Monthly Archives: July 2013

Economic Fairness and Economic Spirituality

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Life is not a free ride. Many would say life is not fair. Some will say life is not worth the experience. Some might wish that life would stand still. No matter one’s opinion about life, all of us are in the same lifeboat – a lifeboat whose keel is economics.

Lest the mariner becomes too philosophical, this post ponders two phenomena in life: the ability of fairness to sustain an economy and the ability of spirituality to survive in the economic world. “Fairness” is the act of making decisions with the intent of everyone having an equal share. “Spirituality” is awareness that all creation is of the same source, that existence is a shared phenomenon. This shared trait exists whether one is a theist or one is aware that all matter is related.

The word “pleonexia” is an old Greek word that means “a desire to have more than one’s share.” It appears that pleonexia is inherent in the human creature. Pleonexia is a two-headed beast. The first head is called self-interest; the second head is called unification. Self-interest represents selfishness, arrogance, deliberate unfairness, and disregard for others. On the other head, unification, it represents the need to survive, create, be secure, and experience achievement. Fairness is a balancing act between the two heads. When a person ceases to be concerned about unification, that is, a concern that there is unity and fairness among all parties, fairness must force the person to rebalance their pleonexia.

Given the definition laid out in the last paragraph, self-interest is a symptom of the state of affairs in the United States today. The word “United” no longer applies to the Union. An outspoken advocate of this idea is Joseph Stigler, who takes to task the one percent of the population that has more than its share and has no interest in unification. Stigler published a synopsis of his book ‘The Price of Inequality’ in the May 2012 edition of Vanity Fair. Visit the following website:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality

Please read the article because it presents material quite relevant to this post.

How can fairness force a retreat from self-interest to a balance of self-interest in behalf of unity? Stigler suggests that sustained self-interest leads to economic failure. In this scenario everyone loses. Stigler suggests redistribution of excess through taxation. Increasing taxes certainly gives clout to fairness. Mentioning taxes obviously involves the government as a major factor for maintaining fairness. The plight of the citizen dealing with all the governments in the United States has been a lament of other posts and will not be pursued. One need only say the Government is not interested in fairness.

It is sensible that a democratic government plays the role of arbiter in many areas of the economy. The government must look after the supply-demand (GDP) relationship; the government must look after the affect of international economics; the government must balance the wealth of the nation to the benefit of all citizens. It is a fact that fairness has no force to balance the economy without the cooperation of government. Efforts of charitable nonprofit organizations to adjust fairness will never be robust enough to change the self-interest culture.

However, the government can only do so much. Like Hollywood movies, the government reflects culture. The citizenry – all the citizenry including the one percent – must have a culture that is empathetic about the commonality not only of all people but all things. Lacking this empathy, as the United States culture does today, fairness has no substance. Fairness is more than tweaking economic regulations. The government needs a citizenry that has spirituality. Without spirituality, it is difficult to care about education, global warming, those that are in financial need, equal rights under law, and it is impossible to have a sense of unity as a nation.

The American citizen, rich and poor, is too sophisticated to simply be greedy or simply be unmotivated. There must be a balance between the two heads – one does not work without the other. Pleonexia must be balanced.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

It is Your Turn to be the Government

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The readers have read the mariner’s criticisms through many posts. Our governments all, Federal, State, County, and Local need your help. The election season has arrived in many County and Local governments. How about running for the school board? County Supervisor? Mayor? Town Council? Most elective offices have lengthy procedures that must be followed if you want to be in an election. File for your ticket now.

Find out who your local, County, and State District party chairmen are; find out when the caucuses or monthly meetings are so you can attend. Become part of the process. You certainly cannot have a negative influence – the bar of competence is too low. Your ideas about decent government are needed. The small clique of party regulars has too much influence. That can be remedied with more party members attending.

If you are not interested in personal public leadership, your opinions are a powerful tool. Use any form of communication from mailed letters, social networks, or emails. You may feel as if you are one small voice against giant political machines. Actually, you are one of many communicating with elected officials. Our government officials may not do what you want them to do but it makes them aware that there are votes at stake that may at some point outweigh the influence of lobbyists.

