tight, but I can manage. And if we're willing to quit sniveling and act responsibly, the rest of us should be able to manage, as well, one way or another.
Earmarking a "Venial Sin"
One of the most important things McCain said in his debate against Barack Obama came early in the talks on economic issues. McCain quoted a friend of his on how pork-barrel earmarking was the gateway drug of wasteful spending. I think it was a point that McCain could have pressed forward on, and properly phrased it would have resonated well with Catholic voters, at least. Obama did not seem to understand, and that is intriguing given that Obama has typically been good at identifying the source of problems. And his lack of understanding should have been exploited, but unfortunately could not have been without taking extra time or wandering far off topic.
McCain cited $18 billion dollars in earmarks made this last fiscal year, and how Obama had earmarked nearly $400 million himself over his short career in the Senate. Now, this does not seem like a lot of money, especially in light of the $700 billion bailout package being debated in Congress, or the trillions of dollars of debt our nation is in. Obama tried to minimize the $18 billion, and I think to an extent he succeeded in diverting McCain’s message about the wasteful spending in earmarks. But McCain did get a parting shot in: “Maybe $18 billion isn’t a lot of money to Senator Obama…”
In the issue of earmarks, McCain is absolutely right. One of most important means of reining reckless government spending is to clamp down on earmarks. True, taking care of earmarks won’t necessarily solve the overall problem, but it takes care of certain interior dispositions that makes reckless spending so easy.
Earmarking is a temptation. Right now, Congressmen can slip in a few hundred thousand here, a couple million there, attaching those dollars to bills that need not have anything to do with the earmark itself. Passing an amendment to remove those earmarks from the bill is not necessarily easy, especially since “everybody” slips in egregious spending from time to time. The whole “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” really is one of the strongest bipartisan efforts in our federal government. On top of that, often it becomes the case of either voting through the earmarks, or letting a good bill that would help thousands of people die.
Our Congressmen have a duty to the American people, and that is to be fiscally responsible in their legislation. They tax income, spending, savings, investments, and so on in order to fund all the government projects. While these projects can be of vital importance—such as the military and Social Security—members of Congress have a duty to make sure that their spending is within the money the government brings in.
The problem is a disconnect between Congress and the money it plays with. Congress feels it can simply throw money around, and if it runs out of money, it can issue bonds, take out loans, or print more. If necessary, it could try to raise revenue by raising taxes, though who to tax is a hotly debated issue. But with this disposition, it is very hard to have even the incentive to be fiscally responsible.
Believe it or not, but this mentality starts with earmarks. There’s a little voice that whispers to us: “it isn’t a lot of money” and “this will please our constituents” and “everybody else does it.” Oddly enough, this sounds very much like temptation that leads us into sin.
If we had to apply labels in this analogy, then we would probably say that earmarking is a venial sin. It is so small in proportion to the larger problem that surely it doesn’t constitute to grave matter. One could easily argue that earmarking pales in comparison to spending hundreds of billions of dollars wastefully in bailing out rich CEOs of failing banks that made insensible risks and now are paying the price for their lack of prudence.
Of course, one could argue that knowingly spending millions of dollars wastefully for political points could only constitute to grave matter, but I won't argue that point. For the sake of analogy, we'll claim that earmarking is a venial sin while running a deficit of trillions of dollars, mortal sin.
Labelling earmarking as venial in this situation is not dismissing it as unimportant. Venial sin is not “sin that doesn’t matter”. It does matter. Venial sin wounds God’s grace within us. Repeated venial sin makes future sin easier and easier to commit. It causes our moral integrity to decay. It makes us shut our ears to our consciences and leads us to make excuses that further lead us down the road towards serious sin. The accumulation of venial sin inevitably allows for the commission of mortal sin.
Worse, venial sin is itself a roadblock to seeking forgiveness and living a virtuous life. We could easily see the gravity and severity of our mortal sins and truly feel remorse. But when it comes to venial sins, these are the things we tend to cling to fiercely because they are such “small” sins. These are the attachments to temporal goods that have a tendency to make our repentance something less than genuine.
This is exactly what we have going on in Congress, and why McCain is right to state that earmarking is the gateway drug of reckless spending. A little bit here, a little bit there, and who cares where this money comes from, as long as it goes someplace that will help with my reelection. But this mentality builds. If we have a bill that increases government sponsored health care for families making less than $40,000 a year, why not pay a few extra billion and bump that up to $55,000 a year? If we’re drafting a bill to send $20 billion in aid to hurricane ravaged states, why not tack on a few extra billion for struggling farmers in other states? Those few extra billion aren’t all that much, and they’re for good causes, right? And before we know it, we’re running a huge deficit because we think we can keep expanding the spending, using the rationale that we’re not spending that much more on any one particular bill.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
If we want to rein in our reckless spending, we have to radically change the mindset of those who represent us in Congress. And to root out that wasteful mentality, a key component has to be the squashing of earmarks.
Getting rid of mortal sin permits God’s grace to return to our souls, but getting rid of venial sin allows our souls to grow in grace and become ever more fortified against sin. If we want our Congressmen to stop committing the mortal sin of huge budget deficits, then they must root out the venial sin of earmarking. McCain understands this. Obama does not.
Friday, September 26, 2008
NFL Week 4 picks
ATL @ CAR: CAR (ATL has won against KC (0-3) and DET (0-3), which isn't all that remarkable, though they were solid victories. CAR has played tough against SD and CHI, and their loss to MIN shouldn't be considered too detrimental. Though MIN is 1-2, both losses come against tough teams: IND and GB. However, ATL is starting to get their feet under them, and CAR is plagued by penalties. 14-12)
CLE @ CIN: CIN (No real feel for this one. CLE's defense has done moderately well, especially against PIT, but offensively they haven't put up points. CIN is on the up, having played NYG into overtime, and it may be that Palmer is back on target. However, any game between these two can be a rough and tumble match. 28-24)
HOU @ JAC: HOU (Expect an upset here. HOU needs the win, and JAC is cocky after defeating IND last week. 21-20)
DEN @ KC: DEN (If this isn't a blowout, I'll be disappointed, but then, the past two weeks should have been blowouts, as well. Division rivalries are always tough, but DEN should be able to march the ball all day long on the KC defense. 34-17)
SF @ NO: NO (SF is on the rise, and though NO is 1-2, there's still a lot to be said about NO. It will be hard fought and probably moderately high-scoring on both sides. 33-28)
ARI @ NYJ: NYJ (No real feel on this one, either. I expect that after seeing the kinks last week when Favre was actually allowed to throw the ball, NYJ will have smoothed things out a little. 27-24)
GB @ TB: TB (The main reason, I think, that GB lost to DAL was because GB could not put pressure on Romo. TB's line has been very strong at keep the defense off Griese, and if they do that again, they'll in, hands down. 23-20)
MIN @ TEN: MIN (This is going to be a defensive battle, and when Collins is called forward to make good on passes, he'll cough a couple up. 13-9)
SD @ OAK: SD (This game should be close early, but SD will probably pull away late in the third. 38-24)
BUF @ STL: BUF (STL is changing up their quarterback, but that doesn't fix a beleaguered defense. BUF should take charge of this game and stay afloat all the way through. 24-10)
WAS @ DAL: DAL (WAS will hang with DAL for the first half, but DAL will break it open in the second half. 36-21)
PHI @ CHI: CHI (Expect CHI to have one of their on games this week, but with a huge defensive battle. 17-14)
BAL @ PIT: BAL (Roethlisburger probably won't be 100% in this game, either, and unless the offensive line gets their act together, Big Ben might wind up hurt even worse. 20-10)
Week 3 results: I was 12-4, a record good enough for playoffs. Expected record for Week 4: 7-6
CLE @ CIN: CIN (No real feel for this one. CLE's defense has done moderately well, especially against PIT, but offensively they haven't put up points. CIN is on the up, having played NYG into overtime, and it may be that Palmer is back on target. However, any game between these two can be a rough and tumble match. 28-24)
HOU @ JAC: HOU (Expect an upset here. HOU needs the win, and JAC is cocky after defeating IND last week. 21-20)
DEN @ KC: DEN (If this isn't a blowout, I'll be disappointed, but then, the past two weeks should have been blowouts, as well. Division rivalries are always tough, but DEN should be able to march the ball all day long on the KC defense. 34-17)
SF @ NO: NO (SF is on the rise, and though NO is 1-2, there's still a lot to be said about NO. It will be hard fought and probably moderately high-scoring on both sides. 33-28)
ARI @ NYJ: NYJ (No real feel on this one, either. I expect that after seeing the kinks last week when Favre was actually allowed to throw the ball, NYJ will have smoothed things out a little. 27-24)
GB @ TB: TB (The main reason, I think, that GB lost to DAL was because GB could not put pressure on Romo. TB's line has been very strong at keep the defense off Griese, and if they do that again, they'll in, hands down. 23-20)
MIN @ TEN: MIN (This is going to be a defensive battle, and when Collins is called forward to make good on passes, he'll cough a couple up. 13-9)
SD @ OAK: SD (This game should be close early, but SD will probably pull away late in the third. 38-24)
BUF @ STL: BUF (STL is changing up their quarterback, but that doesn't fix a beleaguered defense. BUF should take charge of this game and stay afloat all the way through. 24-10)
WAS @ DAL: DAL (WAS will hang with DAL for the first half, but DAL will break it open in the second half. 36-21)
PHI @ CHI: CHI (Expect CHI to have one of their on games this week, but with a huge defensive battle. 17-14)
BAL @ PIT: BAL (Roethlisburger probably won't be 100% in this game, either, and unless the offensive line gets their act together, Big Ben might wind up hurt even worse. 20-10)
Week 3 results: I was 12-4, a record good enough for playoffs. Expected record for Week 4: 7-6
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Is What We Have What We Want?
It seems to me that one of the most frustrating aspects of the political realm is that the politicians we have seem to be power-hungry and corrupt. We want new elected officials in Congress to fix the problems that previous officials have made, and yet when the new ones reach Congress, they're practically indistinguishable from the ones we voted out.
Probably for most of us in the average American realm, we can scarcely see anything that happens in D.C. as anything other than politics as usual. Take the minor rebellion led by House Republicans over the month-long break. Pundits applauded the move as initiation of change, a bold step forward, and a sign to the nation that these members of the House, at least, were serious about fixing the energy problems confronting us.
