We live in a complicated world. Anyone that has recently filled out a form, added an email account or dealt with any government agency or large company can tell you that. Things are not so simple as the days when our focus was on mere subsistence, of course they are not quite as easy as we have it these days either, but it seems we keep slowly moving down the path of complication. At my son's recent birthday party I was informed by another 6 year old that he "had a lot going on this summer." I wonder if that was the actual truth, or if he had heard that from a Mom or Dad that wore that phrase as a badge of honor. Seems to me that unless we have a lot going on we are not worthy of each other's respect, or perhaps not included in the natural sympathy we are expected to show for the busyness we have created.
Now I for one don't want to give up my hot showers, microwave and washing machine for a shot at simplicity, but I would sure like to have the time back that those conveniences were supposed to provide. No matter what we create to bank up time for ourselves, the decision still falls to us to organize and use our resources. It is our own fault for letting our society and culture of busyness eat away at the conveniences our modern society has provided. We are trading our simplicity away for more "stuff," and this trend will continue until we bury ourselves with extra burdens. As a Christian, I believe that anything which takes our focus away from God has a potential negative affect, whether or not the activity is generally positive or not. We can create a negative situation even by "over-volunteering" for good causes!
I have been trying to decide whether the whole issue of universal healthcare is a good decision or a bad one, whether or not this is a good thing that provides for the needs of many Americans, not just those facing issues of aging but all Americans that deserve a shot at the advances that our modern society has provided in medicine, or a bad one that forces us to sacrifice something important in order to have this important care. I am still on the fence about some of the issues, but universal healthcare is growing in importance for everyone and deserves a closer look. Are we adding healthcare to the role of busyness in our lives, to our badge of honor looking for sympathy at the amount of specialized care that we need, or are we actually taking care of patients that need this care in a way that makes our society a better place? When I get sick and need a doctor I want to be able to go and get it fixed, but I am not so sure that it is in my interest to have the government paying for it out of my taxes.
I recognize that perhaps my personal views are different from other folks, but at the same time my views are likely very similar to others. It seems that reconciling personal viewpoints in a way that improves the general condition of society is why we have government in the first place, whether or not we agree on the nature of government and what it is "supposed" to provide for citizens. The current healthcare "crisis" is basically a fiscal one, the costs continue to rise at an exponential rate for even basic care, forcing decisions to be made regarding the level of care that is appropriate for each individual. If the costs were not increasing so quickly, this would not be such a big issue, but since they are and expected to do nothing but continue to increase, in my opinion we should tackle the cost side of things at the same time as deciding who pays for it. I see 3 basic elements to rising healthcare, elements that may have legitimate importance to some and disdain for others, but nonetheless contribute to the fiscal crisis surrounding healthcare.
3 elements contributing to healthcare costs include:
1-Our legal system. It is no secret that malpractice insurance for doctors is a huge element of rising healthcare costs, not to mention the costs on the industry from mega-million dollar judgements against insurers, doctors and hospitals alike. There are some bad apples out there, but I think that merely making a doctor's record available to the public will take care of that in the marketplace, absolving the need to let the legal system take care of it. No one is perfect, people will make mistakes and people will die, but I am not so sure that every time someone dies it should result in a huge settlement. I see law firms advertising for certain people to call them if they fit within certain guidelines for a lawsuit, so that the firm can represent them in a situation they have already identified and now only have to convince the person that they have been "wronged" so that a suit can ensue. This is only to improve the bottom line of the firm, and a gross twisting of our legal system, leading to huge costs in healthcare that have to stop.
2-Government intervention. No one can argue that involving our national government in something so personalized as the doctor-patient relationship will add to complexity and cost. That is a given. What people rationalize is that the benefits of having the government pay for some or all of the care is worth the added cost, not considering that it will be our taxes that pay for any government program. For me, I think that the only way to sort out a patient's specialized needs is to let the doctor/pharmacist figure that out, then let private insurers deal with how much the premiums will cost to manage that care. Having our government involved will only add to the costs, and while I am for everyone getting the best care available, private insurers need to deal with the issue in order to improve the quality of care and keep the costs as low as possible. We don't need to add to that layers of government inefficiency that will make things take longer and cost more than they already do.
3-Drug Company Advertising. When the FDA allowed drug companies to advertise on national tv, our "need" for drugs went from the doctor's advice to that of the marketing agency. You could argue that the doctors were already under some pressure from the drug companies who make regular office visits with samples and profit sharing, but at least you could trust your doctor to make a decision in your best interest. Marketing has a powerful impact on our ability to make good decisions, how much "need" has been created by marketing from these companies is open to verification, but it exists and contributes to the overall costs of healthcare. We have over 100 million prescriptions annually for anti-depressants, the largest category of drugs sold in the US, you can't convince me that the need is that great without some assistance from advertising. They advertise and convince consumers that we have an issue worthy of taking a new pill, then we go to the doctor and convince him that we need that pill, then we take the pill and go back to the doctor for another pill to counteract the side affects of the first pill. I wish I could get a doctor to comment on this subject, because they are the ones that hold the keys to this answer and I am not qualified, but the costs due to advertising are a direct redistribution of wealth from our pockets to the media (so they can show more disturbing stuff to our kids so they need anti-depressants at an earlier age), ad agencies and drug companies. Advertising of drugs is the same as advertising hard liquor on tv and needs to stop.
Philosophically, I am for health care and consider it one of the best benefits any company can offer an employee. I own a business of my own and have provided healthcare for many years to my employees, and they always comment how important it is to them as well. The costs for the plan that existed in 1999 have basically gone from $1000 annually to about $5000 annually for the same number of employees, what has changed even more is the content of the plan. My hope has always been that insurance would be available to cover that catastrophic need, if an employee or a family member gets cancer or needs a major operation they will not have to declare bankruptcy in order to pay for it. The original plan was very reasonable and even included normal doctor's visits with a reasonable $20 copay. The copay had to be increased over the years from $20 to $30 and $50, and just this past year we were forced to go to a high deductible plan ($6000), but placed a significant amount ($500 to $1000) in an HSA account with a debit card for each employee and instructions to use that and let me know if they went over that amount so we could work something out. This satisfies the need that exists and mitigates the costs to a bearable amount, but I am already thinking about what happens next. If my company with less than 10 employees cannot bear the rising costs, how much worse must it be for larger ones? Once the costs rise again I will be forced to do one of several things-reduce the work force and continue to offer insurance, continue to reduce the coverage and push more and more of the burden toward the employee (same thing as raising taxes, takes money out of our pocket), or stop offering insurance altogether and put that money toward a pool to help in case of an emergency, buy health club memberships for the employees, or some other such compromise. If I were forced to provide the original level of coverage to all my employees today, then the company would exist only to provide that coverage instead of growing and I would either sell out or close the doors. If we do not contain the costs noted above, the every company in America will be faced with the same choice sooner or later.
What concerns me the most is that if our government takes over the issue, then we will have another albatross other than Social Security to pay for, the cost of such a program will strip the life out of the economy and force the government to pay for healthcare with huge tax increases. In many socialized nations with universal healthcare the tax rates are over 50% of income, is that worth the changes that would inevitably be forced on us? We would quickly move from a "free" society to one that is enslaved by our fiscal responsibility. Do not let the Socialists among us force us into this scenario, they want all wealth redistributed so there are no income gaps in our nation and the government takes care of everything. What needs to happen is private insurers work with companies to provide the best care at the lowest costs, churches are able to receive monetary and volunteer gifts that are appropriate to help people in need, and friends and neighbors step up to do the same. If we do this, then the care will improve, our social network be strengthened, our fiscal responsibility be maintained and our nation allowed to remain free and strong. If we adopt universal healthcare, then our nation will take another step toward socialism and we will continue to put more of our focus on government instead of God for our providence. The slide in this direction is slow and purposeful, we cannot continue to vote ourselves more benefits from the public till until our nation experiences a new form of slavery, the answer must be in our individual resourcefulness, private investment and personalized response to this crisis. Healthcare is important, especially for those Americans and their families who are working for a better tomorrow and not trying to "beat" the system, but it is not a "right." We have to decide the importance of universal healthcare as a nation and decide the best course to take, hopefully the simplest and least costly approach will be preferred even if it does not cover every need.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Whose Fault Was It?
