Short mission trips have critics but can foster advocacy, sharing, education.
In the past few years, short-term mission trips have gotten a bad rap, but on a recent delegation to the U.S./Mexico border, nine Presbyterians heard from those in the field who don’t immediately dismiss short missions.
The debate over how much difference such trips really make has been a constant source of discussion among missiologists — there is little hard evidence that much significant work gets accomplished because there are few physical signs of change on mission fields. Another charge is that short-term mission trips are often paternalistic and selfish.
On the other hand, Tucson Elder Michael Hyatt said, “Short-term mission trips are about learning, sharing and educating. We go to learn from and about the people and projects we are visiting and to share our gifts — ours with them and theirs with us — whatever they may be, and then to educate the people in the churches back home, which is also sharing.”
Elder Lynda Fredsell, of Greenville, S.C., said that “short-term trips helped me understand more so I could help people back home understand how good and wonderful the people of Mexico are. There is so much fear of foreigners.”
Leisha Reynolds-Ramos, a former Young Adult Volunteer with Frontera de Cristo, said that “short-term mission trips are about relationships. It is OK if groups want to do work projects, but even those should be focused on the relationship, not accomplishing a certain project. It is important to those who live on the mission fields to have relationships.” ...
... As the paper notes, economists’ conventional wisdom has long held there is no relationship between economic growth and subjective well-being.
Not so, argue economists Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, all of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “We present evidence,” they write, “that well-being rises with absolute income, period.”
This happiness trend knows no boundary of nation and culture — happiness is related to per capita gross domestic product in 69 nations. And fast-growing societies tend to be happier than stagnant nations, even if the latter have a higher standard of living. (In this regard, you might think of India’s now buoyant middle class compared to the more downcast American middle class of the moment.)
This is not necessarily controversial. In fact, Adam Smith long ago noted that growing wealth convinced nobles to pay less attention to their armies and pick-axes and more heed to powdered wigs, violas and court intrigues. And the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman argued in “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” that modern societies are most stable, more democratic and most free when the economy is growing. Recessions, as we now see, carry the infectious clouds of nativism, fear and anger.
But this study tends to put a punctuation mark on all that.
“Absolute income appears to play a central role in determining subjective well-being,” the study concludes. “This conclusion suggests that economists’ traditional interest in economic growth has not been misplaced.” ...
... The economists concentrated on comparisons within the United States, and their findings were striking in this regard. Hawaii ranked first in adjusted average life satisfaction, “yet remarkably has the fifth-highest suicide rate in the country. At the other end of this spectrum, New Jersey ranks near the bottom in adjusted life satisfaction (47th) yet has one of the lowest adjusted suicide risks (coincidentally, the 47th-highest risk).”
So what to draw from this? Well, a paradox.
“People” the study notes, seem to “find it particularly painful to be unhappy in a happy place.”
LONDON: April 11, 1954, was the most uneventful and boring day of the 20th century.
Every day something of significance occurs, but nothing remarkable had happened on the said day in 1954, according to experts who inserted over 300 million important events of the century into a computer search programme to calculate.
According to the results of the search machine, called True Knowledge, on that day a general election was held in Belgium, a Turkish academic was born and an Oldham Athletic footballer called Jack Shufflebotham died. Apart from that nothing much happened.
Developed by Cambridge University technologist William Tunstall-Pedoe, the Internet search engine reached its lofty decision after analysing some 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events" that made the news.
Using complex algorithms, such as how much one piece of information was linked to others, True Knowledge determined that particular Sunday of 1954 to be outstanding in its obscurity. ...
BEIJING — The question that dashed Angel Feng’s job prospects always came last.
Fluent in Chinese, English, French and Japanese, the 26-year-old graduate of a business school in France interviewed between January and April with half a dozen companies in Beijing, hoping for her first job in the private sector, where salaries are highest.
“The boss would ask several questions about my qualifications, then he’d say: ‘I see you just got married. When will you have a baby?’ It was always the last question. I’d say not for five years, at least, but they didn’t believe me,” Ms. Feng said.
Three decades after China embarked on dazzling economic reforms, much has changed for women. Unlike their mothers, whose working — and, often, private — lives were determined by the state, women today can largely choose their paths. Rural women are no longer tethered to communes; urban women no longer are assigned jobs for life or need permission from work units to marry, although all women must apply for permission to have a child.
Yet along with freedom has come risk, as socialist-era structures are dismantled and powerful cultural traditions that value men over women, long held in abeyance by official Communist support for women’s rights, return in force. Many employers are choosing not to hire women in an economy where there is an oversupply of labor and women are perceived as bringing additional expense in the form of maternity leave and childbirth costs. The law stipulates that employers must help cover those costs, and feminists are seeking a system of state-supported childbirth insurance to lessen discrimination.
The result is that even highly qualified candidates like Ms. Feng can struggle to find a footing. Practical concerns about coping in a highly competitive world are feeding into a powerful identity crisis among China’s women. ...
It won’t be stopped, but its effects can be made less bad.
COMPARED with the extraordinary fanfare before the global-warming summit in Copenhagen a year ago, the meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that starts in Cancún next week has gone unheralded. That is partly because of a widespread belief that the publicity build-up to last year’s summit contributed to its failure, but also because expectations have changed dramatically. In the wake of the Copenhagen summit, there is a growing acceptance that the effort to avert serious climate change has run out of steam.
Perhaps, after a period of respite and a few climatic disasters, it will get going again. It certainly should. But even if it does, the world is going to go on getting warmer for some time (see article).
Acceptance, however, does not mean inaction. Since the beginning of time, creatures have adapted to changes in their environment. Unfortunately, such adaptation has always meant large numbers of deaths. Evolution works that way. But humankind is luckier than most species. It has the advantage of being able to think ahead, and to prepare for the changes to come. That’s what needs to happen now. ...