I think that perhaps there was some demonstration of resolve, some definite interest in debating the problem and trying to find solutions, and yet cynically I can only see it as "politics as usual". It was nice grandstanding, and it certainly caught attention, and I was even excited for a while. But then the break passed, Speaker Pelosi didn't bring the House back early from vacation, and then the same politicking returned to D.C. that we've all seen before.
The real problem in Congress is that Congress does not act like a governing body, but a business. People in the business want to stay in the business. People in the business are interested in giving people what the people want, not what they need. Giving people what they need isn't popular, especially if a majority of people polled in the latest survey don't want what they need.
There is something intriguing about a politician that will actually hold firm on an issue and not change direction with the blowing wind. For that, President Bush and Speaker Pelosi deserve respect. The problem is that this kind of tenacity rarely wins reelection. If a politician has a firm stand on a point that is practically a non-issue at the time of his election, no one notices. But if the non-issue becomes an issue, and people want change in the opposite direction of where that politician wants to go, he loses the election.
From the politician's point of view, if he wants to remain a politician, the winning strategy almost seems to be to follow whichever way the wind is blowing.
In addition to policy, in order to win reelection, a politician needs to campaign, both so that people can see the good he has done so far, and also so he can make promises for the future. Campaigning, though, costs money, and thus the politician's winning strategy is to go where the money is.
The net result is that the logical outcome is the production of politicians that only care about money and votes, and have no real interest in crafting real policy. Real policy that fixes problems isn't good, because removing problems removes the need for the politician to be in office. Real policy that gives people what they need is unpopular. Real policy that cracks down on corruption, pork, and bribes chokes off the much needed money to stay in office. Is it any wonder that our new, bright, honest, hopeful candidates go to D.C. and become like all the others?
Sometimes I wonder if this system is what we really want, and if it is what we want, what we can do, if anything, to fix the seemingly inherent problem.
Probably for most of us in the average American realm, we can scarcely see anything that happens in D.C. as anything other than politics as usual. Take the minor rebellion led by House Republicans over the month-long break. Pundits applauded the move as initiation of change, a bold step forward, and a sign to the nation that these members of the House, at least, were serious about fixing the energy problems confronting us.
I think that perhaps there was some demonstration of resolve, some definite interest in debating the problem and trying to find solutions, and yet cynically I can only see it as "politics as usual". It was nice grandstanding, and it certainly caught attention, and I was even excited for a while. But then the break passed, Speaker Pelosi didn't bring the House back early from vacation, and then the same politicking returned to D.C. that we've all seen before.
The real problem in Congress is that Congress does not act like a governing body, but a business. People in the business want to stay in the business. People in the business are interested in giving people what the people want, not what they need. Giving people what they need isn't popular, especially if a majority of people polled in the latest survey don't want what they need.
There is something intriguing about a politician that will actually hold firm on an issue and not change direction with the blowing wind. For that, President Bush and Speaker Pelosi deserve respect. The problem is that this kind of tenacity rarely wins reelection. If a politician has a firm stand on a point that is practically a non-issue at the time of his election, no one notices. But if the non-issue becomes an issue, and people want change in the opposite direction of where that politician wants to go, he loses the election.
From the politician's point of view, if he wants to remain a politician, the winning strategy almost seems to be to follow whichever way the wind is blowing.
In addition to policy, in order to win reelection, a politician needs to campaign, both so that people can see the good he has done so far, and also so he can make promises for the future. Campaigning, though, costs money, and thus the politician's winning strategy is to go where the money is.
The net result is that the logical outcome is the production of politicians that only care about money and votes, and have no real interest in crafting real policy. Real policy that fixes problems isn't good, because removing problems removes the need for the politician to be in office. Real policy that gives people what they need is unpopular. Real policy that cracks down on corruption, pork, and bribes chokes off the much needed money to stay in office. Is it any wonder that our new, bright, honest, hopeful candidates go to D.C. and become like all the others?
Sometimes I wonder if this system is what we really want, and if it is what we want, what we can do, if anything, to fix the seemingly inherent problem.
Greed Has Led Us Here
We need a serious self-examination when dealing with financial crisis at hand. The whole problem is not necessarily a result of capitalism run amok, though there is certainly that factor. Any economic plan seems to be the perfect economic plan, until the human factor is worked into the equation.
Search around the web, and you'll find endless articles about how this current crisis is the fault of the Clinton Administration. At that time, lenders were given incentive to offer sub-prime loans to those with poor credit, little resources at hand, and income that could be measured with welfare or unemployment checks. On the surface, this seemed like a humane move. Let us get these people their own homes! But there is something implicit behind the scenes.
The lenders were eager to offer these loans, both to avoid litigation and to earn a potential profit. And that could happen, as long as the housing market continued to rise. Anyone risking foreclosure could simply sell their house for more than they bought it. They would not suffer too much, and the lenders would still earn money off the loan. It seemed like a win-win situation.
Mark Shea takes umbrage at those who would blame the poor, and that is understandable, because we have a duty to help the poor. But that doesn't mean that the poor are completely free of blame in this, either.
Greed is the factor driving us into this financial crisis, no doubt about it. The lenders took insane risks to earn greater profits, buoyed by the hope that the government would bail them out if things turned sour. But there was greed at the lower levels, too.
Perhaps we don't notice it, because we're so used to it. We see car commercials that talk about $3000 cash back, and we're ready to jump to our feet and buy the car for that screaming deal offered us. We see all kinds of junk that we did not know existed 10 seconds before, but offered to us at a discount of 80% if we only call in the next twenty minutes. We see the Big Mac back on sale for $2, and Arby's regular roast beef on special at 4 for $5. We're now seeing regularly advertising for people who will magically dig us out of debt.
We've been trained to want everything, to want everything now, and to want everything cheap. Greed is everywhere, rampant in our society. The instant gratification generation is now.
How does this relate back to the poor? In part we're deluded. We think every family must have their own house. The poor in particular see homeowners, and the message that we send the poor is that it is all right to covet, all right to be greedy, because somehow you're entitled to the same things those homeowners have. And so when a deal comes along too good to be true, do they look at it with skepticism, or do they buy into heart and soul?
True, we've inundated them (and everyone else) with the message of have now, forget the cost. But they, too, are responsible for living within their means, responsible for paying attention to what is reasonable and what is just fantasy, and in that regard they, too, failed.
But the greed goes deeper. It comes from the generations that lived through the Great Depression who, in the aftermath of WWII, found that they could actually have things again. Everyone could have their own home, two cars, a television, a toaster, a refrigerator, and so on.
And our government not only told us that we could have this, but that we could have more, and in perpetuity. Let's see what all we've come across, thanks to this mentality.
Debt: we have immersed ourselves up to the eyeballs in debt. Why? Because we believed we had to get things immediately, even when we couldn't afford them. We worked on the assumption that, because we didn't have to pay immediately, we could have, because assuredly the funds would be there later on to pay back the debt. We see how well that has worked.
Social Security: our government started plundering Social Security back under the Johnson administration, thinking that we could simply keep paying out social security as long as our work force kept expanding as quickly as it was at the time. The Baby Boomer generation was aptly named. But then the Baby Boomers turned around barely reproduced at all, and suddenly the work force didn't grow as expected, and all that plundering started to catch up with us.
American Vehicle Industry: Back at their height, the American vehicle manufacturers started handing enormous retirement packages, working under the assumption that Americans would keep buying new cars at an ever increasing rate, and thus providing funds to make sure those packages were honored. But then came the bust. Due to foreign imports and a number of other factors, the American companies lost a large share of the market, and their profits dwindles. They could not longer honor the retirement packages, and they had to be bailed out.
Dot-com Industry: A lot of people lost out on this because they thought they could set up little dot-com industries, get bought out, and live off of that money. This also ended in a bust.
Housing Industry: Again, people believed they could keep playing the market under the assumption that the housing market would keep expanding, that property value would keep rising, and they could buy beyond their means, hold on for a while, then sell and make a profit.
We've seen this pattern again and again and again. The trend is the same. We see trend in the market. We take a huge risk and play that market under the assumption that the trend will keep on going forever. And when the trend changes, we lose.
And it is greed that makes us do that. We gamble, not with what we can afford to lose, but with everything, because we think we found the magical means of getting everything right now.
I'm sorry, but we don't need the brand new car, the 8 bedroom house, the 48 inch HD TV, an Xbox 360, a PS3, a Wii, every movie known to man, 6 4-wheelers, a boat, some jet skis, an RV, and so on. We especially don't need to put ourselves into the red to acquire all of these. But we've been taught that we have to have all of these, that we deserve all of these, and when we don't get them immediately, we fall prey to greed. The poor were as guilty as anyone else in this. The only difference is that they are the ones going to pay heaviest, while the ones who committed the most atrocious crimes are going to get bailed out and suffer little to no consequence at all.
Search around the web, and you'll find endless articles about how this current crisis is the fault of the Clinton Administration. At that time, lenders were given incentive to offer sub-prime loans to those with poor credit, little resources at hand, and income that could be measured with welfare or unemployment checks. On the surface, this seemed like a humane move. Let us get these people their own homes! But there is something implicit behind the scenes.
The lenders were eager to offer these loans, both to avoid litigation and to earn a potential profit. And that could happen, as long as the housing market continued to rise. Anyone risking foreclosure could simply sell their house for more than they bought it. They would not suffer too much, and the lenders would still earn money off the loan. It seemed like a win-win situation.
Mark Shea takes umbrage at those who would blame the poor, and that is understandable, because we have a duty to help the poor. But that doesn't mean that the poor are completely free of blame in this, either.
Greed is the factor driving us into this financial crisis, no doubt about it. The lenders took insane risks to earn greater profits, buoyed by the hope that the government would bail them out if things turned sour. But there was greed at the lower levels, too.
Perhaps we don't notice it, because we're so used to it. We see car commercials that talk about $3000 cash back, and we're ready to jump to our feet and buy the car for that screaming deal offered us. We see all kinds of junk that we did not know existed 10 seconds before, but offered to us at a discount of 80% if we only call in the next twenty minutes. We see the Big Mac back on sale for $2, and Arby's regular roast beef on special at 4 for $5. We're now seeing regularly advertising for people who will magically dig us out of debt.
We've been trained to want everything, to want everything now, and to want everything cheap. Greed is everywhere, rampant in our society. The instant gratification generation is now.