It has been a long summer. I counted at one point a stretch of 19 straight days that I was out "on the road" working in June. Not a lot of time for family, relaxation or tending to the basic things of life for certain, but life goes on nonetheless. Bills still have to get paid, kids to their summer "stuff," groceries bought, gas in the car...just a lot to do even as many think of summer as "vacation." Maybe this little story will help put things back in perspective, and give you a little relief from the summer heat.
We had a small water leak from our refrigerator this past week, when I was home for a few minutes between trips my wife noticed that the wood floors near the fridge had separated slightly and were bowed at the edges. I thought it was curious but did not give it much thought other than a cursory inspection, and went off to bed. The next day the situation was a bit more evident, the slight warping had moved outward to a few more boards, so we decided to investigate. Eager to avoid a trip under the house for a leak or some other source, I wanted to take a look at the only appliance with water involved that was in the vicinity-the fridge. Sure enough, as we pulled it out, we found a valve that transferred water to the ice maker was leaking, the leak was dripping down and running along the very slight cracks in the wood floor so it was not very conspicuous. I turned the water off to the fridge, but the damage had been done. The seeping water had warped several boards that would have to be sanded and repaired.
Over the next few days, the slightly warped floor issue was pretty much stabilized to about a 10 foot area, not really a huge deal but enough that you could feel it when you walked over it. I thought about calling the floor guy to have it sanded and repaired, but after looking at the floor and trying to decide where we would have to re-apply the coating to the entire floor to make it look correct again, I decided to take a shot at calling our insurance company to see if the homeowner's policy covered such things. Lo and behold it turns out that such damage is covered, and they would be sending a check for the damage after the estimator took a look at it. He made sure to tell us to keep the faulty part, because they would try and recover damages from the refrigerator manufacturer.
After he left, I started thinking about that. Whose fault was it? I guess the manufacturer made the thing, so they must be responsible, right? But I suppose that the story will not end there, because if you look inside the part you can see evidence of some calcium deposits. I feel sure the manufacturer has a case against the water softener people since the damage to the valve could have been caused by those deposits. The attorneys will no doubt have a meeting to discuss culpability and loss due to damage, you know, lawyer type stuff. The billing will probably reflect the legal opinion of several key attorneys whose experience will also be reflected in the cost of the consultation, after all, they have several years of school to pay for. After the meeting they will advise the manufacturer to hire an expert to examine the part and decide what went wrong. The expert will spend several hours at $100/hr or so, he may have to consult with a design engineer who will undoubtedly notice that the part has a "Made in China" sticker on it, concluding that the part was outsourced by the manufacturer to a Chinese company that was undoubtedly at fault, because they should know that we Americans like our ice convenient and properly softened. That's it, it was their fault, case closed. Estimated cost is approximately 5 refrigerators and 2 new wood floors, to be recovered by increasing my homeowner's policy slowly over the next 10 years, and including a percentage to be amortized by everyone in my nearest zip code.
What really needs to happen is that we develop a government committee to examine the costs of the production, sales and shipping of that part to the American manufacturer, then establish the costs of a flight and $1/hr labor for an underage Chinese worker to come over here and sand my floors smooth and re-clear them. That has to be cheaper than the whole process as it exists now, and could lead to better relations with the Chinese on a cultural level. The only person that would be out anything is my floor guy, but he got paid once to put the floor in the first time so he should be OK. The guest worker could then apply for citizenship while they were here, or just defect and request asylum due to the intense political pressure of the job. The cost of getting them here is already absorbed but the government committee's budget paid for by our taxes, so they can be a productive member of society almost immediately.
So there you have it, a reasonable solution to the water leak issue and the blame properly placed on the manufacturer of the fridge, the water softener company and eventually the real culprit, the Chinese company that made the thing without considering American tastes in the first place. I'll just keep making my homeowner's policy payment in the meantime until they sort that all out, in the end figuring I don't deserve to cash the insurance check because if I was still using those old plastic ice trays instead of expecting my ice to appear out of the front of my refrigerator door, this would never have happened in the first place...
We had a small water leak from our refrigerator this past week, when I was home for a few minutes between trips my wife noticed that the wood floors near the fridge had separated slightly and were bowed at the edges. I thought it was curious but did not give it much thought other than a cursory inspection, and went off to bed. The next day the situation was a bit more evident, the slight warping had moved outward to a few more boards, so we decided to investigate. Eager to avoid a trip under the house for a leak or some other source, I wanted to take a look at the only appliance with water involved that was in the vicinity-the fridge. Sure enough, as we pulled it out, we found a valve that transferred water to the ice maker was leaking, the leak was dripping down and running along the very slight cracks in the wood floor so it was not very conspicuous. I turned the water off to the fridge, but the damage had been done. The seeping water had warped several boards that would have to be sanded and repaired.
Over the next few days, the slightly warped floor issue was pretty much stabilized to about a 10 foot area, not really a huge deal but enough that you could feel it when you walked over it. I thought about calling the floor guy to have it sanded and repaired, but after looking at the floor and trying to decide where we would have to re-apply the coating to the entire floor to make it look correct again, I decided to take a shot at calling our insurance company to see if the homeowner's policy covered such things. Lo and behold it turns out that such damage is covered, and they would be sending a check for the damage after the estimator took a look at it. He made sure to tell us to keep the faulty part, because they would try and recover damages from the refrigerator manufacturer.
After he left, I started thinking about that. Whose fault was it? I guess the manufacturer made the thing, so they must be responsible, right? But I suppose that the story will not end there, because if you look inside the part you can see evidence of some calcium deposits. I feel sure the manufacturer has a case against the water softener people since the damage to the valve could have been caused by those deposits. The attorneys will no doubt have a meeting to discuss culpability and loss due to damage, you know, lawyer type stuff. The billing will probably reflect the legal opinion of several key attorneys whose experience will also be reflected in the cost of the consultation, after all, they have several years of school to pay for. After the meeting they will advise the manufacturer to hire an expert to examine the part and decide what went wrong. The expert will spend several hours at $100/hr or so, he may have to consult with a design engineer who will undoubtedly notice that the part has a "Made in China" sticker on it, concluding that the part was outsourced by the manufacturer to a Chinese company that was undoubtedly at fault, because they should know that we Americans like our ice convenient and properly softened. That's it, it was their fault, case closed. Estimated cost is approximately 5 refrigerators and 2 new wood floors, to be recovered by increasing my homeowner's policy slowly over the next 10 years, and including a percentage to be amortized by everyone in my nearest zip code.
What really needs to happen is that we develop a government committee to examine the costs of the production, sales and shipping of that part to the American manufacturer, then establish the costs of a flight and $1/hr labor for an underage Chinese worker to come over here and sand my floors smooth and re-clear them. That has to be cheaper than the whole process as it exists now, and could lead to better relations with the Chinese on a cultural level. The only person that would be out anything is my floor guy, but he got paid once to put the floor in the first time so he should be OK. The guest worker could then apply for citizenship while they were here, or just defect and request asylum due to the intense political pressure of the job. The cost of getting them here is already absorbed but the government committee's budget paid for by our taxes, so they can be a productive member of society almost immediately.
So there you have it, a reasonable solution to the water leak issue and the blame properly placed on the manufacturer of the fridge, the water softener company and eventually the real culprit, the Chinese company that made the thing without considering American tastes in the first place. I'll just keep making my homeowner's policy payment in the meantime until they sort that all out, in the end figuring I don't deserve to cash the insurance check because if I was still using those old plastic ice trays instead of expecting my ice to appear out of the front of my refrigerator door, this would never have happened in the first place...
Monday, June 4, 2007
How Long Will Democracy Last?
Alexander Tyler, a late 18th century Scottish history professor, had some comments on Democratic government that seem well placed today. His comments were not about the new American Republic that had just come on the scene, but about the rise and fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years prior. His comments carry some points in common to our own republic today, although he could not have envisioned where the American experiment was going.
