Catching Up

I dedicate this posting to Larry F. who has suggested answering my own questions. I have tried to do that over the past two or three weeks; but I find I used some thoughts to make a point or pose a reality check while making another argument. I think some of these deserve a little more treatment. Here they are:

· Sanctity of marriage; should it be restricted to a man and a woman?

Sanctity is the key word; it relates to theological roots. But marriage is used in other contexts as well. Churches define marriage in their own way as they should. They should treat the marital contract consistent with their faith traditions. I wouldn’t have it any other way. However, the state issues licenses for these marital contracts; they call them by the same name, marriage. However, religion is not the governing tradition. Hence, a marriage license is a contract to create a union between two people. Although civil law may define what the characteristics of those two people are, it need not do so. Thus two women or two men can be eligible for ‘marriage’. There is no sanctity involved in the state sanctioned contract. Only in a religious context is marriage definable by traditional faith standards. Those may or may not hold sanctity.

· Wealthy taxpayers create new jobs and should be taxed less

Only if they consciously invest in job creating activities. Buying someone’s pre-existing bonds or stocks does not create a job except for stock brokers and bankers. Capital investment firms create jobs by funding start ups or expansions of firms creating new products or technologies. Research and Development create jobs. Inventiveness creates jobs. Lying on a beach soaking up the sun does not create jobs other than the tips paid to wait staff. Or some hotel builders. The trickle down theory of economics does not work. It didn’t in the Reagan years or anytime since. It’s a theory that failed. It’s time to build things: roads, bridges, economic goods which support broader economic activity, new schools, new technology, new fuels, more research and development. Those activities create jobs. Leave copying old technology and products to the Chinese. Return America to the job of creating new ideas, higher standards of living and quality of life. Those produce reliable jobs that matter.

· Illegal immigrants are lawless, and keep unemployed Americans from jobs

The entire history of America is based on immigration other than native Indians. And they are believed to have immigrated over the land shelf between what is now Russia and Alaska before the Ice Age. America as we know it is totally derived from immigration. It is what makes us strong. Diversity has its own reward. And it builds peaceful, tolerant cohabitants of our land. By definition immigrants are not lawless. If you question that, scan the prison population and see how many are immigrants. They are 99% American-born peoples. Does that define Americans as lawless?

· Nuclear energy is dangerous and should be eliminated

Not any more dangerous than other energy sources. Oil depletes substrate structure which leads to cave-ins, land subsidence, earthquakes, disruptions of water well sources, etc. Those problems are dangerous, and that doesn’t even consider the air, water and soil pollution created by the use of oil products. Natural gas is much cleaner than oil but still produces fossil fuel pollutants. Clean energy is less dangerous: geothermal, wind and solar sources. What makes Nuclear energy scary dangerous is the refusal of our society to do the hard work of neutralizing the negative effects by way of particle research. Each time promising research projects have been proposed they have been dashed by political bickering over funding priorities and deficit management!

POINT: research and development is not deficit producing; it is deficit reduction in the long run. It creates jobs, tax revenues and new wealth which obliterates the deficit funding should that be used to fund research in the first place; and that is not a given.

· Urban areas contain the users who drag down our ability to expand the economy

Nonsense. Urban areas contain the rich mix of people needed to produce ideas, processes, wisdom, and research and development. This is the stuff of the future. In Illinois there is the constant friction between ‘down state’ and ‘Chicago Metro’; not understanding the milieu of the metro area, downstaters tend to think of metro people as rich and users of the state’s resources. Quite on the contrary, the denizens of the metro area create the economic and wealth dynamics which pays for itself and funds the rest of the state. It’s time the entire state of Illinois understands this and stops whining.

· China is buying the American economy; how do we stop this?

We’ve covered this before. China owns some of our national debt, about $2.2 trillion of it. But America is China’s largest global market, the market with the money in the first place. We are not selling our nation to China. Now, in the past we did sell a massive part of our nation’s wealth to Japan. Remember that? And did that make us a slave to Japan? Huh?

· Liberals are tax and spend monsters

Really they are not. Rather they are research and development people, education supporters and anything that is good for feeding the brain and emotional base of mankind with the nuggets of life that will propel us all into the future with more common sense. Holding all of that activity back dwarfs ability, wastes talents, and focuses on the greed that is a natural component of mankind’s makeup.

· Unemployment is the fault of the unemployed; they managed their affairs badly

It can be argued cogently that unemployment is the price of a society in change. Old jobs disappear as their need disappears. New jobs come with new products and technologies and new needs. Workers fill those jobs when they have the talents and skills to fulfill the jobs. The time spent getting those skills and talents are often periods of unemployment. Another cogent argument: unemployment is the wasteful byproduct of an economy working outside the borders of efficiency and equilibrium.

· Homosexuality is the curse of the modern age

Only if you believe in the Tooth Fairy. If someone is afraid of homosexuality they simply don’t understand it and are too afraid of confronting their own ignorance. It’s time for them to open some books or do some Google searches!

Larry, I hope these meanderings help!

December 22, 2011