Comparison of Tax Rates, 1967 and 2011

According to memory, my father was making around $10,000 salary in his job at Bell Aerospace in 1967.  I might be totally off in that recollection, but that year I was making 75¢ an hour working on a nearby farm, so ten grand would have been a goodly sum of money at the time.

Using the BLS's CPI Inflation Calculator, that salary today would be $68,800.

Let's compare tax rates for my Dad making $10,000 a year and someone making the corresponding $68,800 a year in 2011.

Using the Tax Foundation's Federal Income Tax Brackets 1913-2011, I can create the following simple table.

Year	Bracket	Marginal Tax Rate
1967	$8,000 - $12,000	22.0%
2011	$17,000 - $69,000	15.0%

So, if I were making the equivalent amount of money as my father was making 45 years ago, I would be paying a marginal tax rate 32% lower than what he was paying ((22-15)/22).

For the purposes of this thought experiment, I make the convenient assumption that this dollar is net.  I will make the observation that tax payers in 1967 had many more deductions available (e.g., credit card interest) than are available today.

The fundamental point is that taxpayers who are falling in the center of the curve ("Neither the tip of fortune's cap/ Nor the soles of her shoes") are paying a significantly smaller percentage of income for Federal tax today than they would have been paying for equivalent income 45 years ago.

TEA Party?  Too much whine with the cheese.

Evolution of the First Amendment

Madison's original text

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.

The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.

Version passed by House of Representatives

Congress shall make no law establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of Conscience be infringed.  The Freedom of Speech, and of the Press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and consult for their common good, and to apply to the government for a redress of grievances, shall not be infringed.

Version passed by Senate

Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition to the government for a redress of grievances.

Final text passed out of joint committee and sent for ratification

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Triune God

Some time ago, my grown daughter Stephanie confessed to being confused and puzzled by the concept of the Triune God, which is central to most modern divisions of Christianity. "Father, Son and Holy Ghost." And I have to admit, that the concept doesn't bother me at all, principally because I don't see how it affects the precepts by which we are commanded to live. But, the question set me thinking about how this idea developed.

The conception of the Trinity is the result of meditation on the text by early Christians who found compelling the text "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). The Trinity is generally regarded as central to church doctrine by those who believe it. Major disruptions within church organizations have occurred as a results of disputes over what actually is meant by the Trinity, and whether or not it actually is the true and accurate depiction of God.

The conflict appears to center around the terms used to describe the three aspects of God. When we think of the individual elements of the Trinity, we tend to regard them in the same way we would regard individual persons -- i.e., wholly realized, self-actualizing independent beings. However, our conception of the Trinity comes from the early Church Fathers, who sought to codify our understanding of the Trinity as "three Hypostases in one Ousia."

According to Origen, one of the early Church Fathers:

Hypostasis means an objective reality capable of acting. In modern times, it is commonly translated into English as "person." This is exceptionally inaccurate, as it is completely divorced from the original conception. "Personae" is a closer explication. Ousia means being or nature. As there was only one God, the three hypostases had the same ousia.

To the present day, theologians are still arguing over the meanings of these words and whether this understanding of the Trinity represents a Biblically sound perception. For example, the word ousia is not used anywhere in the Bible in a context that reflects this Trinitarian usage. And in some cases, hypostasis is used in Biblical times in ways that make it interchangable with 'ousia.'

Readers of the translated Bible are being confused because they are injecting their own understanding of or conception of a person into the text; seeing "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" as individual beings, rather than as Origen and the other Church Fathers described them, as individual representations of a core essence, with the representations being some self-selected subset of qualities of the entire being.

There are still Christian churches which reject the Trinity, principally because it is not specifically described in the Bible.

---

References:

• Origen and the Defintions of Hypostasis and Ousia
• Hypostasis in Religion and Philosophy
• Ousia

Those Overpaid Teachers!

Stolen from Spadway, commenting on

Beyond Unions: 5 New Rules for All Teachers

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year!

It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day ... maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE...
That's $585 X 180 = $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries.)