How does this relate back to the poor? In part we're deluded. We think every family must have their own house. The poor in particular see homeowners, and the message that we send the poor is that it is all right to covet, all right to be greedy, because somehow you're entitled to the same things those homeowners have. And so when a deal comes along too good to be true, do they look at it with skepticism, or do they buy into heart and soul?
True, we've inundated them (and everyone else) with the message of have now, forget the cost. But they, too, are responsible for living within their means, responsible for paying attention to what is reasonable and what is just fantasy, and in that regard they, too, failed.
But the greed goes deeper. It comes from the generations that lived through the Great Depression who, in the aftermath of WWII, found that they could actually have things again. Everyone could have their own home, two cars, a television, a toaster, a refrigerator, and so on.
And our government not only told us that we could have this, but that we could have more, and in perpetuity. Let's see what all we've come across, thanks to this mentality.
Debt: we have immersed ourselves up to the eyeballs in debt. Why? Because we believed we had to get things immediately, even when we couldn't afford them. We worked on the assumption that, because we didn't have to pay immediately, we could have, because assuredly the funds would be there later on to pay back the debt. We see how well that has worked.
Social Security: our government started plundering Social Security back under the Johnson administration, thinking that we could simply keep paying out social security as long as our work force kept expanding as quickly as it was at the time. The Baby Boomer generation was aptly named. But then the Baby Boomers turned around barely reproduced at all, and suddenly the work force didn't grow as expected, and all that plundering started to catch up with us.
American Vehicle Industry: Back at their height, the American vehicle manufacturers started handing enormous retirement packages, working under the assumption that Americans would keep buying new cars at an ever increasing rate, and thus providing funds to make sure those packages were honored. But then came the bust. Due to foreign imports and a number of other factors, the American companies lost a large share of the market, and their profits dwindles. They could not longer honor the retirement packages, and they had to be bailed out.
Dot-com Industry: A lot of people lost out on this because they thought they could set up little dot-com industries, get bought out, and live off of that money. This also ended in a bust.
Housing Industry: Again, people believed they could keep playing the market under the assumption that the housing market would keep expanding, that property value would keep rising, and they could buy beyond their means, hold on for a while, then sell and make a profit.
We've seen this pattern again and again and again. The trend is the same. We see trend in the market. We take a huge risk and play that market under the assumption that the trend will keep on going forever. And when the trend changes, we lose.
And it is greed that makes us do that. We gamble, not with what we can afford to lose, but with everything, because we think we found the magical means of getting everything right now.
I'm sorry, but we don't need the brand new car, the 8 bedroom house, the 48 inch HD TV, an Xbox 360, a PS3, a Wii, every movie known to man, 6 4-wheelers, a boat, some jet skis, an RV, and so on. We especially don't need to put ourselves into the red to acquire all of these. But we've been taught that we have to have all of these, that we deserve all of these, and when we don't get them immediately, we fall prey to greed. The poor were as guilty as anyone else in this. The only difference is that they are the ones going to pay heaviest, while the ones who committed the most atrocious crimes are going to get bailed out and suffer little to no consequence at all.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
A Response for Palin
Joseph Farah makes a an observation that Sarah Palin might face a difficult question that could make a big difference in how she is viewed. He speculates that if asked if she believes that, since salvation is through Jesus alone, that Muslims and Jews will go to Hell, that there is no direct answer to the question that won't land her in trouble. If she answers yes, then she shows herself to be a bigot. If she answers no, she loses the evangelicals. If she replies with a wishy-washy non-answer, she loses credibility. He offers the solution:
Part of the problem is that Palin, as an evangelical Christian, doesn't have a good answer, or at least, not one that is good politically. Going by the Bible, the only way to salvation is through Jesus. It doesn't become much clearer than that.
The Catholic Christian, on the other hand, has a somewhat easier recourse (though neither the Catholic nor the Evangelical has a nice brief means of answer the question). The evangelicals have to fall back solely on the Bible. Catholics can speak about natural law, and the genuine desire each human has to follow natural law. Furthermore, Catholics can talk about an earnest yearning for the Truth, which is Christ, without knowing that the Truth is Christ. Finally, Catholics can talk about the mitigating factor of invincible ignorance. Thus the Catholic response is:
"Communion with the Church and faith and obedience to Christ are necessary for salvation. However, due to circumstance, it is possible that a person visibly outside the Church is still invisibly in communion with the Church through a desire for goodness, piety, and truth. Thus, while it is normative to achieve salvation through the Church, the visible body of Christ, and thus through Christ Himself, it is possible that mercy is bestowed on those raised in invincible ignorance who yet thirst for the glory of God."
In other words: "I cannot say that Jews and Muslims are going to Hell. By ignorance of the truth, but also through a true desire for holiness, Jews and Muslims may be unknowingly seeking Christ, and in the end achieve salvation."
For Palin, not being a Catholic, I would recommend she respond:
Palin: I know exactly why you are asking that question in this forum. You want to play the "gotcha" game. You want a headline from this interview. You want something sensational. You want me to say something controversial and provocative and maybe even offensive to millions of Americans of other faiths. But I'm not going to play that game with you. I already have told you what I believe about salvation and redemption. It's the same belief hundreds of millions of other Christians around the world share. I am firmly committed to my faith, just as others are committed to their faiths. I respect the faiths of others, just as I hope they respect my beliefs. This is a serious issue that cannot be addressed adequately in bumper-sticker slogans or sound bites. Therefore, I'm not going to fall for that bait. I love to talk about my faith. That's something I'm qualified to do. I welcome the chance to talk about the issues facing this country today. That's something I'm qualified and prepared to do. But I'm not going to talk about the faiths of others. Nice try. Next question.While I feel that this reply is in keeping with a spirited, on-the-offense campaign, it is still dodging the question, and people who really care about the issue will notice it. The evangelicals will feel slighted that she didn't have the chutzpah to make a simple assertion that every evangelical believes is true and vital to their faith, and the people on the other side will see her as playing politics as usual by not giving a definite answer.
Part of the problem is that Palin, as an evangelical Christian, doesn't have a good answer, or at least, not one that is good politically. Going by the Bible, the only way to salvation is through Jesus. It doesn't become much clearer than that.
The Catholic Christian, on the other hand, has a somewhat easier recourse (though neither the Catholic nor the Evangelical has a nice brief means of answer the question). The evangelicals have to fall back solely on the Bible. Catholics can speak about natural law, and the genuine desire each human has to follow natural law. Furthermore, Catholics can talk about an earnest yearning for the Truth, which is Christ, without knowing that the Truth is Christ. Finally, Catholics can talk about the mitigating factor of invincible ignorance. Thus the Catholic response is:
"Communion with the Church and faith and obedience to Christ are necessary for salvation. However, due to circumstance, it is possible that a person visibly outside the Church is still invisibly in communion with the Church through a desire for goodness, piety, and truth. Thus, while it is normative to achieve salvation through the Church, the visible body of Christ, and thus through Christ Himself, it is possible that mercy is bestowed on those raised in invincible ignorance who yet thirst for the glory of God."
In other words: "I cannot say that Jews and Muslims are going to Hell. By ignorance of the truth, but also through a true desire for holiness, Jews and Muslims may be unknowingly seeking Christ, and in the end achieve salvation."
For Palin, not being a Catholic, I would recommend she respond:
"As all Christians, I believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Salvation is through Him. However, Jesus Himself warned us not to judge the eternal destination of our fellow man: "judge not, lest ye be judged". There is always hope that those visibly outside of Christianity may be saved. This is no different than how we deal with the courts: a man is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Will I say that it is much more difficult for someone outside of Christianity to be saved? The answer is: of course. Is it easier to get to San Francisco from D.C. by taking the interstate or by walking through countryside? Of course. Walking through the countryside is a lot harder and a lot longer path to take, and the temptation to give up and go home is much stronger. Is it impossibly difficult? That I cannot say. That requires knowing a person's inner disposition towards to God, and none know that save God Himself."
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Democrats Pass No-Fault Child Abandonment Act
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Associated Press
Washington D.C.-- Today lawmakers in Washington have passed the National Fathers' Responsibility Act amidst a wave of criticism and bipartisan squabbling. The act passed the Senate with a 53-46-1 vote divided almost entirely along party lines, with only Michael McConnel (D-WY) breaking from his party block. It had earlier cleared the House with a narrow 218-214-3 majority. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the Act into law on Monday.
The National Fathers' Responsibility Act is a measure intended to bring fathers back into the lives of their children. "For decades we've heard how detrimental the absence of a child's father is," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "It is criminal that this problem has been left unaddressed for so long." The Act, widely hailed by national Democrats as "the final solution to a pervasive problem", entitles women to demand, and receive, whatever care deemed necessary for her child from the child's natural father.
President Obama had ealier expressed enthusiasm for the Act. "We have suffered far too long from absent fathers, from men who will not take responsibility for the lives they brought into this world. The message of this bill is clear: men, it is time to own up. Either take responsibility for yourself, or we'll ensure that you take responsibility anyway."
Women nationwide have expressed their endorsement of the Act. "This is a big step to ending sexual inequality," stated one woman who asked to remain anonymous. "For a long time woman have suffered because of an unfair legal system that demands that the woman always take the children after a divorce. So there she is, alone, trying to handle four kids and a job because child support payments are so small, and the father's out there somewhere with a new girlfriend, getting ready to start the whole process over again. It's disgusting."
Annette Jergens, from Denver, Colorado, added her own testimony. "I was only sixteen when I got pregnant with our first child, and while I wanted an abortion, he fought and fought, promising that he would always be there to care for us." After deciding to keep her child, Jergens married her high school sweetheart, Alex Reynolds, after which they had three more children in rapid succession. "Times were tough," Jergens explains. "I had to get help many times from my parents because Alex only waited tables." And then one day, Reynolds just walked out. "I was devastated," a tearful Jergens continues. "Eventually the courts gave us a divorce and required that Alex make child support payments, but when he does work, he only makes minimum wage, and the pittance we get from that doesn't even buy used clothes for my children."
Under the National Fathers' Responsibility Act, men like Alex Reynolds will be required to provide for the entirety of the childrens' financial need, regardless of size of paycheck. In addition, he could be required to take his children into his custody whenever Jergens feels she is incapable of providing for them herself.
"If it is no big deal to force a single woman to care for all the children," said Denise Actinson, a prominent social worker for the rights of women, "then no one can complain that it is a big deal to force a single man to care for all the children, either. This Act is just common sense, something we've been without for ages."
