Faith: firm belief in something for which there is no proof
Blind Faith: belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination
Thousands of years ago, before humans had developed strong critical thinking skills and before we understood many of the basic things in our natural environment, people reconciled their need to make sense of that which they did not understand with explanations according to their best guesses about what was happening around them.
To bolster their belief that their guesses were accurate and maintain a sense of security in understanding a very complex, and often frightening world, they sought confirmation of their beliefs via dream interpretation, shared stories, and popular legends.
Before we understood the sub-conscious mind and its function in the brain, and before we had an understanding of rapid eye movement (R.E.M.) sleep, humans believed that the "mind movies" they saw while sleeping were messages from other worlds, instructing them, giving them orders, and foretelling their futures.
The fact that many of the tidbits of information gleaned from the dreams of our ancestors turned out to be helpful is attributable to the fact that our subconscious mind picks up on cues in our environment that trigger instinctive responses. Weather patterns may cause us to instinctively perceive an oncoming drought, for example, which translates into a dream telling us we must build a reserve of food for emergency use. Because we do not always understand the mechanisms behind the subtle environmental input and our subconscious reaction to it, we often imagine an other-worldly connection that, in reality, is quite mundane and natural to this world.
It's interesting how many news stories show humans expressing astonishment that the behaviors of some animals seem to be able to "predict" earthquakes and other natural phenomena, when my own ancestors (I have a Cherokee-Irish background on my mother's side of the family) and current members of the Cherokee Nation will tell you that humans living in a more natural environment often perceive these subtle hints of natural events as well.
There's nothing advanced, other-worldy, or amazing about it. It's one of the most basic functions of the amygdala, that part of the brain which creates fear-based and emotional reactions to environmental input.
Unfortunately, along with the ability to perceive dangers, (many of which turn out to be very real), comes the tendency to exaggerate fears, resulting in an overreaction or irrational fear, which can then result in unnecessary avoidance and anxiety, which often leads to hate and violence at the extreme.
This is why animals are often seen attacking humans who mean them no harm whatsoever. The wild bear is unable to discern whether you intend to kill her cubs, so she responds by ripping you apart when you get too close. She's not committing this violence because she's a thug high on crack, she's doing it out of an instinctive reaction driven by the amygdala. Sadly, even though humans have mental capabilities which allow them to discern what a bear can not, many fail to develop this ability and function at the lowest levels of neurological activity.
Recently, science has discovered that the more religious/conservative among us have a more active and larger-sized amygdala, meaning that the emotional, fear-based "fight or flight" response is stronger in those who are more prone to belief in religion and superstition than for their more skeptical counterparts.
Those who tend to lean towards the more rational explanations for things in their natural environment have been shown to have thicker anterior cingulates, which is an area of the brain associated with anticipation and decision-making.
We know for a fact that the human body has evolved and changed over the years. In fact, in more recent years, there have been more adaptive mutations etched in the human genome occurring about 100 times more quickly over the past 10,000 years than in any other period in the history of the human species. (For more information, check out this article.)
The fact that many people are unaware of this stems from the reality that very few people have been educated about the human genome project, the fact that it is complete, and what has been discovered as a result of it. This is because the project was begun, and completed, within the past 15 years, and most of us over the age of 20 never had the opportunity to learn it in high school science class because the information hadn't yet been discovered.
When Galileo promoted the evidence that the earth was not the center of the universe, and that the sun did not revolve around the earth, he was almost murdered by the church, and was forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his scientific proclamations, which were in opposition to beliefs held by the Catholic church, and the list goes on.
The fact that religion-based governments with fascist tendencies killed off many scientists who presented facts they discovered in opposition to the teachings of the church is a testament to not only the need for political groups to maintain control of populations through the use of religion, but also of the need for a people who had become comfortable with the ideas they spent their entire lives reading, believing, and repeating to hold on to them at any cost, regardless of any evidence discovered to the contrary.
We seem to be at a precarious stage in human development, with a rapidly-increasing understanding of our world in conflict with cultural beliefs developed over thousands of years. Our emotional and cultural attachment to these ideas makes it difficult to accept new information when it appears to contradict what we have come to believe as truth and in which we also may find extreme comfort. However, when one looks back on the mass murders and horrendous wars waged throughout history, it is clear that religion and superstition, which often give way to bigotry, have played the largest role.
The fear of having ideas to which we have such an emotional attachment opposed causes those who are fear-driven to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to anything which even remotely sounds contradictory, causing an ever-widening gap between the superstitious believer and the critical thinker.
Religious people often claim that "faith requires no evidence", yet they are constantly attempting to bolster their faith with arguments that are designed to remove the need to subject their beliefs to any intellectual scrutiny. In the mind of the religious, science and logic are simply inadequate tools for understanding such "mysterious" forces as the objects/beings which serve as the foundation of their belief system, yet none of them have ever thought to ask where the stories they say they believe in come from, and why the sources of those stories should be seen as credible witnesses. The reason? Not only are they not motivated to put the mechanisms behind their beliefs under scrutiny, they are motivated to run as far away from understanding them as possible, lest they discover something which threatens the beliefs to which they have become so emotionally attached.
Life is scary. It's a terminal illness from which we will all eventually die; and while we are living, even basic day-to-day survival can be difficult. Certainly, not one person who finds comfort in the ideas and stories of gods, angels, gnomes, faeries, and other benevolent beings handed down throughout thousands of years of human existence can be blamed for their eagerness to embrace such comfortable ideas. However, it is an unfortunate reality that these superstitions are behind much of the trouble against which many people find themselves struggling.
I can't tell you how many times I have received chain letters via e-mail claiming that the "money angel" or "blessings of abundance" will be bestowed on all who forward said e-mail to at least 10 or 20 of their closest friends. What's worse, I've actually gotten notes from those who send them expressing hope that sending it to me will help them come up with the money to pay their overdue utility bills, and wishing me abundance from doing the same thing and forwarding it on to my friends. "It can't hurt!" is the frequent mantra of those who are willing to spend the time necessary to click on the names of their friends and acquaintances and forward the message. However, the attitudes and behaviors behind it can, and do, hurt many.
Magical thinking is behind much of the economic trouble we are seeing in our society today. There seems to be the idea that if we just have "faith", we can buy homes which cost more on a monthly basis than we can actually afford to live in, vehicles with higher payments than we can afford to make when gas prices rise, and anything we see on sale which we'd like to have, despite the fact that we have no budget and no clue how we will weather any financial disasters or personal emergencies which might create a loss of income.
I know many religious folks who will tell you that the behaviors I have just described are sinful. Still, those behaviors are based in a lack of critical thinking about the realities in which we live, and it is an unfortunate fact that the willingness to believe in religious doctrines without question, even if it all turns out to be true, is the same mental process that allows the mind to justify believing in other things which have no supporting evidence beyond the arbitrary interpretation of those who wish to believe it.
Faith has its place. Faith can see us through some very difficult times. Faith can give us strength to hang on and see something through, whether it's surviving a prison sentence or achieving goals which have never before been accomplished, even in the absence of certainty that it can be done. However, there is a difference between the faith that allows us, even motivates us, to press on and the blind faith that causes us to stay stuck in a pattern of destructive behavior.
It's not the faith that's the problem, it's the type of faith. Is it faith motivated by a genuine desire for the accomplishment of a worthwhile goal, such as contributing to the betterment of the human condition and the refinement of our personalities and behaviors, or is it faith in a system which excuses us from the often difficult exercise of utilizing critical thinking and overcoming our primal urges to distance ourselves from others who are different than us through judgement and hate disguised as religion? Is it faith in hard work and tenacity to allow us to meet our obligations and overcome our challenges, or is it faith in "miracles" which we hope will erase the evidence of our failure to expend the necessary effort required to fulfill our hope for a better world and a better life?
I have friends ranging from the extremes of atheist to the devout and everything in between. Some are secular Christians who value the philosophies of religion but do not necessarily embrace the supernatural and legalistic aspects of it, while others pray for me on a regular basis because they believe I am horribly lost and will burn in the lake of fire for admitting that I am without belief in the supernatural, including any deities. I know many religious "leaders", including past and present ministers, preachers, priests, et al who have the ability to inspire their congregations with messages of love and understanding.
I believe that all of my friends of faith have good intentions, and that those who are religious have chosen religion (and it is a choice, which indicates that there is some reasoning behind it, even if those claiming it's all about faith are not willing to say so) out of a genuine desire to refine themselves into better people. I think that's admirable, and I fully support them in the path which they have chosen for themselves toward that goal.
However, I would be remiss not to point out the many traps on the road into which I have myself fallen in the past. When I see someone lifting a foot aimed at a hole leading to the abyss, I mention it, much to the annoyance of some who believe it to be a golden foothold. I am sure it is just as disheartening to them for me to mention that they are engaging in immoral behavior disguised as religion as it is frustrating for a well-meaning hiker to be told that feeding wild animals can lead to their dependence on easy access to food and, ultimately, their extinction.
I have read far too many stories of people hoping for a miracle from their god to heal their child in lieu of medical treatment which was almost certain to save their lives... of people killing gays because they believe their god hates gays and wants them to do so. I understand that these are not the typical folks you'll find in the churches of mainstream America, but that isn't the point.
The point is that, for those who use faith as a justification for anything, the danger will always exist that they will use it for the justification of something less virtuous than leading a life absent of the seven deadly sins, but that they may one day decide that faith is a justification for far more sinister behavior, giving them authority to commit heinous acts against others, as we have seen throughout history.
It isn't necessary that mass murders take place as a result of faith in order for faith to become a dangerous tool instead of a useful means through difficulty. A simple disregard for the reality surrounding us based on faith is enough to cause us to make a series of bad decisions that will later lead to the collapse of everything we have worked for and everything which we stand for as decent human beings.
Many of the people who have decided that they are victims of a bad economy are actually victims of their own bad decisions. While it may be true that there is much corruption in our government and economic institutions (The Federal Reserve and commercial banks, for example) the fact of the matter is that those who have consistently anticipated possible challenges and planned ahead have managed to survive the economy without becoming homeless, even though they may have had to tighten their belts and are noticing that they no longer have the luxury of doing what they want whenever they want due to financial considerations.
To a certain extent, we are all affected by the poor decisions of those we pay to represent us in our government, but we are affected far more by our own vices and the excuses we use to justify them than we would like to admit.
The world is full of grieving parents who lost their children to tragic accidents, despite the fact that they had faith that there was a guardian angel watching over their child. When it becomes apparent that their belief in a guardian angel didn't protect their child, they comfort themselves with the idea that "god needed them in heaven", when the truth is, not giving a stranger the opportunity to have access to their child would have certainly prevented the child from harm.
To the extent that faith helps us navigate a difficult world, I think it can be a useful tool. When faith is used as an excuse for not learning about the world around us in a way which allows us to have healthy attitudes towards those who are different than us and to function as contributors to, rather than isolationists from, a world in need of discerning minds, it can be as dangerous a weapon as a surgical knife used to murder instead of heal.
It's not about being more intelligent, or having a "big brain". It's about how you use that brain (and the intelligence of which it is capable) to humble yourself, removing your need for an invisible friend with all of the answers and the power to make all of your problems go away, and instead accepting that the answers are no more accessible to one who has access to them only by proxy than to one who has no belief in an invisible all-knowing being at all. The former claims special privilege by association to one with all the answers, ("my daddy is better than yours" or "uh-oh... you're gonna be in TROUBLE because you made my daddy mad") and the latter humbly admits their limitations without the need to be a special child of a supernatural superhero.
Faith. It's a tool that, if a license were required for its responsible use, many would fail the test.
A.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Here's How It Works...
Once upon a time, there was a great country with three main classes: the lowers, the middles, and the uppers.
The lowers and the middles decided that those who had waaaaay more money than they did should have to give up some of their private property and give it to the lowers and the middles, even though the uppers having more is not what caused the lowers and the middles to have less.
Amazingly, they were able to convince enough people to go along with their plan, and they petitioned their government to take, take, take from all of the uppers until the uppers had the same amount of money as the lowers and the middles.
Since there were no longer any uppers, the lowers began demanding from their government that the middles should have to give up some of their private property so that they could all have the same amount of private property, claiming that this was the only "fair" way to do things.
Their government was all too happy to acquiesce, and it wasn't long before everybody had the exact same amount of private property as everyone else.
Unfortunately, the government had also decided that since it had the power to take the money from the uppers and the middles and give it to the lowers, they also had the right to dictate the activities of the lowers, middles, and uppers.
Everyone was required to be tested for drugs randomly without warning, and was sent to prison if they tested positive.
Anything that might cost the government more money, such as drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or drinking soda or eating sugar, was also outlawed. The government justified this by saying "We are providing affordable health care for everyone, so we must keep demand for health care down as much as possible."
Since it was not deemed ethical to deny health care to those who broke the law by drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, or eating sugar, those who were caught doing so were sent to prison, where they could still receive health care, but where they would not have the freedom that would allow them to obtain these forbidden items as easily.
