Tom wrote post called, “Consequences?Me? Suffer the Consequences?“ in which he poses the question, “Why Would Anyone Try To Escape Reality?”
The answer to that is because reality bytes. No one in their right mind would want it.
I am laughing here, but Tom and I are on opposite ends of the country and opposite ends of the perspective spectrum, too. That’s not bad thing at all, we agree on the points that matter. I think hubby and I are on opposite ends too, and we’ve been married for a long time. Just goes to show you, God likes His diversity. I could annoy a few more egal people and declare, God likes His complementary perspectives.
I actually come from a place where I was the crazy one, still am sometimes, the alleged escapist who can’t face reality, the one with the Invisible Friend, the Skydaddy. Finally I just surrendered all, escaped right into Jesus, and rather than accepting the consequences of this world, I availed myself of His grace.
That’s the gospel! While there are no accidents with God, I kind of stumbled into the gospel on accident.
So the gospel isn’t really about facing reality, accepting the consequences of our actions, and working hard. Those are actually conservative values. They aren’t bad values either, but even good values can become idols. Many conservative values have become idols to conservatives. An extreme example is here where I live. We have some older people that are like yelling, “get a job” without any awareness that the people they are yelling at have three jobs and are still forced to live in their car.
We aren’t loving one another, we’re just shouting out slogans and spouting ideology. The thing is we think we all know what reality “is” and we like to try to own it like playing king of the hill or capture the flag. That tends to breed a lack of intellectual humility, a lack of curiosity, and a whole lot of fear. Pretty much describes our world today.
We’ll have to wait for Part Two to see where Tom is taking us. Before I go I just want to mention that I love how Jonah is the most nonconforming, non compliant, disobedient prophet, and yet he saves the most people, and their animals.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
We agree more than I think you realize.
Jonah trusted God with his own life, but he so hated the people of Nineveh he rebelled when God showed the people of
Nineveh mercy. Jonah wanted to be God, but only God is wise enough. So, God had to show Jonah his sin.
Because we need the wisdom of God — because we were made to glorify God — reality without God is highly overrated.
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Good post. We are not listening to each other anymore or, we are listening to respond and not to hear. I recently did a repost of a story of Daryl Davis, a Black man who has talked over 200 members of the KKK to quit and give him their robes. He did it by asking questions and then listening to their answers. He would then get them to think about what they just said with examples that illustrated the foolishness of some of their beliefs. It takes a lot of courage to do what he has done and still does.
When I have spoken to church groups or rotary clubs about helping homeless working families, invariably people would be surprised to learn that these families had jobs, often more than one. An event – loss of hours, loss of benefits, loss of car, health care issue or domestic violence, etc. – caused them to lose their home. These people just need help climbing the ladder out of the hole their in. What also surprised these folks is how devout our families were. We used to have our volunteers sign a release to not witness to the families, but we learned that it was not necessary – the only thing these families had was their faith, in spite of losing their home.
I am sorry to ramble, but I wanted to illustrate how people need to listen to understand. Many thanks, Keith
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Oh, a big amen to that, Keith! People really do need to listen. Many who are suffering are devout, they have a faith that is stronger than our own. They should be teaching us about Jesus! Ironically we’re often so afraid of evangelism, of allegedly forcing our beliefs on people, that we don’t even invite them in.
And yes, Daryl Davis has the heart of the Father. That really is how we change the world.
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Thanks. So true on asking others about what they believe. It gives them a chance to ask you in return. Davis noted people just want to be heard. Keith
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Well said, IB. I actually agree with both of you which, as you said, helps us see a more fully-orbed truth. Most sides of this point are valid.
On one side (yours), we cannot be rigid in making reality an idol, which actually works against walking by faith not by sight (2 Cor.5:7). Not living circumstantially, but by the Lord’s power. And there’s the more important reality of showing love and grace and understanding to others (other-centered love). On the other side of this (CT’s), it’s the truth that makes us free, so we must embrace reality (as much as it may suck for us) and let God use that to process us and make us more like Him. It’s this cooperative process with Jesus that makes us truly free (John 8:31-32).
Good stuff! 🙂
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Amen, Mel! I like Tom, he always gives us something good to chew on.
