Money is less valuable the more of it you have. The money you need to keep a roof over your head, food out your table, and keep your creditors paid contributes more to your well-being than the money you have over and above that. So the money paid to wealthier people has less utility than it would have were it paid to people further down the economic scale.
This helps to explain why Bernie Sanders is appealing to so many people.
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Again, I totally agree. My income is currently far in excess of what I need, which is why I give most of it away. The extra money has no value for me, but can be a game changer for someone else.
My largest "superfluous" expense (as much as a hundred dollars per month) are my books. But even those, I have finally gotten into the habit of giving them away (mostly to my local senior center) after reading - unless I want to keep something for reference.
Bernie Sanders is a millionaire. A millionaire who has not used that wealth to create inventions to cure diseases or ease the lives of his fellow citizens.
Just like all the socialist "leaders".
Argument ad hominem? Does this have anything to do with the legitimacy or lack of it of socialisms?
Just as, for, example, conservatism can be true even if Donald Trump is a moral skunk.
Does this have anything to do with the legitimacy or lack of it of socialisms?
No but it has a lot to do with those who find appeal in rich socialists who got rich, and remain rich, over spouting propaganda attacking the rich. That looks an awful lot like getting suckered.
Conservatism, defined as the value of preserving tradition and respecting the opinions of previous generations, is true. But progressivism, defined as the celebration of new ideas and the discarding of old ones that are past their sell-by date, is equally true. The two philosophies desperately need each other.
Conservatism minus progressivism leads to stagnation. The best example of this in my lifetime would be Brezhnev's Soviet Union.
Progressivism without conservatism leads to revolutionary anarchy. The best (worst) example of this in my lifetime would be Trump (who was, ironically, the diametrical opposite of a "conservative").
Argument ad hominem?
Thought that was the subtitle of this site.
Dr. Repert I need to talk to yo I don't an email address. Please contact me. Joe Hinman (Metacrock) metacrock@gmail.com
A Good Friday meditation by Catholic theologian M. Shawn Copeland:
To know and to follow Christ crucified is to know and love those children, women, and men who are poor, excluded, and despised, made different and unwelcome, lynched and crucified in our world....
If we would follow Christ crucified, we would hear the echoes of ululation and bitter weeping in Gaza and in Rafah, in Baghdad and in Beirut, in Cairo and in Kigali....
If we would follow Christ crucified, we would press to our hearts the tears that flowed from the eyes of Cherokee, Seminole, and Choctaw children and women and men who limped through the cold and hunger from Oklahoma to Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi....
If we would follow Christ crucified, we would recover the tears that fell on the floors of the camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibór....
If we would follow Christ crucified, we would retrieve the tears that flowed from the eyes of children and women and men who crowded into flimsy boats and old trucks and shipping containers to suffocate and die in front of fences strung across the desert, at abandoned check points on the outer edge of rural towns, and at heavily guarded borders near rivers and waterways....
If we would follow Christ crucified with attention, reverence, and devotion, we would recognize that the tears and blood and moans of the innocent have been absorbed into the air we breathe, have seeped into our streams and oceans, into the earth in which we plant and from which we harvest and eat....
If we follow with attention, reverence, and devotion the moans and tears of the brutalized and burned, raped and mutilated, enslaved and captive across the centuries, we are led to the ground beneath the cross of the crucified Jewish Jesus of Nazareth....
On this Good Friday, I have spent almost* the entire morning reading about and contemplating the Crucifixion. I just now came across this, from Esau McCaulley, assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois.
Black Christians have found solace in the idea that the God they worshiped knew the trouble we’d seen. He experienced it himself. The hip-hop artist Swoope said, “Christ died in the blackest way possible, with his hands up and his momma there watching him.”
* "Almost", because I did spend some time catching up on the latest news from Ukraine.
It's unfortunate that people want to bring race into Good Friday. I guess if you are obsessed with a topic you will find it in everything. I only feel pity for them.