Later, it was decided that potato chips, cake, and other high-fat foods were also costing the government too much in health care costs, so they made those illegal as well.
Pretty soon, everyone was miserable. They had health care, they had housing, they had the basic necessities, but they had no freedom.
And they all lived unhappily ever after.
The End.
The lowers and the middles decided that those who had waaaaay more money than they did should have to give up some of their private property and give it to the lowers and the middles, even though the uppers having more is not what caused the lowers and the middles to have less.
Amazingly, they were able to convince enough people to go along with their plan, and they petitioned their government to take, take, take from all of the uppers until the uppers had the same amount of money as the lowers and the middles.
Since there were no longer any uppers, the lowers began demanding from their government that the middles should have to give up some of their private property so that they could all have the same amount of private property, claiming that this was the only "fair" way to do things.
Their government was all too happy to acquiesce, and it wasn't long before everybody had the exact same amount of private property as everyone else.
Unfortunately, the government had also decided that since it had the power to take the money from the uppers and the middles and give it to the lowers, they also had the right to dictate the activities of the lowers, middles, and uppers.
Everyone was required to be tested for drugs randomly without warning, and was sent to prison if they tested positive.
Anything that might cost the government more money, such as drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or drinking soda or eating sugar, was also outlawed. The government justified this by saying "We are providing affordable health care for everyone, so we must keep demand for health care down as much as possible."
Since it was not deemed ethical to deny health care to those who broke the law by drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, or eating sugar, those who were caught doing so were sent to prison, where they could still receive health care, but where they would not have the freedom that would allow them to obtain these forbidden items as easily.
Later, it was decided that potato chips, cake, and other high-fat foods were also costing the government too much in health care costs, so they made those illegal as well.
Pretty soon, everyone was miserable. They had health care, they had housing, they had the basic necessities, but they had no freedom.
And they all lived unhappily ever after.
The End.
Bigotry and Economics: Part Three - Intolerance
In "Bigotry and Economics: Part One" I discussed the sense of entitlement and bigotry many people, both rich and poor, frequently display in their behavior. In part two, I discussed misplaced blame and the sometimes non-existence of an actual person to be blamed for various economic issues. In part three, I'll be discussing some of the extreme bigotry and hate (some of which I have personally experienced recently) toward those who express ideas in opposition to those at different extremes of the political spectrum.
It seems that people have a need to over-simplify and label others. I suppose a certain amount of that tendency is inherent in human nature, but I tend to believe that at least part of it lies in an indulgence in mental sloth. We'd rather not think about things that we think we already have figured out, and when someone comes along and challenges ideas which we haven't thought out well enough to make a good argument, the tendency is to pigeon-hole those people into undesirable categories so as to excuse us from having to rethink those ideas to which we have become emotionally attached or which have become ingrained in our psyches.
There were some folks I had gotten to know on a casual level in a social networking group who showed me some disturbing aspects of themselves last week, and I'm still quite shaken by it.
While there are some who believe it is not a good idea to discuss things like politics and religion, I believe that if one can't discuss those issues among the people whom they spend time with either in real life or online, then there is little point in interacting on a superficial level, either. For me, the goal of networking socially online or in person is to learn and grow, and that is not possible when surrounding yourself only with those who agree with you, or when walking on eggshells in fear of "rocking the boat".
Don't get me wrong - I'm not one who goes looking for arguments or even debates everywhere I go. I know how to temper my opinions in certain settings where political and religious debates are inappropriate. I'm not talking about being the most controversial, annoying person possible everywhere I go. I'm talking about among people you consider to be your friends and family, people you went to school with, people who live in your community... in other words, your "real life family", which extends far beyond your blood relatives.
Most people who know me from the real world think of me as a kind, patient, "too-nice" person. I'm often told I need to set clear boundaries so people don't think they can walk all over me. I've been working on that, but I also try not to over-compensate and become one of those bitter, angry cynics who pushes away everyone who approaches out of fear that I won't have the fortitude to put my foot down if I let them into my space.
Nothing good ever washes up from shallow waters but the garbage from the bowels of the ocean. If you want to find treasure, you have to go deep, where the substance of treasure is too solid to be regurgitated onto the shore, and sometimes that means diving into the issues and asking some tough questions. I am always trying to understand where others who do not necessarily share my opinions are coming from, and more than once I have changed an opinion of my own when presented with a well-thought out argument that takes things into consideration which I had not factored in to my decision-making when forming my original opinion.
During the economic debates we were constantly hearing about in the media, it was only natural that people would occasionally express an opinion or two about the issues being discussed. For me, I started to keep a watchful eye on one person's comments in particular when I saw a post with her saying "farewell" to a laundry list of government-provided services which she clearly viewed as dear old friends.
I took a step back and just watched her comments over a few days, because I believe that sometimes people will express thoughts that, while may seem ridiculous taken out of context, will make more sense as you read other thoughts they share. However, it became apparent that this person clearly believed the reason she should love her country was because of all of the many services the government provides her and her friends, freedom and sound fiscal policy be damned. The post went something like this:
"So long Pell Grants, affordable healthcare, sex education, public housing, (and a laundry list of other tax-payer supported services). I'm so sad for my country tonight."
I was trying to understand why anyone would buy into the spoon-feedings administered by the fear-mongering media and engaged her in conversation. My point was that it was more important for our country to be able to remain fiscally solvent than it was to hand out every public service our citizens could possibly want. I commented that some of these services serve to keep people dependent, and do not encourage anyone to pursue happiness, but rather to expect to be served happiness at their doorstep. It was then that things began to get ugly.
With a very passive-aggressive manner, this person began trumpeting her horn about how she was SO glad to be "on the side of compassion", and made it clear that anyone who disagreed with her was, in her mind, a cold-hearted, selfish, uncaring, unkind, cruel sub-human who had no empathy whatsoever for anyone else.
I attempted to explain to her that many of us are not only kind and compassionate to a fault, but that we are willing to (and often do) put our money where our mouth is and go out and actually help people with our own resources when we are able. Furthermore, the fact that one is opposed to the government taking even more of our money (be it from those of us who are "poor" or those who are "rich") are not saying that we don't want to help the poor, we just happen to think that we have better ways to do it than by giving all of our hard-won freedom away to a government that shows more and more disregard for the Bill of Rights every day.
Suddenly, I was accused of being "angry". Keep in mind, I was merely stating facts and countering the things that didn't make sense to me with questions and ideas that I thought a thinking person might want to consider. I was not confrontational at all, but the fact that I dared to share insight that was in the middle of the extremes seemed to annoy this person and her friends more than if I had been a member of the actual extreme to which these folks are so opposed.
That's when I realized where the problem lies in our citizenry: it isn't just the politicians. The politicians often are simply reflecting the e-mails, faxes, and letters sent by their constituents. The fact of the matter is, the citizens themselves are sometimes more interested in making others wrong and aggrandizing themselves than they are in taking practical steps to actually physically go and help the people they claim to be so concerned about.
Some of us quietly volunteer at battered women's shelters, writing resume's to help victims of domestic violence find jobs so they can stay away from their abuser, as opposed to merely going and protesting that others don't want to spend their money to solve the problems we ourselves aren't willing to do anything about other than making signs so we can be on television and display our self-righteousness.
Compassion is as compassion does, folks.
Perhaps if we viewed our government as a non-profit organization (the way most seem to without realizing it) and compared it to other non-profit organizations, we'd understand why so many do not see government collecting more taxes from anyone as the best way to bring aid to those who truly need it. The administration-to-aid expense ratio is so high at the government level one wonders why anyone in their right mind believes that more of this is what we need to make our world a better place.
The attitude that I was a horrible, vile person for daring to suggest that our government is not the best venue for our money when it comes to solving the problems faced by our country's poor didn't come from a logical evaluation of what I was saying, it came from years and years of polarized non-thinking and a knee-jerk reaction to anything that doesn't completely agree with what these people have decided they want and must have at all costs, regardless of how it bankrupts us all.
Read the status updates of any self-professed liberal or any conservative. You won't see blog posts they've made laying out clear-cut insights or ideas on how to solve our problems. In fact, these people rarely have blog posts at all. Most of what you will see are links to media stories that lay out the other side to be ridiculously stupid. These people do not think for themselves, and spend a large percentage of their time regurgitating and reposting links to stories produced by their respective politically polarized media outlets.
Sometimes, the only way I know whether I'm reading the status updates of a liberal or a conservative is if I check their political affiliation, since they will post media regurgitations from both sides, trusting that everyone will know what side they are on. The way it works is: the other side's stories will result in comments about how stupid the story is, and the stories from their own side will all get "liked".
What a waste of time.
Meanwhile, those of us who are trying to open the eyes of our fellow Americans to see that we really do have other choices we can make are mindlessly tossed into the "other side" pile, classified as enemies and thrown away like so much trash.
I was loudly unfriended, with the woman and her friends high-fiving one another in true passive-aggressive fashion: "I'm sure it was hard to do, but it needed to be done." As though I was some out of control lunatic who spoiled an intervention and just couldn't be helped, and these folks needed to be protected from my rational thoughts, lest they find themselves having to put some mental effort into their attitudes and behaviors instead of letting a political party tell them what they should stand for and how they should show their support.
I maintain that we needn't be the subjects of a monarchy masquarading as a democratic republic, but that we truly can be citizens of a free country if we are willing to come up with our own solutions instead of running to our government like spoiled children, demanding constant raises in our allowances and the allowances of our friends, then complaining because our parents want to take away more of our freedoms to decide what we can and can not put in or take out of our own bodies.
You can't have it both ways. The more you demand from your government, the more your government will demand of you, not just in confiscation of money earned to be redistributed, but in the right to live as you so choose.
What I found even more disturbing, and quite possibly what annoyed these people more than anything else, was me pointing out that constant bigoted comments about people who disagree with us is not only unfair, but extremely immature and hateful behavior.
These "love and light" folks, who would like you to believe (as they clearly do) that they are pious, virtuous, loving creatures, are giddy as school girls with crushes on their political science teachers when they are finding new ways to vilify those who disagree with them.
A comment was made that the liberals so often seem to have "open and wide-eyed faces full of compassion", while the conservatives have "angry, mean faces". To support this argument, YouTube videos of conservatives in debate were cited. I countered with the fact that when I looked up liberals engaged in debate, they seemed quite angry as well. It was clearly another attempt to convince themselves that they are right, and everyone else who varies even a little bit from their prescribed, bottled set of opinions is not only wrong, but evil and unevolved.
Recently in the news, there have been junk-science studies suggesting that the wealthy people are "less compassionate" than their poor counterparts. Few people ever question the source, or even the validity, of these studies or the interpretation of the results. Let me provide some insight:
Any study claiming that facial expressions and brain activity of someone who is wealthy are indicative of less compassion than that of someone who is poor is making a huge assumption, which immediately disqualifies the study as being worthy of called a "scientific" study at all, and should be called a "politically-motivated" study.
The truth is, most wealthy people are wealthy not because they are less compassionate, but because they are able to be compassionate in situations that are more appropriate, and less emotional when making business decisions. Being compassionate and feeling compassion is completely different from allowing yourself to be ruled by your emotions, even those emotions of compassion.
To say that the objective, rational, logical, and less emotional mode of behavior sometimes necessary in order to make sound business decisions that benefit the company, its customers and its employees is indicative of a lack of compassion is no different than saying that a physician who can cut open a patient in order to do heart surgery without wincing as they make the cut must somehow be similar to a cold-hearted killer. NONSENSE!
There is a time for compassion, and there is a time for rational thought. Sometimes, the two can go together, but they must both be kept in balance. Those who allow themselves to be ruled by their emotions at all times in all areas of their lives are usually the ones who create the need for others to take care of them, because they are not capable of making good decisions themselves.
A little self-discipline goes a long way, but when we lack balance in our emotional reactions to things that upset us, we sometimes create a worse set of circumstances rather than improved circumstances which promote problem-solving.
Doctors are trained to keep their emotions in check in order to save lives on a physical or mental level. Lawyers are trained to recognize the difference between the law and their own sense of morals in order to protect the rights of their clients, as morals are often quite subjective, and the law is less so. Business people are trained to make sure that their businesses remain solvent in order to protect the money of their investors.
Most people seem to think that being wealthy is a corrupting factor, that people lack compassion because they are wealthy and don't understand the struggles of the poor. I present to you the distinct likelihood that self-control and mental and emotional self-discipline is what allowed someone to become wealthy, and that most of the wealthy have compassion, they just don't wear it on their sleeve.
"If a rich person quietly donates millions to feed the hungry or treat the sick and it doesn't get reported in the media, did it really happen?" - Angie Max
Sadly, the demonization of the rich and the deifying of the poor has resulted in the popular opinion that wealthy people are selfish and do not voluntarily do anything to help anyone less fortunate than them. Unless someone is helping people in Bono-like fashion with lots of publicity and press junkets, they aren't helping at all in the minds of these folks. This perpetuates the ridiculous idea that the only way to help anyone is through the iron-fist of the government, and the fact that the government frequently squanders the money is less important to many than the fact that those evil rich folks are having some of their money taken away from them.