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I was trying to think how to respond to your post IB, because like Mel, I agree with both your perspective and Tom’s. Mel’s comment sums my thoughts up nicely so I’ll just stick with that! 😉
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Boomers, Conservatives, Republicans fail to recognize that minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Minimum wage was always meant to be a LIVING WAGE. If it did keep up with inflation, minimum wage would be $24 an hour today. The gig economy is the slave economy. Tax policies that allow Amazon to pay $0 in federal taxes each year. Non-progressive individual taxation allows for billionaires to be created and exist. Shameful.
Housing prices are hyperinflated now, too. Most housed people are also just one medical emergency or catastrophe away from homelessness themselves. Domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women, and those women’s children. Affordable housing is rare and substandard. The demand/need outpaces the supply. Homeless shelters are dangerous. Better to sleep in one’s car.
I like how God grew Jonah a tree to shade him. His lovingkindness. He didn’t scold Jonah. He grew him a plant to shade Jonah temporarily and to later illustrate His point.
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Exactly. I am not quite a boomer, but back in the day when I made about 3.35 an hour, life was much more doable. Our money went so much farther. Mac and cheese was 12 cents a box. Gas was something like 69 cents. Housing prices jumped ten fold. Tuition jumped ten fold. The cost of living just shot through the roof.
The problem with raising minimum wage is that it soon becomes maximum wage. I’m not sure what that is about, but it is so true. So now there is no real chance for advancement, no real corporate ladder to climb. Everybody just pays the bare minimum, maybe an extra 30 cents if we think you’re really special and you’ve been there for 15 years. To make matters worse, raising minimum wage tends to increase the price of goods and services. So now we’re making more money but everything costs so much more, so the poor are now worse off than when we started.
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You make a good point about raised minimum wages that soon become relative maximum wages (give or take a 30 cent pay raise). Hyper-capitalistic society.
People seem to think greater taxation is a terrible evil but there was a time when the wealthy were taxed heavily. Eisenhower had the super wealthy taxed at 91 percent. After $400,000, the additional money was taxed at 91 percent. In today’s dollars, $400,000 is about $4 million. If they made $700,000, that last $300,000 was taxed at 91 percent. In today’s dollars, it would be $7 million and the final $3 million being taxed at 91 percent.
There should be no billionaires. Taxation needs to be progressive. If it was, then the incentives to exploiting and underpaying the workforce would be less as most everything beyond $4 million is going to the government.
There is a CEO in Seattle who decided to make the minimum salary at his company $75,000. Nobody was paid less than $75,000. The pay raises were paid out of his bloated pay as CEO. He said it was an extremely tough choice and wasn’t an easy decision to make. A secretary at his company went from something in the $30,000 range to $75,000. If the government would tax at 95 percent every dollar anyone makes beyond $500,000, how many CEOs and company owners would then consider raising the wages of their employees? The alternative is the government takes it. Disincentivize greed. Change the capital gains tax, which is too low. The wealthy who praise “austerity measures” are also the ones who don’t work themselves and live off of old money and gains from investments.
How much affordable housing could be built if the tax base was radically altered? Think of how many low income apartments could be immediately built after just one year of a modified Eisenhower taxation plan.
Nobody needs to be making over $500,000 per year. Nobody needs to be making $10 million a year. Look at the comparisons between CEO pay 50 years ago and entry-level worker pay 50 years ago. Then compare the ratio to CEO pay and entry-level worker pay today. With 1 or 2 exceptions, all the companies have crazy ratios. It’s evil. It’s disgusting. And with built-in golden parachutes on top of the obscene bloated pay of CEOs, there is no comparison. It’s pure greed and pure evil. It’s paid for by the blood, sweat, and tears of the exploited workers.
Unions are needed in every sector of society. Our country is still top only because of the military power and our outspending every other country in military spending. But our country is worse than other 1st world countries’ standard of living.
Health care should be available to everyone. It should not be a carrot for employers and a trapping device for those with families, staying at abusive, exploitative, horrible workplaces for fear of losing medical coverage and then anything that happens is “pre-existing conditions” and people becoming uninsurable due to the capitalistic healthcare sector.
Change the tax policy and instantly fund the public coffers. Then invest in the country’s citizens. We’ve been picked apart and consumed by the capitalistic vultures at the top.
