If government were to take over the management of the Sahara Desert there would be a shortage of sand there within five years.
Milton Friedman
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Romney's Tax Returns
For Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns for public scrutiny would be a great mistake. Does anyone seriously believe that that would satisfy the Democrats and turn their attention to real issues? The Democrats would never let go of it. They would seize on everything in it as indicative of some evil conspiracy, some dark ruse to avoid taxes and they would keep pounding away on it through election day as if we did not know that Romney is a wealthy man.
Harry Truman said that an event does not retain the attention of the public for more than about six weeks, and today that is more like one week. It is when there is a mine field such as Watergate, when there is some shocking event, and then another, and another, so that focus on it is never lost, that the matter remains in the news. If Romney simply refuses, without explanation, the Democrats will continue to demand disclosure but eventually they will stop when they have started to realize that the "issue" is putting people to sleep.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
What This is About
This is a Christian blog and I hope that nothing here is incompatible with that, though topics range through religion, politics, metaphysics, philosophy and other topics thought to be interesting. The viewpoints range widely and not all of them are necessarily shared by myself or anyone else in particular. My intention is to provoke thought. The pictures are placed here to break up the texts and because I like them. Most of them are depictions of beautiful girls and there's nothing I would rather look at than that, though I hope that they are in good taste, or at least not in bad taste. The essay on Social Security is included because there is so much misunderstanding about what it is, why we have it, and what its prospects may be in the future. Misrepresentations on that subject, deliberate or not, eminate from the right and the left from different motives, which is rather unusual. I try to be strictly objective and wrote most of the essay myself, drawing on various literature on the subject.
Most of these essays are anonymous because the contributors want it that way.
freddieplato
Most of these essays are anonymous because the contributors want it that way.
freddieplato
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Why Class Warfare Doesn't Work in America
In his re-election campaign Obama has shifted from a broad general appeal to class warfare, hoping to gain traction by proposing to cure the nation's woes by taxing 'millionaires and billionaires', apparently without sensing any obligation to show how that course would accelerate economic growth, improve the unenmployment situation or enhance the general prosperity. In fact it would not, and beyond the radical left, including the mainstream media, Hollywoood, Academia, the generality of jealous malcontents and the permanent leftist political class the class appeal is a lost cause. There are two primary reasons for this.
First, Americans actually understand that you cannot tax the rich out of our troubles and into solutions because there simply are not enough rich people with enough money to do that. The voters are not as stupid as the radical left thinks they are, and this defect in class-warfare strategy at this time is obvious to most people. If circumstances were not so dreadful as they are there might be some possibility that a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul strategy could actually work, at least temporarily, by postponing the day of reckoning. But that is not now the case and most of the voters know that. Furthermore, they know that business, and therefore growth, are discouraged by excesses of taxation and regulation and they are generally convinced that such excesses exist now.
Second and more fundamental is the fact that class envy is foreign to the thinking of most Americans due to the significant degree of class mobility in this country. There are fixed class distinctions in most of the rest of the world, more in some regions than others, but just about everywhere except for Canada, Australia and a few other countries most of which speak primarily English. Many Americans, if not most, have relatives on the low end of the socio-economic scale and others on the high end. That's America, Abe Lincoln growing up in poor backwoods circumstances with one year of formal education only to become a brilliantly self-educated president of the United States. Whatever your circumstances you may realistically hope to improve them if that is your ambition. And --- America is so bountiful and free that many folks are satisfied where they are. Money isn't everything. Regardless of that, with conditions like we have in America people are not so anxious to destroy a class to which they themselves may aspire to become members even though they are not members now. Ask Oprah Winfrey, who came from as far down on the social register as you can get --- poor, abused, unhappy childhood --- and became the famous billionaire we all know. It is just a fact; Americans are not class-identified.
Mr. Obama's advisors should advise him to get a new strategy if he hopes not to be buried in a fifty-state landslide.
First, Americans actually understand that you cannot tax the rich out of our troubles and into solutions because there simply are not enough rich people with enough money to do that. The voters are not as stupid as the radical left thinks they are, and this defect in class-warfare strategy at this time is obvious to most people. If circumstances were not so dreadful as they are there might be some possibility that a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul strategy could actually work, at least temporarily, by postponing the day of reckoning. But that is not now the case and most of the voters know that. Furthermore, they know that business, and therefore growth, are discouraged by excesses of taxation and regulation and they are generally convinced that such excesses exist now.
