Who's Paying?

 

     Elon Mu$k is insistent that the population should keep growing, not stabilize or shrink.  Many people had called for population control for environmental reasons. Mu$k wants growth for continued economic expan$ion.

     If the population expands, there will be more children born who will have a lifetime of needs. Yes, they will also be con$umer$, but some will need significant social supports.

     Also, if there are more consumers, there will be more environmental impacts.

     If Mu$k wants this expansion, then he needs to be the billionaire leading the charge to raise marginal taxes* on the wealthy.  These tax revenues will provide more services for those born with more needs and will pay for environmental clean-ups.  Perhaps it could also provide more daycare and early childhood education free to more people (via vouchers, of course, so it wouldn't involve Mu$k indoctrination).

    Instead, billionaire$ like him are fine with increa$ing the gap between rich and poor. But a larger population gives him more people from which to increa$e his own wealth.  He and other billionaire$ need to pay higher marginal taxe$ on their upper earning$.

*Marginal taxes:  taxes charged only on income above a certain level or "margin."  When people talk about charging higher taxes on the rich (this blog repeatedly calls for a 42% upper income marginal level), that percentage (i.e. 42%) is not taxed on the person's entire income, but only on amounts above a certain level, say, $500,000 or $1 million.

From Sea to Dark Dead Sea

 

[This poem is about the modern American mindset and its influence upon the Church. It does not reflect a crushing depression on the part of the poetess. Cleary, this is not a new line of thought.]

The Jordan in but never out,
So knowledge takes in me such route
In brackish waters to brood about
The suppression of true freedom's shout---
The Dead Sea.

At lowest point, then, here I sit.
The deepest depression of deep'ning rift.
The deep'ning gloom---and shall it lift?
Integrity's shroud, hides Holy Writ. . .
Apathy.

As just-hatched bird by Nature bred
Lives just to squawk and so be fed
I now by histr'y do so defend
By justified means I reach this end:
The Bland Me.

I lived through day, I lived through night;
I lived through love, I lived through fright;
I turned inside to put to flight
The hopeless failures from crueler sight:
The Dead Me.

Whether by mindless shallowness
Or endless, stale analysis,
In Sophist and in Hedonist
The fear of Feeling here exists:
The fear "to be."

On me they float but can't dive in:
Cannot drown but cannot swim.
Advance in skills. . .Retreat within. . .
A merry-go-round with fatal spin. . .
Technology?!?!

Oh, to be that other sea,
Parted to let young Israel free,
Closed to drown out cruelty,
Fluid with fresh-faced vitality:
The Red Sea!!!

-----C. Marie Byars, 1987

Let Freedom Ring

Downfall of Our Forbears

Book Weary

 

As school semesters draw to or have drown to a close, many students can relate to these words:

"Of making of many books there is no end,

And much study is wearisome to the flesh."  

                                             ----Ecclesiastes 12:12b

Happy Mother's Day

 

Mom, you "meme" so much to me!

Pathways

Our society is a little crazy right now.  The internet makes it worse.  Things come across as if our whole society is SJW's (Social Justice Warriors) vs. neo-chauvinists; no gun restrictions at all vs. total banning of guns; unrestricted capitalism vs. full socialism; MAGA vs. laissez faire belief systems; hard core Christian evangelicals vs. atheists; etc., etc. When you get people talking, get them away from labels, there's still a lot of overlap in the directions Americans think this country should go.  There need to be methods to support the consensus areas.

Failed Products

     Sometimes products just don't catch on the way developers hope.  Here are some product disappointments of recent years:

Oh, yes and Happy April Fools' Day!  😁 😜