Posted in seeker, tagged median way on April 21, 2008 | No Comments »
I realized why I needed to shut down the sharing way blog: Who doesn’t believe in sharing? The worst tyrants in history loved to give shows of sharing. The robber barons of the US’s gilded age are celebrated philanthropists today. Sharing as a vague principle is nice, but vague niceness cannot save the world.
So I’ve [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way, taxes on April 16, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Next year, I hope to have the courage to follow this example, from Vermont War Tax Resister Follows His Conscience:
Every year since 1982, Bennett writes a check out to the Internal Revenue Service for 48 percent of the taxes he owes, withholding the portion that would go to fund the military. “I knew my relationship [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way, taxes on April 16, 2008 | 5 Comments »
If everyone who opposes the war would refuse to pay their taxes, the war would end.* I don’t expect that to happen. Most of us have responsibilities to family or friends, so when the bandits come, we pay, because that’s less frightening than resisting.
Emma and I squeaked through 2007 without owing taxes. But our hands [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way, my vow, practical morality on March 28, 2008 | 11 Comments »
I keep thinking about how astonishingly rich I would be if I lived at the average level of wealth for a US citizen, and I just can’t do it. So I’m interpreting my vow this way now: I will work to reach this country’s average wealth, but then I will live by the median income [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way, my vow, practical morality on March 24, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I could say “average is rich” is a spiritual truth. It means we share the enormous wealth of the world, and therefore we’re all rich in a world where there’s no need and no desperation, no greed and no exploitation.
But I believe in practical morality. As I’ve thought about the morality of wealth, I’ve wrestled [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way, my vow, practical morality on March 24, 2008 | 11 Comments »
My vow a few days back to live as though everyone in the US had a fair share of the wealth doesn’t bother me because it seems too hard—it seems too easy. It frees me from empty subjectivity. It calls for objective data that needs updating, but I can use dated information for now:
How much [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged leveler, median way, taxes on October 12, 2007 | 52 Comments »
The primary reason I rejected Marxism as a practical ideology was the birth of my children. I wanted them to go to the best schools, have opportunities for travel and lessons and to be surrounded by books.
Then build a society that gives everyone those things, and your children will have them too. Some parents want [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged leveler, median way on October 11, 2007 | 67 Comments »
Ideology shapes assumptions. Most of the following questions and comments croggled me, but they seem to be sincere, so:
What happens after you equalize? Won’t the system just end up destabilizing, and we’ll be back where we started after, oh, a century or so of commerce?
Equalization is an on-going process. The challenge is to find a [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged leveler, median way, taxes on October 10, 2007 | 33 Comments »
Who are the rich?
From here: The top .7% of the world’s households own a third of the world’s wealth, the top 1% own 40%, the top 2% own 50%, the top 10% own 85%.
New Scientist refers to “the super-wealthy - about 3 per cent of the population.” If you want to think in Marxist terms, [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged median way on August 21, 2006 | 9 Comments »
TomPaine.com - Politicians’ Middle-Class Delusions:
…a longtime state employee named Paola Roy told Lieberman she felt the middle class has been forgotten by the federal government. Lieberman responded that he shared her concerns, and for good reason: “I came out of the middle class,” he said, “and, being a senator, I haven’t gone much beyond the [...]
