Links for 1/28/20

Links for 1/28/20
The Senate does not represent land. It represents governments (like the U.N. General Assembly). This is a feature, not a flaw, unless Congress can unilaterally abolish or create states. The left is always divided, because it is about change. Finding consensus for change is harder than resisting or reacting to it (especially as the right-wing is always led by property interests and relies in social conservatives to be its useful idiots).

The upper middle class is the top 10%. No one else is able to keep up with inflation. Of the bottom 90%, half pay no income tax. The total adjusted gross income of the top 10% is equal to that of the bottom 90%. Likewise, the upper middle is 90% to 99%. The upper class is the top 1%. The top 1% has the same income as the upper middle. The top 0.1% has the same income as the remaining 1%. The top .01% makes as much as the rest of the top .1%. Finally, the top 1433 families - the top .001%, have the same income as the rest of the top .01%.

The only way to change tax policy to raise more money is to give the wealthy a justification for paying more beyond altruism. That justification is debt liability. Debt liability was 13 × income tax paid in 2016. It was 13.76 in 2017 (most recent data from the IRS Data Book). Post 2017 tax cut and for the immediate future, liability is 18 x taxes paid. The bottom 44% owe nothing, because they pay nothing. The halfway point in terms of total taxes paid is between the 97% and 98% level. This means that, with the bottom 44% owing nothing, the next 53% owe what the top 2.5% owe in debt.  Making that clear is necessary to get the wealthy behind the notion of raising taxes and in distributing income downward by making work pay better.

Stiltner is confusing conformity with faith on the one side and civility on the other. Faith has not declined. Faking faith has. The pressure to conform to mandatory Mass attendance is mostly gone. 50 years ago, we would all gather at my grandmother's house and say who saw whom at Mass. No one checks anymore. As conformity has declined, so has feigned civility. We are better off with honesty. The good old days were not really that good. No more Potempkin parishes.

Rising sea levels will frown the southern red states who are paid to deny warming. Justice is a poet. Ecuador is about the triumph of capitalism over the planet and the poor.

Pensions are underfunded because the people who decide such things are linked to the people who sell defined contribution plans (retirement accounts earn more commissions than a centrally funded or self-funded pension, which has none). The people who sell those IRA plans also give money to groups who whine about the danger of trans potty policy, marriage equality, abortion and ACA funding of birth control. Without social conservatism, capitalism would be voted out of existence. For reactionaries this is a feature, not a flaw.

On sports and gender, the question should not be self-identification. It should be testosterone levels. If such levels are too high in men due to weight training, participation in football should be banned. Participation as a girl or woman should require higher estrogen levels. That is an issue for sports organizing bodies, not society and especially not theologians.