Tyler suggested that true democracy is temporary in nature, and follows a sort of life cycle seen in the Athenian fall, and many other civilizations if you think about it. The life cycle includes the following stages:
1. Bondage to Spiritual Faith .
2. Spiritual Faith to Courage.
3. Courage to Liberty.
4. Liberty to Abundance.
5. Abundance to Complacency.
6. Complacency to Apathy.
7. Apathy to Dependence.
8. Dependence to Bondage.
The average lifespan of a democracy over history, using this model, takes around 200 years. Some of these stages take very little time, and others take many decades, but it seems the inexorable tide continues through this cycle as Tyler suggested. It does not take much effort to apply the history of America to this model, and placing our life cycle today somewhere in the 5-7 range depending on your personal view. It seems that as we "allow" government to replace liberty, it is as if we are winding up a big rubber band that gets closer and closer to the point where it breaks loose. That would have been the case in the American Revolution, the French Revolution and ultimately every revolution that has been fought to "free" people from bondage. We replace faith with government programs, freedom with protection, personal accountability with "rights," all the way to the point where the society we created has ceased to be a democracy. You can see this today in many European countries, even those claiming to be free and democratic, where in reality the situation is some sort of pseudo-Socialism as the people have discovered they can vote for candidates or structures that provide personal benefits in lieu of personal freedoms.
Personally, I prefer government to take a lesser role, I don't want the government to tell me how to live my life, especially in return for a program that may or may not help me have a better life. As a nation, we established the direction of the federal government during the Civil War, that the federal government will centralize power over states and ultimately individuals. That direction will continue until the day the people take that power back, either through a cultural change that says enough is enough or through some calamity that forces a new start. I think it is time for Americans to stop taking the easy way out, stop depending on government to provide for our needs when we should be doing it ourselves, stop depending on others to define our relationship to our God and stop depending on our leaders to work to supply our needs in order to stay elected. Let's put people in positions to get the job done and expect that we have some responsibility to do the same, regardless of whether or not "our" person is elected.
Government exists to satisfy a need for the common good, to provide a central authority where larger needs such as common defense would not be appropriately handled by individuals. In the beginning of a democracy we see anarchy alongside freedom, later to be replaced with policies and regulations alongside government intervention. There are many who are labeled subversives, and rightly so when they use force to achieve their goals, but throughout the history of democratic government it has been the "subversives" that are now considered the heroes of society. Our Founding Fathers expected to be captured and hanged as subversives, but instead we lionize their activities as those of courageous men. Good thing it worked out that way for their (and our) sake. I suppose the term "subversive" only applies to those who failed to achieve productive change, and not to those who took a great risk and achieved something.
We are biblically called to provide prayerful support to the leaders of our government, and that counts whether or not you believe their actions to be in line with your own or not, but we as individuals fail our higher calling when we sit back and let things happen through our own apathy. The simplest power that we share in a democracy is the power to vote, and I hope and trust that every one will do that, regardless of who I think is "right" or "wrong." There is a local primary in VA today pitting Scott Sayre against Emmitt Hanger, personally I do not have a clear understanding of which candidate to vote for as I think they are both good choices for very different reasons, but I am hopeful that people will get out and vote absed on their conscience and then be prepared to help support the winner, instead of withdrawing if their guy is not elected. Either candidate will do a good job for VA in terms of keeping government smaller, keeping taxes low and supporting the conservative views of the region, so vote for your choice and exercise your democratic rights to support our republic and hopefully extend or alter the life span of our democracy.
Tyler suggested that true democracy is temporary in nature, and follows a sort of life cycle seen in the Athenian fall, and many other civilizations if you think about it. The life cycle includes the following stages:
1. Bondage to Spiritual Faith .
2. Spiritual Faith to Courage.
3. Courage to Liberty.
4. Liberty to Abundance.
5. Abundance to Complacency.
6. Complacency to Apathy.
7. Apathy to Dependence.
8. Dependence to Bondage.
The average lifespan of a democracy over history, using this model, takes around 200 years. Some of these stages take very little time, and others take many decades, but it seems the inexorable tide continues through this cycle as Tyler suggested. It does not take much effort to apply the history of America to this model, and placing our life cycle today somewhere in the 5-7 range depending on your personal view. It seems that as we "allow" government to replace liberty, it is as if we are winding up a big rubber band that gets closer and closer to the point where it breaks loose. That would have been the case in the American Revolution, the French Revolution and ultimately every revolution that has been fought to "free" people from bondage. We replace faith with government programs, freedom with protection, personal accountability with "rights," all the way to the point where the society we created has ceased to be a democracy. You can see this today in many European countries, even those claiming to be free and democratic, where in reality the situation is some sort of pseudo-Socialism as the people have discovered they can vote for candidates or structures that provide personal benefits in lieu of personal freedoms.
Personally, I prefer government to take a lesser role, I don't want the government to tell me how to live my life, especially in return for a program that may or may not help me have a better life. As a nation, we established the direction of the federal government during the Civil War, that the federal government will centralize power over states and ultimately individuals. That direction will continue until the day the people take that power back, either through a cultural change that says enough is enough or through some calamity that forces a new start. I think it is time for Americans to stop taking the easy way out, stop depending on government to provide for our needs when we should be doing it ourselves, stop depending on others to define our relationship to our God and stop depending on our leaders to work to supply our needs in order to stay elected. Let's put people in positions to get the job done and expect that we have some responsibility to do the same, regardless of whether or not "our" person is elected.
Government exists to satisfy a need for the common good, to provide a central authority where larger needs such as common defense would not be appropriately handled by individuals. In the beginning of a democracy we see anarchy alongside freedom, later to be replaced with policies and regulations alongside government intervention. There are many who are labeled subversives, and rightly so when they use force to achieve their goals, but throughout the history of democratic government it has been the "subversives" that are now considered the heroes of society. Our Founding Fathers expected to be captured and hanged as subversives, but instead we lionize their activities as those of courageous men. Good thing it worked out that way for their (and our) sake. I suppose the term "subversive" only applies to those who failed to achieve productive change, and not to those who took a great risk and achieved something.
We are biblically called to provide prayerful support to the leaders of our government, and that counts whether or not you believe their actions to be in line with your own or not, but we as individuals fail our higher calling when we sit back and let things happen through our own apathy. The simplest power that we share in a democracy is the power to vote, and I hope and trust that every one will do that, regardless of who I think is "right" or "wrong." There is a local primary in VA today pitting Scott Sayre against Emmitt Hanger, personally I do not have a clear understanding of which candidate to vote for as I think they are both good choices for very different reasons, but I am hopeful that people will get out and vote absed on their conscience and then be prepared to help support the winner, instead of withdrawing if their guy is not elected. Either candidate will do a good job for VA in terms of keeping government smaller, keeping taxes low and supporting the conservative views of the region, so vote for your choice and exercise your democratic rights to support our republic and hopefully extend or alter the life span of our democracy.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
No tractors left in Kansas...
When the words left Governor Kathleen Sebelius' mouth, I was stunned. As residents were pulling dead and injured neighbors out of the rubble from an F5 tornado, she was suggesting that the response would be slowed by National Guard deployments to Iraq that included men and tractors. Was the Kansas governor suggesting that instead of focusing on what we could do to help and assist in the almost total devastation in Greensburg, Kansas, this was an opportunity to take a shot at the was on national leadership? Seems out of place for a Democrat devoted to caring for the people, or is it? The fact that over 80% of the local guard unit was intact and functioning did not seem to enter into her mind, and it appeared from news accounts that the response was going as well as could be expected given the situation. I fear that the governor really believes that government exists to solve her problems instantly, and this is yet another example of how incorrect that assumption is. Neighbors, law enforcement and fire fighters in the community are the ones that risked their lives, they were the only ones in a position to accomplish anything in the important hours following the tornado. Did she really expect the guard to handle it?
Regardless of her intention, whether it was true frustration at a lack of immediate suport, a shot at fellow Kansas presidential aspirant and rival Sam Brownback, or a statement against Republican leadership at the federal level, I think her comments were rather misplaced the day after 9 people died. Someone should remind Ms. Sebelius that this is not the aftermath of Katrina, where widespread damage made the FEMA response agonizingly slow and worthy of criticism and eventual reform, this is an event that while terrible in terms of loss of life and property cannot be compared to failures such as the Katrina aftermath. It seems that any problem or catastrophe these days triggers a response from some people that brings to light a much larger issue, an issue of what our government is here to do in the first place. Each side shows up to prove they were doing their job, but the real issue is what job needs to be done?