Your participation is needed badly when populism is totally disregarded in favor of lobbyist financial influence. Recently, the Senate voted down a gun registration bill that was preferred by eighty to ninety percent of the nation. Whether this was good or bad in your opinion is irrelevant. The real danger to both sides is a runaway government.

Many economists and management theorists have said that a new paradigm cannot rise from within the old paradigm – it must begin on its own from outside the system. The nation needs a new paradigm that makes those we elect represent the voters when there is an obvious majority for a given issue.

The United States is managed by wealthy entrepreneurs and large corporations – not by citizens of the United States. This is a broken government. It is your turn to be the government. The mariner has no doubt you will do a better job.

your_vote_counts copy

Ancient Mariner

Modern Trends in Christianity – Part Two

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The last post mentioned that there are two themes that occupy the writers and speakers in current religious publishing. The first theme, a fresh look at the historical experience of Jesus, is addressed in the last post. Today the mariner will investigate the preoccupation with the Religious Right as a political movement and the concern expressed about the increasing secularism of most Christians.

The mariner investigated many conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist websites searching for a core dynamic that these movements can share. In general, the websites were territorial about minor interpretations or tenets. In short, the conservative side of Christianity does not have a cohesive doctrine.

These websites were true religious websites. Government politics representing the  conservative or “religious right” were of a different ilk and focused on public policy, party politics – salted with a collection of moral issues and a lot of character assassination. Neither set of websites had any concern for the circumstances of mainstream Christian practice.

The political religious websites were a mix of conservative Christian advocacy heavily dosed with public issues. If the reader watches the news at all, they will be familiar with these issues: guns; abortion; eliminate discretionary government programs (all of them from health care to school lunch programs, Head Start, PBS, Planned Parenthood, SNAP (food stamps and other assistance programs, unemployment insurance); any extension of regulations of any kind; a major cut in government services, more or less keeping the military, central treasury and only in about half the websites, income taxes.

It is obvious why serious religious writers are looking closely at the claim of religiosity in the religious right movement.

There is not room in this post to capture a great deal of Gospel scripture that counters the misanthropic politics of the religious right but just a few references will demonstrate the massive gap between the religious right movement and the Christian positions of Jesus:

The parable of the Good Samaritan

The two great commandments

“If you have fed them, you have fed me”

“You shall love God above all things” (even your family and your money).

This could go on for pages but this is enough to expose antithetical positions between Jesus and the religious right. The mariner’s favorite Gospel is Matthew. It is an easy read and will be very clear about the principles of Jesus, none of which associate with the religious right. As to the public issues like guns and abortion, there may be a moral point, legally or religiously, but the violent and uncaring attack in an effort to obliterate these issues easily dismisses any moral intent.

What obfuscates the study of the religious right is the Tea Parties (there is more than one). Tea Party members are in the same room as the religious right because both groups are conservative. A closer look, sometimes, can determine a Tea Party person because of the absence of religious morality in their rhetoric. To the right of the Tea Party and to the left of the religious right is the libertarian – a cross breed of conservative government minimalism with a progressive approach to anything that pokes into one’s personal freedom.

Mix these three groups with the professional Republicans in the House of Representatives and it is no wonder that Speaker Boehner has no control over irrational legislation.

Ideologically, the right wing groups are noisy and disruptive but a minority incapable of streamlined organization that can overtake the middle of American religious culture. After doing this research, the mariner felt the most bothersome aspect of it all was the solidarity of the right behind the two-headed coin of nationalism and autocracy. New Testament Christianity is not to be seen.

A broader issue on religious book lists is the invasion of secularism into the religious practices of mainstream denominations. The mariner has written about this subject in other posts. (See Following Jesus Around, Is Christianity Still Christianity? Evolution of Faith, and Who is God?) Lest the mariner’s evaluation of the religious right makes the mainstream Christian self-righteous, secularism has decayed the organized church more than termites can destroy a rotten log.

