Money and Politics

Jeffrey Sachs from Harvard was saying that the United States is turning into a plutocracy. And this is a feeling you get throughout the world, that the politicians are not powerful and the power is in the hands of a few strong players in the business sector. Do you feel that way?

“We are still a democracy, but we have moved in my lifetime towards a plutocracy. We do not have a plutocracy, I want to emphasize that, but the distribution of wealth and the influence of wealth have moved in that direction.

“If you look at the 1992 top-400 tax returns in the United States, the average income for those 400 people was $45 million per person. The last available figures show $340 million per person – that is eight for one in a period when the average worker went no place.

“The average tax rate for the top 400 went from 28% down to 16.6% during the same period, so we have had a system where as people have gotten richer and richer, they have been favored by taxation and have gotten richer to a greater degree. To my mind that is a bad trend, and it will probably get corrected in time. The rich have more influence in politics than they did 50 years ago.”
Warren Buffet

Responsibility

So who’s to blame for the financial crisis?

“The American people, including banks, Congress, the administration, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the media – they all subscribed to the idea that residential housing could not collapse …. The idea that a $22-trillion asset class in an economy that is only worth in aggregate maybe $55-60 trillion, which for two-thirds of people with their own homes was their major asset, and in many cases they borrowed very significant funds against something that would plunge in value – this was something that we all participated in.

“It was a collective delusion, that once adopted, spread through all kinds of institutions and instruments of finance so that the interdependence of these items, once the delusion became exposed, once it became apparent that the emperor had no clothes, swept through the economy with the impact and the speed of a tsunami. All kinds of things happened that you wouldn’t have thought possible because of this huge interdependence in markets.”

You didn’t mention the rating agencies.

“It includes them – there were a few people out there shoring up subprime, but basically it includes everybody.”
Warren Buffet

Healthcare – Wow

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check.
Atul Gawande, The New Yorker

This entire piece is incredibly well done. I encourage you to read all 8 pages of it. This is also how editorials will continue to make money: by writing this well.

Law and Deuteronomy

I find it incredibly laughable that any modern person considers either the formative or contemporary laws of the United States of America to be in any way similar to those found in Deuteronomy. Whatever rhetoric might persuade about a country being the new Israel and the civic documents its stone tablets looking at the actual documents you better immediately see a giant disconnect. Looking at contemporary ideas of justice and law:

The disparity between Deuteronomy’s commandments and those that one might extract from their policies could scarcely be more stark. The new right-wing bible reads, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of America, so be sure to extract every dollar from your operations so that you don’t end up as one again.” Christopher B. Hays

Remembering Rev. Gomes

Don’t misunderstand me — I don’t despise patriotism — but there is no salvation in love of country. There is salvation only in love of Jesus Christ, and if you confuse the two, the greatest defeat will have been achieved. first sermon post 9/11

On Feb 28th Reverend of Harvard’s Memorial Church, Professor Peter Gomes passed away. We have all lost something. I will always remember the few times I have seen him speak at his introductions to the Noble Lectures.

Literalism Fails the Question of Intent

But nowhere in the original Constitution does it say that the federal courts have the power of judicial review. Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers suggests that the federal court has this power, but it wasn’t until 1803 that the Supreme Court actually ruled that this power existed. Hence, a contradiction: Hamilton, a constitutional framer and author of the beloved Federalist Papers, asserts that a power that is not explicitly written in the Constitution exists and a court rules in his favor — and then, all these years later, Tea Party constitutionalists use that power to invalidate a federal healthcare law on the basis that it violates the Constitution!
Salon

Literalism, in any form religious or political, adopts the text as it stands for the purposes and intents of its interpreters. It forgoes any original intent of the author(s). If it did just this without asserting that the literalist interpretation is The One and Only True Interpretation – I would be fine with it. But the blatant disregard for the original setting and other writings than the one in question, combined with their rhetoric just sicken me.

On top of that, if the ideal the Tea Party espouses ever was realized, it would just mean the states would have more authority to suppress rights.