I am really trying to understand what would make someone in a position of leadership and power say such words after a catastrophe like the Greensburg tornado. With an open mind, I am trying to understand how we have managed to have such conflicting points of view, and what we can do to help each other understand the other side. I want to understand Ms. Sebelius and her point of view, even though I believe she had a lapse of judgement in the timing of her comments. I think what we have as an underlying issue is a basic conflict, a conflicting opinion of what our government is supposed to do vs. what we as citizens are supposed to do. I am assuming that she believes that government exists to solve the problems of society, and lawmakers and leaders should plan for all contingencies in order to take the responsibility away from the citizen and place it in the hands of the federal government. I think she believes government exists to serve the needs (all of them) of the people, partially as a mandate to secure her position as a leader and member of the "elite" and partly out of humanitarian desires that may be well founded. I am making these assumptions because I hold different views and am trying to understand hers, but the basic assumptions are so conflicting that middle ground seems difficult.
The governor's comments do little for my impression that Democrats consider society their playground, where manipulation of social programs and entitlements serve to protect the elite's position in society as priority, but the real issues confronting people's lives are not dealt with. There are people out there that really think we can solve our problems with more government intervention, and there is no middle ground in that argument. I believe there is a place for government intervention, especially in natural disasters like this where the local and regional response would be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster, where we can do more together instead of as individuals in areas like national defense and economic policies, but I do not think that government intervention belongs in our neighborhoods and local communities. Over our nation's history we have steadily moved away from our personal freedoms and placed them in the hands of our national government, sometimes willingly out of great need during the Great Depression and at other times unwillingly out of great passion during the Civil war. There is no doubt that the programs designed in the 1940's were necessary to help recover from the Great Depression, but instead of returning to normal after that crisis subsided we allowed that to be the starting point of an even greater "trade" of our personal freedom for federal subsidy.
I will give you a current example. We spend a gross amount of money on entitlement and welfare programs in the US today, that much we can agree on. These programs are administered on a federal level and budgets created that consume a great deal of our national resources. I think most Democrats think people like myself intend to get rid of those programs altogether to affect some sort of bottom line or enforce some "self-determination" ideal where everyone needs to work in order to eat. That is not the case. I recognize that some people are in situations where they need help, but I am very concerned when that help comes from Washington DC lawmakers who do not know the individual circumstances and whose intention appears to be an attempt to trade votes for cash.
I would propose welfare reform in the following way, give the people their money back through tax credits equal to the amount spent at the federal level and let the local communities and churches handle it. They know the situation and the people involved, and can best prepare assistance that provides what is needed and a means to return to productive society as soon as possible, without reams of paperwork and useless waste getting in the way. Americans are very giving people, and if even a percentage of Americans turned over those tax savings to local community boards and churches, I believe that vastly more work could be done and more importantly the right work would be done. We could use a rifle instead of a shotgun to solve people's real issues. This is a very simplified view of the concept of course, but I used this illustration to show what is different about the basic concept, and how that difference is used to paint each "side" into a corner with no middle ground. We must find that middle ground, and we will disagree, but the current situation of spending and expecting all our cares to be removed by the government must be met somewhere closer to reality and less along "party" lines. If it continues, we will walk down the path of fiscal ruin and personal loss of freedom to a point where there is no turning back until disaster comes, then the whole debate won't matter much.
Regardless of her intention, whether it was true frustration at a lack of immediate suport, a shot at fellow Kansas presidential aspirant and rival Sam Brownback, or a statement against Republican leadership at the federal level, I think her comments were rather misplaced the day after 9 people died. Someone should remind Ms. Sebelius that this is not the aftermath of Katrina, where widespread damage made the FEMA response agonizingly slow and worthy of criticism and eventual reform, this is an event that while terrible in terms of loss of life and property cannot be compared to failures such as the Katrina aftermath. It seems that any problem or catastrophe these days triggers a response from some people that brings to light a much larger issue, an issue of what our government is here to do in the first place. Each side shows up to prove they were doing their job, but the real issue is what job needs to be done?
I am really trying to understand what would make someone in a position of leadership and power say such words after a catastrophe like the Greensburg tornado. With an open mind, I am trying to understand how we have managed to have such conflicting points of view, and what we can do to help each other understand the other side. I want to understand Ms. Sebelius and her point of view, even though I believe she had a lapse of judgement in the timing of her comments. I think what we have as an underlying issue is a basic conflict, a conflicting opinion of what our government is supposed to do vs. what we as citizens are supposed to do. I am assuming that she believes that government exists to solve the problems of society, and lawmakers and leaders should plan for all contingencies in order to take the responsibility away from the citizen and place it in the hands of the federal government. I think she believes government exists to serve the needs (all of them) of the people, partially as a mandate to secure her position as a leader and member of the "elite" and partly out of humanitarian desires that may be well founded. I am making these assumptions because I hold different views and am trying to understand hers, but the basic assumptions are so conflicting that middle ground seems difficult.
The governor's comments do little for my impression that Democrats consider society their playground, where manipulation of social programs and entitlements serve to protect the elite's position in society as priority, but the real issues confronting people's lives are not dealt with. There are people out there that really think we can solve our problems with more government intervention, and there is no middle ground in that argument. I believe there is a place for government intervention, especially in natural disasters like this where the local and regional response would be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster, where we can do more together instead of as individuals in areas like national defense and economic policies, but I do not think that government intervention belongs in our neighborhoods and local communities. Over our nation's history we have steadily moved away from our personal freedoms and placed them in the hands of our national government, sometimes willingly out of great need during the Great Depression and at other times unwillingly out of great passion during the Civil war. There is no doubt that the programs designed in the 1940's were necessary to help recover from the Great Depression, but instead of returning to normal after that crisis subsided we allowed that to be the starting point of an even greater "trade" of our personal freedom for federal subsidy.
I will give you a current example. We spend a gross amount of money on entitlement and welfare programs in the US today, that much we can agree on. These programs are administered on a federal level and budgets created that consume a great deal of our national resources. I think most Democrats think people like myself intend to get rid of those programs altogether to affect some sort of bottom line or enforce some "self-determination" ideal where everyone needs to work in order to eat. That is not the case. I recognize that some people are in situations where they need help, but I am very concerned when that help comes from Washington DC lawmakers who do not know the individual circumstances and whose intention appears to be an attempt to trade votes for cash.
I would propose welfare reform in the following way, give the people their money back through tax credits equal to the amount spent at the federal level and let the local communities and churches handle it. They know the situation and the people involved, and can best prepare assistance that provides what is needed and a means to return to productive society as soon as possible, without reams of paperwork and useless waste getting in the way. Americans are very giving people, and if even a percentage of Americans turned over those tax savings to local community boards and churches, I believe that vastly more work could be done and more importantly the right work would be done. We could use a rifle instead of a shotgun to solve people's real issues. This is a very simplified view of the concept of course, but I used this illustration to show what is different about the basic concept, and how that difference is used to paint each "side" into a corner with no middle ground. We must find that middle ground, and we will disagree, but the current situation of spending and expecting all our cares to be removed by the government must be met somewhere closer to reality and less along "party" lines. If it continues, we will walk down the path of fiscal ruin and personal loss of freedom to a point where there is no turning back until disaster comes, then the whole debate won't matter much.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Room for World Religions in the US?
I often wonder what the members of the first Constitutional Conress would have thought of including faith traditions (other than Christianity) into their fledgling nation? We could learn a lot about what their intentions were for this young nation in terms of religion if there was a Muslim in the membership of that body. We forget pretty quickly that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were pretty much cut from the same cloth when it came to religion and matters of faith. Sure, there were some from either side of that debate, but the debate generally centered on what it was like to be a Christian, not that we should conform to, condone or accept another religion altogether like Islam or Hinduism. That was completely out of their minds at the time and left for us to face, we were a Christian nation from the beginning whether you subscribe to the idea the Founding Fathers were Deists (a Creator made the Universe and then set it aside to run itself by natural laws) or Evangelicals (God is actively involved in the workings of the Universe with a desire for a personal realtionship with each of us). Do you think our nation was founded on Christian principles, and do these principles still have value for us today?
