Posted by Herm on February 01, 2010 at 17:12:00:
In Reply to: Re: goodwill posted by Squeegee on February 01, 2010 at 10:58:09:
I believe both of you, Leo and Squeegee, are correct as far as you take it. The real problem can’t be defined until we realize if we give “it” a name “it” takes on a life of its own. Any “life of its own” becomes an entity that will instinctively fight to survive. This is true of individual person’s names, family names, company names, religious organization names, etc..
The USA Republican party just lost most of its body mass, under that name, and is fighting in any way possible to survive an identity, even if it means becoming a new name of the “Party of No”.
The Insurance companies, life and health, build huge edifices as facades that resemble the entity they want to continue to live. All insurance companies have denied legitimate claims, at one time or another; so that the company may live though by doing so the reason for their living became a mute point. They have even gone so far as to deny claims of those who have paid the lobbying bill to deny government intrusion into the insurance industry's profits.
I will not take on any particular religious organization but all are guilty of demonizing all other religious beliefs, but themselves, that they might survive. Any creator and omnipotent God worth His salt should be able to nurture and protect under His own name and through each of His responsibilities as He chooses, without our help.
Family feuds are famous because the survival of the family name becomes more important than the survival of the community or mankind.
Under the best of times in the USA the vast majority of the nation felt patriotism because the survival of the USA trumped even a person’s, family’s, church’s and corporation’s survival. If the USA’s borders fall then there is less reason to believe that the present security and hope would survive under a different name.
I am over simplifying but I hope the picture I’m trying to paint is clearing a bit.
Why would we not tax the super rich if it was truly because of the USA resources (including the workforce) they were able to accumulate what they did? The normal reason to cut taxes to stimulate the economy is that it frees up money to be spent toward the betterment of the tax payer and more money is running around the system. After a certain point of amassing monetary wealth one person can no longer find enough needs to purchase and the funds languish (the word for the week) relative to the national economy. Most of the super rich use their wealth as a score in competition with other super rich. All that is being taxed relative to income is additional funds and not the stored funds. Besides, if the super rich are taxed a higher percentage of their income it gives them more reason to “earn” more to keep their score up.
What has any of us really earned? Did we not all use the resources that were made available to us through happenstance rather than because our individually expended energies were more special and therefore more valuable than another’s?
We all want to survive to the highest level we can and that is good. I was born into a middle class USA family, with great health, with a great IQ, with great healthcare, with great education and employment possibilities and I took advantage as best I could. I didn’t put out any more effort than my Vietnamese tent-girl back in 1966, actually far less. She didn’t have any health care (and had a floating eye). She had the equivalent of sixteen years of schooling back here in the states. She had no opportunity in Vietnam to apply her skills and talents and I have to say her skills and talents exceeded mine but I got paid far higher than $5.00 a week.
My family of birth was economically middle class because of the social efforts applied by the FDR administration because there was no middle economic class until the 1950s. I would have had more opportunities in the USA without those governmental efforts than my tent-girl but not to the degree I still enjoy today. I didn’t earn what I have today as much as I became responsible to use it wisely due to the efforts of countless other’s sacrifices that came before me. There is nothing I really own, that cannot be taken from me, but I have an abundance of great things in my name that I am responsible to until I die.
If we cannot learn to accept the fact that we are all terminal, that our possessions are just resources we are responsible to, that none of us know it all, that every one of us ranks as stupid/ ignorant compared to what we know there is to know, that beauty is only in the eye of the beholder, that each individual of the body of Man in no way exceeds a reason to survive beyond the body of Man, that melding our productive differences makes us all stronger, that consenting adults should not be the concern of any other adult without a mutually agreeable contract, on and on and on … we will never readily link our self interests with those of a different name.
We still haven’t got it, as a single inextricably linked humanity, that racial histories and gender/sexual differences are equal in value to our own to enhance each of our self interests. We are way too quick to demonize difference as a negative in our lives. We take the Inter-State Highways as though they exist for only our good and get really frustrated when a state trooper pulls us over for not obeying the laws of the road; who’s road, who’s laws? We seem to think each of us should be absolutely free to do whatever we want because we earned it, right? The truth is; if those before us had not shared and sacrificed we would have nothing to be responsible for. The truth is that if our entire USA population is not healthy, educated, clothed, sheltered and welcomed to share within, rather than without, then each of our quality of life is diminished accordingly.
I, again, could go on painting the picture I see but it would be much better if all who have read this far add a stroke or two of their own, please!
Herm