National Republicans find the passage of the bill sobering. Calling it the "No-Fault Child Abandonment Act," they predict a rampant spree of women across the nation dumping their children into the hands of unsuspecting fathers and wiping their hands of any further involvement.
"This is exactly the kind of braindead nonsense we'd expect from men-hating, child-loathing, frothing-at-the-mouth radicals--I mean Democrats," said pundit Ann Coulter. "Liberals have this pervasive blind spot when it comes to dealing with problems, namely that they think more of the problem will provide a solution." When asked to clarify her comments, Coulter replied, "This just cuts the mother out of the picture. Looks, the courts are already insanely in favor of the woman in a divorce. She can take everything and leave the man with nothing. Now, when the going gets rough, she take the kids, dump them off with their father, who still has nothing, and drive away in her Mercedes, never looking back."
A few Republicans believe the criticism for the bill is exaggerated, but they still are concerned. "What concerns me is the potential for abusive situations," said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). "If a woman decides she just needs to leave the kids with their father for a month or two, and the father doesn't want them, what's to prevent abuse? The Act makes failure to comply a felony, but sending the fathers to prison doesn't do a thing to ensure the children are provided for."
Other Republicans expressed concerns that the Act will further tear families apart. In a society where over half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of children are raised in so-called fractured families, and a significant percentage are raised by a single mother. "We're going to see a rift where children are no longer treasured members of the family, but instead are a grave threat and a potential divide between husband and wife," said Senator Michael Enzi, (R-WY). "A woman could walk away from the marriage, take the children with her to collect on the child support, and then leave the children with their father indefinitely while still collecting child support. A man would almost have to be an idiot to walk into a situation posing that kind of risk."
The net result? Sen. Enzi predicts fewer marriages, higher abortion rates, fewer children even in stable families, and a growing mistrust between the sexes.
Democrats scoff at the Republicans' concerns, calling them "fearmongering and an attempt to weasel their out of the responsibility they share for creating this situation and doing nothing to fix it." "If a man knows he'll have to take care of the children no matter how hard he tries to escape from it," said Speaker Pelosi, "he'll approach childrearing more carefully, more responsibly, and that can only benefit our children.
Associated Press
Washington D.C.-- Today lawmakers in Washington have passed the National Fathers' Responsibility Act amidst a wave of criticism and bipartisan squabbling. The act passed the Senate with a 53-46-1 vote divided almost entirely along party lines, with only Michael McConnel (D-WY) breaking from his party block. It had earlier cleared the House with a narrow 218-214-3 majority. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the Act into law on Monday.
The National Fathers' Responsibility Act is a measure intended to bring fathers back into the lives of their children. "For decades we've heard how detrimental the absence of a child's father is," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "It is criminal that this problem has been left unaddressed for so long." The Act, widely hailed by national Democrats as "the final solution to a pervasive problem", entitles women to demand, and receive, whatever care deemed necessary for her child from the child's natural father.
President Obama had ealier expressed enthusiasm for the Act. "We have suffered far too long from absent fathers, from men who will not take responsibility for the lives they brought into this world. The message of this bill is clear: men, it is time to own up. Either take responsibility for yourself, or we'll ensure that you take responsibility anyway."
Women nationwide have expressed their endorsement of the Act. "This is a big step to ending sexual inequality," stated one woman who asked to remain anonymous. "For a long time woman have suffered because of an unfair legal system that demands that the woman always take the children after a divorce. So there she is, alone, trying to handle four kids and a job because child support payments are so small, and the father's out there somewhere with a new girlfriend, getting ready to start the whole process over again. It's disgusting."
Annette Jergens, from Denver, Colorado, added her own testimony. "I was only sixteen when I got pregnant with our first child, and while I wanted an abortion, he fought and fought, promising that he would always be there to care for us." After deciding to keep her child, Jergens married her high school sweetheart, Alex Reynolds, after which they had three more children in rapid succession. "Times were tough," Jergens explains. "I had to get help many times from my parents because Alex only waited tables." And then one day, Reynolds just walked out. "I was devastated," a tearful Jergens continues. "Eventually the courts gave us a divorce and required that Alex make child support payments, but when he does work, he only makes minimum wage, and the pittance we get from that doesn't even buy used clothes for my children."
Under the National Fathers' Responsibility Act, men like Alex Reynolds will be required to provide for the entirety of the childrens' financial need, regardless of size of paycheck. In addition, he could be required to take his children into his custody whenever Jergens feels she is incapable of providing for them herself.
"If it is no big deal to force a single woman to care for all the children," said Denise Actinson, a prominent social worker for the rights of women, "then no one can complain that it is a big deal to force a single man to care for all the children, either. This Act is just common sense, something we've been without for ages."
National Republicans find the passage of the bill sobering. Calling it the "No-Fault Child Abandonment Act," they predict a rampant spree of women across the nation dumping their children into the hands of unsuspecting fathers and wiping their hands of any further involvement.
"This is exactly the kind of braindead nonsense we'd expect from men-hating, child-loathing, frothing-at-the-mouth radicals--I mean Democrats," said pundit Ann Coulter. "Liberals have this pervasive blind spot when it comes to dealing with problems, namely that they think more of the problem will provide a solution." When asked to clarify her comments, Coulter replied, "This just cuts the mother out of the picture. Looks, the courts are already insanely in favor of the woman in a divorce. She can take everything and leave the man with nothing. Now, when the going gets rough, she take the kids, dump them off with their father, who still has nothing, and drive away in her Mercedes, never looking back."
A few Republicans believe the criticism for the bill is exaggerated, but they still are concerned. "What concerns me is the potential for abusive situations," said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). "If a woman decides she just needs to leave the kids with their father for a month or two, and the father doesn't want them, what's to prevent abuse? The Act makes failure to comply a felony, but sending the fathers to prison doesn't do a thing to ensure the children are provided for."
Other Republicans expressed concerns that the Act will further tear families apart. In a society where over half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of children are raised in so-called fractured families, and a significant percentage are raised by a single mother. "We're going to see a rift where children are no longer treasured members of the family, but instead are a grave threat and a potential divide between husband and wife," said Senator Michael Enzi, (R-WY). "A woman could walk away from the marriage, take the children with her to collect on the child support, and then leave the children with their father indefinitely while still collecting child support. A man would almost have to be an idiot to walk into a situation posing that kind of risk."
The net result? Sen. Enzi predicts fewer marriages, higher abortion rates, fewer children even in stable families, and a growing mistrust between the sexes.
Democrats scoff at the Republicans' concerns, calling them "fearmongering and an attempt to weasel their out of the responsibility they share for creating this situation and doing nothing to fix it." "If a man knows he'll have to take care of the children no matter how hard he tries to escape from it," said Speaker Pelosi, "he'll approach childrearing more carefully, more responsibly, and that can only benefit our children.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The root of all sexual evil
At the very least, sex needs to be an act that is respectful and giving. But consider masturbation. Masturbation is inherently an act that says: I'm seeking sexual pleasure for my own benefit. This immediately turns us in the wrong direction, and if we keep doing it, we acquire the habit of seeking sexual pleasure for our own gratification. This can very easily transfer over to sex, so that sex then becomes an act of taking, rather than giving, and is only respectful as long as one is respecting the other's ability to give pleasure. In other words, masturbation sets the precedent of seeking personal gratification, which can easily become the use of others to reach that gratification. It could very well be that masturbation is the root of all the sexual dysfunction a person can encounter.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Was Jesus God?
One of the proofs that Jesus is God goes along the following. Historical records, in this case the gospels, state that Jesus claimed to be God. Specifically, he applied the name I AM to himself: before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58). We know both from the book of Exodus and the Jews' reaction that I AM is effectively the secret name of God, who when Moses asked for his name, said I AM WHO AM. From this we can conclude a few possibilities: either Jesus was telling the truth, he was deliberately deceitful, or was crazy. By eliminating the latter two, we arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was telling the truth, and is indeed God.
However, there seems to be arguments against this proof, claiming that it sets up a false dilemma. A false dilemma is when two (or more) options are pitted against each other and are claimed to represent the whole of possibilities, when this is not the case. For example, a false dilemma is to state: Either you support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, or you're a racist. This doesn't actually partition the whole space. A true partition that makes use of both is the following. First divide the populace between those who support Obama and those who don't. Then divide the populace between those who are racist and those who are not. We end up then with four categories: Barack/not racist, Barack/racist, not Barack/not racist, and not Barack/racist. What the false dilemma actually tries to assert is that the categories of Barack/racist and not Barack/not racist are empty, but is this really the case? A simple poll will show that some people support Barack simply because of his skin color (which is a racist view), and some people who have no problems with a black president don't like Obama simply because they disagree with his policies (which is not racist).
The claim that the original argument is a false dilemma simply states there must be other alternatives than what is offered in the argument. Suppose, for example, Jesus was simply a holy man, a good philosopher, but not God, as a number of different groups might claim (e.g. Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, agnostics, and even some atheists). But do alternatives really hold any water?
Let's examine the divisions that are made in the original argument. Either Jesus was telling the truth, lying, or crazy. Let's handle truth first. Either Jesus' claim was true, or it was false. There's no fuzziness there, so let's move onto the second division that is made, i.e. Jesus' intent. Either Jesus intended to tell the truth, or he intended to deceive. Now we have four categories:
1. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to tell the truth
2. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to deceive
3. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to tell the truth
4. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to deceive
We could, potentially, further divide the categories, or we could discard these particular categories and invent new ones, but it is obvious that these completely partition the space. (But wait, some might argue, couldn't his claim be either true and false, or neither true nor false? Couldn't Jesus have had no intent at all? I hope these aren't strawmen arguments, but they're all I could think of at the moment. But a proposition is either or true or false. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither. And to deny that Jesus had an intent flies in the face of what he set out to do.) If we have completely partitioned the space, there can be no false dilemma.
The first case is obviously the one the original argument means to prove. The second is tricky. If Jesus was indeed God made man, then the only way he could intend to deceive (by claiming to be God) was to believe he wasn't God. Could such a thing really happen? Because this is such a tricky case, it is often lumped together with the fourth argument, where the consideration of deceit is handled by reference to empirical evidence. What is the intent of someone who goes about claiming to be God? What does it say that Jesus freely chose to give himself up to death, and how does that work with the intent of someone falsely claiming to be God? In other words, we only handle the "liar" aspect of both the second and fourth argument. For the third argument, we have a word for someone who claims to be God, truly thinks that he is God, but is not actually God. That word is crazy.
