Israel, Part I: Ancient History

Satellite Image of Israel 2003

About a decade ago, when we were about a year into our homeschooling adventure, our history text had a sizable section on Middle Eastern history, focusing on Israel. Up until then my understanding of the nuances of the modern-day conflict was pretty minimal. Still, I’m no expert, but I thought the historical overview might be useful right now. It is something I had been intending to cover, even before Glenn Beck set up his Restoring Courage event there. But I’m pleased he’s doing it. 

This is going to take a few days. Today we’ll cover the background, the ancient history. Next comes the Zionist movement in the early 1900s. Then we’ll cover the history of modern Israel. I don’t know exactly how many days this will take, but as long as this is, it’s only a thumbnail version. I hope you find it useful.

Ancient History

Abraham was an inhabitant of the region at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea around 2000 BC. In his old age he and his wife Sarah had a son named Isaac. He also had a slightly older son named Ishmael, with Sarah’s handmaid Hagar as a surrogate, since Sarah had reached old age childless. To this day there is contention about which of the two sons is the birthright son—the one Abraham nearly sacrificed. I believe the Bible version with Isaac, but the Arab world, some descending from Ishmael, claim it is him. This is just to point out how very long the memory of differences is 

Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob received the birthright, also with some controversy, since he was born literally on the heels of his brother, mainly because he cared about the birthright and Esau was willing to give it up for a mess of pottage (food). 

Jacob was renamed Israel; he had twelve sons, who headed (to make a long story shorter) twelve tribes of people. The brothers were jealous of one of the younger sons, Joseph, and sold him to travelers on the way to Egypt. Joseph ended up thriving there, rising from slavery to just below the pharaoh. At a time of famine, he managed grain so the people didn’t starve.  

Meanwhile, Israel and his sons were experiencing famine back in Israel’s land. They traveled to Egypt to request help, and Joseph managed a reconciliation. They ended up relocating to Egypt, and in time this large family grew to appear a threat to later Egyptian leaders, who enslaved them. This was not personal ownership-type slavery; it was oppression of the people as a whole. 

Eventually Moses came along, helping bring about the release of the House of Israel (the total group of twelve tribes). After 50 years of wandering in the wilderness, they were led back to the original land of Israel, assigning each tribe its own land, covering what is now Israel and beyond to, I believe Syria and Lebanon. So, since about 1500 BC the House of Israel has continuously held a presence in this land. 

There have been occupations, takeovers, and dispersals. Around 720 BC the Assyrians came in and captured much of the area, dispersing the northern ten tribes. The ones left were mainly the Jews, in and around Jerusalem, and Levi, the tribe without a land inheritance but who worked in the temple, essentially the cleric class, along with part of the tribe of Benjamin. The others were spread out who knows where. 

In 600 BC the Babylonians came in and took over. They captured many of the ruling class and took them to Babylon. This included Daniel (of the lion’s den) and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (who were thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship any god but the One True God and were spared in the fire). Around 450 BC many were able to return to those still in Israel, and were able to rebuild and rededicate their temple. 

By the time of Christ, the Romans had taken over, occupying the land and managing it with their governors. In 70 AD there was a destruction of the temple. And from this time the Jews were unable to regain their autonomy there. Most were dispersed across the diaspora (the world outside of Israel). The Romans renamed the area Palestine. 

Following the fall of Rome and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turks ruled the area from about 1517 AD. At this point the coastal area was mostly swamps and desolate rocky-strewn mountains. Small numbers of Jews continued to live there, but also nomadic Arabs. Most Jews lived in European countries. Some countries welcomed them, but most persecuted and despised them. Always the Jews remained a singular people, indentifying with one another, rather than totally assimilating into their various societies. And they continued to long to return someday to their homeland in Israel.

The story of Zionism in Part II tomorrow.

Number Crunching

A couple of days ago I accidentally listened to part of the president’s speech (while trying to listen to something else), and I heard him say some things that were remarkably vague but clearly untrue. One was that, even though our nation’s credit rating has been downgraded below triple-A, he (who has been around the world apologizing for this terrible country that embarrasses him) insists that we always have been and always will be a triple-A country. That sounds like a disappointed parent of a youth sports team who tells the kids, “Even though they got more runs that you did, even though they performed better on the field, and even though we lost the game by all the usual measures, you’re still a winning team to me.” Right. Any kid hearing that would know what it really meant—they lost the game by not performing well enough. 