I'm baffled when I hear people talking about how they are victims of capitalism because gas prices are so high. There has recently been an investigation into possible price fixing by the FTC. The findings were that there was no such thing going on. Do you trust your government now? Why is it that some will trust government when it comes to taking other people's money so they can enjoy more benefits, but they don't trust them when they find no wrong-doing on the part of the oil companies they are angry with because they don't want to pay the latest price for gas? This reminds me of the kids who wanted me to give them free candy. Have we forgotten how to car pool? Take the bus? Oh wait... that's too inconvenient. Guess what? Convenience is a luxury, not a necessity. If you are not willing to pay the asking price for luxury, you do not deserve it. Car-pooling and taking the bus will become less inconvenient in the minds of the self-entitled if the demand for gasoline continues to increase, causing prices to rise to the point where no one can justify the expense all because nobody is green enough to put their money where their mouth is and coordinate shared transportation to and from work.
Do I sound angry? If so, I guess I need to redefine my understanding of anger from "having a strong feeling of being annoyed" to "pointing out incongruencies between words and actions".
Seriously folks, when we make it unacceptable to point out things that don't make sense to us, we cut off the dialog between ourselves and those with differing opinions, which only strengthens the tendency toward being used as mindless ping-pong balls in the game between the political extremes. I'm not interested in being a part of that game. This isn't a game to me. It's a life-destroying vice. I want nothing to do with it.
What do I stand for? I stand for life-affirming freedom... freedom to pursue happiness, and freedom for those who refuse to do so to suffer the consequences. I stand for the freedom to help those who genuinely can not help themselves, and the ability to do so without infringing on the rights of others.
Many of the "open-faced, wide-eyed" liberals would consider me to be one of the poor they are claiming to be so concerned about if they knew my circumstances. I don't have health care, I have a chronic illness, and have just recently learned that in all likelihood a heart defect I was born with is going to require surgery within the next couple of years or sooner, depending on how well the valve and my heart muscle continue to perform and for how long. Would I like to live in a fantasy-world where I could have all of my bills paid while recovering so I don't lose everything I've worked to rebuild after losing everything more than once in my life already? (Once to a fire.) Of course I would. But I'm a grown up, and I know that in the real world, things don't work that way.
I do not fancy myself to be more worthy of someone else's money just because I have chronic health problems, and I refuse to advocate taking more money from the rich just because the government promises to provide "affordable health care". Why are the rich less deserving of their right to own private property than the rest of us, simply because they have more of it? Remember: the idea that the rich having much causes others to have little has been proven false, so you'll have to come up with a better answer than that.
Have we forgotten that health care expenses aren't the only problem faced by the chronically ill? What about the recovery time from surgery when self-employed folks aren't able to work and who don't have disability insurance? Do the rich have to pay for that too? Where does it end? I'll tell you: it never will. The "gimme gimme gimme's" will continue demanding more and more until everyone has a very mediocre, status-quo existence and freedom is a word your children have to ask about because it no longer exists.
If I died because I was not able to afford the health care I needed, or lost everything again because I was unable to earn money while recovering from surgery, I would not blame it on the rich. I would blame it on life, or nature, that sometimes very cruel, yet often beautiful force in our world that allows all life to exist in the first place.
We have overcome much of nature's cruelty in our part of the world. That doesn't mean we are magical people able to solve all of the problems created by birth defects, famine, and illness. I would be heartbroken to think that the destruction of freedom and the idea that individuals have the right to own private property had to be destroyed because people were so selfish that they wanted to prolong their own life at all costs. Life is precious, but no one life is more precious than another person's right to freedom. We prove that every time a soldier dies in the name of freedom.
I feel that I have much to contribute to this world, but I do not fancy myself to be so important to this world that others must make sacrifices in order to prolong my life without me making an effort to provide something of equal value to the world. Is it nice when others choose to help us? Of course it is! And it means so much more when it comes from the heart rather than from the cold, iron fist of the government.
Those who speak of compassion and kindness should be motivated to create and nurture organizations that are compassionate and kind, not government agencies that dole out minimal assistance only after the endless red tape and paperwork required to eke out a fraction of the money they took from "the rich". Most of that money goes to provide cushy government jobs to rude folks who are only there so they can receive good pay and great government benefits from their government job which the rest of us must do without, receiving a very watered-down version of what the government employee receives with our money.
Yes, I realize not all folks who work for the government are rude, but speaking from personal experience, those who deal with the public and their often demanding attitudes often are. Perhaps they can't be blamed for that, but my point remains that the "deskside manner" of those who "help" others with their fiscal needs is every bit as important as the "bedside manner" of a physician who helps the sick. I guess my training in non-profit management and grant writing at U.T. is starting to show...
I should mention that I have family members who work for the government. They are quite conscientious in carrying out their duties in a responsible way, even if I don't always agree with them on principle. However, I maintain that if tax money were distributed in a more responsible way to organizations specializing in solving problems, we would have the same people who work for the government working for private non-profits and achieving much, much more. It is the bureaucratic and wasteful nature of government itself that causes so many problems, not the lack of funding. Many of the frustrated government workers I know realize that the reason they don't have enough money to achieve the desired results for their clients is because too much money goes to pay the bureaucrats, and while there are similar complaints about the C.E.O.'s of some non-profits, their salaries don't even begin to hold a candle to the waste that occurs when for every one non-profit C.E.O. there are literally scores of "administrators" in the government who take twice as long to achieve the same result as one "over-paid" non-profit C.E.O.
I've had to utilize government assistance in the past, and I've also utilized the services of private non-profit organizations when necessary. I can tell you from first-hand experience that you'll find far more "open-faced, wide-eyed" people at the non-profits run mostly by volunteers than the hassled, harried, harassed government employees you'll find in government offices.
Wayne Dyer, a psychologist who's books I've read since I was about 13 years old, tells of his childhood: his father left the family one day and never came back. There was no welfare then. His mother, like many others in her time, found herself without means to support her family and facing homelessness. She loved her kids and found a family willing to take in Wayne and his siblings while she worked and made enough money to afford a home for them. Nothing motivates one to action like the certainty of losing one's children if they remain idle. Unfortunately, we have many people in our country who have made a career out of finding more and more ways to be idle at the expense of others, and very few of them are truly unable to do for themselves.
I know this not because I read it in a textbook, or heard it on television, or listened to a lecture in college. I know it because I delivered pizza to the projects at midnight and saw it with my own eyes... the $40,000 S.U.V.'s I mentioned in part two, the sackfuls of junk food unloaded from them between the first and the fifth of the month...
Why is it necessary to give someone the equivalent of a gift card to a grocery store? If they are truly hungry, why can we not give them a card to a food bank and let the funds go to a food bank stocking only the most basic groceries necessary for nutrition and which allow for accommodating special dietary needs? Why must we provide access to filet mignon for everyone? Who is more selfish, the person who uses taxpayer money to purchase junk food and filet mignon, or the taxpayer who resents having to fund not merely the survival of others, but their comfort as well?
If we did the truly compassionate thing, we would provide for the survival of others, but we would not enable them to make a career out of dependence by providing motivation for staying that way. There is a difference between providing basic nutritional needs and carte blanche at a grocery store. There is a difference between providing guaranteed student loans and Pell Grants that provide free education at the expense of the rest of us who are forced to work to pay for our education.
What is it exactly about being poor that means someone is perfectly capable of going to college, but less capable of paying back student loans after they receive their education? Are we saying that the poor are stupid and less able to earn a living with the same education as someone who comes from a wealthy family?
That, my friends, is yet another form of bigotry.
Bigotry comes from a variety of unlikely sources in a variety of disguises. Don't be fooled. The consequences of doing so are real, and the laws of nature don't care whether you are a liberal, a conservative, an independent, or a libertarian. When the illusion of wealth we have created in this country finally collapses to the point where everyone realizes that we really can't afford the extravagance in giving we'd like to provide, we will all be subjected to the equal treatment by nature as it inflicts hunger, famine, and disease on all of us, because we were too busy bickering about what to do with other people's money to notice what was going on in the vaccine industry, the carelessness of the nuclear construction and the possible resulting meltdown that does not care whether you are open-faced and full of light and love or not...
We have some serious issues that are going unaddressed in our country right now, and the idea that we are only ignoring them because we think the rich in America should provide everyone who is poor in our midst with a higher standard of living than the folks starving to death in Somalia could even dream of is disturbing to me.
And no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Someone actually has to pay for all of this. But yes, Virginia, there really is a choice between "hang the rich" and "treat the poor like trash and totally ignore there needs". Those who refuse to acknowledge that are not part of the solution, but are contributing to the problem, regardless of how much face time they get on the local news.
A.
It seems that people have a need to over-simplify and label others. I suppose a certain amount of that tendency is inherent in human nature, but I tend to believe that at least part of it lies in an indulgence in mental sloth. We'd rather not think about things that we think we already have figured out, and when someone comes along and challenges ideas which we haven't thought out well enough to make a good argument, the tendency is to pigeon-hole those people into undesirable categories so as to excuse us from having to rethink those ideas to which we have become emotionally attached or which have become ingrained in our psyches.
There were some folks I had gotten to know on a casual level in a social networking group who showed me some disturbing aspects of themselves last week, and I'm still quite shaken by it.
While there are some who believe it is not a good idea to discuss things like politics and religion, I believe that if one can't discuss those issues among the people whom they spend time with either in real life or online, then there is little point in interacting on a superficial level, either. For me, the goal of networking socially online or in person is to learn and grow, and that is not possible when surrounding yourself only with those who agree with you, or when walking on eggshells in fear of "rocking the boat".
Don't get me wrong - I'm not one who goes looking for arguments or even debates everywhere I go. I know how to temper my opinions in certain settings where political and religious debates are inappropriate. I'm not talking about being the most controversial, annoying person possible everywhere I go. I'm talking about among people you consider to be your friends and family, people you went to school with, people who live in your community... in other words, your "real life family", which extends far beyond your blood relatives.
Most people who know me from the real world think of me as a kind, patient, "too-nice" person. I'm often told I need to set clear boundaries so people don't think they can walk all over me. I've been working on that, but I also try not to over-compensate and become one of those bitter, angry cynics who pushes away everyone who approaches out of fear that I won't have the fortitude to put my foot down if I let them into my space.
Nothing good ever washes up from shallow waters but the garbage from the bowels of the ocean. If you want to find treasure, you have to go deep, where the substance of treasure is too solid to be regurgitated onto the shore, and sometimes that means diving into the issues and asking some tough questions. I am always trying to understand where others who do not necessarily share my opinions are coming from, and more than once I have changed an opinion of my own when presented with a well-thought out argument that takes things into consideration which I had not factored in to my decision-making when forming my original opinion.
During the economic debates we were constantly hearing about in the media, it was only natural that people would occasionally express an opinion or two about the issues being discussed. For me, I started to keep a watchful eye on one person's comments in particular when I saw a post with her saying "farewell" to a laundry list of government-provided services which she clearly viewed as dear old friends.
I took a step back and just watched her comments over a few days, because I believe that sometimes people will express thoughts that, while may seem ridiculous taken out of context, will make more sense as you read other thoughts they share. However, it became apparent that this person clearly believed the reason she should love her country was because of all of the many services the government provides her and her friends, freedom and sound fiscal policy be damned. The post went something like this:
"So long Pell Grants, affordable healthcare, sex education, public housing, (and a laundry list of other tax-payer supported services). I'm so sad for my country tonight."
I was trying to understand why anyone would buy into the spoon-feedings administered by the fear-mongering media and engaged her in conversation. My point was that it was more important for our country to be able to remain fiscally solvent than it was to hand out every public service our citizens could possibly want. I commented that some of these services serve to keep people dependent, and do not encourage anyone to pursue happiness, but rather to expect to be served happiness at their doorstep. It was then that things began to get ugly.
With a very passive-aggressive manner, this person began trumpeting her horn about how she was SO glad to be "on the side of compassion", and made it clear that anyone who disagreed with her was, in her mind, a cold-hearted, selfish, uncaring, unkind, cruel sub-human who had no empathy whatsoever for anyone else.
I attempted to explain to her that many of us are not only kind and compassionate to a fault, but that we are willing to (and often do) put our money where our mouth is and go out and actually help people with our own resources when we are able. Furthermore, the fact that one is opposed to the government taking even more of our money (be it from those of us who are "poor" or those who are "rich") are not saying that we don't want to help the poor, we just happen to think that we have better ways to do it than by giving all of our hard-won freedom away to a government that shows more and more disregard for the Bill of Rights every day.
Suddenly, I was accused of being "angry". Keep in mind, I was merely stating facts and countering the things that didn't make sense to me with questions and ideas that I thought a thinking person might want to consider. I was not confrontational at all, but the fact that I dared to share insight that was in the middle of the extremes seemed to annoy this person and her friends more than if I had been a member of the actual extreme to which these folks are so opposed.
