(I am an evangelical Christian and attend a Baptist church in the heart of the Bible belt.)
My pastor quoted this verse yesterday in reference to fasting.
Isaiah 58:3-6
'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?' Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers...
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
I took this to heart, and also noted the reference to fair treatment of workers (which was not the subject of the sermon). I think it is time for the Church to address the morality of certain business practices that do great harm to our neighbors and enrich others at their expense.
Leviticus 23:22
'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.'
Leviticus 19:13
Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him. Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.
Deuteronomy 24:15
Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
Deuteronomy 25:4
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
Jeremiah 22:13
Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.
Malachi 3:5
"Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts.
James 5:4
Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.
Jesus' disciples gathered grain from the fields when they were hungry, as did His ancestor Ruth. (Ruth 2:2, Mark 2:23-24). The commandment to leave the edges of your grainfield for the poor is beautiful because it doesn't require handing out food; the poor can harvest and cook for themselves. Charity is only required for the truly helpless.
A Christian Response
Why is the second greatest commandment from Jesus "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"?
Let me ask this another way. What does the fellow need whom you pass begging on the highway, or whom you see at the thrift shop picking up food for his family? Enough money to pay his electric bill, or his rent for a month? This would certainly be an acceptable gift and much appreciated, but next month he will need help again.
What people really need are good jobs. Since the Garden of Eden, mankind was made to work. Work gives people not only money, but dignity and family values. And it prevents crime.
What would the LORD think about those who drive their employees out of the workplace to be replaced by slaves in a foreign land?
I feel passionately about this because I have seen layoffs happen to so many of my colleagues and friends. Of course most of them found other jobs eventually and this is certainly not limited to my business or industry. But it is a national tragedy and symptomatic of a spiritual issue. I believe that the spirit of hedonism is behind this, and the endless pursuit of money. To the extent that we in the Church participate in this system, we are responsible to speak out against it and to protect people from it.
If you are an employer, my hat is off to you for putting up with a government that treats you like the enemy. I don't know how you keep up with the time, taxes and regulations required to employ people in this country! I encourage you to speak up, rather than giving up. Speak out rather than selling out.
I have never been an employer, but a lot of people work for me. People care for my lawn, serve me dinner at restaurants, repair my house, and manufacture the products I buy. I will always treat them fairly and consider their needs when I deal with them. I will do my best to influence decision makers at work. I will use my vote to elect people who support family-friendly business practices. And I will encourage my pastor and friends to discuss the morality of this critical issue in the context of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.
Will you join me?
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Balooning Deficit - What's Up With That?
Why the budget deficits? Find out for yourself here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/30-years-spending-priorities-federal-budget-2012/
The Washington Post provides a nice little interactive tool that helps you see where the money has been coming and going for the last 30 years. For example:
You can see from the charts where the real problems lie. First, revenues have declined $600 billion from $2.7 trillion in 2007 to $2.1 trillion the last few years.
Second, spending has gone from $3 trillion in 2007 to about $4 trillion each year since.
So breaking it down further, you will see the exponential growth of the entitlement programs, particularly health care-related expenditures. You will also see the massive doubling of "income security" which is another word for unemployment benefits. Oddly, that started in the 2010, most likely due to extending unemployment benefits from one year to two years.
On the revenue side, what happened in 2009? Individual and corporate income taxes declined by $400 billion. I believe that was due to an abrubt halt in routine investment gains that had been realized in prior years. You can't really blame unemployment because payroll taxes hardly budged during that time. Not only did capital gains evaporate and corporate incomes greatly decline, but you now have a carry-over effect with unrealized capital losses limiting tax revenues.
I guess the most disturbing thing to me is that the 2012 budget calls for a $500 billion increase in tax revenues. If that doesn't happen we could be staring at a $1.6 trillion budget gap in 2012. And it could get even worse, with a likelihood of much greater expenditures on interest on the national debt.
$1.6 trillion dollar deficit in a single year - whoa. That is more than the entire federal budget when the first President Bush left office. Yet I think the average taxpayer's income is probably not much higher than it was then. (Mine certainly isn't.)