I have heard a lot of people today comment that they are spiritual but don't want to be involved in religion, I suppose the church in general has given no real reason to dispute that. Constant strife, bickering and a general desire to change the way people live without giving them any relevant need to do so is a difficult way to increase membership. The part I can't seem to get over is why I can't get normal people to come to Sunday School with me, but other people will join a cult with crazy practices that end up fodder for low budget movies. People are looking for relevance, but the church is becoming less and less of the answer for many. It seems the first issue is whether or not religion is relevant to people's lives today, whether the issue is important to their general well being and purpose for life. I have been doing some research for a paper that involves how people lived years ago and why there has been a steady decline in church membership over the last few generations. Seems to me if you could answer that question then that would lead you to the real answer about relevance in people's lives.
I am not talking about government and legal trends that started in the late 1940's and continue to today, about rulings that removed the Bible and prayer from schools and the 10 Commandments from the court houses. That is a topic for another day and worthy of discussion, since those factors do influence the relevance of faith. I believe that something more basic is at work, a combination of advances in technology and ease of life combined with poor overall leadership in the church. A few generations ago, surveys noted that people were less interested in financial goals and getting rich as much as they were in finding fulfillment in their lives. Data also suggests that we were more comfortable with less, not needing houses larger than 1500 square feet or so, only one car in general, one phone line, no need for microwaves, air conditioning, stereos and I-pods that we consider "must-haves" today. What has triggered this new trend? Advances in technology have provided many of these things that make life easier, and each advance in technology that makes life easier has the ability to divert our attention away from matters of faith.
We can occupy ourselves with any means of entertainment and live cushy lives for the most part, in stark contrast with life as a search for fulfillment and general survival not many generations ago. When you are in survival mode, then matters of faith are most important, when we are "comfortable" then it is less so. When you combine this with organized religion asking us to conform our lifestyles to join their clubs, it becomes pretty evident why church membership is declining. I am not for giving up my hot shower or microwave or suggesting that from anyone else, but I will ask that you truthfully consider how your life and matters of faith would be different if your focus was elsewhere.
So back to our original question, was our nation founded on Christian principles, and do those principles still have value today? I can only imagine the scene if it could happen today. Thomas Jefferson sitting in one corner, telling whomever would listen to beware of the clergy because they were only interested in taking away people's personal rights in order to conform them to their version of Christianity, any number of the 55 licensed clergymen that participated in the signing roaming the room to offer up their testimony of how belief in Christ had changed their lives, to the point of being willing to die for the right to tell others, and George Washington in the middle talking about how life is made better by following the practices of the Bible and how can we try and work together to make America stronger. About that time a Muslim walks in the room and everyone stops talking, like an EF Hutton commercial. This adds a new twist to the conversation altogether.
I would be willing to bet that if that Muslim asked for the same rights and priviledges to practice his religion as had been afforded the early Americans, his request would have been brushed aside with no second thoughts and great indignation. The rights and priviledges of free practice of religion were intended solely for those practicing the Christian religion, not for other faith choices. Now I am sure the debate would center on letting people have the freedom to make their own choices vs. not allowing false religions to sway the hearts and minds of simple people, but would have returned to the general premise that only Christianity was intended as the faith choice for America. The same men that penned "all men are created equal" and then allowed the slave trade to continue would have come to this conclusion quickly, there was no room in their world for weak acceptance of religious diversity. They would have accepted a person's right to choose their own path and rejected the incorrect choice as one not to be made or suggested to others.
Freedom of religion through the Bill of rights in 1789 was intended for Christian denominations, and resulted from the desire of the leaders of the day to avoid having a State mandated denomination as existed in European nations. We have taken that a step further and perverted it years later by trying to remove Christianity from the mainstream altogether by building a "wall of separation" between church and state (Did you know that was not in the Constitution, but in a letter sent by Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church ansering a query about which denomination was most important? This letter was used later by the Supreme Court to create a law that changed the original intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights). We are a nation of personal freedoms, but have continued to water down the original intent to the point that the church has to make much better decisions or our nation's heritage and history is lost. Other religious choices have to be tolorated as a personal right, but acceptance of other faiths on the same level of Christianity in our government, schools, courtrooms, etc. is unacceptable and should not be allowed any more that having a State Denomination shoudl be allowed.
What can the church do to make a comeback? Is is even possible? Absolutely. The church has to return to the basics, every denomination must focus on the core belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to a personal realtionship with God the Father and Creator. Christianity is the only world religion that can make that claim. If we can agree on that then the rest is semantics. People need to be introduced to this man as the Savior of mankind, the conduit to eternal life. People have to be told the message that belief in Him will lead to a changed life, you don't have to change first to be "accepted." If the church can get that message righted again, then the pews will be filled with people who discover the relevance in their lives and want to learn more about His love. As they accept that love, they will be changed forever, and the old things will not hold sway.
We must introduce them to Christ first, and let them make the choice whether he is the greatest fraud in all of history or who He says He is, but that is their choice. This is the most important choice anyone can ever make if He is who He says He is, and irrelevant if not. We must start there, the life change will come after the decision is made, but it cannot come beforehand. Let's get the order corrected, stand fast against other religions that do not put Christ at the center of the salvation plan, and have the fortitude to stand up when others dispute or confuse the message that our forefathers clearly understood. We have already made the mistake of allowing a fringe element attempt to remove the vestiges of Christianity from our daily lives, but now to have that replaced with acceptance of other religions seems doubly incorrect. There are places where other faiths are allowed to operate and Christian churches barred due to separation of church and state issues. There is more diversity allowance for other faiths than the faith that our nation was founded with, and we go on with no concern because Christianity has been placed in a benign holding pattern for many. You can make whatever choice you want regarding faith, but don't try to transform America from a Christian nation. I wonder what that meeting room would have looked like?
"Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in 1822.
I have heard a lot of people today comment that they are spiritual but don't want to be involved in religion, I suppose the church in general has given no real reason to dispute that. Constant strife, bickering and a general desire to change the way people live without giving them any relevant need to do so is a difficult way to increase membership. The part I can't seem to get over is why I can't get normal people to come to Sunday School with me, but other people will join a cult with crazy practices that end up fodder for low budget movies. People are looking for relevance, but the church is becoming less and less of the answer for many. It seems the first issue is whether or not religion is relevant to people's lives today, whether the issue is important to their general well being and purpose for life. I have been doing some research for a paper that involves how people lived years ago and why there has been a steady decline in church membership over the last few generations. Seems to me if you could answer that question then that would lead you to the real answer about relevance in people's lives.
I am not talking about government and legal trends that started in the late 1940's and continue to today, about rulings that removed the Bible and prayer from schools and the 10 Commandments from the court houses. That is a topic for another day and worthy of discussion, since those factors do influence the relevance of faith. I believe that something more basic is at work, a combination of advances in technology and ease of life combined with poor overall leadership in the church. A few generations ago, surveys noted that people were less interested in financial goals and getting rich as much as they were in finding fulfillment in their lives. Data also suggests that we were more comfortable with less, not needing houses larger than 1500 square feet or so, only one car in general, one phone line, no need for microwaves, air conditioning, stereos and I-pods that we consider "must-haves" today. What has triggered this new trend? Advances in technology have provided many of these things that make life easier, and each advance in technology that makes life easier has the ability to divert our attention away from matters of faith.
We can occupy ourselves with any means of entertainment and live cushy lives for the most part, in stark contrast with life as a search for fulfillment and general survival not many generations ago. When you are in survival mode, then matters of faith are most important, when we are "comfortable" then it is less so. When you combine this with organized religion asking us to conform our lifestyles to join their clubs, it becomes pretty evident why church membership is declining. I am not for giving up my hot shower or microwave or suggesting that from anyone else, but I will ask that you truthfully consider how your life and matters of faith would be different if your focus was elsewhere.
So back to our original question, was our nation founded on Christian principles, and do those principles still have value today? I can only imagine the scene if it could happen today. Thomas Jefferson sitting in one corner, telling whomever would listen to beware of the clergy because they were only interested in taking away people's personal rights in order to conform them to their version of Christianity, any number of the 55 licensed clergymen that participated in the signing roaming the room to offer up their testimony of how belief in Christ had changed their lives, to the point of being willing to die for the right to tell others, and George Washington in the middle talking about how life is made better by following the practices of the Bible and how can we try and work together to make America stronger. About that time a Muslim walks in the room and everyone stops talking, like an EF Hutton commercial. This adds a new twist to the conversation altogether.