Second and more fundamental is the fact that class envy is foreign to the thinking of most Americans due to the significant degree of class mobility in this country. There are fixed class distinctions in most of the rest of the world, more in some regions than others, but just about everywhere except for Canada, Australia and a few other countries most of which speak primarily English. Many Americans, if not most, have relatives on the low end of the socio-economic scale and others on the high end. That's America, Abe Lincoln growing up in poor backwoods circumstances with one year of formal education only to become a brilliantly self-educated president of the United States. Whatever your circumstances you may realistically hope to improve them if that is your ambition. And --- America is so bountiful and free that many folks are satisfied where they are. Money isn't everything. Regardless of that, with conditions like we have in America people are not so anxious to destroy a class to which they themselves may aspire to become members even though they are not members now. Ask Oprah Winfrey, who came from as far down on the social register as you can get --- poor, abused, unhappy childhood --- and became the famous billionaire we all know. It is just a fact; Americans are not class-identified.
Mr. Obama's advisors should advise him to get a new strategy if he hopes not to be buried in a fifty-state landslide.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Truth and Relativism
There are many dichotomies in the world by which human affairs are analyzed --- conservatism and liberalism, bourgeoisie and proletariat, male and female, arrogant and humble, employed and retired and on an on. Analysts love dichotomies, opposites, trying to fit reality into either this or that of two opposite categories. Sometimes that mode of analysis may have merit and sometimes not, but I submit that the broad dichotomy which over-arches the others is objecitivsm and relativism. For example, I consider Islamic Jihadism to be evil, evil in fact, not because I don't like it and someone else does, not because it's evil to me but not to someone else. No, evil period. If a movement which endorses bombing trains, planes, theatres, restaurants, markets, busses, office buildings, and even churches, thereby murdering countless innocent men, women and children is not evil, what is? Can death for non-believers or the oppression of women be anything but evil? Can the benign and beautiful admonitions of Jesus Christ be anything but good? Do we mean simply that something is good 'in the eye of the beholder' or simply good?
If we believe in objective truth we ought to able to locate the authority from which it proceeds. In Judeo-Christianity that is the God of Abraham and Christ. Whatever it is, if there is nothing outside the observer from which he draws authority, how can good be good and evil, evil, rather than good or evil only in someone's opinion? And if all truth really isn't truth, but a matter of opinion, how is it possible to argue about anything? If you say that one thing is as good as another you have simply expressed an opinion, not a fact. It is true that if I say that I love Paris I am, speaking literally, stating a fact about my state of mind. But it should be understood as an opinion. It tells you nothing about Paris but only something about myself.
If I say that Paris is a beautiful city I am stating a fact. I am telling you something about Paris, that it is a beautiful city --- beautiful whether I like the city or not. And also, that kind of statement is subject to argument. You can't argue about my state of mind unless you are a mind reader or have evidence that my state of mind is not what I say it is.
But once you remove some standard by which statements of fact are either trure or false, everything becomes merely a matter of opinion, only, not fact. Even the statement "there are no facts" is a statement of fact.
If you say "Albany is the capitol of Mississippi" you are wrong, but you have still made a statement of fact. The fact that an assertion is a statement of fact does not mean that it is true, but only that it is a certain kind of statement.
If we believe in objective truth we ought to able to locate the authority from which it proceeds. In Judeo-Christianity that is the God of Abraham and Christ. Whatever it is, if there is nothing outside the observer from which he draws authority, how can good be good and evil, evil, rather than good or evil only in someone's opinion? And if all truth really isn't truth, but a matter of opinion, how is it possible to argue about anything? If you say that one thing is as good as another you have simply expressed an opinion, not a fact. It is true that if I say that I love Paris I am, speaking literally, stating a fact about my state of mind. But it should be understood as an opinion. It tells you nothing about Paris but only something about myself.
If I say that Paris is a beautiful city I am stating a fact. I am telling you something about Paris, that it is a beautiful city --- beautiful whether I like the city or not. And also, that kind of statement is subject to argument. You can't argue about my state of mind unless you are a mind reader or have evidence that my state of mind is not what I say it is.
But once you remove some standard by which statements of fact are either trure or false, everything becomes merely a matter of opinion, only, not fact. Even the statement "there are no facts" is a statement of fact.
If you say "Albany is the capitol of Mississippi" you are wrong, but you have still made a statement of fact. The fact that an assertion is a statement of fact does not mean that it is true, but only that it is a certain kind of statement.
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