The other thing Obama said was that any solutions to our economic woes must include making the rich pay their fair share. I’m pretty sure I know what he means by that—more from me. But when listeners hear him say it and go, “Yeah, make those rich guys pay their fair share,” what do they have in mind?  

I asked my son Political Sphere if he knew, and he said he’d heard there was a study asking that question, and most people said they thought it would be about 25% of income. He said the whole percentage of the total tax burden that they pay isn’t what the envious poor are looking at; the pound of flesh they require is a quarter taken out of every dollar earned by those rich people (but not from themselves). 

I did some research; I didn’t find that particular study. But let’s go with that assumption and do some number crunching, first with percentage of total tax burden, and then also with that magical 25% number. 

The numbers we’ll use are from the IRS 2010 report (even though I’ll be using 2011 budget numbers, so the best we can do is estimate). Warning: math ahead, but nothing we can’t handle. The numbers are big, but the functions are pretty simple. 

Percentages of Taxes Paid

There were 139,960,580 tax returns (including only those with positive adjusted gross income—people who earned money). These earners reported an adjusted gross income totaling $8,426,625,000,000 ($8.5 Trillion). On that income they paid a total of $1,031,512,000,000 (a Trillion and some change). That’s only a quarter of the annual budget, so it’s good that income isn’t the only measure of GDP, and income tax isn’t the only source of revenue. 

The top 1% includes millionaires and billionaires, but also anyone making $380,354 a year or more; average in this group was $1.2 Million—wealthy, but not filthy rich. This percentile earned a total of $1,685,472,000,000 ($1.6 Trillion) and paid $392,149,000,000 (nearly $400 Billion). [Save these numbers; we’ll come back to them.] They earned 20% of total income and paid 38% of total income taxes. 

The top 5% needed to earn $159,619 to merit the honor of this category. (Note: all the US legislative branch and the president are at least in this category.) They earn 34.73% of income and pay 58.72% of income tax. Fair?  

The coveted top 10% earn at least $113,799. They earn 45.77% of income and pay 69.94% (round to 70%) of taxes. This is the category our household has inched its way into, following college degrees, graduate school, student loan payments, and nearly three decades of hard work and experience.  

Now for a paradigm shift. Average per capita income in the US is $47,500, in the top 10 nations worldwide. That means that an “average” household—married couple with two kids—would need to earn $190,000 to meet the average. They would need to be well into the top 5% of earners as a household. Our household (temporarily) has nine. To meet the average, we would need income of $427,500, far into the top 1% range. Instead, we earn about $30,000 less per capita than the average, explaining why we live in one just-below-median-cost home instead of several separate residences (just for this year, or part of this year, so don’t start up a donation fund or anything).[*] 

The point is, there is good reason we don’t feel rich. But we are considered a target by those who think we’re not paying our fair share. 

Just for completion, the top 25% earn $67,280 or more a year. They earn 67.38% of income and pay 86.34% (sometimes rounded to 90%) of taxes. 

The top 50% earn 87.25% (again close to 90%) of income, and pay 97.30%. So that resentful bottom half earns 12.75% of income and is paying only 2.7% of taxes. Fair?

Percentage Per Dollar Earned

OK, now for the all-important part about percentage per dollar earned. Those bottom 50% who want the rich to pay their fair share must define fair as “almost 10 times more per dollar earned than I pay,” because that bottom 50% is paying an average effective tax rate of just 2.59%. And, to be honest, only the top earners of the bottom 50% are paying that; the rest are paying nothing. Or less than nothing—receiving earned income tax credit, or possibly getting government handouts in the form of student grants, food stamps, or subsidized housing. 

But we want those top earners to be paying 25%; that’s what’s important, right? And they’re only paying an average effective tax rate of 23.27%. What’s with that? What it is is only part of the story.  

The top tax tier, you may know, is about 36%--that is, 36 cents out of every dollar earned above a certain income level. It will go up if Obama raises that upper rate to what it was before across-the-board Bush tax cuts nearly a decade ago. So their “richest” dollars are taxed well beyond the 25-cent fair level. That rate has been at times 78% (Reagan dropped it drastically, thus increasing revenue) and even 90% back during the Depression.  

But not all of their income is taxed that way. That’s right—because we have a progressive tax and not a flat tax.  