I would be willing to bet that if that Muslim asked for the same rights and priviledges to practice his religion as had been afforded the early Americans, his request would have been brushed aside with no second thoughts and great indignation. The rights and priviledges of free practice of religion were intended solely for those practicing the Christian religion, not for other faith choices. Now I am sure the debate would center on letting people have the freedom to make their own choices vs. not allowing false religions to sway the hearts and minds of simple people, but would have returned to the general premise that only Christianity was intended as the faith choice for America. The same men that penned "all men are created equal" and then allowed the slave trade to continue would have come to this conclusion quickly, there was no room in their world for weak acceptance of religious diversity. They would have accepted a person's right to choose their own path and rejected the incorrect choice as one not to be made or suggested to others.
Freedom of religion through the Bill of rights in 1789 was intended for Christian denominations, and resulted from the desire of the leaders of the day to avoid having a State mandated denomination as existed in European nations. We have taken that a step further and perverted it years later by trying to remove Christianity from the mainstream altogether by building a "wall of separation" between church and state (Did you know that was not in the Constitution, but in a letter sent by Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church ansering a query about which denomination was most important? This letter was used later by the Supreme Court to create a law that changed the original intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights). We are a nation of personal freedoms, but have continued to water down the original intent to the point that the church has to make much better decisions or our nation's heritage and history is lost. Other religious choices have to be tolorated as a personal right, but acceptance of other faiths on the same level of Christianity in our government, schools, courtrooms, etc. is unacceptable and should not be allowed any more that having a State Denomination shoudl be allowed.
What can the church do to make a comeback? Is is even possible? Absolutely. The church has to return to the basics, every denomination must focus on the core belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to a personal realtionship with God the Father and Creator. Christianity is the only world religion that can make that claim. If we can agree on that then the rest is semantics. People need to be introduced to this man as the Savior of mankind, the conduit to eternal life. People have to be told the message that belief in Him will lead to a changed life, you don't have to change first to be "accepted." If the church can get that message righted again, then the pews will be filled with people who discover the relevance in their lives and want to learn more about His love. As they accept that love, they will be changed forever, and the old things will not hold sway.
We must introduce them to Christ first, and let them make the choice whether he is the greatest fraud in all of history or who He says He is, but that is their choice. This is the most important choice anyone can ever make if He is who He says He is, and irrelevant if not. We must start there, the life change will come after the decision is made, but it cannot come beforehand. Let's get the order corrected, stand fast against other religions that do not put Christ at the center of the salvation plan, and have the fortitude to stand up when others dispute or confuse the message that our forefathers clearly understood. We have already made the mistake of allowing a fringe element attempt to remove the vestiges of Christianity from our daily lives, but now to have that replaced with acceptance of other religions seems doubly incorrect. There are places where other faiths are allowed to operate and Christian churches barred due to separation of church and state issues. There is more diversity allowance for other faiths than the faith that our nation was founded with, and we go on with no concern because Christianity has been placed in a benign holding pattern for many. You can make whatever choice you want regarding faith, but don't try to transform America from a Christian nation. I wonder what that meeting room would have looked like?
"Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in 1822.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is
It appears that everyone is ready to go back to work after a week of tragic TV news in Virginia. Not to diminish the grief of the families and friends suffering their loss, I am pretty happy to be able to focus on something else as well. There were a lot of comments about the Tech article, but after leaving that up for several days I think it is best to heal and move on the best we can.
The news you are going to be hearing this week will probably include something about the imminent record close of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow), for the first time a close is expected over 13,000. I know this could be a boring subject for most people, but it brings up a subject that I think is important in this day and age, definitely worth discussing. The financial markets can at best be confusing, but in my simple view there are a few things that most people don't know and could benefit from. My basic advice is this, find something that you are very interested in where you can invest your money and beware of assuming everything will continue to go along as "normal." My goal here is not to scare anyone into putting cash in their mattress, actually it is completely the opposite. We should save for a rainy day and be prepared to invest in appreciating assets (key word here is "appreciating"), it is a subject even the Bible talks about (remember the parable of the "talents" in Luke 19 12-26 as one example?).
A little background to start, a very important history lesson that I can pretty much guarantee you will not hear in the mainstream media. In the early 1970's our nation removed ourselves from the Gold Standard that existed (other than the Confederate States during the Civil War) since the start of our national economy after the American Revolution. What that meant is that each dollar that existed in circulation had a corresponding value of gold at a central depository, like Fort Knox for example. Each dollar had a real value based on gold, you could show up at any time and request your dollar be traded in for gold. What happened to change that? Well, simply put, we ran out of enough gold to ensure it could back the currency due to our expanding economy, the government had to remove us from that standard and then create "legal tender" laws that basically made it illegal for anyone to refuse the non-gold backed dollar in any financial transaction. This was a key moment in time.
Why is this a problem? Well, simply put again, any fiat (another name for a currency that is not backed by some tangible, precious metal source) currency in the history of the world has eventually failed due to the fact that only the faith and credit of the issuing government backs the currency, not a bonafide source of wealth. It is a 100% certainty that as more dollars enter circulation, the value of each dollar has to become less (remember Econ 101?), and it will take more dollars to buy the same item you purchased yesterday when fewer dollars were in circulation. This is called inflation, and it is important to remember that it is not the price of goods and services that is going up, it is the "cheapening" of the dollar you are using to purchase them that creates inflation. The only way to stop inflation is to stop printing more money.
So why do we keep printing money? We continue to print money for one reason, to keep our economy alive and vital. Over our history we find a cycle of boom and bust that generally happen each 37 months for boom and 18 months for bust. Our Federal Reserve Bank does an unbelievable job at efficiently managing the money supply to keep the economy rolling. As inflation gets carried away, in simple terms they just reduce the amount of money printed to slow it down to a reasonable level. As the bust cycle takes over and unemployment begin to rise, we print more money to pay for programs that stimulate the economy and bring us back to a boom cycle. This happens over and over again, pretty much indefinitely, as we generally increase the supply of money to keep up with our promises over time. If you want to ask my political affiliation, this is one of the main reasons I am in favor of less government intervention, which typically falls to the Republican side of things. I know there are several programs that really help people, as we have removed the church from our support of those less fortunate and replaced it with government programs, but that is a subject for another day...
The Federal Reserve is rather artful at managing this scenario, but the end result is that the endless money printing does have a price. Inflation and taxation act together to erode the value of our dollars, to the point where we have to borrow against the faith and credit of the US to keep the cycle intact, which will continue until we either stop printing money and let inflation run wild as it did in Venezuela most recently (not going to happen in the US, I know that much), or until the borrowing to maintain the boom and bust cycles buries us in the failure of our currency, most likely to be replaced with another world currency such as the Euro or the Yuan (much more likely, followed by the biggest credit call in history). With the pressures of our current entitlements such as Social Security, the pressures to continue the cycle are enormous.
Unfortunately, I have an opinion there is not much that we can do other than prop up our economy the best we can until the inevitable happens, until we cannot even maintain our standard of living because our dollar is mostly in circulation to pay for the interest on our approaching 10 trillion dollar debt (have any idea how much money that is? Each trillion is a thousand billion dollars, enough to already force nearly half of our national budget toward payment of interest on that debt due to our borrowing). Until we either force our elected officials to revise the policies and stop the trend, which I do not see happening because they want to be elected and that is not the way to get (or stay) elected, or other nations begin to stop offering loans to support that debt, we are going to sail along in this present cycle of building huge mountains of borrowed money in order to maintain the steady increase in our money supply. We are already opearting at a discount of nearly 30% to the Euro since its inception, and I don't think that trend will reverse itself. As Haggai remarked in the Bible, we are putting our money into bags with holes.
What can you do to protect your investments? For now, you can just play along and try to achieve returns that exceed the combination of taxation and inflation, there is no need to alter that strategy unless a collapse appears imminent, and I would think that would be reasonably well publicized in advance. I would strongly suggest, however, that you also invest a portion (maybe 10-15%) of your savings in something that you are really interested in that involves a tangible (something you can touch), appreciating asset. New clothes, furniture and most new cars are not apprecaiting assets, but if you think about it for a minute you can find items of interest from classic cars to baseball cards to antiques to actual gold and silver. The key would be to buy the best quality available of an item known to be appreciating and of interest to you. I would think of it in terms of holding certain items that you could use to buy groceries if you could not access a bank account, but don't take that statement as suggesting the sky is falling. If you can act prudently and be aware of what is going on, then you can be prepared for most anything that comes your way.