So now we're back at the original argument. It posed that either Jesus was telling the truth, was a liar, or was crazy, and we have just shown how these three conditions fully partition the possibility space. One might object to arguments against Jesus being a liar or crazy, but one cannot claim that the argument itself poses a false dilemma.
However, there seems to be arguments against this proof, claiming that it sets up a false dilemma. A false dilemma is when two (or more) options are pitted against each other and are claimed to represent the whole of possibilities, when this is not the case. For example, a false dilemma is to state: Either you support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, or you're a racist. This doesn't actually partition the whole space. A true partition that makes use of both is the following. First divide the populace between those who support Obama and those who don't. Then divide the populace between those who are racist and those who are not. We end up then with four categories: Barack/not racist, Barack/racist, not Barack/not racist, and not Barack/racist. What the false dilemma actually tries to assert is that the categories of Barack/racist and not Barack/not racist are empty, but is this really the case? A simple poll will show that some people support Barack simply because of his skin color (which is a racist view), and some people who have no problems with a black president don't like Obama simply because they disagree with his policies (which is not racist).
The claim that the original argument is a false dilemma simply states there must be other alternatives than what is offered in the argument. Suppose, for example, Jesus was simply a holy man, a good philosopher, but not God, as a number of different groups might claim (e.g. Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, agnostics, and even some atheists). But do alternatives really hold any water?
Let's examine the divisions that are made in the original argument. Either Jesus was telling the truth, lying, or crazy. Let's handle truth first. Either Jesus' claim was true, or it was false. There's no fuzziness there, so let's move onto the second division that is made, i.e. Jesus' intent. Either Jesus intended to tell the truth, or he intended to deceive. Now we have four categories:
1. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to tell the truth
2. Jesus' claim was true and he intended to deceive
3. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to tell the truth
4. Jesus' claim was false and he intended to deceive
We could, potentially, further divide the categories, or we could discard these particular categories and invent new ones, but it is obvious that these completely partition the space. (But wait, some might argue, couldn't his claim be either true and false, or neither true nor false? Couldn't Jesus have had no intent at all? I hope these aren't strawmen arguments, but they're all I could think of at the moment. But a proposition is either or true or false. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither. And to deny that Jesus had an intent flies in the face of what he set out to do.) If we have completely partitioned the space, there can be no false dilemma.
The first case is obviously the one the original argument means to prove. The second is tricky. If Jesus was indeed God made man, then the only way he could intend to deceive (by claiming to be God) was to believe he wasn't God. Could such a thing really happen? Because this is such a tricky case, it is often lumped together with the fourth argument, where the consideration of deceit is handled by reference to empirical evidence. What is the intent of someone who goes about claiming to be God? What does it say that Jesus freely chose to give himself up to death, and how does that work with the intent of someone falsely claiming to be God? In other words, we only handle the "liar" aspect of both the second and fourth argument. For the third argument, we have a word for someone who claims to be God, truly thinks that he is God, but is not actually God. That word is crazy.
So now we're back at the original argument. It posed that either Jesus was telling the truth, was a liar, or was crazy, and we have just shown how these three conditions fully partition the possibility space. One might object to arguments against Jesus being a liar or crazy, but one cannot claim that the argument itself poses a false dilemma.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
In Honor of C.S. Lewis...
To all junior demons,
We are about to launch a new seminar to prepare you or to aid you in dealing with your patients. We believe strongly that too many of our field operatives, and yes that includes some of our finest workers dedicated to Our Father Below, have failed to keep ahead of recent trends in the mortal realm. We have every indication to believe that our past efforts have sparked this monumental surge forward in divisiveness of our Enemy's ranks and the increasing flood of deserters from our Enemy's cause. However, this does not permit us to be lax in our management of our patients--to the contrary!
It is the unfortunate result that our Enemy designed these pitiful bipeds with the capacity of reason. How more providential to our cause if He would have disdained rationality for emotionality, abandoned all necessity of reasoned thought to the dictates of gut feelings! For we all know, being able to see the entirety of our Enemy's Church, the inevitable success our Enemy must attain, and how against reason it is to declare its defeat, much less its nonexistence. As our efforts continue to, temporally, bear fruit in these realms, we must in turn step up our efforts to distract our patients from noticing how unreasonable they are being.
Our seminar will comprise six sessions, and attendance will be mandatory unless our advisory board deems that a patient cannot be left unattended for the duration. Thus, unless the patient displays imminent, but reversible, inclination towards the Enemy's camp, the mandatory requirement will not be waived.
Our first session will deal with the new advances in the biped's notion of love, how it has developed in recent years, and how difficult our battle will be to continue to nurture this notion of love. Remember, we are not opposed to love, only that love for our Enemy that we find so distasteful. Self-love, on the other hand, provides us with no end of entertainment, and it is towards this that we have worked so hard. And it has indeed born fruit in unexpected arenas, and deserves direct attention so we can properly handle its cultivation.
Our second session will stress the recent upsurge in atheism. In some of your reports, I have seen gross complacency when the patient embraces a wholly materialistic view apart from anything supernatural, and this must be curbed. The atheist, while deep in our camp, holds the most untenable position of them all, and we must, I repeat, must be diligent in our efforts to maintain this position. We must keep forward in our efforts all those feelings that would lend credence to this ridiculous notion that our Enemy does not exist, including foremost that the biped's notion of the Enemy must be correct and thus contradictory. We will visit classic arguments, such as "Can the Enemy create a rock He cannot lift?" While this is elementary for most of us, it deserves to be revisited, for it encompasses most of the flawed arguments the bipeds will latch onto.
Our third session will address the topics of suffering and addiction. The bipeds in the developed world have discovered lifestyles that, initially, seem to remove even the slightest discomforts from their lives. Always in the past, our efforts have been directly predominantly at the unfairness of the immense suffering man has had to endure, but in the developed world, we can no longer guide our patients down this course. The ease of their lives and the abundance of their wealth, coupled with that accursed reason bestowed by the Enemy, eventually gives rise to the notion that they can actually help those worse off than themselves. All thoughts in this direction must either be curtailed or monitored carefully. We advise that any charitable thoughts must be redirected back at the patient, so that the patient uses the semblance of charity for personal benefit. However, this is a fine line to walk, and we will discuss how best to approach this.
Our fourth and fifth session will be devoted to those recent medical discoveries that have raised controversial issues across the developed world. We will touch upon the materialistic demotion of man to an expendable resource and review how that ramifies into all areas of the bipeds' society. We must be careful in this area to always keep the patient's focus on the utility of discovery, even at the expense of others. This past century has seen some of the most delightful evils come to pass in the mortal realm because of this misguided notion, and with care, we should be able to cultivate an even greater harvest in the future.
Our last information will cover the dissemination of information. In the modern world, anyone has the ability to make his viewpoint, his findings, his opinions, and even his blatant lies known to thousands if not millions of others. This in turn is a great resource we must tap into. We must always keep in mind that a lie repeated a thousand times is no longer considered a lie. And when the patient has, at his fingertips, a thousand times a thousand differing accounts for a single action, a single decision, or a single moral point, even the most blatant lie can been an adequate bludgeon against his reasons. Always keep the patient confused, unsure of who to trust. Keep him away from the only consistent authority there is, namely the Enemy and His abominable Church, and keep him focused on the worldly authorities, whose flaws are depicted and denounced by thousands of disagreeing factions, who are in turn denounced by others, and so on. This vast confusion is a great boon to our cause, but we must be sure to keep the resulting cynicism grounded so that he does not turn to the Enemy as a last recourse.
At the conclusion of this seminar, we expect to notice vast improvements in your reports and a renewed dedication to the work of Our Father Below.
Senior Administrative Assistant,
Screwtape
We are about to launch a new seminar to prepare you or to aid you in dealing with your patients. We believe strongly that too many of our field operatives, and yes that includes some of our finest workers dedicated to Our Father Below, have failed to keep ahead of recent trends in the mortal realm. We have every indication to believe that our past efforts have sparked this monumental surge forward in divisiveness of our Enemy's ranks and the increasing flood of deserters from our Enemy's cause. However, this does not permit us to be lax in our management of our patients--to the contrary!
It is the unfortunate result that our Enemy designed these pitiful bipeds with the capacity of reason. How more providential to our cause if He would have disdained rationality for emotionality, abandoned all necessity of reasoned thought to the dictates of gut feelings! For we all know, being able to see the entirety of our Enemy's Church, the inevitable success our Enemy must attain, and how against reason it is to declare its defeat, much less its nonexistence. As our efforts continue to, temporally, bear fruit in these realms, we must in turn step up our efforts to distract our patients from noticing how unreasonable they are being.
Our seminar will comprise six sessions, and attendance will be mandatory unless our advisory board deems that a patient cannot be left unattended for the duration. Thus, unless the patient displays imminent, but reversible, inclination towards the Enemy's camp, the mandatory requirement will not be waived.
Our first session will deal with the new advances in the biped's notion of love, how it has developed in recent years, and how difficult our battle will be to continue to nurture this notion of love. Remember, we are not opposed to love, only that love for our Enemy that we find so distasteful. Self-love, on the other hand, provides us with no end of entertainment, and it is towards this that we have worked so hard. And it has indeed born fruit in unexpected arenas, and deserves direct attention so we can properly handle its cultivation.
Our second session will stress the recent upsurge in atheism. In some of your reports, I have seen gross complacency when the patient embraces a wholly materialistic view apart from anything supernatural, and this must be curbed. The atheist, while deep in our camp, holds the most untenable position of them all, and we must, I repeat, must be diligent in our efforts to maintain this position. We must keep forward in our efforts all those feelings that would lend credence to this ridiculous notion that our Enemy does not exist, including foremost that the biped's notion of the Enemy must be correct and thus contradictory. We will visit classic arguments, such as "Can the Enemy create a rock He cannot lift?" While this is elementary for most of us, it deserves to be revisited, for it encompasses most of the flawed arguments the bipeds will latch onto.