Our country is headed for further decline and ruination. Track the hollowing out of the middle class and you’ll see that countries rapidly decline once the middle class is gone. Just travel to a 3rd world country. The jarring contrast between the haves and the have nots. Extreme poverty and slums and extreme wealth. Our country is losing it’s middle class. It has been for decades. We are in late stage capitalism’s decline.
Trickle down economics was always a scam. The wealthy must be heavily taxed. Austerity politics has always been a scam and a cruel, inhumane one at that.
A time ago, it was calculated that Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee a gift of $104,000 and he would still be as wealthy as he was at the start of the pandemic. I’m sure the amount of the gift would be even higher, if calculated again today. Every worker that ruins their body and mental health scurrying about at the Amazon facilities would have a life-changing experience in receiving a gift of $100,000. Yet Bezos now wants the government to give him $10 billion to fund his vanity project of space exploration. Shameful. Evil. His ex-wife, in contrast, has plans to give her portion of the wealth away until its gone. Nobody should ever amass such wealth in the first place because it comes from exploitation, paying slave wages, skirting taxation laws, being cheap and greedy and severely underpaying the vast majority of the workforce, as well as other predatory measures.
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If unions weren’t beneficial to the average worker, then Amazon wouldn’t spend so heavily and work so hard to brainwash their least powerful (and most numerable) employees into believing unionization to be bad for them and bad for the company. Same thing happens with Walmart employees. Presumably more corporations also do this, but Walmart and Amazon employ so many people.
Every school needs to be requiring The Jungle, or similar, to be read and studied. Every school needs to teach kids to be pro-union and explain why unions are necessary. There is power in numbers but the powerful make sure the powerless are ignorant, divided, and brainwashed.
Instead of improving working conditions and raising wages, Apple put up suicide netting at their overseas’ locations to keep the workers’ suicides from appropriately tarnishing Apple’s so-called good name.
SoulPancake, a YouTube channel, showed one wealthy man spending his time on earth and his being born into privilege and social status, rescuing children being used as slave labor. HomeGoods’ products were shown being made by some of those kids. Burns and scars from Vasoline production was shown, if I recall correctly.
The shimmer in makeup is mined from children going into unsafe, unsophisticated, hazardous holes dug into the ground and bringing the out the material used in creating such shimmering products.
The iphones and electric cars are only possible from slave labor abroad in hazardly mining some core materials used.
Blood diamonds. Greater beef production is made possible through slash-and-burning of the Amazon rain forest. Once it is gone, it’s gone. Look at how Tyson locks small farmers into overwhelming debt and slave wages and eventual bankruptcy while taking most any profit/gain and putting all the risk and debt on the actual farmer doing the work and building the barns for chickens to be mass-produced.
The more people know, the better chance the people will band together and fight the wealthy elites and those in power (who are owned by the wealthy elites).
What if everyone refused to shop at Walmart until the company stopped paying it’s workers slave wages? Workers are kept at just below full-time status in order to ensure they won’t be given benefits. Workers are putting in nearly 40 hours a week and yet are forced to be reliant on Section 8, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and more because Walmart works it so the benefits are paid from government programs.
What if nobody bought an iphone until things dramatically changed for the exploited workers overseas?
Consumption culture must go.
Meritocracy doesn’t exist, despite the claims.
Billionaires should be appropriately hated.
Voting mostly doesn’t matter as almost all politicians in power are bought and owned by the elite. Voting in the less powerful positions and local elections actually matters.
Work to unionize wherever you are. Shop at small businesses whenever possible. Get your food from the local farmers market, if you can.
And above all, we’re all going to die. Our souls are most important. Our relationship with God is most important.
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Well, one reason why taxing the rich doesn’t work, people only pay taxes on earned income. That would be you and I who have to earn an income. The wealthy who already own homes, cars, etc, don’t have to earn much income. If you don’t owe rent, mortgage, bills etc, and all your needs are provided for, there isn’t much reason to earn an income. So you can keep it below a taxable level and shelter your money.
The problem with Gov discouraging greed is that you will also discourage wealth. When all of people’s needs are provided for, there is little or no reason for them to go to work.