That's when I realized where the problem lies in our citizenry: it isn't just the politicians. The politicians often are simply reflecting the e-mails, faxes, and letters sent by their constituents. The fact of the matter is, the citizens themselves are sometimes more interested in making others wrong and aggrandizing themselves than they are in taking practical steps to actually physically go and help the people they claim to be so concerned about.
Some of us quietly volunteer at battered women's shelters, writing resume's to help victims of domestic violence find jobs so they can stay away from their abuser, as opposed to merely going and protesting that others don't want to spend their money to solve the problems we ourselves aren't willing to do anything about other than making signs so we can be on television and display our self-righteousness.
Compassion is as compassion does, folks.
Perhaps if we viewed our government as a non-profit organization (the way most seem to without realizing it) and compared it to other non-profit organizations, we'd understand why so many do not see government collecting more taxes from anyone as the best way to bring aid to those who truly need it. The administration-to-aid expense ratio is so high at the government level one wonders why anyone in their right mind believes that more of this is what we need to make our world a better place.
The attitude that I was a horrible, vile person for daring to suggest that our government is not the best venue for our money when it comes to solving the problems faced by our country's poor didn't come from a logical evaluation of what I was saying, it came from years and years of polarized non-thinking and a knee-jerk reaction to anything that doesn't completely agree with what these people have decided they want and must have at all costs, regardless of how it bankrupts us all.
Read the status updates of any self-professed liberal or any conservative. You won't see blog posts they've made laying out clear-cut insights or ideas on how to solve our problems. In fact, these people rarely have blog posts at all. Most of what you will see are links to media stories that lay out the other side to be ridiculously stupid. These people do not think for themselves, and spend a large percentage of their time regurgitating and reposting links to stories produced by their respective politically polarized media outlets.
Sometimes, the only way I know whether I'm reading the status updates of a liberal or a conservative is if I check their political affiliation, since they will post media regurgitations from both sides, trusting that everyone will know what side they are on. The way it works is: the other side's stories will result in comments about how stupid the story is, and the stories from their own side will all get "liked".
What a waste of time.
Meanwhile, those of us who are trying to open the eyes of our fellow Americans to see that we really do have other choices we can make are mindlessly tossed into the "other side" pile, classified as enemies and thrown away like so much trash.
I was loudly unfriended, with the woman and her friends high-fiving one another in true passive-aggressive fashion: "I'm sure it was hard to do, but it needed to be done." As though I was some out of control lunatic who spoiled an intervention and just couldn't be helped, and these folks needed to be protected from my rational thoughts, lest they find themselves having to put some mental effort into their attitudes and behaviors instead of letting a political party tell them what they should stand for and how they should show their support.
I maintain that we needn't be the subjects of a monarchy masquarading as a democratic republic, but that we truly can be citizens of a free country if we are willing to come up with our own solutions instead of running to our government like spoiled children, demanding constant raises in our allowances and the allowances of our friends, then complaining because our parents want to take away more of our freedoms to decide what we can and can not put in or take out of our own bodies.
You can't have it both ways. The more you demand from your government, the more your government will demand of you, not just in confiscation of money earned to be redistributed, but in the right to live as you so choose.
What I found even more disturbing, and quite possibly what annoyed these people more than anything else, was me pointing out that constant bigoted comments about people who disagree with us is not only unfair, but extremely immature and hateful behavior.
These "love and light" folks, who would like you to believe (as they clearly do) that they are pious, virtuous, loving creatures, are giddy as school girls with crushes on their political science teachers when they are finding new ways to vilify those who disagree with them.
A comment was made that the liberals so often seem to have "open and wide-eyed faces full of compassion", while the conservatives have "angry, mean faces". To support this argument, YouTube videos of conservatives in debate were cited. I countered with the fact that when I looked up liberals engaged in debate, they seemed quite angry as well. It was clearly another attempt to convince themselves that they are right, and everyone else who varies even a little bit from their prescribed, bottled set of opinions is not only wrong, but evil and unevolved.
Recently in the news, there have been junk-science studies suggesting that the wealthy people are "less compassionate" than their poor counterparts. Few people ever question the source, or even the validity, of these studies or the interpretation of the results. Let me provide some insight:
Any study claiming that facial expressions and brain activity of someone who is wealthy are indicative of less compassion than that of someone who is poor is making a huge assumption, which immediately disqualifies the study as being worthy of called a "scientific" study at all, and should be called a "politically-motivated" study.
The truth is, most wealthy people are wealthy not because they are less compassionate, but because they are able to be compassionate in situations that are more appropriate, and less emotional when making business decisions. Being compassionate and feeling compassion is completely different from allowing yourself to be ruled by your emotions, even those emotions of compassion.
To say that the objective, rational, logical, and less emotional mode of behavior sometimes necessary in order to make sound business decisions that benefit the company, its customers and its employees is indicative of a lack of compassion is no different than saying that a physician who can cut open a patient in order to do heart surgery without wincing as they make the cut must somehow be similar to a cold-hearted killer. NONSENSE!
There is a time for compassion, and there is a time for rational thought. Sometimes, the two can go together, but they must both be kept in balance. Those who allow themselves to be ruled by their emotions at all times in all areas of their lives are usually the ones who create the need for others to take care of them, because they are not capable of making good decisions themselves.
A little self-discipline goes a long way, but when we lack balance in our emotional reactions to things that upset us, we sometimes create a worse set of circumstances rather than improved circumstances which promote problem-solving.
Doctors are trained to keep their emotions in check in order to save lives on a physical or mental level. Lawyers are trained to recognize the difference between the law and their own sense of morals in order to protect the rights of their clients, as morals are often quite subjective, and the law is less so. Business people are trained to make sure that their businesses remain solvent in order to protect the money of their investors.
Most people seem to think that being wealthy is a corrupting factor, that people lack compassion because they are wealthy and don't understand the struggles of the poor. I present to you the distinct likelihood that self-control and mental and emotional self-discipline is what allowed someone to become wealthy, and that most of the wealthy have compassion, they just don't wear it on their sleeve.
"If a rich person quietly donates millions to feed the hungry or treat the sick and it doesn't get reported in the media, did it really happen?" - Angie Max
Sadly, the demonization of the rich and the deifying of the poor has resulted in the popular opinion that wealthy people are selfish and do not voluntarily do anything to help anyone less fortunate than them. Unless someone is helping people in Bono-like fashion with lots of publicity and press junkets, they aren't helping at all in the minds of these folks. This perpetuates the ridiculous idea that the only way to help anyone is through the iron-fist of the government, and the fact that the government frequently squanders the money is less important to many than the fact that those evil rich folks are having some of their money taken away from them.
I'm baffled when I hear people talking about how they are victims of capitalism because gas prices are so high. There has recently been an investigation into possible price fixing by the FTC. The findings were that there was no such thing going on. Do you trust your government now? Why is it that some will trust government when it comes to taking other people's money so they can enjoy more benefits, but they don't trust them when they find no wrong-doing on the part of the oil companies they are angry with because they don't want to pay the latest price for gas? This reminds me of the kids who wanted me to give them free candy. Have we forgotten how to car pool? Take the bus? Oh wait... that's too inconvenient. Guess what? Convenience is a luxury, not a necessity. If you are not willing to pay the asking price for luxury, you do not deserve it. Car-pooling and taking the bus will become less inconvenient in the minds of the self-entitled if the demand for gasoline continues to increase, causing prices to rise to the point where no one can justify the expense all because nobody is green enough to put their money where their mouth is and coordinate shared transportation to and from work.
Do I sound angry? If so, I guess I need to redefine my understanding of anger from "having a strong feeling of being annoyed" to "pointing out incongruencies between words and actions".
Seriously folks, when we make it unacceptable to point out things that don't make sense to us, we cut off the dialog between ourselves and those with differing opinions, which only strengthens the tendency toward being used as mindless ping-pong balls in the game between the political extremes. I'm not interested in being a part of that game. This isn't a game to me. It's a life-destroying vice. I want nothing to do with it.
What do I stand for? I stand for life-affirming freedom... freedom to pursue happiness, and freedom for those who refuse to do so to suffer the consequences. I stand for the freedom to help those who genuinely can not help themselves, and the ability to do so without infringing on the rights of others.
Many of the "open-faced, wide-eyed" liberals would consider me to be one of the poor they are claiming to be so concerned about if they knew my circumstances. I don't have health care, I have a chronic illness, and have just recently learned that in all likelihood a heart defect I was born with is going to require surgery within the next couple of years or sooner, depending on how well the valve and my heart muscle continue to perform and for how long. Would I like to live in a fantasy-world where I could have all of my bills paid while recovering so I don't lose everything I've worked to rebuild after losing everything more than once in my life already? (Once to a fire.) Of course I would. But I'm a grown up, and I know that in the real world, things don't work that way.
I do not fancy myself to be more worthy of someone else's money just because I have chronic health problems, and I refuse to advocate taking more money from the rich just because the government promises to provide "affordable health care". Why are the rich less deserving of their right to own private property than the rest of us, simply because they have more of it? Remember: the idea that the rich having much causes others to have little has been proven false, so you'll have to come up with a better answer than that.
Have we forgotten that health care expenses aren't the only problem faced by the chronically ill? What about the recovery time from surgery when self-employed folks aren't able to work and who don't have disability insurance? Do the rich have to pay for that too? Where does it end? I'll tell you: it never will. The "gimme gimme gimme's" will continue demanding more and more until everyone has a very mediocre, status-quo existence and freedom is a word your children have to ask about because it no longer exists.
If I died because I was not able to afford the health care I needed, or lost everything again because I was unable to earn money while recovering from surgery, I would not blame it on the rich. I would blame it on life, or nature, that sometimes very cruel, yet often beautiful force in our world that allows all life to exist in the first place.
We have overcome much of nature's cruelty in our part of the world. That doesn't mean we are magical people able to solve all of the problems created by birth defects, famine, and illness. I would be heartbroken to think that the destruction of freedom and the idea that individuals have the right to own private property had to be destroyed because people were so selfish that they wanted to prolong their own life at all costs. Life is precious, but no one life is more precious than another person's right to freedom. We prove that every time a soldier dies in the name of freedom.
I feel that I have much to contribute to this world, but I do not fancy myself to be so important to this world that others must make sacrifices in order to prolong my life without me making an effort to provide something of equal value to the world. Is it nice when others choose to help us? Of course it is! And it means so much more when it comes from the heart rather than from the cold, iron fist of the government.
Those who speak of compassion and kindness should be motivated to create and nurture organizations that are compassionate and kind, not government agencies that dole out minimal assistance only after the endless red tape and paperwork required to eke out a fraction of the money they took from "the rich". Most of that money goes to provide cushy government jobs to rude folks who are only there so they can receive good pay and great government benefits from their government job which the rest of us must do without, receiving a very watered-down version of what the government employee receives with our money.
Yes, I realize not all folks who work for the government are rude, but speaking from personal experience, those who deal with the public and their often demanding attitudes often are. Perhaps they can't be blamed for that, but my point remains that the "deskside manner" of those who "help" others with their fiscal needs is every bit as important as the "bedside manner" of a physician who helps the sick. I guess my training in non-profit management and grant writing at U.T. is starting to show...
I should mention that I have family members who work for the government. They are quite conscientious in carrying out their duties in a responsible way, even if I don't always agree with them on principle. However, I maintain that if tax money were distributed in a more responsible way to organizations specializing in solving problems, we would have the same people who work for the government working for private non-profits and achieving much, much more. It is the bureaucratic and wasteful nature of government itself that causes so many problems, not the lack of funding. Many of the frustrated government workers I know realize that the reason they don't have enough money to achieve the desired results for their clients is because too much money goes to pay the bureaucrats, and while there are similar complaints about the C.E.O.'s of some non-profits, their salaries don't even begin to hold a candle to the waste that occurs when for every one non-profit C.E.O. there are literally scores of "administrators" in the government who take twice as long to achieve the same result as one "over-paid" non-profit C.E.O.
I've had to utilize government assistance in the past, and I've also utilized the services of private non-profit organizations when necessary. I can tell you from first-hand experience that you'll find far more "open-faced, wide-eyed" people at the non-profits run mostly by volunteers than the hassled, harried, harassed government employees you'll find in government offices.
Wayne Dyer, a psychologist who's books I've read since I was about 13 years old, tells of his childhood: his father left the family one day and never came back. There was no welfare then. His mother, like many others in her time, found herself without means to support her family and facing homelessness. She loved her kids and found a family willing to take in Wayne and his siblings while she worked and made enough money to afford a home for them. Nothing motivates one to action like the certainty of losing one's children if they remain idle. Unfortunately, we have many people in our country who have made a career out of finding more and more ways to be idle at the expense of others, and very few of them are truly unable to do for themselves.
I know this not because I read it in a textbook, or heard it on television, or listened to a lecture in college. I know it because I delivered pizza to the projects at midnight and saw it with my own eyes... the $40,000 S.U.V.'s I mentioned in part two, the sackfuls of junk food unloaded from them between the first and the fifth of the month...