Also, some income of higher earners (and also some lower earners) comes in forms other than wages. They earn capital gains, for example, which are taxed at 15-25%. There’s a reason for the lower rate—to encourage capital investment, which equates to economic growth and jobs. And you have to remember that, when a person (you, even) invests capital, you’re taking a risk. The government doesn’t come in and give you a refund on your losses. Sunk costs are sunk. So, if an investor is expected to risk his capital, he needs to be able to accumulate enough growth that it doesn’t disappear into tax payments the moment he cashes it out; that would prevent him from reinvesting that money in another capital project. So raising that rate might look “fair,” but it would result in a worse economy and higher unemployment—also defined as a 100% tax on laid-off workers’ income.

The Answer You’re Looking For

For the sake of argument, what if we did “fairly” tax the top 1% of income earners at a flat 25%, just them? Their total income (you kept this number in mind from above, right?) is $1,685,472,000,000. So at 25% the tax revenue would be $421,368,000,000; that is $29,219,000,000 ($29.2 Billion) more—assuming all of it would be collected, meaning that the top 1% would behave no differently, make no attempt to put their income into other investments, or out of the country, or that they would refuse to bother earning the additional income.  

In the world of Washington spending, $29 Billion is a rounding error. Payroll for some random department.  

What if we included ALL the rich, those like us who make at least $113,799 a year? The total income of the top 10% (that includes, of course the top 5% and top 1%, by definition) is a little over $3.8 Trillion. Let’s say we raise the rate from 18.71% to 25% to be “fair.” Assuming no changes in behavior [which is impossible; read about the Laffer Curve], you could ideally increase revenue by $243 Billion (rounded up).  

Spending for 2011 is estimated to be $3.8 Trillion, with a deficit (less revenue than spending) of $1.27 Trillion. This hypothetical additional revenue would reduce this single year deficit to $1.03 Trillion. Not much of a dent. 

If we stopped fussing about who makes how much and just across the board taxed everybody 25 cents of every dollar earned (not including state and local, FICA, etc., that are not in this set of numbers at all), then we’d be bringing in not a mere $1.032 Trillion (total tax from all filers), but $2.11 Trillion. We’d reduce the deficit by $1.075 Trillion, still in the hole (with a painful chunk taken out of everyone’s paycheck).

How Much Is Enough?

What tax rate would we need to pay to meet this year’s expenditures? A little over 45%. From every income earner, rich to poverty-stricken.  

That’s just for this year. Obama insists that just about everything that can be cut has been cut, so you would need to expect another 45% to be taken out next year too. And that wouldn’t be to pay off the national debt. No, that would be just to keep our heads above water and not have to raise the debt ceiling yet again. 

Or, we can disregard everything this president says and do what it takes to cut spending to the specific lawful expenditures enumerated in the Constitution.

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[*] My son Economic Sphere read this and wondered about the high per capita income number, so I tracked it down. It is most likely per capita GDP, which is higher (like revenue without subtracting expenses in a business). One stat I located put 2009 per capita income at $27,000 or so, which may be closer to accurate. If you want to redo the math for this paragraph, it would mean a family of four would earn $108,000, still nearly in the top 10% category. Our huge household would need $243,000 to be average—so the point that we would need to be rich to feel average still holds. I got the original stat, and the chart of IRS stats I used, from here: http://www.financialsamurai.com/2011/04/12/how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/

A Little Light Reading

I clipped this quote back in the summer of 1999; it relates to today’s post. 

At the dawn of time, Truth was wandering the world when she came upon a town and first saw people. Delighted, she entered the town to speak to them, but when they saw her, they ran away screaming in terror.

Dismayed and discouraged, she left the town. Soon she came across the most beautiful being she had ever seen, clothed in lovely robes of shimmering color. The being noticed how sad Truth was and asked the reason.

“When I saw the people, I was glad because I had so much to tell them” Truth said. “But when they saw me, they were afraid and ran away.”

“Well, of course, they ran away,” the being said, “for you are naken and people are greatly afraid of the naked truth. My name is Story, and I have many of these beautiful robes. Here, take one and let us go into the town together.”

When the people saw Truth clothed in the beautiful garment of Story, they greeted her warmly and asked her to stay.”

—A folk tale adapted by Tom Burger, 1999 

Much of my writing these days is pretty straightforward “naked” truth. But I often think of this quote. Sometimes I use analogies to get ideas across, or personal experience. Sometimes I use literature. I often use literature for gathering truth. 