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Taxing the rich does work. Increase the capital gains tax rate. Progressively raise property taxes. Close the loopholes in luxury taxes (buy million dollar art but ship it to another state’s address, where the state taxes are lower, in order to avoid a higher tax). Raise estate taxes progressively. Make it impossible to give $10 million to an heir tax-free. Progressively wipe out old money and old wealth. Don’t allow any corporation like Amazon or Walmart to not pay taxes each year. There is a list of corporations which pay $0 in federal income taxes each year. That needs to change.
Corporate welfare is alive and well. The media doesn’t talk about such. All these austerity measures and anti-welfare on an individual level, yet the amount of corporate welfare available seems to grow each year. In 2008, the corporate bailouts weren’t criticized. Wall Street’s greed and psychopathy is rarely criticized.
Discouraging greed is not the same as discouraging wealth. Wealth is a relative term. To make $500,000 yearly from your profits on investment properties is still a wealthy life compared to a person earning an inflation-adjusted minimum wage of $24 an hour. One still makes over10 times as much as the other and thus has tremendous disposable income available. They are still wealthy. They don’t need 5 million. $500,000 is still an incredibly luxurious life. And they employ people to handle everything for them, so those wealthy people don’t actually work. Yet they reap 10 times the money the other, actual worker who puts in 40 hours a week, does.
Progressive taxation, unions, etc. don’t mean all the people’s needs are provided for. You make a tremendous leap there. Affordable housing isn’t free housing. Low income housing isn’t free housing.
Look at education. K-12 is free at public schools. That hasn’t disincentivized anyone from working and yet it provides a crucial need. It is paid for by taxes. And society benefits from such.
Same could be done with healthcare. If people didn’t avoid addressing medical problems from lack of funds, you’d have a healthier society and thus a more productive one. There are countries in Europe where healthcare is covered. Canada offers such. And yet people still work! Thus, the argument doesn’t hold.
One medical expense away from homelessness is no way to live. Getting cancer shouldn’t mean you lose everything and declare bankruptcy and go live on the street. Yet it does for many. One car wreck and all that you have could be gone. Drunk driver runs a red light and smashes into you and you now need 24/7 care, that’s going to claim everything you have.
Same goes for tuition free college. Other countries provide such and thus have a more educated population. Crushing student debt doesn’t dominate the lives of its college graduates. Those college graduates can then have more discretionary money to spend. Greater disposable income available to them means a greater likelihood of being able to purchase housing or afford other basics of life.
Greater taxation means more money available to spend on improving our country. Infrastructure, for example. Better roads, more libraries, better K-12 educational experiences with smaller class sizes, more individualized educational plans, etc.
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LOL! Your heart is in the right place and you have a lot of enthusiasm, but you are missing some pieces of the puzzle.
You said, “Progressive taxation, unions, etc. don’t mean all the people’s needs are provided for.” I was actually referring to wealthy people and THEIR needs. Why should I work and amass a fortune that you are just going to take away from me in the form of taxes? It would be lovely if everyone was a genuine humanitarian and wanted to share the wealth and let you fund all these things, but most people are just going to stop producing wealth if they don’t get to keep it.
I agree, they don’t need five million, $500,000 is plenty. So now that I’ve got my chunk, why should I go on working to earn another 4.5 million for the government? Also, what makes you think the gov can be trusted to get that money to the people who need it??
Health care would also be lovely but when you speak of cancer screenings, I see a tragic opioid epidemic and now a mandatory experimental vaccine I don’t want. I see the institution of medicine in bed with Big Pharma and the insurance industry and that doesn’t bode well for any of us. At the moment I don’t need free healthcare, I need protection from Big healthcare that has now taken away my autonomy, my choices.
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Yes, I figured you were saying don’t give more benefits to the lower income brackets because they won’t work, then. Lots of Conservatives and especially the Republicans’ austerity politics and “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” mentality towards the poor or struggling. I thought you were against the free healthcare for all the citizens and saying then nobody would work. Not so.
Healthcare for all, as a right, an entitlement, isn’t Communism, nor does it infringe on your freedom. And nobody would take you by force to give you a vaccine you don’t want. That hasn’t happened in Canada, for example. Whether Canadians access the free healthcare system provided to them is up to them. There are a few exceptions, but that’s it. Those exceptions apply here, too, where healthcare isn’t free.