We had Maundy Thursday last night to remember the Last Supper in that unique way during Holy Week. My priest asked me to do the foot-washing. People from the congregation came forward, took off their shoes, put their feet in the basin, I poured water over them and rubbed their feet with the warm water and then dry them with a towel. I realized I am part of a really bizarre faith (religion). I'm on my knees on the church floor washing people's feet and then we all share the Eucharist together believing in the real presence of Christ.
On the drive home Mrs. Perspective and I talked a little bit about the service but mostly about about the mundane but necessary things in life.
Limited,
Sorry to upset your apple cart, but race (and racism) is part and parcel of EVERYTHING.
My apple cart was upset by the incarnation. Sorry Star, race isn't part of everything except to addicts. Again, I only pity people who have that view.
It's not a "view", Limited, it's a fact - like gravity. You can be in denial of it, but that doesn't change reality. In fact, your comment justifies your moniker of "Limited Perspective". I much prefer the perspective of cruising (hopping) amongst the stars. No tunnel vision up here.
Fair enough Star. My view is limited. It's Good Friday. Blessing to you and your family on Easter. He is risen in three days.
Meanwhile, the darkness of the Tomb...
I recall that disastrous Good Friday of 1975, as we watched the North Vietnamese army descending on Saigon, with literally millions of civilians jamming the roads trying to somehow get away. What followed was, of course, the "boat people" - uncountable persons taking to the sea, hoping that somebody, anybody, would find them and take them to safety. For 30 years, my barber was Hua, a Vietnamese refugee who was one of a handful of survivors on a boat crammed with more than 150 persons (although it was designed for 30 passengers). They finally washed ashore in Thailand, with Hua and maybe 4 others emerging from a pile of corpses. He now owns his own barber shop, and both his sons are college graduates.
We are now once again witnessing the same re-crucifixion of Christ in Ukraine.
I've told this story before, but growing up in the 80s and 90s I had many classmates who were not white. The TV shows and movies I watched had characters who were not white - some of them had no white characters.
My parents were at most centrists who didn't talk to me much about their political beliefs (I recall them voting for Bill Clinton and also griping about Bill Clinton, that's about it), and of course the internet didn't exist and I didn't care about the news beyond what almost everyone was talking about to an unavoidable extent, so I essentially had no outside influences when it came to the topic of race.
Because of this, it never occurred to me to think that my non-white classmates were different than me. It never occurred to me to think that a show with no white characters was something I couldn't relate to, or that one black character in a largely white cast was different.
I can remember exactly one time before adulthood I ever thought about race as something important, and that was when I got lost on foot in Little Rock during a school FBLA event. At one point I was the only person with white skin in sight, and I became aware of this when the crowds of people around me began staring at me and calling me "whitey" and "white boy", etc.
Encountering partisan progressives online was the final event that brought race into my mind, and that's because they were obsessed over it and called anything they disagreed with racist (and sexist and any other -ist and -phobe imaginable).
On the one hand, the "white boy" event and some of the stories the race-obsessed left told made me aware of what it is like to be a racial minority. That helped me to grow as an empathetic person, because not everyone has things as good as I did. Sucks to be judged for something beyond your control.
On the other hand, before I was "taught" to think about race, someone's skin color was as relevant as hair or eye color to me. I simply did not think about it. It didn't matter. It had nothing to do with anything remotely relevant to how I would think of someone. So what I gained in being able to understand what others go through, I lost in having the artificial construct of race implanted in my brain no matter how I try to ignore it.
Progressives' obsession with race is a mixed bag. On the one hand they do highlight disparities on a social level that otherwise would go unnoticed. On the other hand, they get so much wrong about racism that it's staggering. I largely tend to ignore them.
Kevin,
Your experience is spot on. Human beings are not born racists - they are taught to be so. We are also not born misogynist, or as xenophobes. These things are all learned behavior.
But the contrary is also true. People are not born as attentive, supportive, and caring beings - they must be raised as such.
I can't recall who said "History is a race between education and barbarism" or something like that. But truer words were never spoken. (Maybe the quote was "We are forever one generation away from barbarism." Whatever, the meaning's the same.)