The news you are going to be hearing this week will probably include something about the imminent record close of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow), for the first time a close is expected over 13,000. I know this could be a boring subject for most people, but it brings up a subject that I think is important in this day and age, definitely worth discussing. The financial markets can at best be confusing, but in my simple view there are a few things that most people don't know and could benefit from. My basic advice is this, find something that you are very interested in where you can invest your money and beware of assuming everything will continue to go along as "normal." My goal here is not to scare anyone into putting cash in their mattress, actually it is completely the opposite. We should save for a rainy day and be prepared to invest in appreciating assets (key word here is "appreciating"), it is a subject even the Bible talks about (remember the parable of the "talents" in Luke 19 12-26 as one example?).
A little background to start, a very important history lesson that I can pretty much guarantee you will not hear in the mainstream media. In the early 1970's our nation removed ourselves from the Gold Standard that existed (other than the Confederate States during the Civil War) since the start of our national economy after the American Revolution. What that meant is that each dollar that existed in circulation had a corresponding value of gold at a central depository, like Fort Knox for example. Each dollar had a real value based on gold, you could show up at any time and request your dollar be traded in for gold. What happened to change that? Well, simply put, we ran out of enough gold to ensure it could back the currency due to our expanding economy, the government had to remove us from that standard and then create "legal tender" laws that basically made it illegal for anyone to refuse the non-gold backed dollar in any financial transaction. This was a key moment in time.
Why is this a problem? Well, simply put again, any fiat (another name for a currency that is not backed by some tangible, precious metal source) currency in the history of the world has eventually failed due to the fact that only the faith and credit of the issuing government backs the currency, not a bonafide source of wealth. It is a 100% certainty that as more dollars enter circulation, the value of each dollar has to become less (remember Econ 101?), and it will take more dollars to buy the same item you purchased yesterday when fewer dollars were in circulation. This is called inflation, and it is important to remember that it is not the price of goods and services that is going up, it is the "cheapening" of the dollar you are using to purchase them that creates inflation. The only way to stop inflation is to stop printing more money.
So why do we keep printing money? We continue to print money for one reason, to keep our economy alive and vital. Over our history we find a cycle of boom and bust that generally happen each 37 months for boom and 18 months for bust. Our Federal Reserve Bank does an unbelievable job at efficiently managing the money supply to keep the economy rolling. As inflation gets carried away, in simple terms they just reduce the amount of money printed to slow it down to a reasonable level. As the bust cycle takes over and unemployment begin to rise, we print more money to pay for programs that stimulate the economy and bring us back to a boom cycle. This happens over and over again, pretty much indefinitely, as we generally increase the supply of money to keep up with our promises over time. If you want to ask my political affiliation, this is one of the main reasons I am in favor of less government intervention, which typically falls to the Republican side of things. I know there are several programs that really help people, as we have removed the church from our support of those less fortunate and replaced it with government programs, but that is a subject for another day...
The Federal Reserve is rather artful at managing this scenario, but the end result is that the endless money printing does have a price. Inflation and taxation act together to erode the value of our dollars, to the point where we have to borrow against the faith and credit of the US to keep the cycle intact, which will continue until we either stop printing money and let inflation run wild as it did in Venezuela most recently (not going to happen in the US, I know that much), or until the borrowing to maintain the boom and bust cycles buries us in the failure of our currency, most likely to be replaced with another world currency such as the Euro or the Yuan (much more likely, followed by the biggest credit call in history). With the pressures of our current entitlements such as Social Security, the pressures to continue the cycle are enormous.
Unfortunately, I have an opinion there is not much that we can do other than prop up our economy the best we can until the inevitable happens, until we cannot even maintain our standard of living because our dollar is mostly in circulation to pay for the interest on our approaching 10 trillion dollar debt (have any idea how much money that is? Each trillion is a thousand billion dollars, enough to already force nearly half of our national budget toward payment of interest on that debt due to our borrowing). Until we either force our elected officials to revise the policies and stop the trend, which I do not see happening because they want to be elected and that is not the way to get (or stay) elected, or other nations begin to stop offering loans to support that debt, we are going to sail along in this present cycle of building huge mountains of borrowed money in order to maintain the steady increase in our money supply. We are already opearting at a discount of nearly 30% to the Euro since its inception, and I don't think that trend will reverse itself. As Haggai remarked in the Bible, we are putting our money into bags with holes.
What can you do to protect your investments? For now, you can just play along and try to achieve returns that exceed the combination of taxation and inflation, there is no need to alter that strategy unless a collapse appears imminent, and I would think that would be reasonably well publicized in advance. I would strongly suggest, however, that you also invest a portion (maybe 10-15%) of your savings in something that you are really interested in that involves a tangible (something you can touch), appreciating asset. New clothes, furniture and most new cars are not apprecaiting assets, but if you think about it for a minute you can find items of interest from classic cars to baseball cards to antiques to actual gold and silver. The key would be to buy the best quality available of an item known to be appreciating and of interest to you. I would think of it in terms of holding certain items that you could use to buy groceries if you could not access a bank account, but don't take that statement as suggesting the sky is falling. If you can act prudently and be aware of what is going on, then you can be prepared for most anything that comes your way.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
VA Tech is a dream come true for the "fringes"
I suppose there is very little we can claim as a positive from this terrible thing that has happened, but I for one found a great deal of comfort and pride in seeing the reactions of the students and University leaders over the past few days. Most notably was the reaction of the student body toward President Bush and the University President. Their very lengthy ovation at the introduction of both told me a few things about the general character of the students there, and really made me proud to be a citizen of both Virginia and America. After all the criticism of the school administration, I think the question was answered in that moment about whether or not the people closest to this tragedy were in support of their President Charles Steger. We all know that college campuses in general are not that friendly to Republican Presidents either, but the show of respect for President Bush was yet another example of putting differences aside for the sake of something bigger. For all the attempts at trying to pull anger and hatred out of people while they were at their lowest moments, I think the fringe elements of our society were silenced by the desire of that commmunity to pull together instead of breaking apart.
It is simply amazing that there are people in our society (and around the globe) that insist on using this awful event for self promotion of their own fringe agenda. The huge gathering of students for the vigil held on the drill field and the memorial services remind me that the majority of Americans hold similar values and points of view, but the fringes get the airtime because they offer up the greatest opportunity to "shock" us into wanting to watch something extraordinary. Normal people don't make headlines, only the fringes get the headlines. The photos of that nutcase Cho are going to be forever immortalized in history as a symbol of what is wrong in America, I would prefer to focus on what makes America strong.
The issues that keep getting played across our televisions are much less than assignment of blame, gun control and our responsibility to keep everyone safe. The real issues are about our freedom and how we react as Americans to pull together in times of crisis instead of allowing the fringes to pull us apart. I would put this idea out there for everyone to consider, that the time in our history as a nation with the greatest personal freedoms would be the period of time following the Amercian Revolution. That would also be the time of greatest chaos in our history of government, because those 2 things are generally mutually exclusive. We are most comfortable with systems and programs in place to repress anarchy, which generally means we slowly move from a free society to some sort of democratic socialism at best, and situations where a single ruler that controls everything is in power at the worst.
The far left is taking the stance that we should remove all guns from society, because that will make us safe. If only the government had guns, then we would not have to worry. Wow. Where would we have been in 1776 with that concept? I suppose if no one had guns then they would have to find another way to kill each other, so gun deaths would decline, but at the same time we would give up our Constitutional right to bear arms and leave our society open to manipulation and control by anyone that had guns. Giving up our personal rights will never make us safer, only open the door to a slow slide toward control moving to a central source of power. I suppose that is why the Europeans have hit us so hard with our "gun society," they have had more history and time to move toward socialiasm than we have, which is exactly where we will end up if we give up our freedoms.
