Family Matters

Happy Birthday Leslie!
Be good.
Love,
Donn

Uncommon Sense

Dear Loyal Readers:

Posting my ideas for you to read over the past five months has been a challenge and my pleasure. I wish more of you had commented on my thinking so that I might benefit from your instruction and improve. No matter. I suppose I’m grateful that you’ve taken the time even to read my blog.

This week I am announcing phase two of my project. It’s called Uncommon Sense: My positions on issues A to Z. Now that I have explained my perspective, my philosophy—i.e. my metaphysics, epistemology, and the resulting code of ethics, political, and economic systems—I think it’s time I explain how I use my philosophy to develop rational, consistent, objective positions on the issues we read about every day in the newspapers.

To date, writing my blog each week has been relatively easy. Nearly everything I’ve written has come straight out of my head, no research, no reference books of any kind. I’ve been sharing with you what I know. Uncommon Sense is going to be much more challenging. I’m going to have to do some actual research on many issues. I will try to keep up my weekly, Sunday post, but I’m going to promise nothing.

Abortion
Affirmative Action
Capital Punishment
Censorship
Diversity
Draft
Drugs
Education
Election 2008
Energy
Environment
Faith-based Initiative
Free Trade
Foreign Policy
Gay Marriage
Hate Crimes
Health Care
Income Taxes
Iraq
Iran
Jihad
Life
Liberty
Military Spending
Pledge of Allegiance
Privacy
Russia
Smoking
Space
Venezuela
Veterans
War

List tentative.

A Secular Thanksgiving

I wish all of you could take a seat at my family’s Thanksgiving table. On the surface you’ll notice nothing particularly different from any other holiday table. There will be plenty of food—traditional foods, like: turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, smashed potatoes, dressing, corn, beans, muffins, bread, butter, beer, wine, and soft drinks. There will be family and extended family from both in and out of town seated around the table this year; there will be more people than there are chairs, so we may even have to set up a “kids table.” There will be NFL football on TV, live music on the front porch, playing catch and family board games. There will be pecan pie, and pumpkin pie, and whip cream, and vanilla ice cream. There will be laughter and gluttony, groaning and belly rubbing, drinking and afternoon naps, satisfaction and “thanks” giving.

Once the people I love are all seated around my table, I will hold hands with whoever is sitting on either side of me. Everybody else around the table will do the same. I will not bow my head. I will look at my brothers when I thank them for making the trip up to Columbia so that we could share the holiday. They will look at me and thank me for the welcome and the meal. I will thank my father-in-law for the financial support he has lent us this year. Without his help and the help of my mother and my sister L, my family would not be celebrating this year in this home. I will thank my mother and my sister and my brother, M, for the airfare he buys me with his Frequent Flier miles. I will thank my sons, Z and D, for being excellent sons, students, and big brothers. I will thank my daughter, A, for bringing so much energy and laughter into my home and my life [even if Z and D don’t appreciate it!]…how she reminds me of me. I will try to make a funny face for my twin babies, E and K. I hope I can make them laugh. I selfishly look forward to seeing their smiling faces. I will turn to my wife, L, and I will thank her for her love and support, for all of her hard work on the job and in raising our children. I will thank her for understanding my short-comings as a husband, and I will assure her that I have no regrets.

Everybody sitting at my Thanksgiving table will do the same, thanking the people who complete their lives. In this way my children will learn that anything that they might enjoy in this life was produced by somebody, if not by themselves. They will be able to identify the quality of their own contribution, determine for themselves balance and realize for themselves the morality of trade. They will feel the pleasure of being recognized and thanked and the pleasure of recognizing others and thanking them honestly and openly.

I see no point in extending my thanks to mythical beings that produced none of the abundance my family enjoys. What we have, we work for in the freest country on Earth. The help my family received this year was made possible not by some omniscient God, but rather, by people I know who worked for it and who were generous enough to help us in our time of need.

For a citizen of the United States of America to fail to identify the cause of America's success is “sin.” We should thank the Framers! Uncompromised respect for the rights of each individual to live his life in pursuit of his own happiness is the reason we are great.

I will not forget to thank the United States’ armed forces, law enforcement and intelligence services for the important and dangerous work they do.

I will thank the people who deserve my thanks. I will thank the people with whom I share life here on Earth. I will thank the people I love for reasons. I will thank them with a smile for their smiles. I will thank them with tears for their tears. They are the source of my strength, my cause. They are the people to whom I owe much thanks.