Allow people $500,000 until the 95 percent tax rate kicks in. That’s plenty. If everything else will be taken, it would motivate the company owners to pay their employees better or provide a better product for a more reasonable price, or to not pollute and destroy the planet. Cap and restrain greed. Require the top to pay into the system. The lower classes do. Make sure the capital gains tax is raised, progressively so. The heaviest hitters are the most heavily taxed.
The government isn’t the enemy. Regulations are good for everyone. Look at what happens when capitalism is allowed to freely operate with minimal regulations. Look at the amount of pollution that will happen. Waterways are poisoned. Soil is poisoned. The Jungle prompted the government to step in and regulate the meatpacking industry. Regulation is good. Otherwise it’s anything goes and profit is king and nothing else matters.
Building codes and regulations for construction are thought to be onerous, yet look at other countries where regulations are lax. Buildings crumble. Glass bridges have their glass panels fly off from gusts of wind from below.
Look at all the barrels of poison dumped into the ocean or the rivers. Regulations should be even greater. Otherwise what incentive does a business have to not externalize their costs.
Clean drinking water, clean air, clean soil, organic food to eat. Free healthcare to access if you so choose. Such things should be available to all our citizens. Work available paying a living wage, not starvation wages. Safe working conditions.
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Why go on working after making the first $500,000? Glory/ego/pride. Status. Those obscene enough to make $500,000 will be motivated by the glory and prestige. There will always be something.
If I recall correctly, the man who developed the polio vaccine gave it away for free. He didn’t seek to patent protect it and wildly profit from it. He was a rare person, very likely a God-fearing man. He still worked hard. He applied his talents. And the world over greatly benefited.
Some people realize they have enough money and they seek to do good. Most people with great privilege and luck, being born into wealth, or given great talents, will need to be forcibly restrained from their greed. And the braggarts can then compete on how much money they pay into the government, if they still refuse to pay their employees better, or to provide better working conditions, or ensure lessor environmental impacts.
Behind each fortune are a bunch of crimes. Nobody works hard enough to justifiably make $500,000 anyhow. 95 percent tax rate for every dollar beyond.
Ever seen that show where the CEOs were made to work entry-level at their companies and how they complained about the working conditions and most of the time, couldn’t cut it and wouldn’t be hired? And yet they make obscene amounts of money. How? By exploitation, starvation wages, entrapping workers. Blood, sweat, tears, and broken bodies and minds of their employees.
Nickel and Dimed is a good book, too.
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I was once told that drugs are for people who are afraid of reality, and reality is for people who are afraid of drugs.
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Ha! Well there ya go. 🙂
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Speaking of minimum wage, it went up almost 15% here in NM during Covid of all times. This is what happened to two of my daughters: one was making 15% over min wage as a reward for being a good employee, and was then making minimum wage again after the increase. My other daughter discovered her checks only increased by 6% because the min wage increase of 15% meant the government could skim more money from min wage earners. That’s the system, especially in blue run states. But it’s really just the system. Homelessness isn’t as much of a problem where I live, though, because housing is cheaper than in cities on the East or West Coast. I don’t know why places like Portland would rather have homeless camps than address their lack of affordable housing. Subsidized low rent apartments are an okay start. I would recommend outlawing selling houses for more than a certain percentage over their current value, which would prevent wealthy outsiders from pricing locals out of the market. That was what happened in Portland. I know this isn’t really the point of your post, but there has to be practical solutions to solving these problems. Like, why are state governments allowed to take a higher percent of taxes after raising the minimum wage? But maybe it’s just coincidental, and the government is just skimming more from everyone because they lost too much last year….due to their own policies.
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Well said, Jill. Here where I live we have some of the highest minimum wage rates in the country. What happens to many people is they are now in higher tax bracket so the take home less money. Sometimes they lose government benefits too, like rent subsidies. Then the cost of goods increases.
There are a lot of things we could do to make people’s lives better, most of them being to get the government out of the way. Here where I live we have a housing problem in part because of growth management acts, a bottleneck of building permits, no infrastructure, etc. It totally shut down construction and made it very hard to keep up with growth.
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