The far right is taking the stance that everyone should have guns and that will make us safe. I am not so sure of that either, giving all the students at Tech a gun just seems that we will kill 33 students over a year's time on Saturday nights instead of all at once. I have even heard some people pushing the idea that they all deserved to die as a representation of God's retribution for the partying and sex that goes on. Wow. I don't even know where to start, but the idea that God planned all this to teach us a lesson is beyond my comprehension. God loves each one of us in a way that we cannot imagine, and wants to be in a personal and meaningful relationship with us that involves a choice on our part. We must separate this idea of Old Testament retribution from the consequences of our actions, when we choose to do something outside of acceptable behavior then we face consequences for those actions, but God wants us to turn to Him first and then we will want to change our behaviors because we live within that relationship. He did not come to condemn the world but to save it.
The fact remains that we have a very terrible and unusual situation brought on by one person's sadistic actions. If I hear another talking head suggest that we failed Cho as a society because we did not identify him and get him into the right program, so that he could be reformed and rejoin as a meaningful contributor to our society, I am just going to throw up. The guy was a nut, sadistic, crazy, whatever adjective you want to use that describes someone so unbalanced that they could even consider the act, much less plan it out so that he would be immortalized by his actions. If anything he needed to be identified and locked up for the rest of his life, instead of playing the role of "It was his societal condition," "he just needed help," "our gun society is to blame," "his privacy was more important," "if we just could have reached out to him..." There was nothing that could have prevented this guy from going postal. It would have been better if some boyfriend of a stalked girl on campus would have taken him out before he could kill all those people, but even that is a pretty hollow victory.
You could maybe make the point that we sanction violence on TV which allows these things to happen, but the reality is that we can only "vote" on whether that violence is acceptable with our pocketbooks. I would agree that what we watch on TV and the movies has a very negative affect on our actions, but we allow it to happen because we watch and advertisers profit from it. We have a choice, if something is inappropriate then we have a duty to letting those advertisers know we won't be purcahsing their producsts as a result. Wonder why Imus finally got fired? Because that is exactly what happened. We not only have the rights to our personal freedom, we have the obligation to identify people and situations that are outside acceptable behavior and remove them from society. We can get all crossed up in what is acceptable, but I am pretty certain that killing people would be considered unacceptable, and violence that depicts and glorifies those situations should be considered the same.
We live in a free society, where people are free to fly into towers and shoot college students. There is no means of protecting people in a free society from events like this, nor should there be beyond reasonable measures from law enforcement to detect and identify nutcases like Cho, hopefully before he is able to kill, but certtainly not to second guess their actions when they are trying to protect us within an open society. We have to use these terrible situations to pull together and celebrate our freedoms, amid the grief and anguish from those families that are enduring great pain and sacrifice. We cannot let this situation overshadow the fact that life is transient and there are different views about the sanctity of human life over the globe. Over 170 innocent people were killed in Iraq yesterday, but we don't seem as upset about that as the college kids because it is far away and we are used to them killing each other on a regular basis. Our european neighbors are incensed about the evils of American society as a result of the shootings, but they ignore Muslim extremists who are executing and beheading people at the same time. What am I missing? We have to accept by our very nature that America is open to this type of tragedy, for the benefit of enjoying our individual freedoms we have the potential for disaster every day. We can fall prey to trying to fix it, which can only result in the loss of those freedoms, or we can pick each other up when the dust settles and gather together as Americans devoted to maintaining those freedoms as a tribute to those who gave their lives.
It is simply amazing that there are people in our society (and around the globe) that insist on using this awful event for self promotion of their own fringe agenda. The huge gathering of students for the vigil held on the drill field and the memorial services remind me that the majority of Americans hold similar values and points of view, but the fringes get the airtime because they offer up the greatest opportunity to "shock" us into wanting to watch something extraordinary. Normal people don't make headlines, only the fringes get the headlines. The photos of that nutcase Cho are going to be forever immortalized in history as a symbol of what is wrong in America, I would prefer to focus on what makes America strong.
The issues that keep getting played across our televisions are much less than assignment of blame, gun control and our responsibility to keep everyone safe. The real issues are about our freedom and how we react as Americans to pull together in times of crisis instead of allowing the fringes to pull us apart. I would put this idea out there for everyone to consider, that the time in our history as a nation with the greatest personal freedoms would be the period of time following the Amercian Revolution. That would also be the time of greatest chaos in our history of government, because those 2 things are generally mutually exclusive. We are most comfortable with systems and programs in place to repress anarchy, which generally means we slowly move from a free society to some sort of democratic socialism at best, and situations where a single ruler that controls everything is in power at the worst.
The far left is taking the stance that we should remove all guns from society, because that will make us safe. If only the government had guns, then we would not have to worry. Wow. Where would we have been in 1776 with that concept? I suppose if no one had guns then they would have to find another way to kill each other, so gun deaths would decline, but at the same time we would give up our Constitutional right to bear arms and leave our society open to manipulation and control by anyone that had guns. Giving up our personal rights will never make us safer, only open the door to a slow slide toward control moving to a central source of power. I suppose that is why the Europeans have hit us so hard with our "gun society," they have had more history and time to move toward socialiasm than we have, which is exactly where we will end up if we give up our freedoms.
The far right is taking the stance that everyone should have guns and that will make us safe. I am not so sure of that either, giving all the students at Tech a gun just seems that we will kill 33 students over a year's time on Saturday nights instead of all at once. I have even heard some people pushing the idea that they all deserved to die as a representation of God's retribution for the partying and sex that goes on. Wow. I don't even know where to start, but the idea that God planned all this to teach us a lesson is beyond my comprehension. God loves each one of us in a way that we cannot imagine, and wants to be in a personal and meaningful relationship with us that involves a choice on our part. We must separate this idea of Old Testament retribution from the consequences of our actions, when we choose to do something outside of acceptable behavior then we face consequences for those actions, but God wants us to turn to Him first and then we will want to change our behaviors because we live within that relationship. He did not come to condemn the world but to save it.
The fact remains that we have a very terrible and unusual situation brought on by one person's sadistic actions. If I hear another talking head suggest that we failed Cho as a society because we did not identify him and get him into the right program, so that he could be reformed and rejoin as a meaningful contributor to our society, I am just going to throw up. The guy was a nut, sadistic, crazy, whatever adjective you want to use that describes someone so unbalanced that they could even consider the act, much less plan it out so that he would be immortalized by his actions. If anything he needed to be identified and locked up for the rest of his life, instead of playing the role of "It was his societal condition," "he just needed help," "our gun society is to blame," "his privacy was more important," "if we just could have reached out to him..." There was nothing that could have prevented this guy from going postal. It would have been better if some boyfriend of a stalked girl on campus would have taken him out before he could kill all those people, but even that is a pretty hollow victory.
You could maybe make the point that we sanction violence on TV which allows these things to happen, but the reality is that we can only "vote" on whether that violence is acceptable with our pocketbooks. I would agree that what we watch on TV and the movies has a very negative affect on our actions, but we allow it to happen because we watch and advertisers profit from it. We have a choice, if something is inappropriate then we have a duty to letting those advertisers know we won't be purcahsing their producsts as a result. Wonder why Imus finally got fired? Because that is exactly what happened. We not only have the rights to our personal freedom, we have the obligation to identify people and situations that are outside acceptable behavior and remove them from society. We can get all crossed up in what is acceptable, but I am pretty certain that killing people would be considered unacceptable, and violence that depicts and glorifies those situations should be considered the same.
We live in a free society, where people are free to fly into towers and shoot college students. There is no means of protecting people in a free society from events like this, nor should there be beyond reasonable measures from law enforcement to detect and identify nutcases like Cho, hopefully before he is able to kill, but certtainly not to second guess their actions when they are trying to protect us within an open society. We have to use these terrible situations to pull together and celebrate our freedoms, amid the grief and anguish from those families that are enduring great pain and sacrifice. We cannot let this situation overshadow the fact that life is transient and there are different views about the sanctity of human life over the globe. Over 170 innocent people were killed in Iraq yesterday, but we don't seem as upset about that as the college kids because it is far away and we are used to them killing each other on a regular basis. Our european neighbors are incensed about the evils of American society as a result of the shootings, but they ignore Muslim extremists who are executing and beheading people at the same time. What am I missing? We have to accept by our very nature that America is open to this type of tragedy, for the benefit of enjoying our individual freedoms we have the potential for disaster every day. We can fall prey to trying to fix it, which can only result in the loss of those freedoms, or we can pick each other up when the dust settles and gather together as Americans devoted to maintaining those freedoms as a tribute to those who gave their lives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