Since it’s summer, I’ve been doing some light reading. I just picked up another Terry Pratchett Discworld book. If this is something you’re unfamiliar with, you might want to take a chance for a good laugh or two. My favorite Terry Pratchett is Good Omens, the apocalypse comedy [yes, you read that right] he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman (of Stardust novel and screenplay fame). But this particular book is from Discworld (a world that is flat and sits on the back of a giant turtle, if I recall the mythos of the series), called Going Postal. Pratchett is British, and who knows what his politics are, but as for skewering politics in general and human nature in specific, he is the master. 

A petty thief, Moist von Lipwig, gets hanged to within half an inch of his life (by a very skilled hangman), and then is offered the job of postmaster, as opposed to certain death. He takes the job. I am finding it necessary to carry around a stack of small sticky notes to mark things I want to remember, such as these: 

       There is a saying, “You can’t fool an honest man,” which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist never tried it, knowingly anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer and, somehow, more sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly had to aim…. 

       The world was blessedly free of honest men and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook (pp. 17-18). 

As Moist settles in to the job that first day, he thinks, “What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter” (p. 45). 

In the book, where semi-crooks inhabit the imagination safely, I am amused. If only Pratchett’s observation were less true in our world!

It was a book club day today, and we talked about a youth fantasy novel, the first of the Fablehaven series. I have since read book 2, and borrowed book 3 today from a book club friend—who has the whole set and promises that book 4 is the best. I expect we’ll put book 4 on our list for next year (even though I expect to finish the whole series in the next month or so).

I had hesitated to pick up this series. For one, I don’t right now have a young person in the house that the series is aimed at. Still, that was no hindrance for the Percy Jackson series (not very deep, but entertaining), and never stopped all of us from reading and re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and the whole Harry Potter series. 

But I hesitated with this one, because I have come up against the occasional fantasy series that bores me—and I’m not easily bored. When a series has as a theme “you should use your imagination” or, worse, “you should follow your heart,” I roll my eyes. Sometimes an author’s imagination is really worth following, but sometimes it’s just an exercise, and it’s not mine. (Neverending Story, the old movie, was like that for me—sorry to those of you who loved it. Compare that to The Wizard of Oz, where the abundant creativity is a way of showing young Dorothy that there’s no place like home—to appreciate her black and white world and the people there who love her.) There’s nothing really harmful in developing imagination, but there’s not enough exploration of truly valuable human themes either.  

As for the “follow your heart” theme, note that these are usually aimed at teens. Think about it. How many teens do you know that are so Spock-like that their rational thought overrules their impulsive passions? Teens simply don’t need to be told “go with your feelings,” because that’s almost all they do. They need to be taught, “think it through; consider the consequences; wait and make a more informed decision.” So, that’s my little soapbox. 

Back to Fablehaven, a rather pleasant place to spend some summer afternoons. The two young people, Kendra and her younger brother, Seth, visit their grandparents—and come to learn of the fantastical world they preserve. Adventures ensue. But among the often humorous situations, Kendra and Seth are realistic characters, with definite tendencies, but believable thought processes. 

And here’s something there’s not enough of in literature for any age: everything they do has natural consequences. Even when they make mistakes that are unintentional, the consequences follow. Sometimes their grandparents are able to guide them through a process to overcome the negative consequences, but not always. They can’t just be magically bailed out at every turn. So their decisions are important. 

You can see their growth as they change from irritating each other to caring ultimately for each other and even risking their lives to protect each other and their grandparents. Kendra grows in bravery. Seth grows in thoughtfulness (although I suspect his growth is going to be strung out over several books). And their natural strengths—obedience for her, daring for him—are developed as assets, while they broaden and deepen other character traits.  

It was easy to care for these two young people, because they felt so real. And I appreciated the worldview of the author: family is important; choices have consequences; there is evil in the world, but there’s no reason to put it in your mind where the images will stay. Thank you, Brandon Mull. This is how is should be done.

Budget Cuts Are Capital Increases

Even over a weekend it’s difficult to get away from economy talk; I expect the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid!” to make a resurgence any day. I know it’s on our minds as four people in the Spherical Model household are actively job hunting. Anyway, I saw PJTV’s Front Page with Alan Barton, with guests Terry Jones of Investor’s Business Daily and Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Center. 