The in-laws are in town this week and yesterday we spent the day at the National World War I Museum here in Kansas City. From the museum website:
The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial inspires thought, dialogue, and learning to make the experiences of the World War I era meaningful and relevant for present and future generations. The Museum fulfills its mission by:
• Maintaining the Liberty Memorial as a beacon of freedom and a symbol of the courage, patriotism, sacrifice, and honor of all who served in World War I
• Interpreting the history of World War I to encourage public involvement and informed decision-making
• Providing exhibitions and educational programs that engage diverse audiences
• Collecting and preserving historical materials with the highest professional standards
In addition to the museum as a research facility for doing research on the war and the Americans who served in the war. It really is a world class museum and if your are ever in Kansas City. Here are a few photos I took yesterday.
Here is the view of the Liberty Memorial and the musem as you approcah the entrance.
Once inside, the transparent walkway over the field of poppies ... each poppy symbolizing a certain number of soldiers that died.
You first enter a theater that gives you a brief introductory film that gives you a background on the events that led up to the war. Then it is on to the exhibt area.
There are tons of artifacts like this tank ...
... or this Harley Davidson.
There are uniforms, weapons, infantry gear, airplanes, medical equipment, and host of other artifacts. There are interactive displays as well as giant maps and displays that tell how the war unfolded. The are rooms where you can listen to speeches, poems, and music from the era. There are also some mockups of trenches so you can get a senses of what it was like.
In the two exhbit buildlings above ground on either side of the Liberty Memorial are buildings with exhibits and some amazing murals like this one.
Need a break during the visit? You can visit the Over There Cafe, which has some pretty good food.
You also need to take the elevator to the top of the tower where you can see views like this.
The tickets are $12 for adults for two days.
If you are ever in Kansas City and looking for something to do, check it out. I've been three times in recent years and have throughly enjoyed it each time.
If you're OK in math, you're more likely to be well off.
That's the conclusion of a study by think tank Rand Corp., which found that couples who scored well on a short test of math skills accumulated more wealth by middle age than couples who scored poorly.
Researchers found that when both spouses correctly answered three math questions, family wealth averaged $1.7 million. That compared with $200,000 for households where neither spouse answered any question correctly.
Household wealth increased sharply as scores of either the husband or wife rose, the study said. ...
So what were the three questions?
1. If the chance of getting a disease is 10 percent, how many people out of 1,000 would be expected to get the disease?
2. If five people all have the winning numbers in the lottery, and the prize is $2 million, how much will each of them get?
3. Let's say you have $200 in a savings account. The account earns 10 percent interest per year. How much would you have in the account at the end of two years?
My take away is that you should do what I did and marry an engineer. ;-) But seriously, is it social injustice that people who handle math better should become wealthier?
SHOULD the government cut spending or raise taxes to deal with its long-term fiscal imbalance? As President Obama’s deficit commission rolls out its final report in the coming weeks, this issue will most likely divide the political right and left. But, in many ways, the question is the wrong one. The distinction between spending and taxation is often murky and sometimes meaningless. ...
... Economists call the Blowhard plan a “tax expenditure.” The tax code is filled with them — although not yet one for snipe hunting. Every time a politician promises a “targeted tax cut,” he or she is probably offering up a form of government spending in disguise.
Erskine B. Bowles and Alan K. Simpson, the chairmen of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, have taken at hard look at these tax expenditures — and they don’t like what they see. In their draft proposal, released earlier this month, they proposed doing away with tax expenditures, which together cost the Treasury over $1 trillion a year.
Such a drastic step would allow Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson to move the budget toward fiscal sustainability, while simultaneously reducing all income tax rates. Under their plan, the top tax rate would fall to 23 percent from the 35 percent in today’s law (and the 39.6 percent currently advocated by Democratic leadership).
This approach has long been the basic recipe for tax reform. By broadening the tax base and lowering tax rates, we can increase government revenue and distort incentives less. That should command widespread applause across the ideological spectrum. Unfortunately, the reaction has been less enthusiastic.
Pundits on the left are suspicious of any plan that reduces marginal tax rates on the rich. But, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson point out, tax expenditures disproportionately benefit those at the top of the economic ladder. According to their figures, tax expenditures increase the after-tax income of those in the bottom quintile by about 6 percent. Those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution enjoy about twice that gain. Progressives who are concerned about the gap between rich and poor should be eager to scale back tax expenditures.
Pundits on the right, meanwhile, are suspicious of anything that increases government revenue. But they should recognize that tax expenditures are best viewed as a hidden form of spending. If we eliminate tax expenditures and reduce marginal tax rates, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson propose, we are essentially doing what economic conservatives have long advocated: cutting spending and taxes. ...
... One major tax expenditure that the Bowles-Simpson plan would curtail or eliminate is the mortgage interest deduction. Without doubt, many homeowners and the real estate industry will object. But they won’t have the merits on their side.
This subsidy to homeownership is neither economically efficient nor particularly equitable. Economists have long pointed out that tax subsidies to housing, together with the high taxes on corporations, cause too much of the economy’s capital stock to be tied up in residential structures and too little in corporate capital. This misallocation of resources results in lower productivity and reduced real wages.
Moreover, there is nothing particularly ignoble about renting that deserves the scorn of the tax code. ...
Among many people, politicians and media pundits, there seems to be confusion about the operation of free markets. Sometimes the word capitalism is used to propagate the notion of free markets. However the word capitalism came into use almost one hundred years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776 by Adam Smith, the most ardent supporter of free markets. Capitalism should not be confused with the system of free markets. Like markets, capitalism is evolutionary, however it encompasses not only economic organization but also political and social organization.
According to Adam Smith, self-interest (not selfishness), property rights and division of labor are three important interrelated pillars of economic growth. Property rights, if clearly defined and enforced, ensure that people are free to transact their goods and services at positive prices. Self-interest of sellers to make profits and of buyers to obtain products they prefer at the lowest prices brings sellers and buyers together in a market transaction. Self-interest in competitive markets maximizes economic welfare of the society. If free and competitive markets work, they efficiently allocate products among consumers according to their preferences, allocate inputs among producers, and enable producers to obtain the maximum output with given amounts of inputs. Division of labor facilitates scale economies to bring down costs.
However, there are circumstances when markets do not perform their function efficiently. Economists refer those states of the markets as market failure, a point missed by many who blindly promote virtues of free markets.