Our third session will address the topics of suffering and addiction. The bipeds in the developed world have discovered lifestyles that, initially, seem to remove even the slightest discomforts from their lives. Always in the past, our efforts have been directly predominantly at the unfairness of the immense suffering man has had to endure, but in the developed world, we can no longer guide our patients down this course. The ease of their lives and the abundance of their wealth, coupled with that accursed reason bestowed by the Enemy, eventually gives rise to the notion that they can actually help those worse off than themselves. All thoughts in this direction must either be curtailed or monitored carefully. We advise that any charitable thoughts must be redirected back at the patient, so that the patient uses the semblance of charity for personal benefit. However, this is a fine line to walk, and we will discuss how best to approach this.
Our fourth and fifth session will be devoted to those recent medical discoveries that have raised controversial issues across the developed world. We will touch upon the materialistic demotion of man to an expendable resource and review how that ramifies into all areas of the bipeds' society. We must be careful in this area to always keep the patient's focus on the utility of discovery, even at the expense of others. This past century has seen some of the most delightful evils come to pass in the mortal realm because of this misguided notion, and with care, we should be able to cultivate an even greater harvest in the future.
Our last information will cover the dissemination of information. In the modern world, anyone has the ability to make his viewpoint, his findings, his opinions, and even his blatant lies known to thousands if not millions of others. This in turn is a great resource we must tap into. We must always keep in mind that a lie repeated a thousand times is no longer considered a lie. And when the patient has, at his fingertips, a thousand times a thousand differing accounts for a single action, a single decision, or a single moral point, even the most blatant lie can been an adequate bludgeon against his reasons. Always keep the patient confused, unsure of who to trust. Keep him away from the only consistent authority there is, namely the Enemy and His abominable Church, and keep him focused on the worldly authorities, whose flaws are depicted and denounced by thousands of disagreeing factions, who are in turn denounced by others, and so on. This vast confusion is a great boon to our cause, but we must be sure to keep the resulting cynicism grounded so that he does not turn to the Enemy as a last recourse.
At the conclusion of this seminar, we expect to notice vast improvements in your reports and a renewed dedication to the work of Our Father Below.
Senior Administrative Assistant,
Screwtape
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Reasons against contraception
In our world, it seems insane to speak out against contraception, yet I feel I must. For references, I will simply defer to www.pureloveclub.com. It is a Catholic site, but it has a list of references that are fairly useful.
1. Contraceptives don't stop pregnancies
What? Isn't that what contraceptives are for? Yet the answer should be obvious. No contraceptive is 100% effective. They do greatly decrease the chance of pregnancy, true. But consider the following scenario.
A. I have a 50% chance of becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. I have sex 0 times, and thus have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant.
B. I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant if I have protected sex. I have sex once, I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 10 times, I have about a 10% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 50 times, I have a 40% chance of becoming pregnant, and so on.
As the usage of contraceptives (with maybe the exception of the pill for hormonal regulation) almost automatically implies sex, and some sex quite often implies lots of sex, the conclusion is clear. Granted, these statistics don't cover all possibilities, but a nonzero chance of becoming pregnant from having protected sex once eventually because a significant nonzero chance of becoming pregnant when having sex numerous times.
Society proves this point. Since the legalization of contraception, unintended pregnancies skyrocketed. Recent downward trends in teen pregnancies are due entirely to teens abstaining from sex. When looking only at teens that are sexually active, the rates of teen pregnancies have actually increased.
2. Contraceptives don't prevent STDs
The reasoning here is quite similar. While contraceptives like condoms greatly reduce the chance of catching an STD from one sexual encounter, they fail to provide foolproof protection. Enough sexual encounters will raise the probability of catching STDs from unlikely to quite probable.
3. Contraceptives propagate the mentality of using people as objects
Consider the following analogy. Suppose I won't talk to you unless you have blond hair. Or, at the risk of sounding racist, suppose I won't sell you a drink unless you have white skin. It doesn't matter how you get your hair or skin the appropriate color. You could dye your hair or paint your body. Once you do, I'll deal with you. Until then, I won't.
Anyone with an ounce of sense will argue that in the above scenarios, I'm being unreasonable (and racist). And yet no one makes this connection with contraceptives. Here's the underlying principle:
If you have to alter the fundamental nature of a person to make them acceptable, you are treating that person as an object.
Contraceptives essentially state: "I can't accept my/your ability to conceive, so I'm going to change you so that you don't." Pretty straightforward, isn't it?
As for those of you who would object, saying, "But what if I don't mind being (or even want to be) used as an object?" I want you to just take 10 minutes and seriously reflect on that. And consider it in light of other cases of being used as an object (such as the absurd case of a doctor coming around to harvest all your organs while you are still alive and healthy).
4. People can control their urges. Expecting abstinence until marriage (or even lifelong) is reasonable.
Let's carry the objections to this one to their full conclusions. What this is saying is that we can't say no to sex. We have to get it, one way or another. (Sounds like an addiction, right?) So what happens when a man runs out on his endurance, absolutely has to have sex, and an eight-year-old boy walks by? By the reasoning of the objector, the fact that boy was raped is an unfortunate as if he had walked out in front of a semi. It is sad, and the boy was hurt or killed, but no one's to blame. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who would object to this conclusion obviously believes we have the ability to control our sexual desires. Thus abstinence is hardly unreasonable.
1. Contraceptives don't stop pregnancies
What? Isn't that what contraceptives are for? Yet the answer should be obvious. No contraceptive is 100% effective. They do greatly decrease the chance of pregnancy, true. But consider the following scenario.
A. I have a 50% chance of becoming pregnant if I have unprotected sex. I have sex 0 times, and thus have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant.
B. I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant if I have protected sex. I have sex once, I have a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 10 times, I have about a 10% chance of becoming pregnant. I have sex 50 times, I have a 40% chance of becoming pregnant, and so on.
As the usage of contraceptives (with maybe the exception of the pill for hormonal regulation) almost automatically implies sex, and some sex quite often implies lots of sex, the conclusion is clear. Granted, these statistics don't cover all possibilities, but a nonzero chance of becoming pregnant from having protected sex once eventually because a significant nonzero chance of becoming pregnant when having sex numerous times.
Society proves this point. Since the legalization of contraception, unintended pregnancies skyrocketed. Recent downward trends in teen pregnancies are due entirely to teens abstaining from sex. When looking only at teens that are sexually active, the rates of teen pregnancies have actually increased.
2. Contraceptives don't prevent STDs
The reasoning here is quite similar. While contraceptives like condoms greatly reduce the chance of catching an STD from one sexual encounter, they fail to provide foolproof protection. Enough sexual encounters will raise the probability of catching STDs from unlikely to quite probable.
3. Contraceptives propagate the mentality of using people as objects
Consider the following analogy. Suppose I won't talk to you unless you have blond hair. Or, at the risk of sounding racist, suppose I won't sell you a drink unless you have white skin. It doesn't matter how you get your hair or skin the appropriate color. You could dye your hair or paint your body. Once you do, I'll deal with you. Until then, I won't.
Anyone with an ounce of sense will argue that in the above scenarios, I'm being unreasonable (and racist). And yet no one makes this connection with contraceptives. Here's the underlying principle:
If you have to alter the fundamental nature of a person to make them acceptable, you are treating that person as an object.
Contraceptives essentially state: "I can't accept my/your ability to conceive, so I'm going to change you so that you don't." Pretty straightforward, isn't it?
As for those of you who would object, saying, "But what if I don't mind being (or even want to be) used as an object?" I want you to just take 10 minutes and seriously reflect on that. And consider it in light of other cases of being used as an object (such as the absurd case of a doctor coming around to harvest all your organs while you are still alive and healthy).
4. People can control their urges. Expecting abstinence until marriage (or even lifelong) is reasonable.
Let's carry the objections to this one to their full conclusions. What this is saying is that we can't say no to sex. We have to get it, one way or another. (Sounds like an addiction, right?) So what happens when a man runs out on his endurance, absolutely has to have sex, and an eight-year-old boy walks by? By the reasoning of the objector, the fact that boy was raped is an unfortunate as if he had walked out in front of a semi. It is sad, and the boy was hurt or killed, but no one's to blame. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who would object to this conclusion obviously believes we have the ability to control our sexual desires. Thus abstinence is hardly unreasonable.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Greater Good
In taking a class on energy policies, I've learned that very rarely do the best ideas for energy production and consumption ever so much as appear before policymakers. That is why we have politicians talking about the Kyoto Protocol and ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells instead of focusing on things that work. But why are they focusing on these? Who is the heavyweight pulling the strings that make it so that no one seems to realize that ethanol is a very poor choice for fuel, especially when it is produced from corn?
We have to understand that what we are talking about here isn't necessarily so much energy policy, but survivability. For example, I look at tax reform and I think tax reform is a good thing. We should switch to a simple tax code that taxes everyone an equal percent. This eliminates all the loopholes, hopefully a large portion of fraud, and doesn't leave people guessing as to how much of their paycheck is actually theirs. However, a simple system like that will hit the accounting market hard, meaning my father could potentially lose a significant portion of his clients, and his firm could go under. So I'm not personally eager for tax reform to go through.
See, what we would be asking here is for certain people to sacrifice their livelihoods for the greater good. Now, there is nothing wrong with the greater good, in and of itself. The greater good is what helps the most people. In a utilitarian point of view, that greater good is not just morally right, but a moral imperative as well. But we also need to understand that when a person's livelihood is at stake, the very thing he or she has worked their entire lives to build, we cannot expect them to simply roll over without a fight.
So how does this relate to energy policies? Whose livelihoods are at stake? We would think that the oil and coal companies would have the loudest voice, since things like ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol gravely threaten these industries. Why then aren't ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol quashed (as they probably should be) instead of sitting on lawmakers' desks receiving intense consideration?
The answer is this. First, the policymakers are professional at one thing: making policies that satisfy their constituents. They are not experts in fields of science, be it medicine or environment or energy or economics. Thus they have to rely on reports from advisers, who in turn receive their data from "experts." This is where survivability comes into play.
The reports that land on politician's desks are in agreement with the source of funding for the reports. In other words, if a researcher is receiving money from the coal or oil industries, their reports are bound to be biased towards the coal and oil industries. Similarly, if the research is funded by environmental groups, the research will find all kinds of horrors that the coal and oil industries are committing against the environment.
So why isn't there an equal share between competing voices? It is because there are self-feeding loops going on. The first is the politician-constituent loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his constituents. When he pleases his constituents, he gets reelected. The second loop is the politician-funding loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his or her source of funding.