It may be a good idea for every Christian to read the Gospel Matthew then ask one’s self, by sitting in a pew on Sunday, am I praying in public as the Pharisees did? If I skipped the church service and went into the poorest neighborhood to do what I could to make a life better, would Jesus skip the service and come with me?

Secularism is a failed pew-based culture. Mainstream Christians need to get their hands dirty doing God’s work as Jesus instructed. Find God’s grace through another person’s life – not your own.

Ancient Mariner

Modern Trends in Christianity

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Religious historians, theologians and ministers have been unusually busy in the past couple of years. Religious books, magazine articles, television interviews, and sermons have investigated Jesus in terms of what historians have recently learned about the time of Jesus. New insights have been gained about the cultural conflict between the Romans and the Israelites, the class system that was in place in Israel at the time of Jesus – in other words, what was society like during the time of the ministry of Jesus and what role did he play as a man living in this society?

Religious writers also have focused on the failure of modern Christians to adhere to the mission Jesus commands of us. The targets of these writers are the selective policies of the religious right and Christian believers generally; there is heightened interest in this cultural phenomenon because American culture has an increasingly harsh class system just as Jesus experienced during his ministry. Further, while not a military occupation, the nation is run by the wealthy rather than the citizens – again, something that confronted Jesus during his life and ministry. Finally, there is an apocalyptic undertone in the United States and other countries as social, political, religious and global experiences approach a point of chaos.

It is the growing similarity between the times of Jesus and our times today that provides energy for this new wave of religious introspection. Jesus and his message have been revisited many times in history. The power of Jesus’ life and faith must be reinterpreted to relate to the changes that occur in society. Otherwise, his divine insights lose their meaning.

A good example among writers examining the role of Jesus historically is ‘Zealot,’ by Reza Aslan, a respected religious writer.  This book, just published, has received good reviews. In his book, Aslan highlights the aspect of Jesus as an activist who fought the abuses of the Romans and the rigid, self-righteous class system that existed among the Jews themselves. Large numbers of the population were despised, oppressed, and powerless. Jesus behaved as a zealot, fighting the injustices openly and without regard for his own safety.

Aslan’s book clarifies the context of the role Jesus played in a time of chaos. Knowing that Jesus was zealous and defending the discarded people of Israel speaks to us today with more substance and a better understanding of the Gospel message. For example, in those passages of the Gospels where the Pharisees visit Jesus, these are not intellectual discussions. They are confrontations by Judean authorities who did not approve of his work and his belief in love as the primary force among human beings. This belief in love disregarded the religious, political and military rule that controlled Israel at that time. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” evokes more pathos for Jesus and the literal, human meaning of his words when we understand his visible and outspoken rebellion against an unfair society. As Jesus grew more popular, his life was increasingly at risk.

We can relate to this role in modern times. To mention a few: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela. What these names have in common with Jesus (though there is no intent to consider them equal to Jesus) is that they were zealots fighting against injustice for the displaced and oppressed people of their times.

The added disregard for the Jewish view of history, God, and the Old Testament rule fueled the flames of the authorities even more. Jesus brought to Earth a loving God, who did not judge, who did not control social history, and who bestowed divine importance equally on every human being – the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

The next post will discuss the focus on the forgotten message of the Gospels by today’s political and social environment.

Ancient Mariner

Our Duty to Know

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The mariner reported recently that only 42 percent of people polled knew about the existence of ObamaCare (Health Care Reform and The Affordable Care Act). One would think with the saturation of news stations, newspapers, magazines, and the political party battles, the percentage would be a lot higher. A citizen must cast the log from their own eye before they cast the forest out of the eye of Congress.

Our culture is changing ever faster in every respect. Money flies across the internet within seconds; within a decade plastic cards will eliminate paper money as the common format for financial transactions. Technology alters our daily habits. One simple example is the telephone. The mariner’s parents had one telephone from 1949 to 1963 then had to update their model when tone dialing replaced the clicking noises of the round dial telephone. In recent years, the telephone has changed not only its appearance and technology; it is changing every six months. It barely can be called a telephone as Internet technology has made it a toy, a movie theater, a television, a teletype machine and provides banking and retail services – oh, and voice communication.