Market failure occurs due to many reasons. Let me discuss five of those reasons. First is monopoly power, where one or few producers and/or sellers gain control of the market. ...
The second reason for market failure is when producers do not fully bear total costs of products or are unable to capture all benefits of producing products. ...
Third, market fails when there is a common property resource. ...
... The fourth reason is lack of information, misinformation or asymmetry of information. ...
Finally, risk and/or uncertainty may be an impediment for free markets to provide products, which may be welfare-maximizing for the society in the future. ...
There are a host of other areas where free markets will not work efficiently and promote public welfare as envisioned by Adam Smith without some government intervention: for example, areas of product safety, workplace safety, airwaves allocation, oil and gas exploration. Therefore government intervention is essential for the working of free and competitive markets. I do recognize that government intervention in markets should be measured for efficient operation of markets. But indiscriminately diluting regulations, taxes, subsidies and user fees, which are essential parts of a vibrant free-market competitive economy, may result in undesirable consequences which no one would value.
Great summary. I think I agree with most of what he says here. The challenge is distinguishing between "regulating" an economy and "managing" an economy. Regulating an economy is mostly about equalizing anti-competitive advantages in the marketplace. Managing an economy is about deciding what strategies companies/industries should take (or not take), privileging one company/industry over another, or deciding for consumers which products they should should use. Two analogies.
Urban transportation network versus an airport. Urban designers provide some infrastructure, and they establish basic enforced rules. But the nature of traffic movement is individuals deciding when and where they want to go, and what route they will take to get there, sometimes deviating on a whim. They observe formal and informal rules of the road to reach their goal. The airport is managed by air traffic controllers. No one moves without permission. Decisions about destinations and routes must receive approval and alterations require permission.
NFL referee versus NFL coach. Referees make sure the game is played fairly according to the rules. They sometimes must make judgment calls and determine what is fair in a competitive environment. Coaches direct the play of the players, deciding who will be on the field and what plays will be called in which context. Referees regulate a game and coaches manage a game.
My position is that government has the role more similar to a regulator than a manager. Regulation is absolutely essential to the functioning of a free market economy. That has been the traditional understanding of "free market" from the beginning. I think the concept has frequently been abused in two important ways.
Free market champions rightly resist attempts by governments to manage economies but then extend this opposition into the arena of what I'm calling regulation, opposing it as well. Converesly, free market detractors rightly uphold the need for regulation but extend this concept into the realm of managing the economy. Then, each side condemns the other (respectively) as socialists or anti-government anarchists. The line between regulating and managing can sometimes be unclear and reasonable people can disagree. But conservation would be radically improved if people were clearer about what they mean by "regulation."
Why recent headlines on marriage don't do the new Pew survey justice.
... To be fair, marriage and family trends have been headed in the wrong direction for some time. From a family- and marital-health perspective, almost every positive indicator that should be up is down and nearly every one that should be down is up. Only the divorce rate has stabilized, which isn't saying too much given that it's close to 40 percent.
Still, to suggest that marriage is on the verge of obsolescence doesn't quite square with the opinions of the very people who account for its future standing.
According to the Pew survey, 60 percent of American adults currently living with a significant other and not yet married desire to eventually wed. Conversely, only 16% of these individuals express no interest at all in tying the knot. In fact, Pew's data shows that more want to marry today than did in 2007.
Put bluntly and more colorfully, more Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth (18 percent) than say they have absolutely no desire to ever marry (13 percent). (A much larger number of us often think both the sun and the earth revolve around us!)
When it comes to overall attitudes about family, 76 percent of the respondents indicated that their own family was "the most important element" in life, while 22 percent said it was "one of the most import elements."
This is all very good news, but there remains a nagging question: why is there such a drastic disconnect or disparity between what people think and say they believe about the sacred institution - compared to how they act and behave?
It is not a modern development that people don't always act in accordance with their stated beliefs. Colonial America was rife with cohabitation. In his book, Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer quotes a clergyman who was appalled at the prevalence of sex outside marriage in the province of New York in 1695. Upon reflection on his visit there he wrote, "many couples live[d] together without ever being married in any manner of way" and in doing so, engaged in "ante-nuptial fornication" which was "not looked upon as any scandal or sin." ...
... In other words, when it comes to the matter of marriage, most people want to get married, but for any number of reasons—pessimism, fear, perceived convenience—many of them do not. Nevertheless, that they want to marry at all is a significant and positive sign.
God has built into every human being a desire for companionship and a craving to love and be loved. There are compelling reasons to marry and stay married. In study after study, married people are reported to live longer and enjoy greater overall health and sexual satisfaction. Married people are more likely to remain financially solvent. Those who marry and remain married also express a greater sense of contentment in nearly every aspect of life.
A committed marriage is also the best environment in which to raise and nurture children. When mom and dad share the responsibilities and challenges of parenthood, kids are happier, healthier, and more emotionally and spiritually stable. Conversely, children born outside of marriage are more likely to grow up in poverty and score lower on almost every measure of physical and mental health. ...
Mankiw is a professor at Harvard, author of the leading college economics textbook, and served as member of Bush's economic advisors.
Several people have asked my opinion of the Federal Reserve's new round of quantitative easing. In particular, some have noted that I did not sign the open letter by conservative economists critical of recent Fed actions.
My view is that QE2 is a modestly good idea. I say it is a "good idea" because, like Ben Bernanke, I am more worried at the moment about Japanese-style deflation and stagnation than I am about excessive inflation. By lowering long-term real interest rates below where they otherwise would be, QE2 should help expand aggregate demand. I include the modifier "modestly" because I don't expect these actions to have a very large effect.
Moreover, I do see some potential downsides. In particular, the Fed is making its portfolio riskier. By borrowing short and investing long, the Fed is in some ways becoming the hedge fund of last resort. If future events require higher interest rates, the Fed will end up making losses on its portfolio. And even if doesn't recognize these losses (by not marking to market), it could end up paying more interest on newly expanded reserves than it is earning on its newly acquired portfolio of long bonds. Such a cash-flow deficit could potentially undermine the Fed's political independence (which is already not very popular in some circles). Yet if the Fed tries to avoid these losses by failing to raise rates when needed, inflation could indeed become a problem down the road. I trust the team at the Fed enough to think they will avoid that mistake.