Reflecting Again

t. The challenge of the democratic, developed world is a quieter rebellion: against a bankruptcy not just of the pocketbook, but of meaning. It’s not to take a stand against a dictator, but to take a stand against an unenlightened, nihilistic, hyperconsumerist, soul-suckingly unfulfilling, lethally short-termist ethos that inflicts real and relentless damage on people, society, the natural world, and future generations…

Some say it’s impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what’s impossible is for the status quo to stand. Stop Dumb Growth

I have to say I agree. Value (what makes true wealth, not just dollar signs) is no longer disseminated to the people. The people must now create their own value and wealth. And I can say those in my generation are beginning to do that. Many are returning to the roots of physical creation by building and fashioning. Often, very high end items. Many are taking to their own kitchens rather than eating in restaurants – again. making specialty food. Fewer, but some, are going so far back as to grow their own food. And even more people of my generation are becoming entrepreneurs eschewing any large institution as their employer or chief guardian of value and wealth.

The large question on my mind is what will happen in the bridge of our generation and the one before us. Will half attempt to hold up current institutions and be crushed? Will everyone move out of the way and let them fall? What will rise to replace them? “May you live in exciting times” indeed.

Reflecting Lately

I have been doing a lot of reflection lately. And I am realizing just how destructive and poisonous our American culture has become. The culture has an expectation of never-ending positive returns, utopia. The refusal to be present in ugly times and ugly places. The refusal to cry that certain things labelled as beautiful are horrifically ugly.

There really doesn’t seem to be a single individual that I have seen who is capable of standing against with a vision and rhetoric to combat it. Because to do exactly that is not pragmatic. We believe in a fatalistic society. And there are dogmas which we will never cross. Never mind that those three combined traits exclude one another. Paradox exists. It is in people.

Let us all be entertained while the world burns. A grim note to be sure. But very few people I have actually met that want to change. They want to do things. They want to make things. They may even want to change the way things are done. But no one wants to change themselves. I hear they exist. I’d love to meet them.

It is a sad day in my mind. I don’t think what the people in Egypt did today could actually happen here. Walmart would have a sale and the mob would be pacified.

Models of Knowing

Over at Maxistentialism Max writes about the epistemological problem of observations, and our own models of the world. He doesn’t have comments, so I decided to respond here (Hi, Max). How do you know if what you believe about what you observe is actually true? We build up models of the world and map data onto them. Only when enough data (and we are conscious of it) doesn’t match are we free to redraw our model of the world we observe.

I claim that the only escape from this epistemological trap is science

I think he takes it as a blow to his claim that Stephen Hawking doesn’t think this is accomplishable. I don’t think it is either (Max, take a read of Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi, a chemist and philosopher who also doesn’t think it is possible). But what I find really funny is that St. Augustine in the 4th century pretty much came to the same conclusions regarding epistemology (I’d recommend St. Augustine’s Theory of Epistemology by Bubacz – you’re likely to only be able to find that in a good library.)

Sola Scriptura

Caleb gives a good (if somewhat long) reflection on why he doesn’t abide by Sola Scriptura. His reasons are similar to mine, I must admit. To my mind the whole system just fails to be supportive and leaves one in the giant quagmire of denominationalism that Protestants are so fond of.

Caleb goes after it quite technically, first pausing to reflect on what precisely counts as Scripture. The resulting canon we posses (according to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura) is arbitrary. Sola Scriptura does not define the canon (nor do I see a way it could). And some of the books mentioned within Scripture are either lost, or not part of the canon.

His second point is a wonderful syllogism:

• All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.
• Interpretations are by definition external and separate from that which they interpret.
• Sola Scriptura maintains that any claim external to Scripture itself is necessarily uninspired and therefore fallible.
• Therefore, all appeals to Scripture are fallible.

As he writes the major failure of the Protestant Sola Scriptura experiment is the failure to deal with the epistemology. I am no Luther historian, though I would be very interested to see how far he practically took this exercise. I know he himself did not want a radical break from classical Christian teaching. His thesis were given on the basis that his criticisms showed the practices of the day to be un-biblical according to his interpretation. I have read enough of Luther to know that he still exegeted allegorically and still had philosophical/metaphysical influences on his theology and writing. To take Sola Scriptura as far as fundamentalists have is against the spirit of Luther and the Reformation.

I see the only legitimate way to exegete is according to the way the greater church has done throughout her history. A process dependent on what the Church has taught (tradition), what we can understand about the life and times of the written Scripture (reason), and the life of the members of the Church (experience). Bringing these three together is the great difficulty of being honest to the text, to the Church, and to one another. Nor does there have to be one singular answer for all members – as if all members were one part.