Where do jobs come from?

If something costs money, it is not a right. No individual has the right to food, clothing, shelter, or health care. All of these things cost money. Money is earned. No one has a right to the unearned.

Because everybody needs food, clothing, shelter, and health care, everybody has to work.

No individual has a right to a job. Jobs are earned by the qualified and kept through productive, hard work. Jobs that require individuals to use their brains generally pay more than jobs that require individuals to use their muscles. Brain matter is more valuable than muscle because the demand for intelligent work is high while the supply of intelligent workers is low. Anybody can mop the operating room floor; very few people can perform neurosurgery.

There is no guarantee that the job you are working today will even exist tomorrow. That is the nature of capitalism…change. Thomas Friedman [The World is Flat] defines capitalism: “creative destruction.” Innovation is a good thing. Unfortunately, for many, innovation in any market can cause jobs to be “outsourced to the past.” Think of all the jobs lost the day gas stations began to erect “Self-Serve” signs. How many millions of workers have been outsourced in the last two decades by microchips? Should something be done to stop this trend?

As the structure of the economy changes many become structurally unemployed. The government does not even factor these individuals into the unemployment rate. It is assumed that they will brush themselves off and get back to work elsewhere within a relatively short period of time. These people, after all, are not unemployed because the economy is unhealthy. They are unemployed because the definition of “productive work” changed. Most find other work. Some require upgrades: They have to go back to school and get training. Whether or not an individual has marketable skills or not is entirely their responsibility. Is there something unfair about any of this?

Ohio congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich thinks so. He finds the reality I’ve described above “shocking and dangerous.” Look what I found on his website:

Saving the Middle Class: A Real—not Rhetorical—Plan
By Dennis Kucinich

It is a shocking - and dangerous - trend in the United States over the last three decades: the plummeting rewards and respect for hard work. As a result the middle class who has produced this magnificent American engine of economic growth is under intense pressure from the governing elites – of both parties. Risk envelopes the life of the average American employee while the casino capitalists at the top prosper.

Democracy and capitalism are at risk in a system where casino capitalists earn a billion dollars or more in a year while wages and savings wither for the middle class. America’s consumer-driven capitalism will die if these Great Depression era trends are allowed to continue.

Fortunately, the American Dream and the middle class have been resuscitated before…

And Kucinich goes on to promise another FDR-type New Deal complete with government make-work projects, economic isolation, free health care for all, free college for all…all of which will be paid for by clubbing to death “those who have benefited most from our economic and legal system” and “by eliminating waste from our bloated, inefficient military budget.” In this way he will “help America resume its glorious journey…[and] correct our current detour towards fear and greed.”

Unbelievable.

I will limit myself to correcting only the most blatant “Economics 101” errors:

1. “…the middle class who has produced this magnificent American engine of economic growth…” The middle class did not produce the engine of economic growth any more than line workers in Flint produce automobiles. The middle class is the result of an economic boon created by the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs with the great ideas. Automobiles—and every job created by the birth of the auto industry—are made possible by that Idea Man, that Henry Ford, who woke up one morning and said: “I’m going to build a factory and mass produce automobiles.” The people who work in the factory wouldn’t even have jobs if it wasn’t for the Idea Man and his financial backers who risk everything. The middle class owes their existence to the “casino capitalist” [whatever that means], not the other way around. The people who assemble automobiles working the line in some factory risk nothing. They have a job. They get a pay check. They only benefit.

2. “America’s consumer-driven capitalism will die if these Great Depression era trends are allowed to continue.” [I can’t even believe this nearly-communist, collectivist-altruist, Ku-sonofabitch has the nerve to even mention saving capitalism. He knows nothing about capitalism, freedom, or justice.] There is no such thing as a consumer-driven economy, capitalist or otherwise. An economy is driven by production, by the producer. It is only by virtue of the fact that each of us works, produces, that we are able to consume anything at all. Each man’s productivity makes his ability to consume possible. Productivity is the cause. Consumption is an effect.

3. “Fortunately, the American Dream and the middle class have been resuscitated before…” The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. It prolonged it. Not once during the decade 1930-1940 did the unemployment rate fall below 14%. In fact, eight years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash, in 1938, the unemployment rate was 19%. In 1939, when FDR was running for his unprecedented 3rd term, the unemployment rate was 17.2%. [U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1961].