So, in the end, I judge QE2 to be a small but risky step in the right direction.
This pretty much sums up my take, although he may a shade more optimistic than I am. The "hedge fund of last resort" analogy is great good way to put it.
As America undergoes dramatic, uneven changes, it may become harder to govern.
AMERICA is getting used to political upheaval. Barack Obama’s election was, to many voters, a moment of transformation. His first two years, many others lamented, brought a dangerous expansion of government; now the right has arisen again. The new Congress will be more polarised than at any time since Reconstruction, reckon some political scientists. But these swings, however large and consequential, are arguably only symptoms.
If people feel as if the country is changing quickly, that’s because it is. The first set of numbers from the 2010 decennial census will be published in December. They will, sadly, be less interesting than in previous decades, as the census form has been radically shortened this time. But plenty of other data get collected by the Census Bureau every year, and our trawl of what has been gathered over the past decade already reveals some seismic shifts. Baby boomers are retiring in large numbers; the young are more racially diverse than ever. Hispanic immigrants are transforming communities, bringing both promise and tension. The first decade of the 21st century was not kind to America’s middle class—real median household income was 7% lower in 2009 than it was in 2000. The gap between rich and poor widened (see table). And the young are doing relatively badly in education.
All these trends are enough to shake a nation. Just as important, however, is that they are playing out very differently from one part of the country to another. Of course, some variation is inevitable; but as the fault lines that criss-cross the country widen, finding political consensus becomes ever more difficult.
In one important respect America has a sunny demographic outlook. Its elderly may be growing in number but, to the envy of other developed countries, America also has a burgeoning young population. However the distribution of old and young makes this picture more complex. ...
Over at Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight has posted my attempt to explain quantitative easing. If so inclined, drop by and join the converstaion. Click here.
The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey, conducted in association with TIME magazine, and complemented by an analysis of demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A new "marriage gap" in the United States is increasingly aligned with a growing income gap.
Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder.
The survey finds that those in this less-advantaged group are as likely as others to want to marry, but they place a higher premium on economic security as a condition for marriage.
The survey also finds striking differences by generation. In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all twenty-somethings were married. In 2008, just 26% were.
How many of today's youth will eventually marry is an open question. For now, the survey finds that the young are much more inclined than their elders to view cohabitation without marriage and other new family forms -- such as same-sex marriage and interracial marriage -- in a positive light.
Even as marriage shrinks, family -- in all its emerging varieties -- remains resilient. The survey finds that Americans have an expansive definition of what constitutes a family. And the vast majority of adults consider their own family to be the most important, most satisfying element of their lives.
Here is a summary of the key findings of the report: ...
THE Bureau of Labour Statistics just released its October consumer price index data. Here's a chart of the year-over-year change in core prices:
In the twelve months to October, core consumer prices rose 0.6%. That's the smallest increase in the history of the index, which began in 1957. That's what the Fed is trying to change, and that's what you need to keep in mind when you hear people warning about runaway inflation.
We look back on the late 1990s as a rare time when the federal government ran budget surpluses. We tend to forget that those surpluses came as a surprise to almost everybody.
What happened? Above all, economic growth. And that may be a big part of the answer to our current problems.
Yes, the government became more fiscally conservative in the 1990s. Both President George H. W. Bush (who doesn’t get enough credit) and President Bill Clinton, working with Congress, raised taxes to attack the 1980s deficits.
But those tax increases were the second most important reason for the surpluses that followed. The most important was the fact that the economy grew more rapidly than expected. The faster growth pushed up incomes and caused more tax revenue to flow into the Treasury.
Today’s looming deficits are almost surely too large to be closed exclusively with growth. The baby boom generation is too big, and the rise in Medicare costs continues to be too steep. Yet growth could still make an enormous difference.
If the economy grew one half of a percentage point faster than forecast each year over the next two decades — no easy feat, to be fair — the country would have to do roughly 40 to 50 percent less deficit-cutting than it now appears, based on my reading of budget data from the economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale. ...
THE human development index (HDI) is an attempt to give a snapshot of a country's success by combining three important indicators: health, education and wealth. The most recent global HDI ranking from the United Nations' Development Programme places Norway top, with the United States fourth (out of 169 countries). But with over 300m people living in 50 states, America varies greatly, so the American Human Development Project releases a state-based version of the HDI. We have put the two indices together to see where America's states would rank if they were countries. Because the indicators used in the two indices were slightly different, we calculated our index from scratch using comparable data (though we used a proxy for educational attainment). Our index still has Norway as number one but America drops to eighth.
... Today, Nachreiner and other first Boomers — such as Kathy Casey-Kirschling (born 12:00:01 a.m. ET in Philadelphia) and Jim Sickler (born 12:00:01 a.m. CT in St. Louis) — are six weeks from turning 65. On Dec. 1, a month before reaching their milestone, they become eligible for Medicare.
They're the leading edge of a juggernaut that, from Khe Sanh to Woodstock, Play-Doh to Viagra, "wrapped our culture around itself like no generation before or since," Gillon writes in his history, Boomer Nation.
As they've moved through the years like a demographic pig in a python, the 77 million Baby Boomers have redefined each stage of life, says Ken Dychtwald, an expert on generational change. And, he predicts, they will change the next stage, too.
But how will a generation defined by its youthfulness and optimism deal with old age and hard times?
Raised in affluent times and imbued with high expectations, the first Boomers now face the ironic prospect of longer yet crimped lives. Their homes and savings are worth less than a few years ago, and health care and energy cost more.
Although many will need (or want) to work past 65, there's less work to be had. Tobi Morgan, a real estate agent who was Utah's first Boomer, hung out her shingle in South Florida just before the housing market crashed; Ann Fry, born Jan. 1, 1946, in Miami, saw the recession dry up her career coaching practice; Mary Pfeiffer, a Dayton, Ohio, first Boomer, worries about Medicare's ability to cover treatment of her severe scoliosis.