Why is it necessary to give someone the equivalent of a gift card to a grocery store? If they are truly hungry, why can we not give them a card to a food bank and let the funds go to a food bank stocking only the most basic groceries necessary for nutrition and which allow for accommodating special dietary needs? Why must we provide access to filet mignon for everyone? Who is more selfish, the person who uses taxpayer money to purchase junk food and filet mignon, or the taxpayer who resents having to fund not merely the survival of others, but their comfort as well?
If we did the truly compassionate thing, we would provide for the survival of others, but we would not enable them to make a career out of dependence by providing motivation for staying that way. There is a difference between providing basic nutritional needs and carte blanche at a grocery store. There is a difference between providing guaranteed student loans and Pell Grants that provide free education at the expense of the rest of us who are forced to work to pay for our education.
What is it exactly about being poor that means someone is perfectly capable of going to college, but less capable of paying back student loans after they receive their education? Are we saying that the poor are stupid and less able to earn a living with the same education as someone who comes from a wealthy family?
That, my friends, is yet another form of bigotry.
Bigotry comes from a variety of unlikely sources in a variety of disguises. Don't be fooled. The consequences of doing so are real, and the laws of nature don't care whether you are a liberal, a conservative, an independent, or a libertarian. When the illusion of wealth we have created in this country finally collapses to the point where everyone realizes that we really can't afford the extravagance in giving we'd like to provide, we will all be subjected to the equal treatment by nature as it inflicts hunger, famine, and disease on all of us, because we were too busy bickering about what to do with other people's money to notice what was going on in the vaccine industry, the carelessness of the nuclear construction and the possible resulting meltdown that does not care whether you are open-faced and full of light and love or not...
We have some serious issues that are going unaddressed in our country right now, and the idea that we are only ignoring them because we think the rich in America should provide everyone who is poor in our midst with a higher standard of living than the folks starving to death in Somalia could even dream of is disturbing to me.
And no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Someone actually has to pay for all of this. But yes, Virginia, there really is a choice between "hang the rich" and "treat the poor like trash and totally ignore there needs". Those who refuse to acknowledge that are not part of the solution, but are contributing to the problem, regardless of how much face time they get on the local news.
A.
Bigotry and Economics: Part Two - Who's To Blame?
Steve Wozniak, who's birthday is today, is the founder of Apple Computer, founded on April 1, 1976 with partner Steve Jobs. They were just a couple of regular electronics enthusiasts who sold some of their possessions (no corporate bank loans) and raised $1,300 in order to get started. They believed in their vision enough that Jobs was willing to sell his vehicle in order to help fund it, and Wozniak was willing to part ways with his HP scientific calculator.
Today, Apple Computer has more money than the United States of America.
Read the sentence above again and think about it for a moment, and then think about the people who say that "the rich should pay more in taxes because they got rich at the expense of poor people". Now, you tell me how Steves Wozniak and Jobs victimized poor people by creating the world's most successful company. You can't, because they didn't.
Our federal government alone (not counting state and local), on the other hand, spends $2 billion per year locking up non-violent folks for crimes that are often victim-less (marijuana-related, for example). In fact, as of this writing, the "war on drugs" has cost us more than $9 billion dollars at the federal level, $15 billion at the state level combining all states in that total, with a total of more than $25 billion and counting THIS YEAR ALONE! This is not a cumulative total. This is the total so far for THIS. YEAR. And we're losing the war. We've been losing it since the day we started it. Oh, and did I forget to mention that 15,000 human lives are estimated to be lost each year as a result of the war on drugs? Not drugs themselves, mind you, but innocent people killed as a result of the government's activity in the "war on drugs".
Nobody forces anyone to purchase an iPhone. If you want a smartphone, you don't even have to buy an iPhone. You can always choose an Android phone. The reason so many choose the iPhone is because it does so much for them, and is so well-integrated with their needs and what they are trying to accomplish in their lives on a daily basis. Nobody dies for an iPhone or because Apple makes iPhones, or even because Apple is in a "war" against Android phones, unless you want to count Foxconn's employee suicides as a result of their business practices which they are currently revising in light of these tragedies. (If only we could get our government to revise their policies so quickly in response to the tragedies they have created with their freedom-destroying restrictions on an individual's right to ingest marijuana into their own bodies.)
It's a great phone, and an even better personal digital assistant. Some of us dislike the fact that Apple doesn't provide an open source platform like Android does, but at least our federal government did something right in affirming that it was never illegal (still isn't) to "jailbreak" your phone so that you can program it (or purchase non-Apple apps) in order to use it the way *you* want to use it.
I sometimes worry that not allowing the phone to process Flash will be the downfall of Apple, but so far they seem quite unphased. As a beta-tester for app companies on the side, I will soon have to purchase an Android phone in order to be able to test apps for both platforms, so if I want to access a site requiring Flash I can always use the Android. Nobody forces me to purchase one over the other, so I really can't complain. That's the beauty of a free market, where the consumer makes the decisions about what they will buy, and companies make products in order to please their customers.
If you take away the profit motive from companies, you do away with their incentive to provide what the consumer wants. Everyone loses. I'm going to say it: self-interest is not a dirty word, even if it is hyphenated!
If we continue to allow our government to step in and interfere (or even "bail out") companies, we create an environment where the government decides which companies should and should not be saved with OUR money, and even worse, the government then has the power to tell the company what they can and can not do as a company, since the government is now the owner of that company (at least until the money is paid back, assuming that happens).
I have friends who act disgusted when someone like me expresses disdain at our government taking so much license with our money and our freedom. While I admire their desire to avoid cynicism in expressing "trust" of "their" government, I also remind them that our government was founded on a mistrust of government. We literally would not exist as an independent country today had the founders of this country not decided that government was untrustworthy... and not just other governments, but *our* government, and governments in general.
There is a certain amount of cynicism inherently necessary to keep your government in check. Cynicism is something that many of the "love and light" types claim is not in their nature, and yet in the same breath that they make that claim, they turn around and claim that the rich are all dirty, rotten bastards who stole from them in order to buy a private jet. Seriously? If that's not cynicism of the worst kind, I don't know what is.
The fact of the matter is, there are people who can't be trusted at both ends of the political spectrum and at both ends of the economic spectrum.
In "Bigotry and Economics: Part One" I mentioned the bigoted statements often made by those who believe the poor are victims of the wealthy. Now I will mention that there are those who make statements of a bigoted nature against the poor as well. We've all heard it: "The poor are poor because they are lazy and don't try hard enough."
Again, just as with the wealthy who fit the stereotype of selfish asses who don't care about anyone but themselves, there are those who are accurately described by the statement that the poor are lazy. However, the problem with all stereotypes and bigoted attitudes is that it blankets all people in a category and does not make allowances for the many who do NOT fit that stereotype.
I've met some wealthy people who don't seem to give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves. I've also met some wealthy people who give more money than their liberal wealthy counterparts because they *do* care about others, sometimes to a fault.
By the same token, I have met quite a few folks who are disabled (I know more than one paraplegic.) and in need of assistance in a variety of ways and who truly need help. I have also delivered many a pizza to the projects during the first week of the month when welfare checks go out when I worked as a delivery person, and watched as the residents in tax-payer provided housing complexes unloaded sacks full of junk food from $40,000 S.U.V.'s.
My point is that I can see very clearly that there are people who take advantage of others on both ends of the economic spectrum, and that without careful attention to that reality we run the risk of continuing to hemorrhage trillions of dollars in wasteful assistance paid to folks who don't need it and in bailing out companies and banks who behave in an irresponsible and predatory manner.
Make no mistake: the companies and banks we bailed out had to be bailed out because of circumstances created by their own unethical, even illegal, behavior. Banks knew that if they made home loans to people who couldn't afford the mortgages, they'd collect money on the loans until the borrower defaulted, and then make money selling the note and/or the house once they foreclosed. This is a very old practice and is nothing new. This was just the first time the scheme blew up in the banks' faces all at once, causing the illusion of theoretical future interest they had created for their investors to collapse.
Unfortunately, people have decided that because of the widespread banking fraud and the Ponzi schemes committed by a few individuals, that all people who appear to be wealthy are guilty of some unknown crime against poor folks.
I find it interesting that the banks were bailed out for what amounts to a very similar scheme as what Bernie Madoff was doing on an individual level. Apparently, fraud is legal as long as it's being committed by a bank.
The subliminal message we seem to be promoting is that people are bad, and corporations are good, but let's take a closer look:
All of those high-paid executives who receive huge bonuses, even when they are systematically making decisions that result in the bankruptcy of the company, do not decide what their salaries will be. Unlike Congress, whose members DO get to vote for their own raises, corporations are controlled by a board of directors. While it's true that there are some C.E.O.'s who sit on the board of directors, it is the exception and not the rule, and the C.E.O. gets one vote, unlike Congress, which amounts to a room full of C.E.O.'s all voting raises for themselves.
Getting back to my original point that it is unreasonable to expect the wealthy to pay 40% or more of their income in taxes, I think these terms we throw around like "fair share" and "higher percentage" are very misleading.
The very high income of someone receiving $1,000,000 or more per year already ensures that the same percentage of their income is exponentially higher than someone with a much lower income. Applying the same percentage across the board is not the same thing as applying the same AMOUNT across the board. The percentage of higher income equates to MUCH more money paid by the wealthy and MUCH less paid by the poor. That there are those who want the wealthy to pay even MORE than this is very telling of the attitude that the lower, and even middle, classes have toward the "rich".
If you really get honest about what this implies, you understand that these people who think this makes sense are essentially saying that these people are making too much money. If you truly believe that, you need to understand that the person taking home the paycheck isn't the person with whom you should be angry. You should instead be angry with the board of directors of the company willing to pay that amount, and taxing the high-salaried corporate executive to death is hardly any different than a mobster forcing a business owner to pay "protection money".
Also inherent in the attitude that these people are making too much money is the belief that one person making lots of money somehow causes another person to lose money, which is completely false.
Not one person is required to purchase an iPhone from Apple Computer. The people who work at Apple Computer do not make less money because the C.E.O. of the company takes home so much more money than them. They make what they make because they have agreed to trade their labor for the price offered by the company who employs them. The fact that there may not be a lot of alternatives out there or that someone is not in a position to turn down a job which they feel they should be paid more to do is not caused by the C.E.O. of the company. Why then, do we blame the C.E.O.?
Perhaps a better illustration would be two farmers who each have the same amount of land right next to one another. Both have the same quality soil and seed, both receive the same amount of rain and sunlight. One is able to negotiate a much higher return from the soil by providing the soil with more seeds and fertilizer, and perhaps paying more attention to pest and weed control. The other may have some personal or family issues that prevent her from being able to cultivate the crops as well, resulting in a much smaller harvest. The smaller harvest is not in any way caused by the farmer next door reaping a huge harvest. The harvest is created in agreement with the requirements of the laws of nature, and the circumstances of one farm have nothing to do with the circumstances of another.
Is it nice for the farmer with the better harvest to share their harvest with their less-fortunate neighbor? Sure. Should it be required? No.
In life, there are no guarantees. Sometimes things get messy, sometimes there are things that happen to us that we can not control. But this childish attitude many seem to have that others are wrong for not rescuing them usually comes with a heavy dose of hypocrisy.
The middle-class retiree who lost a lot of money in her 401K and is now forced to live on little more than what Social Security pays each month is not a victim of the wealthy, but a victim of her own bad decision to invest the money in the manner in which she chose.
If you truly believe that a corporate executive is making "too much money", the solution is not to take that money away from them, but to stop buying the product the company they work for produces. Write a letter to the board of directors and tell them why you have stopped buying their product. If you are truly concerned that these people making too much money is what is causing the workers in their company or the poor in our country to not have enough, go directly to the source of the alleged problem and deal with it there. Don't give your government the right to start taking "just a little bit more" of everyone's money. That's like saying that some people are too healthy, and it's the fault of the healthy that the sick are sick, so let's go infect all of the healthy people with "just a mild version" of whatever it is that's making the others sick, and somehow that will solve the problem. It won't.
I agree that in a civilized society we can not allow those who are starving or homeless to starve and be killed by the cruel elements of mother nature simply because it isn't our fault they are in the situation in which they find themselves. I am also aware that there are many people who are more than willing to help those people, who just don't happen to think that the government can be trusted to get the job done as well as private non-profit organizations can.
The middle-class retiree who owns her own home and lives alone and wants to use other people's money to take care of the homeless is not willing to open up her home to the homeless, and seems to see nothing wrong with her attitude that she is somehow a better person because she advocates that others pay to solve the problem while she complains that her circumstances are not ideal, despite the fact that they are of her own making. Even if they were not of her own making, she is still much better off than the people she claims to be so concerned about, yet is unwilling to make sacrifices herself, claiming that it will be more difficult for her to do it than someone much wealthier. And there lies the problem: there's always someone much wealthier whom everyone else thinks should foot the bill for their ideologies. Lots of lip service, but the hands remain idle except when pointing the fingers at those whose money they are all too willing to spend, despite the fact that they did nothing to earn it.