Unconvinced? Consider this: The stock market crashes that occurred on Black Monday, October 1987, the dot-com bubble bursting in March, 2000, and 9/17/01 [the day the markets re-opened after the 9/11 attacks] were much worse than the crash in 1929. The 1929 crash doesn’t even make it into Wikipedia’s “Top Ten Crashes,” yet it was 1954 before the stock market had recovered to pre-1929 levels. FDR’s government interference crippled the U.S. economy for a quarter of a century.

When the stock markets reopened on September 17, 2001, after the longest closure since the Great Depression in 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (“DJIA”) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8920, its biggest-ever one-day point decline. By the end of the week, the DJIA had fallen 1369.7 points (14.3%), its largest one-week point drop in history. U.S. stocks lost $1.2 trillion in value for the week. [Wickipedia]

How did we recover so fast? Less government—cut taxes, deregulation, free trade—i.e. more capitalism.

Greed

Greed, wrongly defined, is probably the favorite tool of the altruist-collectivist for separating the materially successful from their wealth. Greedy, selfish capitalists are the cause of every ill in society by his shallow reckoning. His definition of greed is sourced by his careful reading of ancient scriptures, Neolithic texts reasoned before the Industrial Revolution, the Bill of Rights, and Capitalism; or some not so ancient texts written by Marx and Engel, who denied the rights of individuals and the value of the mind in the creation of wealth.

Of course, nearly all definitions of “greed” were drafted at a time when all wealth was produced by the impoverished and illiterate masses to benefit a tiny elite who wielded absolute power. The accumulation of wealth and power was accomplished by these elite, not through their own intellectual effort, but rather, by force. These people were greedy: Their lust for wealth and power that they had neither created nor earned defined them.

Market entrepreneurs who have achieved incredible wealth and who have done so by their own ability and ambition can never be said to be greedy. Greed is neither about how much wealth one possesses nor how one uses his wealth. Greed is about how one acquires wealth. The poorest beggar on the street is greedier than the stingiest producer. The beggar lusts for the unearned. The producer creates his own.

A terminally needy person—materially, emotionally—cannot love. They can only need, and sadly, beg and envy.

Why do Americans persist in defining wealthy producers as evil, selfish and greedy?


Actually, it’s quite possible to get a wrong definition of “greed” from Mr. Webster himself. The Webster’s New World Dictionary sitting on my desk defines greed: “excessive desire for getting or having, esp. wealth; desire for more than one needs.” My American Heritage Dictionary concurs: greed is “a rapacious desire for more than one needs…” Who the hell is Mr. Webster or you or anyone to tell me what I need? What right does anyone have to tell anyone else what their needs are? What’s enough? What’s too much?

In fact, all contemporary definers of greed concern themselves with the “accumulation of wealth” or avariciousness. Back in the day, when wealth was produced on the backs of the masses laboring in the field, these definitions of greed were close enough to the truth. But today? In America? A person who achieves incredible wealth in the United States—who has far more than they need or ever could need—is not greedy. They are successful. Their wealth is theirs. They created it. They can do with it whatever they wish. If they choose to give none of it away, their money remains the moral result of their hard work and ingenuity. Wealth is a just measure of the values you create, nothing less.

Too many Americans read the ancient and not so ancient texts and conclude wrongly that an American billionaire is the same animal as the ancient brute. Nothing could be further from the truth. These people believe [like Marx] that there is a finite quantity of wealth in the world and that it is government’s job to distribute it fairly. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

Wealth is created by the mind of man. The mind is wider than the sky. It is limitless. Four examples: 1. A writer sits down with less than $10 worth of paper and ink, pours his mind out on to paper in sentences. If he writes a Bestseller, he’s just turned $10 worth of raw materials into millions of dollars in sales. 2. All of the oil in the Middle East sat useless under the ground for millennia. The stuff only became valuable when the mind of man grasped the chemistry of the refining process and the usefulness of kerosene. Later, gasoline and the internal combustion engine [also a product of the mind of man] create the oil industry. 3. A couple of yards of material plus the mind of a master fashion designer yields the five thousand dollar dress. The same quality and quantity of raw material in my hands creates a worthless table cloth or beach towel. 4. Computers with easy to use software enable all of us to be more productive. Bill Gates could never be paid enough to compensate him for all of the wealth that has been created by others using tools he created.

Gates deserves far more than the 60 billion he’s got. And if he didn’t give one dime of his money away to charity, he would not be greedy.

Greed is lust for the unearned.