"We tried to save for retirement, but we were always a day late and a dollar short," she says. Her husband, a retired postal worker, works the early shift at a deli counter. ...
... But the biggest question raised by the Boomers' senior moment is how it will affect the politics of Social Security and Medicare, and the nature of retirement.
Boomers' sheer numbers (one will be turning 65 every 8 seconds) threaten to overwhelm the federal budget with rising costs for the entitlement programs.
Gillon questions the assumption that, as in the case of the World War II generation, Boomers' political clout will protect the entitlement status quo, even if it means passing on the bill to later generations. Boomers never have been politically cohesive, and — like the general electorate — they're becoming more polarized, he says.
And they have something else at stake: their reputation.
Slightly more than half of Americans think the Boomers have made things better for the generations that came after them, compared with 4 in 10 who think they've made things worse, according to the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. Asked whether "giving" or "selfish" better describes Boomers, 57% chose the former, 37% the latter.
Neil Howe, a consultant who studies generational change, says the Boomers will forfeit their reputation for spirituality, authenticity, wisdom — for what President George H.W. Bush called the "vision thing" — if they appear to be acting selfishly in the entitlements debate.
Selflessness won't be easy because, as Jane Dunlap puts it: "Our retirement is not going to be our parents' retirement."
That retirement came abruptly, usually around 65, and completely. But now, "this generation will drive the final nail in the coffin of '40 years and a gold watch,' " Gillon says.
Although most blue-collar Boomers will retire as soon as they can afford to, some others want to keep working even if they don't have to.
"They'll have to carry me out on a flip chart," says Vicki Thomas.
Consider two new models of first Boomer non-retirement: ...
... These nuclear plants will pump out power for economic growth without creating smog or loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
The United States already operates the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the world with 104 reactors producing about 20 percent of our nation's electricity, but there hasn't been a groundbreaking for a new plant since 1973. Although utilities are seeking licenses to build and operate about 30 new reactors, the challenge lies in the financing of new plants. In the current economic climate, it's difficult to obtain private financing.
But nuclear power's revival in the United States is inevitable. It is paved not only by the need for more generating capacity but also by favorable cost comparisons with other fuels, concern about climate change, and improved licensing procedures.
To be sure, we also need to consider all forms of renewable energy as they become cost-effective, but the unavoidable truth is that nuclear plants occupy a small fraction of the land required for solar and wind power. And while nuclear plants produce electricity about 90 percent of the time, wind turbines generate power, on average, only 30 percent of the time and require back-up electricity from fossil fuel turbines on days when the weather isn't cooperating. Solar energy is less efficient, providing electricity only 20 percent of the time.
Nuclear power, therefore, must play a larger role in maintaining our nation's energy security and reducing atmospheric pollution and acid rain. Nuclear power also has economic benefits, as it provides a stimulus for new jobs and revenue. ...
There are other factors that make nuclear power attractive.But it is interesting to me that many of those are infactic about the causes of global warming and its coming consequences based on irrefutalbe science are the same ones who reject scientists claims about the safety of nuclear power plants.
Canadian author Eric Kaufmann sees demography as a time bomb for democracy
WE know about the ageing of developed countries and the number of people on the move, but the figures can still startle.
In 1900, the West, including Russia and eastern Europe, accounted for 35 per cent of the world's population; today it accounts for 17 per cent, and that number is expected to fall to about 10 per cent by 2050.
In 1959, Europe had 2.5 times the population of Africa. By 2050, according to UN estimates, Africa will have more than four times Europe's population and almost 40 per cent of Europeans will be over 60.
Between 2000 and 2005, 17 million people moved from developing to developed countries.
According to Eric Kaufmann, reader in politics at Birkbeck College, London, and author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, the kicker is that these changes don't just indicate rational adjustment to economic opportunity, humans as work units being shuffled around by the invisible hand of capitalism. They presage a deep cultural shift: a coming eclipse of the secular, the scientific and the religiously moderate by the militantly devout. ...
Which rich countries are doing the most to help poor ones? Rich and poor nations are linked in many ways—by foreign aid, commerce, the environment, and more. Each year, the CDI rates rich-country governments on how much they are helping poor countries via seven key linkages: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. The CDI then takes the average for an overall score.
To see if countries live up to their potential to help, scoring adjusts for size. So small countries can beat big ones. Scores are on a standard scale and 5 = average. ...
Check out the interactive map. Sweden and Denmark top the list. Japan and South Korea are at the bottom. U. S. is smack in the middle.
In December, President Obama's fiscal responsibility commission will recommend ways to fix long-term federal budget shortfalls, very likely including changes to Social Security. At that time, Congress should consider a reform that could increase retirement incomes while boosting the economy and federal tax revenues: gradually raising Social Security's early retirement age of 62.
When Social Security was created in the 1930s, retirees could not start collecting benefits until age 65. But in 1956, eligibility rules were changed to allow women to begin collecting at age 62. In 1961, the rule was changed for men as well. Today, 62 is the most common age of retirement. With a typical 62-year-old likely to live to age 83, an individual now spends roughly one-third of his adult life in retirement.
For those who have saved enough, this is perfectly fine. But many people claim Social Security benefits at 62 without considering that doing so reduces monthly benefits by about 25% for life. Without early retirement, poverty among retirees over the age of 65 would be about one-fifth lower.
Restoring the early retirement age to 65 would have little effect on Social Security's solvency, because benefits increase when retirement is delayed. The trust fund's solvency would be extended for only a few years, meaning that other steps would be necessary to preserve it.
But raising the early retirement age would prevent lower benefits due to early retirement, raising average monthly checks significantly. Private pension benefits also would be higher--by about 15%--because retirees would have been paying in for longer and have fewer retirement years to finance. In a recent paper for the American Enterprise Institute, I analyzed the numbers and concluded that average annual incomes for future retirees would rise by about $7,500 if the retirement age was returned to 65.
Increasing the retirement age also would help the economy and the federal budget. The nation's annual GDP would increase by hundreds of billions of dollars. Those extra dollars would be taxed, resulting in higher tax revenues to fund the federal budget. The additional revenue would reduce the federal budget deficit by several times more money annually than does the recent healthcare reform. ...