They were discussing an August 1^st piece by former Bush speech writer David Frum. I found the original here, but the way they worded their summary is below: 

I see some things I don’t believe in:

• Forcing the United States to the verge of default.
• Shrugging off the needs and concerns of millions of unemployed.
• Protecting every single loophole, giveaway, and boondoggle in the tax code….
• Massive government budget cuts in the midst of the worst recession since World War II.

Much of the debate about last week’s debt ceiling raise was, as you are aware, between more and less conservative Republicans. All the Democrats were about more government spending without limits, so any actual discussion had to be among their opponents, and the degree to which they would oppose further harm to the economy. So Frum is, I’m surmising, from the camp that thinks, “Sure, spending cuts might work sometimes, but not at a time like this when government is really needed.” In other words, conservatives—and anyone who actually understands basic economics—would likely disagree with him.  

In the Front Page discussion they more or less address each of Frum’s points. Of course conservatives didn’t want the government to default; they wanted government to control spending so that we wouldn’t lose our credit rating. It was Obama who insisted that without spending increases beyond the doubling of spending he’d already frittered away in his first three years in office, that the government would have no choice but to default. That was simply disingenuous—along with claiming military pay and payments to fixed-income seniors would be immediately curtailed; what Obama meant was, “My priority is to hold these payments hostage and blame Republicans for it, which I will get away with because of help from the fawning media.” [Yes, a direct quote from Obama’s mind, because I have that scary ability; it’s a blessing and a curse.] 

As for the assumption that government budget cuts are cruel to the unemployed and everyone during the recession, Alex Epstein said this: 

Two things: He talks about how these budget cuts are cruel. We should think of budget cuts as capital increases in the economy, because the less money government is taking from people, the more they have to do productive things. [I love this line; it’s the reason I went back to the interview for today’s blog post.] 

The second thing is, if you want to make life better for the unemployed, why don’t you make life possible, or easier, for the employers…. Liberate the energy industry [the industry Epstein studies], and liberate the other industries, and jobs will follow. 

Terry Jones adds some comments about the parties, insisting that he has plenty to complain about with both parties, but: 

The GOP in speaking out on behalf of capital increases is actually speaking out on behalf of the poor, because capital, when it’s effectively deployed, creates jobs. It creates places for people to go and earn incomes, and it takes them off the dole, and it lets them lead productive and happy lives. And when government stands between capital and its ultimate profitable usage, it destroys jobs, and destroys that potential for happy, productive lives. Democrats…to the extent that they want to tax businesses higher, want to tax the wealthy higher, want to tax anyone who’s successful at a higher rate, are doing their darndest it seems to destroy the success of our economy. 

Common sense well stated is a beautiful thing.  

Do we know how to solve the current unemployment problem? Yes, get government out of the way of businesses, and they will be delighted to hire people who will help them produce more wealth. 

Do we know how to solve the debt problem? Yes, return to carefully spending only on what is allowed in the Constitution. Do it incrementally if necessary, but do it. 

Do we know how to get our elected government officials to do what is necessary? There’s the tough question. I’m assuming immediate brain transplants are impossible, so we will have to wait for a large number of full-body transplants come election day 2012—followed by regular common-sense therapy applied by those of us who recognize ourselves as “We the People.”

Intrusion Underway

On the infamous day of March 22, 2010, Obamacare was shoved through the legislative process in an underhanded way, against the will and outcry of the American people. Supporters have used a couple of tactics since then: 1. be as quiet as possible about it; 2. say, “See, you haven’t even noticed any changes.” Really, how often do you hear casual observers say, “Things are so much better now when I go to a doctor”? 

Some of the monstrous takeover of 1/6 of the US economy sets in sometime in the future—so that we won’t have too much reason for outcry prior to the 2012 election. But little bits of it are already infiltrating our regular private lives. I encountered evidence of some of this infiltration when I went to the chiropractor on Tuesday. 

I would rather not talk about my health, but let’s just say that I go to this chiropractor pretty regularly and have for a decade. I go not just for spinal adjustment but also an alternative approach to allergy treatment. My insurance has been good enough to reimburse part of the office visit most of this time because chiropractic is covered. But because of some legal rigmarole, this changed a few months ago. The new rule is that he can only give a receipt for chiropractic if he refuses to do the other treatment that visit. One of his concerns is that the difficulty will be great enough that he may want to get out of chiropractic altogether and just do the alternative care—which would be an additional loss of care to me. 