The telephone is just one example of how our view of the world has changed and how we communicate – who would have thought that the U.S. Postal Service would become an anachronism? The mariner has mentioned in other posts the disappearance of privacy – a subtle but very important element of personal freedom.

Our duty to know goes beyond everyday habits. The advances in medicine and science will change the definition of what life means, how long we will live, what our medical policy for patient care will be in the future, even how we apply religion and faith to our behavior. Great moral issues will be tested as medicine extends the actuary tables beyond the age of 100; Social Security, Welfare and virtually all the laws, regulations and expectations associated with the human condition must change dramatically. This change is at our doorstep and modifies our financial security as we grow older.

Science has left us in the dust as it redefines reality, how the Earth works, and what the role of technology will be in our society when computers and robots are as aware as we are and can think faster, and immediately understand emotions as a cause and effect phenomenon.

Then there is the whole issue of government in the grips of immoral forces that want to shut out those who need the government for survival: virtually all elected officials are in government to get rich, not to serve the democratic principles of a once great nation.

The point is this: Each of us, for our own wellbeing, must read more, listen more, and think more critically about our culture. It used to be one would go to school for a while, learn a trade or business, and spend our middle and later years becoming more experienced and skilled at the trade we learned when we were younger and at some point retire to a relatively comfortable lifestyle. This is no longer true. What we learned in school and in our early adult years lose value quickly. More and more workers are discovering that financial life ends at fifty – with medicine providing another fifty years of life with marginal income.

For our own survival, it is our duty to know what is happening around us in government, education, banking, earth sciences, medicine and our own security in what is a very volatile oligarchy.

Ancient Mariner

The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care)

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While we are focused on battles that take on the oligarchy, Obama Care is less a battlefield than a front line similar to the Maginot line between France and Germany during the Second World War. The health industry is a huge industry, perhaps a profit hungry octopus reaching into insurance, manufacturing, health care (shaped around profitability rather than health), pharmaceuticals, State health programs (mostly a battle over sharing costs), and the idea that under the present circumstances, that is, without a single payer solution, the cost of covering more people will be borne by each citizen through increased ‘taxes’ or premiums.

The following website is the official White House fact sheet. There are so many websites citing pro and con positions that the reader will have no difficulty finding information about the Affordable Care Act.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/myths-and-facts

 

The following states have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court upheld the key component (a mandatory health tax). These lawsuits are supported by the many arms of the octopus.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Colorado

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Indiana

Kansas

Louisiana

Maine

Michigan

Mississippi

Nebraska

Nevada

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

South Dakota

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Other states, like Iowa for instance, are inventing creative alternatives that virtually ignore the Affordable Care Act but, in fact, are financial failures.

Of all the statistics the mariner reviewed, the scariest one is that forty-two percent of Americans do not know Obama Care exists. In another post, he referenced the Stepford citizens we meet when we take the trash to the curb. This is evidence. It is no wonder there is not a balanced debate about any issue. Combined with unfair voting practices, crooked gerrymandering, and hidden legislative agendas, it is a wonder all of us do not live in homeless shelters.

The best weapon for restoring America’s balance is an educated voter.

Ancient Mariner

Hegemony/Oligarchy

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Some offline responses suggest that the word ‘hegemony’ may relate more to international relationships like the Imperialist Age of Great Britain at the height of its colonialism. The mariner is always willing to improve communication so the word ‘hegemony’ is replaced by the word ‘oligarchy’. As defined in the dictionary and Wikipedia, oligarchy means “governed by the few”; the second definition in the dictionary says, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.

Under the definition of oligarchy, a subtopic in Wikipedia referenced the term “Crony Capitalism”, a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, etc.

Therefore, ‘oligarchy’ is the issue at hand. Still, all the posts previously written about this topic apply both as the subject and as the practices that confront the citizen today. Just swap the word hegemony for oligarchy.

