Hello, I'm Stephen. (A.K.A. The Jokestrap, Jokestrap, or Single Action Jack) I have an About Me now. Check that if you're curious, and ask me if you need to know anything else.
Something Super Amazing
Too many Americans continue to be numbed by the soothing sounds of conservative spin in the media. Let’s take a look at the facts.
When it comes to the economy, too many Americans continue to be numbed by the soothing sounds of conservative spin in the media. Here are three of their more inventive claims:
1. Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators
A recent Treasury analysis found that only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
As for job creation, it’s not coming from the people with money. Over 90% of the assetsowned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of theinvestable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups.
The Wall Street Journal noted, in way of confirmation, that the extra wealth created by the Bush tax cuts led to the “worst track record for jobs in recorded history.”
2. Individual initiative is all you need for success.
President Obama was criticized for a speech which included these words: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
‘Together’ is the word that winner-take-all conservatives seem to forget. Even the richest and arguably most successful American, Bill Gates, owes most of his good fortune to the thousands of software and hardware designers who shaped the technological industry over a half-century or more. A careful analysis of his rise shows that he had luck, networking skills, and a timely sense of opportunism, even to the point of taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own.
Gates was preceded by numerous illustrious Americans who are considered individual innovators when in fact they used their skills to build upon the work of others. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent for his telephone, electrical engineer Elisha Gray was filing an intent to patent a similar device. Both had built upon the work of Antonio Meucci, who didn’t have the fee to file for a patent. Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb was the culmination of almost 40 years of work by other fellow light bulb developers. Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, the Wright brothers, and even Thomas Edison had, as eloquently stated by Jared Diamond, “capable predecessors…and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.”
If anything, it’s harder than ever today to ascend through the ranks on one’s own. As summarized in the Pew research report ”Pursuing the American Dream,” only 4% of those starting out in the bottom quintile make it to the top quintile as adults, “confirming that the ‘rags-to-riches’ story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality.”
3. A booming stock market is good for all of us
The news reports would have us believe that happy days are here again when the stock market goes up. But as the market rises, most Americans are getting a smaller slice of the pie.
In a recent Newsweek article, author Daniel Gross gushed that “The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records.”
But the richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stock market. What Mr. Gross referred to as the “democratization of the stock market” is actually, as demonstrated by economist Edward Wolff, a distribution of financial wealth among just the richest 5% of Americans, those earning an average of $500,000 per year.
Well JJ these billboards are coming down on February 19th. Thank you cogitoergoatheist for the heads up.
I want you guys to watch this video and pay attention to the Pastor that said he believed the billboards were wrong because we are born with a natural desire to connect to a higher power.
The inaccuracy of that statement is beyond laughable. No one is born a theist. No child is born seeking anything beyond the source that will provide their physiological needs. A baby seeks its mother because it needs to be fed, changed, and cared for; that is an ingrained biological response. The desire for a higher power is taught as evidenced by us all not seeking the same higher power. The gods of our lives are dictated by where we are born, and the religion of our family. Those never exposed to our religions, never practice them.
Of course the argument could be made that even the most remote tribes have some form of belief system and always have. Every ancient civilization we study shows evidence of having a creation myth and the gods that go along with it. However man has always sought to explain that which he did not understand. When lightning struck a tree and fire was first witnessed, an explanation had to be given. During times of droughts and other natural disasters, times of war, the birth of twins, when no male heirs were born, when anything happened that was unexpected, something had to be created to explain it. When things happened in the world that were inexplicable, a power greater than us was invented to make sense of it all.
That is not evidence of our desire to connect with a higher power at birth. We were seeking answers to the thinks we could not explain. When we learned to control the fire, we started to take back our power. We’ve since found explanations for most of the great mysteries that bewildered our ancestors, yet there are things that we still don’t understand. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I am unwilling to relegate the unknown to “god did it.” I’m willing to wait it out and hopefully science and technology will be able to answer the questions in my lifetime. If they never come up with the answers, I’m willing to acknowledge that there will always be mysteries of the universe. I am not willing to teach my children to believe in a higher power because I think it’s good for them and it’s something that they desire. We’ve come too far for that don’t you think?