We were all born sinners and there are all kinds of sin. Christ died this day to set us free from our sin.
Let us pause and contemplate our salvation. There will be time chastising your political enemies later.
Kevin,
I can remember exactly one time before adulthood I ever thought about race as something important, and that was when I got lost on foot in Little Rock during a school FBLA event. At one point I was the only person with white skin in sight, and I became aware of this when the crowds of people around me began staring at me and calling me "whitey" and "white boy", etc.
Did this teach you that only white people can be racist?
Ah Starhopper is now being censored. Seems we have more than one thing in common.
I actually walked out on that play during the intermission, so maybe Victor hated it as much as I did?
bmiller said...
Did this teach you that only white people can be racist?
There are many racist black people. Jesse Peterson, Candance Owens, etc.
And don't forget Clarence Thomas.
He is risen!
Caesar Augustus, St Athanasius, Beowulf, Billy the Kid, phenolphthalein, a sprained ankle, Tom Sawyer, pepperoni pizza, shy bladder syndrome, leaded gasoline, frostbite, Rio Lobo, semicolons, Rascosnikoff, indoor plumbing--they are all black racists!
As the crazy Star guy said, evening is about race and racism.
Limited,
You're learning. There's hope for you yet!
Everything is about race... Vegetarianism, fly fishing, plate tectonics, carbon fibers, a bee in your bonnet...take it from Star, everything is about race.
LimitedPerspective,
I'm sure you understand that phenomena/discussions/etc. can be about more than one thing at a time.
You might not realize how deeply racism was woven into the fabric of Western civilization, and why would you?
Of interest are the things that Limited did not include in his list:
Banks and banking
real estate
education
historical narrative
corporate ladders
access to medical coverage
driving while black
generational wealth
economic opportunity
treatment by police
prison populations
etc., etc., etc.
One Brow,
Starting with the definition of Western Civilization. I view that as the civilization of the geographical area formerly governed by the Roman Empire.
When you write of a cultural characteristic woven into the fabric of a civilization, I do find that topic interesting.
Why would I understand the topic of race and Western Civilization? Because I went to a public school in the 1960s and '70s in California. I was in the military, I graduated from a State University in California, I was employed by a large corporation as part of a labor union, I was employed by a large corporation in the revenue stream in constant contact with HR directors, I follow politics, I live as a white minority in the county I live in, how on Earth could I miss it?
I also think that when we talk about a cultural characteristic (woven into the fabric) of a civilization, we need to have a standard by which we can judge all civilizations. Then we can make fair comparisons about how functional civilizations have been on a range of topics. I would prefer to focus on other characteristics of Western Civilization, but if it's about racial minorities, then we can take a look around the world.
Of the 175 trillion 946 billion 322 million 486 thousand 106 topics I didn't mention, thanks for mentioning those 15 or so Star.
Anytime... My pleasure!
Limited Perspective,
... how on Earth could I miss it?
Something like 40% of the country seems to have missed it entirely.
At any rate, race plays into who and what we value as a culture at the deepest levels.
"Something like 40% of the country seems to have missed it entirely."
I studied engineering and chemistry in college and tried to avoid issues of race. But, as you wrote it is unfortunately woven into us.
As a note, I belong to the Anglican Church. I read once that the average Anglican is a 23 year old African female. African immigrants and African Americans are are woven into the fabric of the churches in my diocese.
For the surrounding churches, I live in a Hispanic majority county, and they are mostly (at least nominally) Roman Catholic. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Cinco de Mayo, Hispanic racial politics are
a much larger part of my cultural surroundings then the Swedish festival I am attached to.
Engineering involves math right?
Racist much?
"Engineering involves math right?"
Yeah, I took a lot of math, but like my grammar and spelling, I still make mistakes. Like my comment to the crazy Star guy. I could only think of 175,946,322,486,106 topics. I forgot about tearing your last clean pair of boxers as you pull them out of the dresser while running late in getting out the door in the morning. I should have written 175,946,322,486,107 topics. I don't want to short charge Star about all the topics that involve race and racism.
Stop showing off your math skills. Racist!
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