What can be done about this? We could probably cut $200 billion from expenditures by getting employment back to pre-recession levels. That might also add $100-200 billion in revenues. But primarily the problem is the explosive growth of health care spending. That absolutely must be stopped, and Obama Care is not going to do it. Consumers absolutely must become aware of their health costs at the point where they make decisions that affect their health.
I recommend reading a book "The Coming Jobs War" by Jim Clifton. That's a really good book that explains better than I can do in this blog.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/30-years-spending-priorities-federal-budget-2012/
The Washington Post provides a nice little interactive tool that helps you see where the money has been coming and going for the last 30 years. For example:
You can see from the charts where the real problems lie. First, revenues have declined $600 billion from $2.7 trillion in 2007 to $2.1 trillion the last few years.
Second, spending has gone from $3 trillion in 2007 to about $4 trillion each year since.
So breaking it down further, you will see the exponential growth of the entitlement programs, particularly health care-related expenditures. You will also see the massive doubling of "income security" which is another word for unemployment benefits. Oddly, that started in the 2010, most likely due to extending unemployment benefits from one year to two years.
On the revenue side, what happened in 2009? Individual and corporate income taxes declined by $400 billion. I believe that was due to an abrubt halt in routine investment gains that had been realized in prior years. You can't really blame unemployment because payroll taxes hardly budged during that time. Not only did capital gains evaporate and corporate incomes greatly decline, but you now have a carry-over effect with unrealized capital losses limiting tax revenues.
I guess the most disturbing thing to me is that the 2012 budget calls for a $500 billion increase in tax revenues. If that doesn't happen we could be staring at a $1.6 trillion budget gap in 2012. And it could get even worse, with a likelihood of much greater expenditures on interest on the national debt.
$1.6 trillion dollar deficit in a single year - whoa. That is more than the entire federal budget when the first President Bush left office. Yet I think the average taxpayer's income is probably not much higher than it was then. (Mine certainly isn't.)
What can be done about this? We could probably cut $200 billion from expenditures by getting employment back to pre-recession levels. That might also add $100-200 billion in revenues. But primarily the problem is the explosive growth of health care spending. That absolutely must be stopped, and Obama Care is not going to do it. Consumers absolutely must become aware of their health costs at the point where they make decisions that affect their health.
I recommend reading a book "The Coming Jobs War" by Jim Clifton. That's a really good book that explains better than I can do in this blog.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
No Place for Old Economists
I've been watching some old economists talking about "typically markets do this", or "when the economy returns to historical norms" or some such nonsense. Maybe the law of supply and demand hasn't changed, but the historical norms of supply and demand in the West don't apply today and probably won't apply again until the world economy is fully globalized (yikes), or I expire (double yikes).
This really does matter to "main street" people because taxes, government spending and all manner of other decisions are based on these guys being right.
So you have one group of old economists called "supply-siders" who believe that if you throw money at the "rich" in the form of tax cuts, economic growth and jobs will just happen.
You have another group of old economists called "Keynesians" or "demand-siders" who believe that if you throw money at the "poor" that they will generate demand and the demand will result in economic growth and jobs will just happen.
Even the Federal Reserve is governed by these old economic views, as they wasted trillions of dollars "shooting in the dark" with easy money, assuming the economy would just magically recover.
Meanwhile we have tax policies designed to solve yesterday's problems of tight labor markets (capital gains tax breaks) and idiotic internet-bubble bad business models (dividend tax breaks).
Yes, it was a good idea back in the 1900s to incent businesses to invest in capital equipment to improve productivity. It's not so good now - we are awash in productivity to such an extent that we no longer need about 25% of the available labor force in America.
Yes, it may have been a good idea back in the internet bubble to get companies to think about paying dividends instead of pursuing ridiculous, unsustainable revenue opportunities. Now - not so much.
Now we have a situation where companies can make plenty of money with very little labor and the quality jobs that are available are easily filled with cheaper resources overseas. But the supply-siders are continuing to push tax cuts and the demand-siders are continuing to push unsustainable government hand-outs.
At some point right-wingers have to say "tax cuts aren't the solution". And left-wingers have to say "government hand-outs aren't working". It's really that simple. But the left continues to move left and the right continues to move right. Here I am stuck in the middle again, in a vast un-represented waste land.