To sum it up: the blame game has no winners. Those who make risky investments are not guaranteed to receive a huge return, nor are they guaranteed that they won't lose all of the money invested. If it is fraud causing them to lose their money, then it may not be totally their fault they lost their money, but in the case of Bernie Madoff, there were a lot of very greedy people who are now painting themselves as victims, even though any reasonable person not drunk with greed would have known it was too good to be true. Indeed, it wasn't the greed of Bernie Madoff that allowed the largest Ponzi scheme in history to occur, it was the greed of those who chose to buy into it, despite the fact that everything about it screamed "FRAUD ALERT"!
So, you think it's not the responsibility of the individual investor to question the validity of the investments? You "trust" your government? Let's not forget: there were those who tried to tell the feds that there was something illegal about Bernie Madoff's investment company, and they failed to act on the information until it was too late to save the billions of dollars that were lost. That's what happens when you trust your government, especially in order to justify giving yourself permission to do foolish things.
To be continued...
Today, Apple Computer has more money than the United States of America.
Read the sentence above again and think about it for a moment, and then think about the people who say that "the rich should pay more in taxes because they got rich at the expense of poor people". Now, you tell me how Steves Wozniak and Jobs victimized poor people by creating the world's most successful company. You can't, because they didn't.
Our federal government alone (not counting state and local), on the other hand, spends $2 billion per year locking up non-violent folks for crimes that are often victim-less (marijuana-related, for example). In fact, as of this writing, the "war on drugs" has cost us more than $9 billion dollars at the federal level, $15 billion at the state level combining all states in that total, with a total of more than $25 billion and counting THIS YEAR ALONE! This is not a cumulative total. This is the total so far for THIS. YEAR. And we're losing the war. We've been losing it since the day we started it. Oh, and did I forget to mention that 15,000 human lives are estimated to be lost each year as a result of the war on drugs? Not drugs themselves, mind you, but innocent people killed as a result of the government's activity in the "war on drugs".
Nobody forces anyone to purchase an iPhone. If you want a smartphone, you don't even have to buy an iPhone. You can always choose an Android phone. The reason so many choose the iPhone is because it does so much for them, and is so well-integrated with their needs and what they are trying to accomplish in their lives on a daily basis. Nobody dies for an iPhone or because Apple makes iPhones, or even because Apple is in a "war" against Android phones, unless you want to count Foxconn's employee suicides as a result of their business practices which they are currently revising in light of these tragedies. (If only we could get our government to revise their policies so quickly in response to the tragedies they have created with their freedom-destroying restrictions on an individual's right to ingest marijuana into their own bodies.)
It's a great phone, and an even better personal digital assistant. Some of us dislike the fact that Apple doesn't provide an open source platform like Android does, but at least our federal government did something right in affirming that it was never illegal (still isn't) to "jailbreak" your phone so that you can program it (or purchase non-Apple apps) in order to use it the way *you* want to use it.
I sometimes worry that not allowing the phone to process Flash will be the downfall of Apple, but so far they seem quite unphased. As a beta-tester for app companies on the side, I will soon have to purchase an Android phone in order to be able to test apps for both platforms, so if I want to access a site requiring Flash I can always use the Android. Nobody forces me to purchase one over the other, so I really can't complain. That's the beauty of a free market, where the consumer makes the decisions about what they will buy, and companies make products in order to please their customers.
If you take away the profit motive from companies, you do away with their incentive to provide what the consumer wants. Everyone loses. I'm going to say it: self-interest is not a dirty word, even if it is hyphenated!
If we continue to allow our government to step in and interfere (or even "bail out") companies, we create an environment where the government decides which companies should and should not be saved with OUR money, and even worse, the government then has the power to tell the company what they can and can not do as a company, since the government is now the owner of that company (at least until the money is paid back, assuming that happens).
I have friends who act disgusted when someone like me expresses disdain at our government taking so much license with our money and our freedom. While I admire their desire to avoid cynicism in expressing "trust" of "their" government, I also remind them that our government was founded on a mistrust of government. We literally would not exist as an independent country today had the founders of this country not decided that government was untrustworthy... and not just other governments, but *our* government, and governments in general.
There is a certain amount of cynicism inherently necessary to keep your government in check. Cynicism is something that many of the "love and light" types claim is not in their nature, and yet in the same breath that they make that claim, they turn around and claim that the rich are all dirty, rotten bastards who stole from them in order to buy a private jet. Seriously? If that's not cynicism of the worst kind, I don't know what is.
The fact of the matter is, there are people who can't be trusted at both ends of the political spectrum and at both ends of the economic spectrum.
In "Bigotry and Economics: Part One" I mentioned the bigoted statements often made by those who believe the poor are victims of the wealthy. Now I will mention that there are those who make statements of a bigoted nature against the poor as well. We've all heard it: "The poor are poor because they are lazy and don't try hard enough."
Again, just as with the wealthy who fit the stereotype of selfish asses who don't care about anyone but themselves, there are those who are accurately described by the statement that the poor are lazy. However, the problem with all stereotypes and bigoted attitudes is that it blankets all people in a category and does not make allowances for the many who do NOT fit that stereotype.
I've met some wealthy people who don't seem to give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves. I've also met some wealthy people who give more money than their liberal wealthy counterparts because they *do* care about others, sometimes to a fault.
By the same token, I have met quite a few folks who are disabled (I know more than one paraplegic.) and in need of assistance in a variety of ways and who truly need help. I have also delivered many a pizza to the projects during the first week of the month when welfare checks go out when I worked as a delivery person, and watched as the residents in tax-payer provided housing complexes unloaded sacks full of junk food from $40,000 S.U.V.'s.
My point is that I can see very clearly that there are people who take advantage of others on both ends of the economic spectrum, and that without careful attention to that reality we run the risk of continuing to hemorrhage trillions of dollars in wasteful assistance paid to folks who don't need it and in bailing out companies and banks who behave in an irresponsible and predatory manner.
Make no mistake: the companies and banks we bailed out had to be bailed out because of circumstances created by their own unethical, even illegal, behavior. Banks knew that if they made home loans to people who couldn't afford the mortgages, they'd collect money on the loans until the borrower defaulted, and then make money selling the note and/or the house once they foreclosed. This is a very old practice and is nothing new. This was just the first time the scheme blew up in the banks' faces all at once, causing the illusion of theoretical future interest they had created for their investors to collapse.
Unfortunately, people have decided that because of the widespread banking fraud and the Ponzi schemes committed by a few individuals, that all people who appear to be wealthy are guilty of some unknown crime against poor folks.
I find it interesting that the banks were bailed out for what amounts to a very similar scheme as what Bernie Madoff was doing on an individual level. Apparently, fraud is legal as long as it's being committed by a bank.
The subliminal message we seem to be promoting is that people are bad, and corporations are good, but let's take a closer look:
All of those high-paid executives who receive huge bonuses, even when they are systematically making decisions that result in the bankruptcy of the company, do not decide what their salaries will be. Unlike Congress, whose members DO get to vote for their own raises, corporations are controlled by a board of directors. While it's true that there are some C.E.O.'s who sit on the board of directors, it is the exception and not the rule, and the C.E.O. gets one vote, unlike Congress, which amounts to a room full of C.E.O.'s all voting raises for themselves.
Getting back to my original point that it is unreasonable to expect the wealthy to pay 40% or more of their income in taxes, I think these terms we throw around like "fair share" and "higher percentage" are very misleading.
The very high income of someone receiving $1,000,000 or more per year already ensures that the same percentage of their income is exponentially higher than someone with a much lower income. Applying the same percentage across the board is not the same thing as applying the same AMOUNT across the board. The percentage of higher income equates to MUCH more money paid by the wealthy and MUCH less paid by the poor. That there are those who want the wealthy to pay even MORE than this is very telling of the attitude that the lower, and even middle, classes have toward the "rich".
If you really get honest about what this implies, you understand that these people who think this makes sense are essentially saying that these people are making too much money. If you truly believe that, you need to understand that the person taking home the paycheck isn't the person with whom you should be angry. You should instead be angry with the board of directors of the company willing to pay that amount, and taxing the high-salaried corporate executive to death is hardly any different than a mobster forcing a business owner to pay "protection money".
Also inherent in the attitude that these people are making too much money is the belief that one person making lots of money somehow causes another person to lose money, which is completely false.
Not one person is required to purchase an iPhone from Apple Computer. The people who work at Apple Computer do not make less money because the C.E.O. of the company takes home so much more money than them. They make what they make because they have agreed to trade their labor for the price offered by the company who employs them. The fact that there may not be a lot of alternatives out there or that someone is not in a position to turn down a job which they feel they should be paid more to do is not caused by the C.E.O. of the company. Why then, do we blame the C.E.O.?
Perhaps a better illustration would be two farmers who each have the same amount of land right next to one another. Both have the same quality soil and seed, both receive the same amount of rain and sunlight. One is able to negotiate a much higher return from the soil by providing the soil with more seeds and fertilizer, and perhaps paying more attention to pest and weed control. The other may have some personal or family issues that prevent her from being able to cultivate the crops as well, resulting in a much smaller harvest. The smaller harvest is not in any way caused by the farmer next door reaping a huge harvest. The harvest is created in agreement with the requirements of the laws of nature, and the circumstances of one farm have nothing to do with the circumstances of another.
Is it nice for the farmer with the better harvest to share their harvest with their less-fortunate neighbor? Sure. Should it be required? No.
In life, there are no guarantees. Sometimes things get messy, sometimes there are things that happen to us that we can not control. But this childish attitude many seem to have that others are wrong for not rescuing them usually comes with a heavy dose of hypocrisy.
The middle-class retiree who lost a lot of money in her 401K and is now forced to live on little more than what Social Security pays each month is not a victim of the wealthy, but a victim of her own bad decision to invest the money in the manner in which she chose.
If you truly believe that a corporate executive is making "too much money", the solution is not to take that money away from them, but to stop buying the product the company they work for produces. Write a letter to the board of directors and tell them why you have stopped buying their product. If you are truly concerned that these people making too much money is what is causing the workers in their company or the poor in our country to not have enough, go directly to the source of the alleged problem and deal with it there. Don't give your government the right to start taking "just a little bit more" of everyone's money. That's like saying that some people are too healthy, and it's the fault of the healthy that the sick are sick, so let's go infect all of the healthy people with "just a mild version" of whatever it is that's making the others sick, and somehow that will solve the problem. It won't.
I agree that in a civilized society we can not allow those who are starving or homeless to starve and be killed by the cruel elements of mother nature simply because it isn't our fault they are in the situation in which they find themselves. I am also aware that there are many people who are more than willing to help those people, who just don't happen to think that the government can be trusted to get the job done as well as private non-profit organizations can.
The middle-class retiree who owns her own home and lives alone and wants to use other people's money to take care of the homeless is not willing to open up her home to the homeless, and seems to see nothing wrong with her attitude that she is somehow a better person because she advocates that others pay to solve the problem while she complains that her circumstances are not ideal, despite the fact that they are of her own making. Even if they were not of her own making, she is still much better off than the people she claims to be so concerned about, yet is unwilling to make sacrifices herself, claiming that it will be more difficult for her to do it than someone much wealthier. And there lies the problem: there's always someone much wealthier whom everyone else thinks should foot the bill for their ideologies. Lots of lip service, but the hands remain idle except when pointing the fingers at those whose money they are all too willing to spend, despite the fact that they did nothing to earn it.
To sum it up: the blame game has no winners. Those who make risky investments are not guaranteed to receive a huge return, nor are they guaranteed that they won't lose all of the money invested. If it is fraud causing them to lose their money, then it may not be totally their fault they lost their money, but in the case of Bernie Madoff, there were a lot of very greedy people who are now painting themselves as victims, even though any reasonable person not drunk with greed would have known it was too good to be true. Indeed, it wasn't the greed of Bernie Madoff that allowed the largest Ponzi scheme in history to occur, it was the greed of those who chose to buy into it, despite the fact that everything about it screamed "FRAUD ALERT"!
So, you think it's not the responsibility of the individual investor to question the validity of the investments? You "trust" your government? Let's not forget: there were those who tried to tell the feds that there was something illegal about Bernie Madoff's investment company, and they failed to act on the information until it was too late to save the billions of dollars that were lost. That's what happens when you trust your government, especially in order to justify giving yourself permission to do foolish things.
To be continued...
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Bigotry and Economics: Part One
I am the daughter of a musician and an artist. Both of my parents had multiple creative talents, and the expression of those talents were higher priority than worrying about how much money we had, so long as we had the basic necessities covered. We had what we needed, but often only because we had help from family members. I suppose you could say that we grew up poor, but since the words "rich" and "poor" get bandied about so carelessly and generally, let me be more specific:
We were the kind of poor who ate macaroni and cheese for dinner most nights, although we did eat the Kraft Deluxe brand of macaroni and cheese most of the time. Some would say that qualified us as rich, since they could only afford the most basic, generic brand of macaroni and cheese with powdered cheese instead of the creamy kind that squeezes out like a huge orange turd and melts so nicely, but for the sake of this blog post let's say that we were still qualified to be considered poor.