Now, these loops intertwine. The politician has a hard time reaching his base if he doesn't have the funding to make his voice heard and show how he/she is better than the opposition and getting the people what they want. Therefore, he/she has to convince the people, if they are not already, that what they want is in line with the politician's source of funding. (Or the politician has to find funding from industries already in line with the people.)
Now, who's survivability are we talking about? We are talking about the people's survivability: they want lawmakers to pass laws that help them and stop bills that will hurt them. Thus the people focus on, not the greater good, but their own survivability. But we are also talking about the policymaker's survivability: through both funding and votes, the politician survives by passing legislation, not for the greater good, but for their constituents. And we are also talking about the researcher's survivability: the researcher has to report what is in line with what his/her funding desires, for otherwise they have no funding to live off of.
So, when enough public outcry demands something, policymakers scramble to satisfy, finding constituent groups that will satisfy, who in turn fund studies that will satisfy. The best ideas are lost in that mix because the best ideas focus on the greater good, not necessarily on the majority outcry of the people.
We have to understand that what we are talking about here isn't necessarily so much energy policy, but survivability. For example, I look at tax reform and I think tax reform is a good thing. We should switch to a simple tax code that taxes everyone an equal percent. This eliminates all the loopholes, hopefully a large portion of fraud, and doesn't leave people guessing as to how much of their paycheck is actually theirs. However, a simple system like that will hit the accounting market hard, meaning my father could potentially lose a significant portion of his clients, and his firm could go under. So I'm not personally eager for tax reform to go through.
See, what we would be asking here is for certain people to sacrifice their livelihoods for the greater good. Now, there is nothing wrong with the greater good, in and of itself. The greater good is what helps the most people. In a utilitarian point of view, that greater good is not just morally right, but a moral imperative as well. But we also need to understand that when a person's livelihood is at stake, the very thing he or she has worked their entire lives to build, we cannot expect them to simply roll over without a fight.
So how does this relate to energy policies? Whose livelihoods are at stake? We would think that the oil and coal companies would have the loudest voice, since things like ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol gravely threaten these industries. Why then aren't ethanol and the Kyoto Protocol quashed (as they probably should be) instead of sitting on lawmakers' desks receiving intense consideration?
The answer is this. First, the policymakers are professional at one thing: making policies that satisfy their constituents. They are not experts in fields of science, be it medicine or environment or energy or economics. Thus they have to rely on reports from advisers, who in turn receive their data from "experts." This is where survivability comes into play.
The reports that land on politician's desks are in agreement with the source of funding for the reports. In other words, if a researcher is receiving money from the coal or oil industries, their reports are bound to be biased towards the coal and oil industries. Similarly, if the research is funded by environmental groups, the research will find all kinds of horrors that the coal and oil industries are committing against the environment.
So why isn't there an equal share between competing voices? It is because there are self-feeding loops going on. The first is the politician-constituent loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his constituents. When he pleases his constituents, he gets reelected. The second loop is the politician-funding loop, in which the politician tries to pass policies that will please his or her source of funding.
Now, these loops intertwine. The politician has a hard time reaching his base if he doesn't have the funding to make his voice heard and show how he/she is better than the opposition and getting the people what they want. Therefore, he/she has to convince the people, if they are not already, that what they want is in line with the politician's source of funding. (Or the politician has to find funding from industries already in line with the people.)
Now, who's survivability are we talking about? We are talking about the people's survivability: they want lawmakers to pass laws that help them and stop bills that will hurt them. Thus the people focus on, not the greater good, but their own survivability. But we are also talking about the policymaker's survivability: through both funding and votes, the politician survives by passing legislation, not for the greater good, but for their constituents. And we are also talking about the researcher's survivability: the researcher has to report what is in line with what his/her funding desires, for otherwise they have no funding to live off of.
So, when enough public outcry demands something, policymakers scramble to satisfy, finding constituent groups that will satisfy, who in turn fund studies that will satisfy. The best ideas are lost in that mix because the best ideas focus on the greater good, not necessarily on the majority outcry of the people.
Friday, December 08, 2006
The world darkens
9/11. Al Qaeda. The Taliban. Pakistan, and its unwillingness to expulge the terrorists in its northern regions. Its caving to terrorist demands. Its tensions with India. Iraq, and its insurgencies. The guerillas funded by Syria and Iran. Syria, who is aiding Hezbolla against the Lebanese government. Hezbolla and Hamas, striking against Israel. Iran, developing nuclear power and nuclear weapons at a daunting pace. Iran, who threatens to nuke Israel into oblivion. Iran, who seeks a day without the United States. Iran, who negotiates with China. China, who holds our economy in its hands, and who backs North Korea. North Korea, who has nuclear weapons and hates the United States. Indonesian riots. The caving of Europe to Islamic threats, especially France and England. The relapse of Russia. Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, and their expanding influence. There is no corner of the globe where some threat does not exist to the United States.
This is not a failure of President George W. Bush and his foreign policies. This is the natural consequence of opposing ideologies. What people fail to realize is that any friend who demands we change our entire identity and bow in subservience to them is not, in fact, a friend. If the only way to be friends with someone is to abandon our identity, our dignity, and our integrity, then we are better off without them.
Why do these people hate us? Petty dictators like Hugo Chavez hate us because we are powerful enough that we diminish their power. Our words carry more weight, and we can ignore them without much worry. It can be infuriating to be taken so lightly. We threaten them with the possibility that we might step in and remove them from power, a very real threat when their people are oppressed and look to the United States as a model and potential savior. We can make their lives difficult through sanctions, and we have economic might to make those sanctions uncomfortable at the least. We threaten these dictators merely through what we can do, through what we are, because we are what the world could be without petty kinglets like Hugo Chavez. People, when they see what that world is like, do not tolerate dictators for long. Thus those dictators have to hide the truth from their people and demonize as best they can in a Machiavellian attempt to maintain power.
Alone, these dictators offer very little to worry about. We can play at negotiations with them when they have no allies to make contention troublesome. We can use peaceful measures to cripple them when they have no allies to resupply them. But when these dictators have allies, they can be bold and fling defiance at us and believe themselves removed from threat through strength in numbers. And it seems these numbers are growing at a frightening pace.
The Islamic people hate us for the same reason that evangelical Christians are so fervent in their hatred of evolution. Just as evolution contradicts their most sacred text (by saying it cannot be literally true, at least in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis), our very way of life--the freedom of religion, freedom of expression, our free market, our civil rights movements--is abhorrent and contradictory to Islam. Everything about us breaks their code of ethics, contradicts the will of their deity. Our very existence is temptation, a path to what they see as corruption and darkness. As long as we in the United States value those traits we hold the most dear, the Islamic people will ever and always fight us, for our beliefs are anathema under their tenets.
There can be no compromise with these people. Either they conquer us or we abandon our identity and take on theirs. That is the only outcome they will accept.
And their numbers are growing. They gather allies. Islamic terrorists and petty dictators see a common goal in our destruction. They work with cunning and guile against us. They have no benevolent intentions for us. Any reform they wish to force on us would revoke every founding belief we have.
And so few people understand what it is we face. So few people understand where we came from. Why does our prosperity exist? They do not know. They display their lack of knowledge in the succor of our enemies, in the protest of every move we make against our enemies, in endless efforts spent to make the United States the guilty party.
They do not understand that we are guilty in our enemies' eyes simply because we exist. There is no other reason. To accept that guilt is to embrace annihilation.
This is not a failure of President George W. Bush and his foreign policies. This is the natural consequence of opposing ideologies. What people fail to realize is that any friend who demands we change our entire identity and bow in subservience to them is not, in fact, a friend. If the only way to be friends with someone is to abandon our identity, our dignity, and our integrity, then we are better off without them.
Why do these people hate us? Petty dictators like Hugo Chavez hate us because we are powerful enough that we diminish their power. Our words carry more weight, and we can ignore them without much worry. It can be infuriating to be taken so lightly. We threaten them with the possibility that we might step in and remove them from power, a very real threat when their people are oppressed and look to the United States as a model and potential savior. We can make their lives difficult through sanctions, and we have economic might to make those sanctions uncomfortable at the least. We threaten these dictators merely through what we can do, through what we are, because we are what the world could be without petty kinglets like Hugo Chavez. People, when they see what that world is like, do not tolerate dictators for long. Thus those dictators have to hide the truth from their people and demonize as best they can in a Machiavellian attempt to maintain power.
Alone, these dictators offer very little to worry about. We can play at negotiations with them when they have no allies to make contention troublesome. We can use peaceful measures to cripple them when they have no allies to resupply them. But when these dictators have allies, they can be bold and fling defiance at us and believe themselves removed from threat through strength in numbers. And it seems these numbers are growing at a frightening pace.
The Islamic people hate us for the same reason that evangelical Christians are so fervent in their hatred of evolution. Just as evolution contradicts their most sacred text (by saying it cannot be literally true, at least in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis), our very way of life--the freedom of religion, freedom of expression, our free market, our civil rights movements--is abhorrent and contradictory to Islam. Everything about us breaks their code of ethics, contradicts the will of their deity. Our very existence is temptation, a path to what they see as corruption and darkness. As long as we in the United States value those traits we hold the most dear, the Islamic people will ever and always fight us, for our beliefs are anathema under their tenets.
There can be no compromise with these people. Either they conquer us or we abandon our identity and take on theirs. That is the only outcome they will accept.
And their numbers are growing. They gather allies. Islamic terrorists and petty dictators see a common goal in our destruction. They work with cunning and guile against us. They have no benevolent intentions for us. Any reform they wish to force on us would revoke every founding belief we have.
And so few people understand what it is we face. So few people understand where we came from. Why does our prosperity exist? They do not know. They display their lack of knowledge in the succor of our enemies, in the protest of every move we make against our enemies, in endless efforts spent to make the United States the guilty party.
They do not understand that we are guilty in our enemies' eyes simply because we exist. There is no other reason. To accept that guilt is to embrace annihilation.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Giving money away isn't the answer
For some reason, many people decry the rich for being rich. They have the wealth and all the trappings that accompany it, whereas the poor people have to make do with so little food, having to choose at times between eating and having a roof over their heads. The rich, they claim, should be giving more (money) to the poor to ease their difficult existence. More money would aid single mothers in putting food in the empty bellies of their children. More money would provide clothing, medicine, and school supplies for those same children. More money would mean the difference between a leaking roof and patched one. More money would provide the means to ensure the old clunker saved from the scrap heap would still run tomorrow. And that money should come, no strings attached, no return obligations from the recipient of such beneficience.