The Agriculture Appropriations Bill was discussed recently as a sample battlefield where future failure and success are at risk. Another kind of battlefield is the appointment of judges not only at the Federal level but in State courts as well. A recent report said that there are eighty-eight vacancies in the Federal Court system. One Senator can hold up consent. Obviously, this is another battleground for the future failure or success of the United States. Judges hang around a long time; therefore, their ideology will have a long term impact. The Supreme Court is the extreme example. The mariner once mentioned term limits to assure government officials were young enough to understand the current culture. Unfortunately, Federal and Supreme Court judges are not subject to term limits.

Dealing with a top-down Federal oligarchy is too expensive and too large to introduce reform. The mariner has written in the past that State citizens have a better opportunity at the State level to begin reforming the unbalanced economic structure. The mariner suggests strongly that State citizens should participate in State and County political party activities to prevent a small number of cronies from sustaining the status quo. Attend monthly meetings. Meet your State and county representatives personally and have a conversation. Discover who the power brokers are. Use your post office, email, Tweet and Facebook accounts to communicate your opinion.

Ancient Mariner

 

House Agriculture Appropriations Bill

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The mariner recently has written about the battle with hegemony as the hardest task in moving the Country forward to success. The Agriculture Appropriations Bill passed by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is an excellent example that the battle is at hand.

The Republicans added government paid insurance to farmers to cover 90 percent of crop losses. This assures billions of dollars will be paid out for every ear of corn that did not grow right or any soybeans with an Asian beetle in the field or any damage to any crop a farmer grows – even the giant corporate farms that do not need the money any more than Bill Gates needs a loan. A clause was slipped into the bill at the last moment to remove sunset language to make the increases permanent.

Meanwhile, the Bill gutted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that feeds 47 million citizens of the United States – most of whom work for inadequate salaries.

This is a clear example of war from those who would preserve hegemony. It is blatant legislation that moves more money to those who already have money – the exact opposite of what is required to have a successful future for the United States. At the same time, it is another blow to the middle and working class citizens, stripping even more of the quality of life from the population that must be restored to strengthen the future of the United States.

Pull up a chair; your future is playing out in front of you.

Ancient Mariner

 

Paving the Road to Future Success

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Overturning hegemony need not be a matter of violent war as in the past. It can be a continuous conversion of society, taking one bridge at a time. In the American democratic culture, we are lucky that many before us have given their lives and livelihoods to change the power structure. We have in place a seasoned democratic system by which financial and cultural imbalance can be restored without bloodshed on a grand scale.

Still, there are warriors today. The battle for cultural reform is active in many areas.

Consider women’s rights, both on the job and Planned Parenthood. Consider the battle between corporate profit and unions. Consider the attack on retirement funds. Consider deliberate underfunding of discretionary programs for support of education, health, financial safety nets. Consider the battle to make each vote count in an election without the corruption of outside money. Consider the battle on tax reform and reigning in the abuses written into law by corporations and opportunists. Consider the battle to rebuild infrastructure for a new age, a new energy program, and a distribution of tax income to local empowerment.

The American citizen is indeed in the midst of an ideological war that has waxed and waned through the centuries in many countries. There is a tendency for the lucky among us to accumulate wealth. While that in itself is not an issue, eventually wealth begets wealth and money begins to accumulate unfairly, debilitating the happiness and wellbeing of large numbers of the society. In terms of today’s society, battles for shared participation in the country’s wealth began with the New Deal and the government controlled modernization and equality until the late 1960’s. Since then, the hegemonic forces have been whittling away at the reforms that had been made. From the time of Reagan’s Presidency, the slide backward has accelerated.

If the United States is to remain a world power, the entire population must be armed with education, financial security, and a controlled distribution both of taxes and corporate reform. To remain the world power that we remember from the middle of the last century, every citizen must be a capably armed warrior.

War can be avoided by using the ballot box. Revisit the post, “How to Restore a Balanced and Fair Economy.” That post is a primer for turning around the direction of the war on hegemony.

Your vote is critical. Give your decision a long thought. Will you help pave the way to a successful future, or sustain the hegemony that grows stronger and stronger with each election?

Ancient Mariner.