You've no doubt seen a map similar to the one below showing the breakdown of party control by congressional district.
Closer analysis will reveal that Democrats are big in Urban districts and Repubilcans more rural and suburban areas. The Economist article, from which this map (and the two following) came, says:
Run down the top 30 incorporated places in America; the only ones represented by Republicans are Fort Worth, Texas and (as of January) Columbus, Ohio. Every other major city in Texas, and in fact every other major city in the South, is represented mainly by Democrats.
But then it shows two other eletoral maps ... one for Germany and one for France:
There isn't the same sort of urban/rural dynamic at work. So why is there such a difference? The Ecomonist doesn't offer an explanation and I don't really know either. What do you think?
The voter coalition that elected President Obama and fortified Democratic congressional ranks just two years ago — independents, women, young people, blue-collar workers and more — fractured in the midterm elections Tuesday, either swinging to Republicans or staying home.
Economic angst, conservative opposition to the landmark health care law and independents' disappointment with Obama's failure to deliver on promises to change Washington all contributed to a dramatic political reversal.
The result: A Republican takeover of the U.S. House and a narrowed Democratic majority in the Senate, a rising anti-government Tea Party movement and the third tumultuous U.S. election in a row. It was the first time in more than a half-century that political power in the USA has swung so significantly in three consecutive elections. ...
The article gives a pretty good recap with a breakdown by various demographics.
Two of the largest religious groups in the electorate followed the same basic voting patterns in the 2010 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives as they have in prior elections: white Protestants voted overwhelmingly Republican and religiously unaffiliated voters cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Democrats. But Catholic voters, who had favored Democratic over Republican candidates by double-digit margins in the last two congressional elections, swung to the GOP in 2010. And within all three of these major religious groups, support for the Republican Party rose this year compared with 2006, matching or exceeding their levels of support for the GOP in any recent election. Republican gains among religious groups parallel the party's broad-based gains among the overall electorate and white voters in particular.
Analysis by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life of National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll data reported by CNN shows that white Protestants,1 a group that has long been one of the key components of the GOP coalition, voted for Republicans over Democrats in their congressional districts by a 69%-to-29% margin. This marks an increase of six points in Republicans' share of the white Protestant vote compared with 2008, and an eight-point gain for Republicans compared with the last midterm election in 2006.
At the other end of the spectrum, the religiously unaffiliated supported Democrats over Republicans by an overwhelming margin in 2010 (66%-32%). But the exit polls also show that Republicans made gains even within this staunchly Democratic group, picking up 10 points compared with 2006. This increase is comparable in size to the GOP's gains among white Protestants, a traditionally Republican group.
Among all Catholic voters, 54% voted for Republican congressional candidates in 2010, up 12 points compared with 2008. Among white Catholics, nearly six-in-ten (59%) voted Republican in 2010, compared with 39% who voted Democratic. By comparison, 52% of white Catholics voted for Republican congressional candidates in 2008, and 49% voted Republican in 2006. ...
I'm presently reading Jerry Muller's Capitalism and the Jews. It is a fascinating book and I expcet to blog more about it shortly. But for today I thought I'd highlight this insightful passage where Muller is summarizing the ideas sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918).
While Simmel could at times echo the complaints of cultural pessimists and of cultural critics of capitalism, at his most creative he upended their assumptions. Unlike Marx and Engels, who decried the competitive process so central to capitalism as intrinsically evil, Simmel pointed out the integrative effects of competition. For competition was not a relationship between those who competed only, it was a struggle for the affection – or money – of a third party. To compete successfully, Simmel noted, the competitor must devote himself to discovering the desires of that third party. As a result, competition often “achieves what usually only love can do: the divination of the innermost wishes of the other, even before he himself becomes aware of them. Antagonistic tension with his competitor sharpens the businessman’s sensitivity to the tendencies of the public, even to the point of clairvoyance, regarding future changes in the public’s tastes, fashions, interests.” And the competition for customers and consumers had a highly democratic aspect as well. “Modern competition,” Simmel observed, “is often described as the fight of all against all for all.” Thus, he concluded, competition forms “a web of a thousand social threads: through concentrating the consciousness on the will and feeling and thinking of fellowmen, through the adaptation of producers to consumers, through the discovery of ever more refined possibilities of gaining their favor and patronage.”
In The Philosophy of Money and in his other works, Simmel explained that the development of the market economy made for new possibilities of individuality. Simmel suggested that the limited-liability corporation was a model for many characteristic forms of association under advanced capitalism, in which individuals cooperate with a limited portion of their lives for common but limited purposes. Compared to the precapitalist past, in which individuals lived most of their lives in a single, circumscribed community, modern life was based upon looser, more temporary associations, founded to pursue economic, cultural, or political interests, and demanding of the individual only a part of himself, sometimes only a monetary contribution in the form of dues. As a result, the modern individual can belong to a greater range of groups, but groups that are looser and less encompassing. Thus Simmel concluded that “money established incomparably more connections among people than ever existed in feudal associations so beloved by romantics. In contrast to earlier forms of association, modern groups allow for participation without absorption. They make it possible for the individual to develop a variety of interests and to become involved in a wider range of activities than would otherwise be possible, yet to do so without surrendering the totality of his time, income, or identity to any particular association, from the family to the state. For Simmel, the eclipse of “community” was not a source of nostalgic lament: it presented new possibilities, along with potential pitfalls. He highlighted the development of a new form of individuality promoted by the market economy, an individuality based on choice from among the many cultural spheres and social circles created by the capitalist market. (48-50)
This dovetails with what Adam Smith wrote about more than a century earlier. In one of his most misunderstood statments (about the butcher, brewer, and baker) from The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
... A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. ... (Book 1, chapeter 2, Paragraph 2. Emphasis is mine.)
This highlighted portion has been misinterpreted as Smith saying we should pursue our self-interest above all else. But if you read closely you see that Smith is saying the we should appeal to the self-interest of others to get our needs met. Smith elsewhere emphaized that benelovence is the highest human sentiment but here is arguing that you cannot build an economy on benevolence. Market exchange would create an interdependence and expand the community you might serve as well as the commuinty that might serve you.