And why shouldn't the money given from the rich to the poor be a charitable donation? If religious calling doesn't compel one to give to the poor, at the very least it is humane to ease the suffering of people who are worse off. And consider this--a person worth $2 billion could give $40,000 to 25,000 people and still have a cool billion left over. That's 25,000 people who could, in an instant, have as much money as a middle class person makes in an entire year. And that's only half of the fabulous wealth said billionaire had acquired. That certainly leaves plenty left for him. Right?
It seems so nice and respectable. But, I may ask, what then? Once that money is given away, what then? A family of 4 needs something around $15,000 a year to barely eek by, assuming no great calamity strikes. Assuming one such household receives the aforementioned $40,000, that money will not even last 3 years. Supposing that this household is a single mother with three children, where the mother only brings in $10,000 a year, she could possibly make that wealth last for 8. But what then? Well, what if she brings home $12,000 a year? She could stretch the $40,000 across a little over 13 years. If she brings home $13,000, we jump to 20 years. She could see her kids out of high school by that point. Why, if she managed $15,000 a year, she could just save that $40,000 for emergencies and sending her children off to college. In fact, if she invests that $40,000 in stocks, bonds, or even just a CD, she could more than double that $40,000 by the time her kids leave home for college.
But life does not run so smoothly. The additional $40,000 to supplement her meager income won't last near that long. Her car will break down. Her kids will catch pneumonia and require medication. She might decide that her kids will be healthier if they have something other than ramen noodles for each meal. They might fare better in school if they had nicer clothes. At the very least it will give the bullies one less reason to pick on them. And maybe now she can afford that new stove so she doesn't have to cook all their meals in the microwave, two of which have already burned out from overuse. Even a conservative spender making $15,000 a year will probably see that $40,000 disappear rapidly, probably in fewer than 3 years.
So what then? Should that billionaire channel another billion dollars to all those families that have spent his generous gift? Surely in 3 years' time he'll have recouped a portion of his losses. But how long did it take to make that $2 billion in the first place? 20 years? How long will it take him to earn half of that back? 3 years is probably an underestimate. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that he could. So every three years he gives out $40,000 to 25,000 people. So that's 25,000 households out of a projected 7 million taken care of. And he can't afford to give away any more, else he'll start losing all the money he has, preventing him from making an everlasting commitment. But hey, with another 299 billionaires, we could more or less keep the entire poor population somewhat afloat, right?
However, this ignores the realities of how the billionaires (with the exception of inheritence) are acquiring their money. That billion dollars isn't just sitting around at home in piles of fat stacks of hundred dollar bills. That money is tied up in investments. A large portion is probably tied up in the billionaire's business. Another chunk is probably in the stock market. What people fail to realise is just what it means to have money invested like that. When someone invests, they are essentially loaning the money to other people, expecting them to make enough of a return in whatever business endeavors they embark upon to pay that loan back with interest. Investing in the stock market, or even just putting money in a bank account, is not some magic method of making money. That money goes somewhere, to someone, who hopefully increases the overall money in the system.
So what then, if a billionaire pulls a billion dollars out of investments? That's a billion dollars less going to people who would otherwise use that money to start or upkeep their own businesses. That overall money out of their pocket, which is additional money out of the billionaire's pocket. But some would argue, why is that so bad? That money was just going to people who had enough money to begin with, right? Not necessarily. A business is expensive to start up, and so loans are often necessary just to get off the ground. But where does that loan come from? In fact, loans borrowed from a bank are nothing more than the investsments people make! If there are no investments, there are no loans, because the money just isn't there. And that means businesses that never get started, or fall apart, and that's just increasing the poor population.
So, let's leave the billionaires alone, or at least not expect so much of a contribution from them. Instead, why not simply ask for the extra money people have lying around, money that would be spent on frivolous odds and ends anyway? Suppose, for example, we shopped smart and cooked all our own food and never went out for fast food. We'd save money, since cooking for ourselves is almost always cheeper than ordering out. And we could use that money to donate to the poor. Everything is happy, right?
Not really. If we estimate the poor population initially at 10% of the country, that's 30,000,000 people. Now, there are at least 6,000,000 people employed in the fast food industry (probably a very conservative estimate). If everyone stopped buying fast food, those 6,000,000 people are unemployed. That increases the poor population by 20%! That wasn't something we intended, now was it? But we had better take care of those additional 6 million as well, so we'll cut back on something else. And lo and behold, another several million people are out of jobs. We keep going at this pace, and pretty soon, nobody's will be employed, everyone will be poor, and then there will be no money to distribute around.
Giving money away isn't the answer. A solution to many problems is to see the poor employed in jobs that will earn them enough money. But where do those jobs come from? There have to be businesses that employ, and there has to be a need for those businesses. Not only do businesses have to sell items to make a profit, people have to buy those items for the products to be sold. The conclusion then is that people need to buy more--that will increase the demand for products, which will increase the number of businesses that provide those products, which will finally increase the number of jobs available. At that point, a billionaire servers a poor person better by creating a large enough business that he can afford to hire that individual.
Perhaps there's more wisdom in that adage "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime" than we originally thought. Certainly, we can provide for our poor better by giving them the opportunity to provide for themselves than trying to take care of them directly.
And why shouldn't the money given from the rich to the poor be a charitable donation? If religious calling doesn't compel one to give to the poor, at the very least it is humane to ease the suffering of people who are worse off. And consider this--a person worth $2 billion could give $40,000 to 25,000 people and still have a cool billion left over. That's 25,000 people who could, in an instant, have as much money as a middle class person makes in an entire year. And that's only half of the fabulous wealth said billionaire had acquired. That certainly leaves plenty left for him. Right?
It seems so nice and respectable. But, I may ask, what then? Once that money is given away, what then? A family of 4 needs something around $15,000 a year to barely eek by, assuming no great calamity strikes. Assuming one such household receives the aforementioned $40,000, that money will not even last 3 years. Supposing that this household is a single mother with three children, where the mother only brings in $10,000 a year, she could possibly make that wealth last for 8. But what then? Well, what if she brings home $12,000 a year? She could stretch the $40,000 across a little over 13 years. If she brings home $13,000, we jump to 20 years. She could see her kids out of high school by that point. Why, if she managed $15,000 a year, she could just save that $40,000 for emergencies and sending her children off to college. In fact, if she invests that $40,000 in stocks, bonds, or even just a CD, she could more than double that $40,000 by the time her kids leave home for college.
But life does not run so smoothly. The additional $40,000 to supplement her meager income won't last near that long. Her car will break down. Her kids will catch pneumonia and require medication. She might decide that her kids will be healthier if they have something other than ramen noodles for each meal. They might fare better in school if they had nicer clothes. At the very least it will give the bullies one less reason to pick on them. And maybe now she can afford that new stove so she doesn't have to cook all their meals in the microwave, two of which have already burned out from overuse. Even a conservative spender making $15,000 a year will probably see that $40,000 disappear rapidly, probably in fewer than 3 years.
So what then? Should that billionaire channel another billion dollars to all those families that have spent his generous gift? Surely in 3 years' time he'll have recouped a portion of his losses. But how long did it take to make that $2 billion in the first place? 20 years? How long will it take him to earn half of that back? 3 years is probably an underestimate. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that he could. So every three years he gives out $40,000 to 25,000 people. So that's 25,000 households out of a projected 7 million taken care of. And he can't afford to give away any more, else he'll start losing all the money he has, preventing him from making an everlasting commitment. But hey, with another 299 billionaires, we could more or less keep the entire poor population somewhat afloat, right?
However, this ignores the realities of how the billionaires (with the exception of inheritence) are acquiring their money. That billion dollars isn't just sitting around at home in piles of fat stacks of hundred dollar bills. That money is tied up in investments. A large portion is probably tied up in the billionaire's business. Another chunk is probably in the stock market. What people fail to realise is just what it means to have money invested like that. When someone invests, they are essentially loaning the money to other people, expecting them to make enough of a return in whatever business endeavors they embark upon to pay that loan back with interest. Investing in the stock market, or even just putting money in a bank account, is not some magic method of making money. That money goes somewhere, to someone, who hopefully increases the overall money in the system.
So what then, if a billionaire pulls a billion dollars out of investments? That's a billion dollars less going to people who would otherwise use that money to start or upkeep their own businesses. That overall money out of their pocket, which is additional money out of the billionaire's pocket. But some would argue, why is that so bad? That money was just going to people who had enough money to begin with, right? Not necessarily. A business is expensive to start up, and so loans are often necessary just to get off the ground. But where does that loan come from? In fact, loans borrowed from a bank are nothing more than the investsments people make! If there are no investments, there are no loans, because the money just isn't there. And that means businesses that never get started, or fall apart, and that's just increasing the poor population.
So, let's leave the billionaires alone, or at least not expect so much of a contribution from them. Instead, why not simply ask for the extra money people have lying around, money that would be spent on frivolous odds and ends anyway? Suppose, for example, we shopped smart and cooked all our own food and never went out for fast food. We'd save money, since cooking for ourselves is almost always cheeper than ordering out. And we could use that money to donate to the poor. Everything is happy, right?
Not really. If we estimate the poor population initially at 10% of the country, that's 30,000,000 people. Now, there are at least 6,000,000 people employed in the fast food industry (probably a very conservative estimate). If everyone stopped buying fast food, those 6,000,000 people are unemployed. That increases the poor population by 20%! That wasn't something we intended, now was it? But we had better take care of those additional 6 million as well, so we'll cut back on something else. And lo and behold, another several million people are out of jobs. We keep going at this pace, and pretty soon, nobody's will be employed, everyone will be poor, and then there will be no money to distribute around.
Giving money away isn't the answer. A solution to many problems is to see the poor employed in jobs that will earn them enough money. But where do those jobs come from? There have to be businesses that employ, and there has to be a need for those businesses. Not only do businesses have to sell items to make a profit, people have to buy those items for the products to be sold. The conclusion then is that people need to buy more--that will increase the demand for products, which will increase the number of businesses that provide those products, which will finally increase the number of jobs available. At that point, a billionaire servers a poor person better by creating a large enough business that he can afford to hire that individual.
Perhaps there's more wisdom in that adage "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime" than we originally thought. Certainly, we can provide for our poor better by giving them the opportunity to provide for themselves than trying to take care of them directly.
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