So far this isn’t specifically related to Obamacare, just an additional frustration. I have responded by paying out of pocket, as I do for much of my medical care, simply because the insurance bureaucracy does not serve me well. Up until now I have felt fairly safe that this chiropractic-plus-other care would remain so far off the grid that it would be untouched. My doctor doesn’t process insurance for anyone. For chiropractic-only care the receipt must be paid at time of service and then turned in for reimbursement by the patient. He never deals with Medicare in any way. 

Full-size Flowchart Image Here

But recently he was informed that, because of new regulations in Obamacare, he must undergo training to handle Medicare. “But I don’t handle Medicare,” he reminded the regulator. “You still have to take the training—for the safety of the public,” the regulator informed him. It is an eight-hour course. He must pay for the training himself. He will never use it

“How will it improve safety for the public, since I don’t handle Medicare?” 

“You have to go through the training, for the safety of the public,” the regulator replied, in a way that sounded completely disconnected from the reality at hand. 

Does this have anything to do with improving my medical care? No. Does it have anything to do with making the medical care I have chosen more affordable? No. Does it have anything to do with making the medical care I choose more available? Just the opposite. Does it in any way improve care for either the regular patient like me or the Medicare patient? In no way at all. 

Does it have anything to do with government intrusion into the relationship between me and my chosen health care provider? Yes. Yes it does. And that is not an unfortunate by-product of Obamacare; that is the purpose.

Negatives of Optimism

Some things I leave lying around for rereading. The Intercollegiate Review (available at ISI.org) is one of those things. At the back they book reviews, and there’s one from the Spring 2011 issue I’ve reread a couple of times (even though I still haven’t gone to get the book itself). The book being reviewed is The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope by Roger Scruton. The review is by Molly Brigid Flynn. 

This has gotten my attention because of the idea that optimism doesn’t always lead to good things; sometimes a good dose of reality is actually more positive. The book outlines some logical fallacies that are common pitfalls of the optimist. Since yesterday we talked about the need for change in order to regain our hope, following losses caused by the hope-and-change president, I thought this might be instructive.  

One of the things I’m looking at is how the “let us control your life” types are likely to fall into these pits—so maybe there’s even more reason we shouldn’t trust them. Here are the fallacies: 

• Best Case Fallacy—a person puts out of mind the possible bad outcomes and acts on the assumption of inevitable success. If you’re debating an issue and say, “But what if this happens?” and they say, “That will never happen,” beware. (I’m thinking, for example, about the amount of oil imported from countries that express hatred for us, and when we say, “Shouldn’t we develop our own resources, rather than risk their control over us if they decide no longer to supply what we need,” and we get, “That would never happen—and we shouldn’t be using so much oil anyway.” Reason to worry.)
• Aggregation Fallacy—ignores mutual limits on various human goods, for example: liberty and equality, safety and excitement, offering help and allowing individual initiative. If a politician tries to impose a maximization of both at once, rather than finding an appropriate balance, the inevitable outcome will be less satisfaction with both.
• Born Free Fallacy—“conceives of human liberty as our primordial state, to be re-won by the overthrow of legal and traditional barriers.” While we do indeed have God-given rights to life, liberty, and property (liberty and property being extensions of the right to life), we do not have those rights where they interfere with the life, liberty, and property rights of another. So to pursue whatever you want as an end in itself, in Spherical Model terms, is southern hemisphere in the right, or anarchy, quadrant.
• Moving Spirit Fallacy—“imagines history to be a determined progress of ages…. We need only identify and eliminate another splint by which civilization cramps the growth of some natural human desire.” In fact, human nature has remained pretty much intact throughout the ages of mankind. Those who believe in evolution are inexplicably impatient with humans, assuming we have evolved in a mere few millennia when they describe the process as taking eons for any other species. It is simply more accurate to say “mankind is likely to be this way,” and then deal with those qualities and flaws.
• Zero Sum Fallacy—“identifies the villains spoiling our plans as whoever is prospering when other people are not.” Assuming the rich got that way on the backs of the poor is a common tool of the liberal to manipulate people with class envy. “The Zero Sum Fallacy refuses to see that the common good is not diminished by sharing; it records any person’s good as a social debit.”
• Utopian Fallacy—the optimistic dream that doesn’t have to defend itself. “The impossibility of my visionary, better future—which is obvious, but stated only by the irreverent and boorish—protects me from having to take responsibility for my failures to achieve it, or its failure to live up to what I prophesied.” Three years ago, the “hope and change” utopia wasn’t even spelled out, but anyone who asked for details was derided as hopelessly negative. Now that the results are obviously disastrous, maybe a little more negative detail-requiring would have been a good thing.
• Planning Fallacy—“presumes that all goods enjoyed by people living together can be achieved through planned action. It failed to see that much of what we need and love arises not by planned cooperation but by a type of unplanned coordination arising from shared place, habits, and laws.” I’ve been especially interested in this one, since the economic dichotomy in this country consists of mutually exclusive planners and free marketers. Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom delineates this debate and shows why the planners can never have the needed information that dispersed individuals easily hold. The review continues, “The activist stance of the Planning Fallacy is blind to how our common goods often come about as by-products, not goals, the unplanned result of many unorganized persons acting according to their own plans. This fallacy is dangerous because many of the schemes hatched in the minds of would-be central planners undermine the goods secured only by persons running their own lives in their own smaller places.”