I remember hearing the question "What are we going to do about K.U.B.?" on a regular basis growing up. It was a question my parents often asked one another, and even though I wasn't sure what it meant, I knew it was something that my parents were worried about.
When I got older, I learned that K.U.B. was the power company, and that if the bill didn't get paid by a certain date, there would be no electricity in our apartment. I don't recall us ever losing power, so again, some might consider us to be rich. However, there are others who never had to worry about losing electricity, and they would most certainly have considered us to be poor.
Are you detecting a pattern here? The point is: poor and rich are meaningless words unless one understands the context in which they are being used. One person's definition of "poor" is another's definition of "rich". Few people ever stop to think about what level of poverty or luxury they are actually referring to when they use the words "rich" and "poor".
My father was a music teacher in the public school system, which didn't pay much. He also taught private piano lessons, and frequently played the organ at various churches and for weddings, funerals, and parties. My father worked sometimes 20 hours a day in order to make sure we had the basic necessities (with maybe an occasional Icee thrown in here and there as a treat) and often had to "borrow" money from his parents to make ends meet.
When my parents divorced, we eventually ended up living with Dad, and I noticed that the more he worked, the better home we could afford to rent. We went from three people (my dad, brother, and myself) living in a tiny one bedroom apartment to a three-level townhouse, my father with his own floor (the basement, which was his bedroom and a full bath) and my brother and I each with our own rooms, shared a bathroom on the top level.
It wasn't a huge place compared to where most of my friends lived, but it was huge to us. It was the first time my brother and I had each had our own bedrooms, and we were on cloud nine! Later, as I visited the homes of friends, I realized that, while our townhouse apartment was brand new and very clean and plenty big enough, it still fell short of where most of my friends lived. I also realized that, while we were renters, most of my friends' parents owned their own homes, and those who rented lived in houses, not apartments.
There were health problems in our family that kept us in debt and limited our income, which affected my parents' credit, and which had a lot to do with the quality of life we had from an economic standpoint. However, I would say that we were generally a happy bunch, possibly because not having much means that it takes less to make you happy.
In middle school, I discovered that I could sell candy at school for a higher price than what I had purchased it for at the convenience store. There were a couple of others who also sold candy, and most of us cleared up to $20 per day if we managed things well.
Selling candy was against the rules at school, and could even get you suspended. I'm sure all of my teachers knew what I was doing, but the only one who ever called me out on it was Mr. Armstrong, my American History teacher.
Mr. Armstrong was a stern, but reasonable man. I remember him commenting during class one day when he saw an illegal sale of a Blow Pop go down between another student and me for the second time that week: "Aha! I see we have a very enterprising young lady in here. See me after class."
I had never been in that kind of trouble before. (Seriously, I was a true teacher's pet.) I was terrified. I remember feeling the blood drain from my face and the feeling of doom that set in. I dreaded what was to take place after class, but I somehow survived that 45 minute wait.
As I approached Mr. Armstrong's desk after class, he said: "Tell me: Are you selling candy to make money, or are you selling candy to supply the other kids with candy?" It was, I thought, a strange question. Why on earth would anyone take such a huge risk of suspension and sell candy just to supply the other kids with candy? Wasn't the point of selling something to make a profit? Before I answered, I wondered if the truth would be the answer he was looking for, but figured that's what I'd go with since the other answer made no sense to me. "To make money." I said softly. "Well then, make sure you do it before or after class. This is a warning. Next time I won't be so lenient."
I almost passed out from relief. I made sure from then on not to sell candy during class, and had no more problems. However, the encounter left me with the distinct impression that, had I not been trying to make money, and had only been trying to increase my popularity by supplying the other kids with candy, I might have been sent to the office and more severely punished. Clearly, Mr. Armstrong respected and valued capitalism. He was a proud African-American, and frequently talked about economics and what it meant to be lower class, middle class, upper-middle class, and so on. He instilled in all of his students the value of hard work and made it clear that if one wanted success, it was necessary to work for it.
I remember happily purchasing a new pair of jeans with my candy profits one time, and most of the rest of the money I made went toward buying purses, hairspray, pens, pencils, notebooks, and various organizers for my room (the O.C.D. was very evident even then). I had the full support of an aunt who would always help me find candy at a good price, and my dad was always willing to drive me from convenience store to convenience store so I could buy up as many Blow Pops, Jolly Ranchers, and packs of bubble gum as I could before the next school day. It was something I both enjoyed and benefited from financially.
You might think this would have made me popular at school, but that wasn't the case. I was in demand, but even a rebel candy seller like myself couldn't transcend the awkward nerd barrier to popularity. Not only was I not popular, but some of the same students to whom I sold candy were cruel to me, saying that I was "greedy" because I wouldn't just give them the candy they wanted. Some of these kids came from wealthy families and, together with the ones who didn't, assumed that I must come from more money than they did, since I had something they wanted most of the time, and since they found themselves having to pay for what they got from me. This was when I first learned how bigoted people can become when you have something they want and they don't want to have to make a fair exchange for it. Not only do people tend to develop a sense of entitlement that they have a right to what you have simply because they want it, but they resent the fact that they have to contribute something of equal value in order to get what they want to the point where they become quite hateful towards the person providing the goods or services, often using inappropriate labels and stereotyping against the parties whom they consider to be "the bad guys" who won't give them what they want. Who cares that the seller merely wants to be able to obtain goods and services that the seller needs and wants. The fact that capitalism is based on self-interest becomes a reason for the consumer to be critical of the seller, all while the consumer forgets that they are behaving out of self-interest when they shop for bargains and/or purchase a product. (And how selfish is it when someone thinks they deserve something without having to pay for it like the rest of us?) It's called a sense of entitlement, and it's not just for the poor. Even the wealthy exhibit this behavior, and it has less to do with how much money one has and more to do with a failure to respect the rights of others.
Yes, that's right. I used the word "entitlement" to refer even to the WEALTHY kids who were angry that I wouldn't give them the candy they wanted... candy which I had paid for myself and which I took a significant risk in selling.
Capitalism is something that most do not truly understand the meaning of since we haven't had it in this country for a very long time. Capitalism is based on a free market, enabling fair competition. But that's not what we seem to have in America these days. Instead, we seem to have a bizarre mix of corporatism (which does not provide for fair competition and favors certain businesses over others according to political interests and government control making it nearly impossible for an honest, capitalistic corporation to make a profit without benefit of government forcing the people to use that corporation through price fixing or other controls, not to be confused with anti-trust law) mixed with socialism, (in which the government owns everything and does not allow for the ownership of private property or competition, and in which the government decides who gets what and, once again, the people have no control).
When someone uses their own efforts and resources to purchase inventory that customers need and want or puts effort into providing a service and sells it at a fair price, it is only fair that they be rewarded for their efforts. In a capitalistic society, you don't survive if you are price gouging. Not so in our current corporatist society, which allows companies to band together and gang up on consumers, fleecing them via corporate-favored government regulatory committees which favor politics over fair competition. Virtually every problem we have in today's society is the result of such corporatism and the economic fraud that so frequently accompanies it. Unfortunately, many people who are uneducated in what capitalism actually is blame capitalism, making small business owners (some of whom own corporate jets to allow them to SAVE money while traveling in an effort to keep their companies profitable and their employees employed) out to be villains and the consumers who are (Gasp! Horror!) required to PAY for their products and services out to be victims.
Forget the fact that some of the store owners who are in business are actually losing money, the fact that some of their customers are poor becomes an excuse in the minds of said customers for stealing from the store. After all, a store owner must be wealthy, right? This stems from the mistaken idea that there is no risk in capitalism on the part of the provider of goods and services, and that every business owner is a wealthy, privileged individual who never has trouble making ends meet.
The truth is, those corporate jet owners became corporate jet owners mostly because they took risks. The fact that the risks some take pan out and allows them to become wealthy causes many to assume that all business owners are this successful when, in fact, most are not.
For every one successful, corporate-jet-owning business owner, there are thousands of others who made decisions that did not turn out so well for their businesses. Many of them have lost their homes, their health insurance, vehicles, and even become homeless because they took the risks inherent in owning a business and were not able to survive.
This risk at such high stakes in the business world would keep anyone from ever starting a business if there were not also the possibility of rewards for their efforts. It is this reward-seeking motivated by self-interest that has allowed many of us to overcome mother nature's life-threatening environment and develop technology to overcome earth's temperature extremes, viruses, plagues, famines, et al.
Not only have many of us managed to do this for ourselves, but in parts of the world where there has not been as much progress, we help those who are still struggling with mother nature's cruelty. Sadly, we can't help everyone, but we do what we can.
Still, we have people in our country who whine and complain that they can't retire in comfort because politics has caused the stock market to crash, affecting their 401K. (Did anyone stop to consider that the stock market is not without risk? Did these people forget to read the documents they were signing when they signed on with a broker?) The ability to live in comfort comes from the reward of taking risks with your money, hedging your bets that the company you are investing in will be profitable. When it isn't profitable, you lose money. How ironic that those who are upset that they may have to work the rest of their lives instead of taking leisure trips and writing the great American novel are some of the very ones criticizing capitalism. The cause of their dismay is that they invested in companies that were not profitable. Had they been profitable, had their retirement turned out the way they wanted, I wonder: would they be so critical of capitalism?
These are the people who want the corporate jet owners to pay 40% or more of their income in taxes so that they can have more benefits. They don't seem to understand that paying 40% more for a small business doesn't just mean their own income, but the entire income of the business itself, since most small businesses are taxed on the entire income of the business at a personal tax rate.
I dislike the mindless spoon-fed mentality that so many who identify with political extremes of either liberals or conservatives seem to exhibit. There seems to be an all-or-nothing attitude. There are those idiots who don't understand why we pay taxes at all (to support the infrastructure which allows businesses to become profitable to begin with) and others who think that it's not enough that 20% of $1 million equates to $200,000 in taxes compared to $2,000 in taxes on a $20,000 income, and want someone with a salary over $1,000,000 to pay an even HIGHER amount in taxes.
The most common argument I've heard for this? "The rich have become wealthy at the expense of the poor, so they should have to pay more."
REALLY?!?
I am amazed at those who consider themselves to be poor who would NEVER tolerate someone making such ridiculous, untrue, and blanketed statements towards THEM, who seem to be completely blind to the bigotry they are exhibiting towards "the rich".
Let's take a closer look at who the "rich" really are:
Contrary to popular belief, the myth of the crooked fraud stealing money from the poor so they can live high on the hog is very rare. Unfortunately, news of the fraud and Ponzi schemes of a few gets reported so widely and blown out of proportion so badly and for so long, that those who fail to use critical thinking when building their opinions and mindlessly swallow what the political pundits with which they are aligned are saying begin to believe in the false caricatures of the wealthy, rather than the actual respectable, if not heroic, wealthy people who have improved our standard of living immensely.
The ability to take a phone with you in the car and reach emergency assistance when necessary, increasing the survival rate of vehicular accident victims, increased quality in communications, the ability of those without so much as running water in India who spend half of their $300 monthly income on smart phones for their children so they can network and find jobs and enjoy a better future, something previously not possible for many in that part of the world, all came about as a result of these supposed "evil, greedy, selfish" wealthy folks who dared to risk everything they had to start a business in their garage and, after decades of hard work, now own those notorious "private jets".
Never mind that the corporate jets they own are what allow them to find the raw materials and negotiate the lowest price on computer chips which, in turn, make the technology more affordable for the poor. Who cares that without the corporate jet they'd spend more than half their time waiting in airports and sitting on the tarmac, delaying the availability of their latest inventions to a world that needs the gadgets more than most realize or are willing to admit? Hang the rich and their airplane hangars.
I'm amazed at the number of people who have decided not only that all rich folks are wealthy at the expense of the poor (Who forced the poor to purchase an iPhone? A pizza from Domino's? Furniture from Rent-A-Center?) but that taking more of the hard-earned money from the innovators that make our world unbelievably smaller and more manageable in a very positive way will somehow solve the problems of the poor. It might put a Band-Aid (TM) on those problems, but unless you're willing to live with a mere Band-Aid (TM) as a solution to a gangrenous problem caused by the raping of the American people NOT by the wealthy, but by the powerful political groups (many of whom happen to be wealthy not because they worked hard to build a business but because they managed to convince you to vote them into office where they enjoy huge salaries and extensive benefits you'll never get) you shouldn't be so eager to grab those Band-Aids (TM) when what you really need are stitches, and seek a more responsible, life-affirming solution. But first, you've got to stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed into hating those who have more than you, because that is the main weapon being used against all of us to convince us to bicker among ourselves in true political fashion so the powers that be can continue fleecing all of us - rich and poor alike.
To be continued...
