While I agree that land ownership is not the appropriate metric for measuring wealth as it was before the Industrial Revolution, land ownership and real estate speculation are two different things. The fractional reserve banking system relies on ever increasing consumer loans and debt. To be sustainable, loans must be made with increasing risk to people who aren’t qualified for the borrowed amount. The thirty year mortgage is the perfect vehicle for this inflated value as the bank gets real property collateral and has leverage as most people are borrowing for what is their family’s primary residence. After acquisition, the county, state, and city get their hands in your pockets too, asking for levy payments for public services and taxes. It’s a recipe to have all your earnings tied up in a home you can’t sell because you have to have a place to live. Meanwhile alternative housing is made unlawful, forcing those who cannot afford the price of admission into rental from wealthy landlords, where earnings are drained away without any gain in equity. I don’t know what the answer is, but the solution is not simple. In some ways I think a flat tax makes sense, but simple tax code and absolute enforcement is probably a good start. I know many very wealthy people and none of them pay a proportional tax burden to the working class people I know.
Really? Different strategies don’t include teaching that black people were descended from Cain? Putting women in the pulpit? Allowing homosexual people to be members of the Christian church, the figurative body of Christ? This has nothing to do with accommodating the human condition and you know it. Modern religion has become a culturally irrelevant abomination in the eyes of the very deity dictated text it claims to adhere to. It’s attaching historical relevancy to a faith that has little to do with the tenets established 2023 years ago. Either adhere to the text in the Bible or strike out on your own with a new “sacred” codex, but the hypocrisy in modern Christianity is intolerable. At least the Muslim and Judaic faiths stand their ground, stupid as that is. Of course my statement is an oversimplification, the point of this exercise is rhetorical, for the benefit of those reading. While I won’t address the myriad technical difficulties Christianity has, the macro view from outside the religious box should be a clear enough view of the flawed logic in the whole system, unless there is some mitigating factor making a person need the structure and security of a religious framework. I have no problem with the function of religious dogma, just don’t assert this ideal as factual truth, and certainly don’t condemn others for not buying into your faith.
The answer to this question is complex and nuanced, and probably not something I’m prepared to answer in a short statement here, but I’ll do my best. I think Christianity has a best fit dogma. Because it’s old, and has had branches follow debunked methodology, it has used natural selection to focus the theology on those parts of our existence science hasn’t been able to quantify yet. Death and the afterlife are constant concerns, and I think Jesus, like Buddha, Mohammad, and countless others meant well, and captured some piece of the human condition. Our existence is massive and difficult to comprehend, never stop searching. As long as I live I will be looking for understanding in whatever form it approaches me with an open heart. I have faith that if some universal deity exists we will cross paths. I’ve been around a long, long time, long enough to see bullshit clearly.
Exactly! 💯 Even sales tax is reasonable IMO, but income tax? Nope. We need to incentivize productivity.
Kate Wolf, John Prine, Bill Morissey, Nanci Griffith, John Gorka…
Regressive tax policy takes money from those least able to pay, and exempts those who are most able. Everyone talks about California tax policy negatively and admittedly it has problems, but it is progressive.
Absolutely. Essentially everything but dietary fat eventually turns to blood sugar. Proteins when incomplete always are converted to sugar, but proteins convert at a net energy loss because it takes more energy to break them down than they give back. Complete proteins are utilized for amino acid synthesis in the body, high protein diets will help with weight loss, but can cause kidney failure in the long run. Glucose is glucose, doesn’t matter what source. Insulin response every time, and blood insulin blocks fat metabolism. Key concepts here, I would encourage you to take a dive down the rabbit hole, and I’m happy to tell you what I know.
We have government. Justifying awful regressive governance by inciting the premises of jungle law doesn’t make the governance justified. I’m not sure we’re on the same page and that’s ok. ❤️
Lots of travel foraging in the early days, scarce carbohydrates, ripe fruit, vegetables etc. Mostly roots and what you could hunt, and likely not every day. Our bodies use fat storage as a battery, the high blood sugar that comes from consuming ripe carbohydrates is converted by the liver into visceral fat for use in lean times. Constant blood sugar leads to metabolic syndrome, diabetes and the like. We live in an unprecedented time of plenty, with our old world appetites. It’s a health disaster.
The old school folk music is sure hitting the spot tonight. I’m making sauerkraut, cooking dinner for the family, and feeling…fine, but feeling….
Your point is relevant to that context sure, but we’re a long way from those circumstances. To justify bad government using 10,000 year ago survival is folly.
I think we’re more progressive than that. Strip naked, go out in nature anywhere and see how you fare. Really?!
Pacific island cultures are a decent example. The gods have control of the wind and sea. The rituals focus on the safe return of fishermen, the primary source of nutrition. The Incan gods revolve around the sun and the seasons, the forces involved in the cultural agrarian source of nutrition, so on and so forth. These religions are proportionally complex to the associated culture. Modern religion is no different, and largely addresses the same fundamental human concerns in our culture, sickness, death, loss, risk, not so much resource scarcity because in first world countries that isn’t a concern for the mainstream population, however the adaptations of first world religion in second world countries do have saints directly associated with scarcity because it is a cultural concern.
Evidence for a god of any kind? Isn’t it interesting that every faith is specific to the limits of the specific cultural understanding of the natural world and the risks associated with the pursuits necessary for survival?