I like this summary: “The politics of hope often blames normal people—non-busybodies—for being selfish, for not realizing how ‘we’ must take care of all, rather than each taking care of his own.” If only those busybodies would limit themselves to giving what is their own, rather than assuming what is mine is theirs to give to whomever they deem worthy, we would all be positively better off.

We Need Change to Recover Hope

Last night on the car radio I happened to hear Charles Krauthammer talking with Dennis Miller. I love a good analogy, or way to visualize something that is otherwise difficult to grasp. And he had one of those good images. He used some of this in his July 7 piece, so you can read that in full. 

He was talking about Obama’s insistence that much of our debt problem could be healed if we only taxed the rich more heavily—specifically those evil people who flit around the country on private corporate jets. OK. So, how much revenue would that bring in (assuming no change in behavior that would diminish use of those jets)? Here’s what Krauthammer said: 

I did the math. If you collect that tax for the next 5,000 years—that is not a type—it would equal the new debt Obama racked up last year alone. To put it another way, if we had levied this tax [on corporate jets] at the time of John the Baptist [he said the time of Herod the Great in his radio version] and collected it every year since—first in shekels, then in dollars—we would have 500 years to go before we could offset half of the debt added by Obama last year alone. 

When I was looking up this piece, I came upon a blog referring to it that adds a little more irony (here.) 

The hypocrisy on vilifying the jet class is hysterical. Included in the Democrat’s stimulus package was an incentive for corporations to purchase private jets. The incentive allows corporations to depreciate the purchase of these planes over five years instead of the standard seven. Why did they do this? Because they believed that this would stimulate the industry. It has been estimated that this “tax break” amounts to $300 million per year. That’s $3 billion over ten years when we’re running an annual deficit of about $1.5 trillion. But now this becomes the symbol of corporate greed and favors to big business. A symbol that the rich are not paying their fair share.

How many Republicans voted for the Obama stimulus that included this tax incentive? Zero. 

This gives us an opportunity to laugh (so we don’t cry) about the ridiculous and preventable situation we’re in. But we need to face some facts: either the leadership (and I mean mostly the Obama administration, the Democratic-led Senate, and the fawning media) is intent on forcing a collapse followed by government takeover resulting in European socialism or worse—or they are incompetent. 

This morning the news said that Moody’s had downgraded the US from its triple-A rating for borrowing [as predicted in yesterday’s post]. Because we defaulted after Republicans failed to go along with raising the debt? Nope—because that’s not what happened. It’s because we have out-of-control spending, with no hope of taking any steps to remedy the mess. Would this have happened if Republicans had just rubberstamped the debt ceiling rise? No, because it didn’t have anything to do with the level of the limit or even a threat of default, which would have been totally avoidable; it had to do with the inability or unwillingness to stop surpassing a debt ceiling no matter how high. 

And the only solution we get from our president for increasing revenue has to do with taking more money out of the private sector so it can’t be used for capital projects? Wait, Krauthammer reminds us of one more suggestion from this transformative leader: 

Obama’s other favorite debt-reduction refrain is canceling an oil-company tax break. Well, if you collect that oil tax and the corporate jet tax for the next 50 years—you will not yet have offset Obama’s deficit spending for February 2011. 

Should we have any faith (or blind wishful thinking) that this administration can do anything to improve our dire economic situation? I don’t. If we want hope, we have to change the leadership.