We were the kind of poor who ate macaroni and cheese for dinner most nights, although we did eat the Kraft Deluxe brand of macaroni and cheese most of the time. Some would say that qualified us as rich, since they could only afford the most basic, generic brand of macaroni and cheese with powdered cheese instead of the creamy kind that squeezes out like a huge orange turd and melts so nicely, but for the sake of this blog post let's say that we were still qualified to be considered poor.
I remember hearing the question "What are we going to do about K.U.B.?" on a regular basis growing up. It was a question my parents often asked one another, and even though I wasn't sure what it meant, I knew it was something that my parents were worried about.
When I got older, I learned that K.U.B. was the power company, and that if the bill didn't get paid by a certain date, there would be no electricity in our apartment. I don't recall us ever losing power, so again, some might consider us to be rich. However, there are others who never had to worry about losing electricity, and they would most certainly have considered us to be poor.
Are you detecting a pattern here? The point is: poor and rich are meaningless words unless one understands the context in which they are being used. One person's definition of "poor" is another's definition of "rich". Few people ever stop to think about what level of poverty or luxury they are actually referring to when they use the words "rich" and "poor".
My father was a music teacher in the public school system, which didn't pay much. He also taught private piano lessons, and frequently played the organ at various churches and for weddings, funerals, and parties. My father worked sometimes 20 hours a day in order to make sure we had the basic necessities (with maybe an occasional Icee thrown in here and there as a treat) and often had to "borrow" money from his parents to make ends meet.
When my parents divorced, we eventually ended up living with Dad, and I noticed that the more he worked, the better home we could afford to rent. We went from three people (my dad, brother, and myself) living in a tiny one bedroom apartment to a three-level townhouse, my father with his own floor (the basement, which was his bedroom and a full bath) and my brother and I each with our own rooms, shared a bathroom on the top level.
It wasn't a huge place compared to where most of my friends lived, but it was huge to us. It was the first time my brother and I had each had our own bedrooms, and we were on cloud nine! Later, as I visited the homes of friends, I realized that, while our townhouse apartment was brand new and very clean and plenty big enough, it still fell short of where most of my friends lived. I also realized that, while we were renters, most of my friends' parents owned their own homes, and those who rented lived in houses, not apartments.
There were health problems in our family that kept us in debt and limited our income, which affected my parents' credit, and which had a lot to do with the quality of life we had from an economic standpoint. However, I would say that we were generally a happy bunch, possibly because not having much means that it takes less to make you happy.
In middle school, I discovered that I could sell candy at school for a higher price than what I had purchased it for at the convenience store. There were a couple of others who also sold candy, and most of us cleared up to $20 per day if we managed things well.
Selling candy was against the rules at school, and could even get you suspended. I'm sure all of my teachers knew what I was doing, but the only one who ever called me out on it was Mr. Armstrong, my American History teacher.
Mr. Armstrong was a stern, but reasonable man. I remember him commenting during class one day when he saw an illegal sale of a Blow Pop go down between another student and me for the second time that week: "Aha! I see we have a very enterprising young lady in here. See me after class."
I had never been in that kind of trouble before. (Seriously, I was a true teacher's pet.) I was terrified. I remember feeling the blood drain from my face and the feeling of doom that set in. I dreaded what was to take place after class, but I somehow survived that 45 minute wait.
As I approached Mr. Armstrong's desk after class, he said: "Tell me: Are you selling candy to make money, or are you selling candy to supply the other kids with candy?" It was, I thought, a strange question. Why on earth would anyone take such a huge risk of suspension and sell candy just to supply the other kids with candy? Wasn't the point of selling something to make a profit? Before I answered, I wondered if the truth would be the answer he was looking for, but figured that's what I'd go with since the other answer made no sense to me. "To make money." I said softly. "Well then, make sure you do it before or after class. This is a warning. Next time I won't be so lenient."
I almost passed out from relief. I made sure from then on not to sell candy during class, and had no more problems. However, the encounter left me with the distinct impression that, had I not been trying to make money, and had only been trying to increase my popularity by supplying the other kids with candy, I might have been sent to the office and more severely punished. Clearly, Mr. Armstrong respected and valued capitalism. He was a proud African-American, and frequently talked about economics and what it meant to be lower class, middle class, upper-middle class, and so on. He instilled in all of his students the value of hard work and made it clear that if one wanted success, it was necessary to work for it.
I remember happily purchasing a new pair of jeans with my candy profits one time, and most of the rest of the money I made went toward buying purses, hairspray, pens, pencils, notebooks, and various organizers for my room (the O.C.D. was very evident even then). I had the full support of an aunt who would always help me find candy at a good price, and my dad was always willing to drive me from convenience store to convenience store so I could buy up as many Blow Pops, Jolly Ranchers, and packs of bubble gum as I could before the next school day. It was something I both enjoyed and benefited from financially.
You might think this would have made me popular at school, but that wasn't the case. I was in demand, but even a rebel candy seller like myself couldn't transcend the awkward nerd barrier to popularity. Not only was I not popular, but some of the same students to whom I sold candy were cruel to me, saying that I was "greedy" because I wouldn't just give them the candy they wanted. Some of these kids came from wealthy families and, together with the ones who didn't, assumed that I must come from more money than they did, since I had something they wanted most of the time, and since they found themselves having to pay for what they got from me. This was when I first learned how bigoted people can become when you have something they want and they don't want to have to make a fair exchange for it. Not only do people tend to develop a sense of entitlement that they have a right to what you have simply because they want it, but they resent the fact that they have to contribute something of equal value in order to get what they want to the point where they become quite hateful towards the person providing the goods or services, often using inappropriate labels and stereotyping against the parties whom they consider to be "the bad guys" who won't give them what they want. Who cares that the seller merely wants to be able to obtain goods and services that the seller needs and wants. The fact that capitalism is based on self-interest becomes a reason for the consumer to be critical of the seller, all while the consumer forgets that they are behaving out of self-interest when they shop for bargains and/or purchase a product. (And how selfish is it when someone thinks they deserve something without having to pay for it like the rest of us?) It's called a sense of entitlement, and it's not just for the poor. Even the wealthy exhibit this behavior, and it has less to do with how much money one has and more to do with a failure to respect the rights of others.
Yes, that's right. I used the word "entitlement" to refer even to the WEALTHY kids who were angry that I wouldn't give them the candy they wanted... candy which I had paid for myself and which I took a significant risk in selling.
Capitalism is something that most do not truly understand the meaning of since we haven't had it in this country for a very long time. Capitalism is based on a free market, enabling fair competition. But that's not what we seem to have in America these days. Instead, we seem to have a bizarre mix of corporatism (which does not provide for fair competition and favors certain businesses over others according to political interests and government control making it nearly impossible for an honest, capitalistic corporation to make a profit without benefit of government forcing the people to use that corporation through price fixing or other controls, not to be confused with anti-trust law) mixed with socialism, (in which the government owns everything and does not allow for the ownership of private property or competition, and in which the government decides who gets what and, once again, the people have no control).
When someone uses their own efforts and resources to purchase inventory that customers need and want or puts effort into providing a service and sells it at a fair price, it is only fair that they be rewarded for their efforts. In a capitalistic society, you don't survive if you are price gouging. Not so in our current corporatist society, which allows companies to band together and gang up on consumers, fleecing them via corporate-favored government regulatory committees which favor politics over fair competition. Virtually every problem we have in today's society is the result of such corporatism and the economic fraud that so frequently accompanies it. Unfortunately, many people who are uneducated in what capitalism actually is blame capitalism, making small business owners (some of whom own corporate jets to allow them to SAVE money while traveling in an effort to keep their companies profitable and their employees employed) out to be villains and the consumers who are (Gasp! Horror!) required to PAY for their products and services out to be victims.
Forget the fact that some of the store owners who are in business are actually losing money, the fact that some of their customers are poor becomes an excuse in the minds of said customers for stealing from the store. After all, a store owner must be wealthy, right? This stems from the mistaken idea that there is no risk in capitalism on the part of the provider of goods and services, and that every business owner is a wealthy, privileged individual who never has trouble making ends meet.
The truth is, those corporate jet owners became corporate jet owners mostly because they took risks. The fact that the risks some take pan out and allows them to become wealthy causes many to assume that all business owners are this successful when, in fact, most are not.
For every one successful, corporate-jet-owning business owner, there are thousands of others who made decisions that did not turn out so well for their businesses. Many of them have lost their homes, their health insurance, vehicles, and even become homeless because they took the risks inherent in owning a business and were not able to survive.
This risk at such high stakes in the business world would keep anyone from ever starting a business if there were not also the possibility of rewards for their efforts. It is this reward-seeking motivated by self-interest that has allowed many of us to overcome mother nature's life-threatening environment and develop technology to overcome earth's temperature extremes, viruses, plagues, famines, et al.
Not only have many of us managed to do this for ourselves, but in parts of the world where there has not been as much progress, we help those who are still struggling with mother nature's cruelty. Sadly, we can't help everyone, but we do what we can.
Still, we have people in our country who whine and complain that they can't retire in comfort because politics has caused the stock market to crash, affecting their 401K. (Did anyone stop to consider that the stock market is not without risk? Did these people forget to read the documents they were signing when they signed on with a broker?) The ability to live in comfort comes from the reward of taking risks with your money, hedging your bets that the company you are investing in will be profitable. When it isn't profitable, you lose money. How ironic that those who are upset that they may have to work the rest of their lives instead of taking leisure trips and writing the great American novel are some of the very ones criticizing capitalism. The cause of their dismay is that they invested in companies that were not profitable. Had they been profitable, had their retirement turned out the way they wanted, I wonder: would they be so critical of capitalism?
These are the people who want the corporate jet owners to pay 40% or more of their income in taxes so that they can have more benefits. They don't seem to understand that paying 40% more for a small business doesn't just mean their own income, but the entire income of the business itself, since most small businesses are taxed on the entire income of the business at a personal tax rate.
I dislike the mindless spoon-fed mentality that so many who identify with political extremes of either liberals or conservatives seem to exhibit. There seems to be an all-or-nothing attitude. There are those idiots who don't understand why we pay taxes at all (to support the infrastructure which allows businesses to become profitable to begin with) and others who think that it's not enough that 20% of $1 million equates to $200,000 in taxes compared to $2,000 in taxes on a $20,000 income, and want someone with a salary over $1,000,000 to pay an even HIGHER amount in taxes.
The most common argument I've heard for this? "The rich have become wealthy at the expense of the poor, so they should have to pay more."
REALLY?!?
I am amazed at those who consider themselves to be poor who would NEVER tolerate someone making such ridiculous, untrue, and blanketed statements towards THEM, who seem to be completely blind to the bigotry they are exhibiting towards "the rich".
Let's take a closer look at who the "rich" really are:
Contrary to popular belief, the myth of the crooked fraud stealing money from the poor so they can live high on the hog is very rare. Unfortunately, news of the fraud and Ponzi schemes of a few gets reported so widely and blown out of proportion so badly and for so long, that those who fail to use critical thinking when building their opinions and mindlessly swallow what the political pundits with which they are aligned are saying begin to believe in the false caricatures of the wealthy, rather than the actual respectable, if not heroic, wealthy people who have improved our standard of living immensely.
The ability to take a phone with you in the car and reach emergency assistance when necessary, increasing the survival rate of vehicular accident victims, increased quality in communications, the ability of those without so much as running water in India who spend half of their $300 monthly income on smart phones for their children so they can network and find jobs and enjoy a better future, something previously not possible for many in that part of the world, all came about as a result of these supposed "evil, greedy, selfish" wealthy folks who dared to risk everything they had to start a business in their garage and, after decades of hard work, now own those notorious "private jets".
Never mind that the corporate jets they own are what allow them to find the raw materials and negotiate the lowest price on computer chips which, in turn, make the technology more affordable for the poor. Who cares that without the corporate jet they'd spend more than half their time waiting in airports and sitting on the tarmac, delaying the availability of their latest inventions to a world that needs the gadgets more than most realize or are willing to admit? Hang the rich and their airplane hangars.
I'm amazed at the number of people who have decided not only that all rich folks are wealthy at the expense of the poor (Who forced the poor to purchase an iPhone? A pizza from Domino's? Furniture from Rent-A-Center?) but that taking more of the hard-earned money from the innovators that make our world unbelievably smaller and more manageable in a very positive way will somehow solve the problems of the poor. It might put a Band-Aid (TM) on those problems, but unless you're willing to live with a mere Band-Aid (TM) as a solution to a gangrenous problem caused by the raping of the American people NOT by the wealthy, but by the powerful political groups (many of whom happen to be wealthy not because they worked hard to build a business but because they managed to convince you to vote them into office where they enjoy huge salaries and extensive benefits you'll never get) you shouldn't be so eager to grab those Band-Aids (TM) when what you really need are stitches, and seek a more responsible, life-affirming solution. But first, you've got to stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed into hating those who have more than you, because that is the main weapon being used against all of us to convince us to bicker among ourselves in true political fashion so the powers that be can continue fleecing all of us - rich and poor alike.
To be continued...
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