Van's List
My solutions involve eliminating laws and policies that make things worse. That is free and simple. Heres a partial list:
This really does matter to "main street" people because taxes, government spending and all manner of other decisions are based on these guys being right.
So you have one group of old economists called "supply-siders" who believe that if you throw money at the "rich" in the form of tax cuts, economic growth and jobs will just happen.
You have another group of old economists called "Keynesians" or "demand-siders" who believe that if you throw money at the "poor" that they will generate demand and the demand will result in economic growth and jobs will just happen.
Even the Federal Reserve is governed by these old economic views, as they wasted trillions of dollars "shooting in the dark" with easy money, assuming the economy would just magically recover.
Meanwhile we have tax policies designed to solve yesterday's problems of tight labor markets (capital gains tax breaks) and idiotic internet-bubble bad business models (dividend tax breaks).
Yes, it was a good idea back in the 1900s to incent businesses to invest in capital equipment to improve productivity. It's not so good now - we are awash in productivity to such an extent that we no longer need about 25% of the available labor force in America.
Yes, it may have been a good idea back in the internet bubble to get companies to think about paying dividends instead of pursuing ridiculous, unsustainable revenue opportunities. Now - not so much.
Now we have a situation where companies can make plenty of money with very little labor and the quality jobs that are available are easily filled with cheaper resources overseas. But the supply-siders are continuing to push tax cuts and the demand-siders are continuing to push unsustainable government hand-outs.
At some point right-wingers have to say "tax cuts aren't the solution". And left-wingers have to say "government hand-outs aren't working". It's really that simple. But the left continues to move left and the right continues to move right. Here I am stuck in the middle again, in a vast un-represented waste land.
Van's List
My solutions involve eliminating laws and policies that make things worse. That is free and simple. Heres a partial list:
- Repeal Obama-care. What a load of job-killing complexity and ill-timed policy. Let's get people back to work so they can afford their own health care.
- Let the Bush tax cuts expire. There are better ways to promote quality job creation. If we're going to throw money at the problem, let's identify the problem first. One thing for sure - those who live on high investment incomes don't need lower tax rates than those who work for a living. The progressive income tax we have already provides tax breaks for lower income brackets, whether that is investment gains or earned income.
- Replace payroll taxes on both employer and employee with a revenue-neutral adjustment to the income tax, starting with the first dollar of income. That will eliminate the concept of government-sponsored retirement and health care entitlements, and encourage people to plan their own futures without government subsidies. It will also eliminate the perverse tax incentives to replace people with technology or offshore labor.
- Reduce unemployment benefits and re-direct that money to companies who will hire and train near-fit candidates from the unemployment rolls. People need incentives to work, and companies need incentives to hire and train. That's a policy that fits the economy today, and not one designed for an economy ten to one-hundred years ago.
- Eliminate all the new Obama EPA regulations and send half the EPA back to the college campuses from whence they came. Thence they can pontificate about the causes of global warming and other idealistic causes du jour.
- One more radical idea - eliminate the exemption from overtime pay for salaried employees. There is a problem today with companies eliminating jobs and piling more work on existing salaried employees. This tactic works in a stressed labor market because people have limited alternatives to longer working hours. And it is self-perpetuating by keeping the labor market stressed. By eliminating the exemption from overtime, new employees would be cheaper than overtime, and the workload and wealth of jobs would be more evenly distributed.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Death of Jobs in America
Sad day in America - Steve Jobs is dead.
I looked around for how he handled Apple and one thing caught my eye. Apple tried to set up operations in Bangalore about 5 years ago, and decided for various reasons that it wouldn't work. They remained a high-quality employer in Cupertino, CA and made some of the best products in the world.
There is some irony in his name; I hope his death doesn't mean more than the loss of this one Jobs. God rest his soul.
Update November 7
OK, so Apple is part of the problem too. Apparently they run sweat shops in China.
I looked around for how he handled Apple and one thing caught my eye. Apple tried to set up operations in Bangalore about 5 years ago, and decided for various reasons that it wouldn't work. They remained a high-quality employer in Cupertino, CA and made some of the best products in the world.
There is some irony in his name; I hope his death doesn't mean more than the loss of this one Jobs. God rest his soul.
Update November 7
OK, so Apple is part of the problem too. Apparently they run sweat shops in China.
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