(Smith and Simmel were in some ways just updating what been observed by John Chrysostom. See the post I wrote last Spring.)
Half a century ago the British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow bemoaned the estrangement of what he termed the “two cultures” in modern society — the literary and the scientific. These days, there is some reason to celebrate better communication between these domains, if only because of the increasingly visible salience of scientific ideas. Still a gap remains, and so I’d like here to take an oblique look at a few lesser-known contrasts and divisions between subdomains of the two cultures, specifically those between stories and statistics.
I’ll begin by noting that the notions of probability and statistics are not alien to storytelling. From the earliest of recorded histories there were glimmerings of these concepts, which were reflected in everyday words and stories. Consider the notions of central tendency — average, median, mode, to name a few. They most certainly grew out of workaday activities and led to words such as (in English) “usual,” “typical.” “customary,” “most,” “standard,” “expected,” “normal,” “ordinary,” “medium,” “commonplace,” “so-so,” and so on. The same is true about the notions of statistical variation — standard deviation, variance, and the like. Words such as “unusual,” “peculiar,” “strange,” “original,” “extreme,” “special,” “unlike,” “deviant,” “dissimilar” and “different” come to mind. It is hard to imagine even prehistoric humans not possessing some sort of rudimentary idea of the typical or of the unusual. Any situation or entity — storms, animals, rocks — that recurred again and again would, it seems, lead naturally to these notions. These and other fundamentally scientific concepts have in one way or another been embedded in the very idea of what a story is — an event distinctive enough to merit retelling — from cave paintings to “Gilgamesh” to “The Canterbury Tales,” onward.
The idea of probability itself is present in such words as “chance,” “likelihood,” “fate,” “odds,” “gods,” “fortune,” “luck,” “happenstance,” “random,” and many others. A mere acceptance of the idea of alternative possibilities almost entails some notion of probability, since some alternatives will be come to be judged more likely than others. Likewise, the idea of sampling is implicit in words like “instance,” “case,” “example,” “cross-section,” “specimen” and “swatch,” and that of correlation is reflected in “connection,” “relation,” “linkage,” “conjunction,” “dependence” and the ever too ready “cause.” Even hypothesis testing and Bayesian analysis possess linguistic echoes in common phrases and ideas that are an integral part of human cognition and storytelling. With regard to informal statistics we’re a bit like Moliere’s character who was shocked to find that he’d been speaking prose his whole life.
Despite the naturalness of these notions, however, there is a tension between stories and statistics, and one under-appreciated contrast between them is simply the mindset with which we approach them. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An economy growing 2 percent a year might be tolerable in normal times. Today, it's a near-disaster.
A growth rate of 5 percent or higher is needed to put a major dent in the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate. Two reasons why that's unlikely well into next year and maybe beyond:
-- Construction -- both residential and commercial -- collapsed last year. And it isn't expected to regain its strength for years. Typically after recessions end, construction booms and powers a new economic expansion.
-- The recession that began in December 2007, after the housing bubble burst, became the Great Recession once the financial crisis erupted in September 2008. Economic recoveries that follow a financial crisis are typically sluggish. Banks usually take years to resume lending normally.
"To really get 'Morning in America' and get people feeling like jobs are really coming back, I would want to see something close to 5 percent" annual economic growth, says economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, referring to the iconic 1984 Reagan re-election ad.
That isn't likely to happen soon. Macroeconomic Advisers doesn't expect the labor market to recover all the lost jobs until at least 2013. Other economists say it could be 2018 or longer. ...
My blogger friend, Allan Bevere, asked me to write a post for his blog regarding what motivates voters. Spefically, do voters vote for self-interest or the common good? I'm posting it here a day later.
************
Nearly a century ago, a young boy named Ezekiel Bulver overheard his parents arguing. It seems Mr. Bulver was trying to convince Mrs. Bulver that any two sides of a triangle are longer than the third. Finally, in exasperation, Mrs. Bulver exclaimed, "You just say that because you are a man!" That was the end of the argument. Ezekiel had an epiphany.
Traditionally you were required to demonstrate that your opponent is actually wrong in a dialog before explaining what led to his erroneous conclusion. What young Ezekiel discovered is that you can bypass that demonstration and fixate on how your opponent became so silly (or evil), thus diverting all attention from the substance of the issue. C. S. Lewis claimed that the mythical Ezekiel Bulver is the founder of modern day political discourse.* And if you've been paying any attention to politics lately, you see Bulverism is alive and well.
Conservatives can't understand how anyone would vote for Barack Obama and the Democrat's agenda. Surely liberals are soft in the head. Maybe they are greedy. They don't care about anyone else, they just want government to provide for their every need. Or maybe it is more sinister. The Democrats, at least many among the leadership, are closet communists waiting for their opportunity to take over and rule against the will of the people.
Similarly, liberals can't understand those Republicans. Only heartless people would be so greedy as to oppose taxes for programs that promote the common good. Conservatives are selfish. Many conservatives protect their own economic status as they side with big corporations that inflict all manner of suffering on society.
And thus the world is neatly carved into two worlds: One where people are knowledgeable and civic minded like me, and the other populated by silly and selfish people who put only themselves first.
Unfortunately, the world is a bit more complex than this. For instance, six years ago Thomas Frank wrote a book, What’s the matter with Kansas? He makes the case that many people from lower-income status vote against their economic interests because of peripheral issues like abortion and gay marriage. These issues are used as wedge issues by conservatives to trick these folks into voting against their own interests.
Of course, Frank does not suggest that liberals change their views on abortion and gay marriage. If they would, then surely this wedge tactic would fail and people would vote in the desired economic reforms. Why don't liberals change? Because these are hardly secondary issues to them … any more than they are secondary issues to the people who supposedly vote against their economic interests to protect their views.
And this raises a critical point. Studies of voting show that, generally speaking, most people of all political stripes vote for the candidates and issues that they believe are in the common good, even at personal expense. What varies is how people perceive what is the common good. People may indeed vote against a candidate who champions programs that would benefit them if they believe that the candidate will also support policies that are, in their estimation, destructive to the foundations of the community. Meanwhile, others will vote for the same candidate even though it will raise their taxes.
Also feeding into this is the tendency to think "most folks are a lot like me" and then inductively reason to the common good. Say there is ballot for a new light rail system. One voter may think, "I can really see how this would benefit me. Just think of how many others will benefit too. This is in the common good." Another voter may think, "This would significantly raise my taxes and be an extra burden to me. I don't want to put this burden on others. This isn't in the common good." But in our caustic Bulveristic environment each voter condemns the other for selfishness. The particularly cynical will claim that most people simply vote their pocketbooks. (It is particularly interesting coming from those who dismiss economics for its assumption that human beings are driven purely by calculating economic benefit.) In fact, what most voters seem to do is to vote what they see as the community's pocketbook, aiming for the common good as they see it.
Most political choices we make are about weighing competing values and concerns. For instance, in America, there has been a general belief that government has a responsibility for a basic social safety net. But this responsibility is a supportive one, not one of controlling citizens' lives. If politicians err too far toward weakening what is considered fair, they lose elections. Similarly, if they err too far toward an imperial model, they also get the boot. Reasonable compassionate people weighing the variables can come to differing conclusions. But the thrust of our age is to deny this reality in favor satisfying Bulveristic hunger.
I think the challenge for Christians in our polarized political environment is to begin a resistance movement against Bulverism. It is appropriate to occasionally have strong convictions about a particular issue or candidate. But as we talk with others, is it necessary to assume the worst about our opponents? Instead of beginning discussions by asserting how silly and/or evil our opponent is, is it possible to begin with assuming positive intent from our opponent, believing our opponent is seeking the common good, and searching for the value we can affirm in what our opponent wants to achieve? We may still come to conclusions that some are indeed silly or malicious, but just maybe by resisting Bulverism we will find that the great majority of us really have something in common: we are seeking the common good.
What do you think?
*(The Bulver story comes from an essay, "Bulverism," in a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis called God in the Dock: Essays on Ethics and Theology.)
Isaac, my 18 year old cat, has tabbylated the data. He predicts Republicans (and those who will caucus with them) will have 50 seats in the Senate and 239 seats in the House. What do you think?
Franchising is a rather ingenious concept. Take a restaurant that has built a reputation for the best chicken sandwich in town. A flood of business motivates the owner to open another location which builds on the success of the first. The second restaurant does equally well and has the added advantage of a proven menu and a working business plan. The third is even easier and attracts investment capital. New openings accelerate as branding is standardized, operating procedures are refined and economies of scale boost profitability. The result is Chic-fil-A – a national chicken sandwich chain. It’s the American way.
It’s what churches have historically done. Create a unique doctrinal recipe, develop an appealing worship style, test the ecclesiastical market, brand it as God’s “authentic” church, unveil an exciting growth vision, sell the vision to sincere members, roll out the replication strategy. We call it church planting. The result is a national denomination.
Is this too crass a comparison? Sit in on a meeting of denominational leaders and you will observe a distinct parallel between the institutional religious world and the corporate business world. At present there is a great deal of hand-wringing in both arenas. In the business sector there is much distress over shrinking profits, declining markets, scarcity of money. In the religious sector there is grave concern about aging membership, declining numbers, shrinking budgets. The solutions being explored are similar. Cut non-performing cost-centers, consolidate functions, hire consultants, re-brand, pursue new markets aggressively. Grow or die. Business is business, whether secular or religious.
Such strategies may be useful in growing businesses and churches. But what about the Kingdom of God? Can this elusive Kingdom be franchised? Churches like to position themselves as the official agents of this Kingdom. But being man-made institutions, they tend to circumscribe the Kingdom with their own doctrinal statements. This way it is easier to determine who’s in and who’s not. But can the Kingdom be measured by church membership? Can it be confined by theological systems or organizational structures?
Jesus, sidestepping the sacred protocol of the religious establishment, advanced the radical idea that his Father’s Kingdom was more about purity of heart than purity of doctrine. He said that this Kingdom belonged to socially devalued people, to the unlearned poor and innocent children. Proof of membership had more to do with caring for a neighbor in need, or turning a cheek to an insulter, or giving a second coat to a coatless person, than being a conscientious Temple attendee. He described the behavior of Kingdom people as those who take little thought for tomorrow, who part easily with their possessions, who practice persistent forgiveness.
Now how do you franchise that? How do you quantify losing one’s life to find it? Or greatness measured by inconspicuous servanthood? How do you calculate wealth gained by giving assets away? Or advertise anonymous benevolence? The Kingdom simply does not fit the franchise paradigm.
Herein lies a major difference between the institutional church and the Kingdom of God. Churches (as opposed to the Church universal) are the localized, organized clustering of Christ-followers. All groups have distinctive creeds and cultures, boundaries and budgets that allow them to compare and contrast themselves with each other. Churches, like all institutions, have an intrinsic imperative for self-preservation. An institution cannot give itself away. If it does, it will go out of existence. Thus numerical and monetary increase, not divestment, is viewed as a sign of God’s favor. Competition becomes the accepted norm. Advertising supplants anonymity. It is the way of institutions.
Which is not to say that the institutional church and the Kingdom are incompatible. Of course not. It is essential for the Church universal to gather locally for worship and teaching and fellowship and service. Supernatural activities occur when the saints come together. How they organize themselves, fashion their creeds, make their decisions (i.e. “do church”) is part of the excitement. The confusion comes when they declare these structures sacred. Sacred implies hallowed, worthy of devotion. When structures become sacred, organizational loyalty is but a short step away. Comparisons begin. Which organization is more sacred, more biblically correct, more doctrinally sound? You see where this takes us. That’s why we have thousands of different kinds of churches, each promoting its brand as the best, each competing for its market share of Kingdom demographics. Forget the “new commandment” Christ gave His followers – the one about unity and laying down our lives for each other. We’re too busy doing church!
... But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.
This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.
That's never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.
More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that's lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.
Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.
In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn't win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.
Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don't want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.
This largely captures my perception of what is unfolding.
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