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is! The average teacher's salary (nationwide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

The Christian Sensibility

I dreamed I saw St Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
I dreamed I was among the ones
That put him out to death
Oh I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.
-- Bob Dylan

The beginning of Christian sensibility is the realization that one could commit an evil act and get up the next day and live with it. At that point, one understands the nature of Original Sin; and the true value of God's grace is revealed. Until that evil within has been confronted -- as in Bob Dylan's dream -- God's grace seems but a "nice to have," and the absolute necessity of it is not apparent. Grace abounds when one is "so alone and terrified" by one's own sin ... and not before.

Too many Christians have been seduced by what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" -- the belief that one could live in the world, be of the world, and still accept God's grace. But, he was right that grace is "costly." It requires that one give up living in the world and live only in God. Most of us are unwilling to pay the full price; perhaps, only saints fully accept the cost of grace. Each day presents those decisions -- in thought, word, deed. Peter, in our Lord's darkest hour, faltered. How much more likely then, are we?

Acceptance of the cost of grace is made bearable, finally, in that moment of lonely terror when one looks over the edge into the abyss that is one's own heart. Then, one begs -- not for forgiveness, which is foregone -- but to be saved. Crying out into the darkness, "How can I bear this burden alone?" brings the echo back from the abyss: "You don't have to."

Make me Thy friend, Lord, be my surety: I
Will be Thy client, be my advocate:
My sins make Thine, Thy pleas make mine hereby.
Thou wilt me save, I will Thee celebrate.
Thou'lt kill my sins that cut my heart within:
And my rough feet shall Thy smooth praises sing.
-- Edward Taylor

The End of the Line

Driving up West Burnside Street from downtown Portland, there is a nondescript building on the corner of 22nd Place and Burnside. In the ground floor are the Pizza Oasis, best pizza in Portland; and the Thai Orchid, best Thai food in Portland. Between the two store fronts is a doorway that leads into the building proper: an SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotel.

That hotel was my home for five years.  

An SRO typically is where you end up right before you land on the streets, or sometimes, right after you come off them.  For so much money per week, you get a room.  I paid an extra $5 a week for a room with its own bathroom.  Most of the rooms in an SRO don't have bathrooms; you share the one at the end of the hall.  There's a shared kitchen, too, if you want to use it.  There are some kinds of sharing I can do without.  Involuntarily sharing my food with others is among them. 

For $105/week, I got a room with a bed, a dresser, a sink and a window.  And, of course, a bathroom.  I went into that room thinking that it would be a temporary stop, a detour after a "perfect storm" of financial and personal catastrophes merged, to leave me homeless, jobless and destitute.  I'd managed to scrape a job in one of the worst hell holes imaginable, a produce company on the east side of the river.  But it was a job.  Things would get better.

They didn't.  At work, I was alongside paroled armed robbers, rapers and drug addicts.  There were knife attacks in the back of the warehouse and fist fights on the loading dock.  At home, -- "home" -- there were regular visits from paramedics to revive overdosed drug users, and the sounds of hand-to-hand combat in the neighboring rooms. One winter, the building breaker box melted down and we were without heat or electricity for ten days.  We still had to pay rent, though. Pay, or get out.  You pay -- because when the streets are icy, huddling under a heap of blankets in your unlit room is better than huddling under a bridge.

After a while, you get used to it.  You go to work, you get your check.  You go to the check-cashing place, get your money.  You stop at the manager's office to pay your rent on the way up to your room.

I became a linux user in that room.  Learned shell, perl and C programming in that room.  Learned networking, hardware repair; became A+ and Network+ certified.  Friday night, on the way home from work I would buy two packs of cigarettes and a six-pack of Mountain Dew.  I'd sit down at my desk and smoke and drink soda and program, play chess at FICS, take things apart and put them back together.  Occasionally, I'd upend my keyboard to dump out the cigarette ash that caused it to stop working.

I might have gone on indefinitely in that zombie zone.  About four years into my stay, I got sick.  It was winter.  I went to the clinic at Good Sam.  The doc said it was bronchitis and I should quit smoking. I stayed sick.  I worked sick, shivering all day in the coolers; then going home to lie in bed shivering.  No "sick days":  don't punch the clock, don't get paid.  A couple more visits to the clinic, with the same verdict.

As I lay in my room, too sick even to smoke a cigarette, I realized that if I died there, nobody would notice.  If I didn't show up for work, nobody would call.  People disappearing from that place was a regular occurrence.  I went weeks without talking to my sisters; they wouldn't think it unusual.  You can't get more alone than that: to die and not be missed, until your body starts to stink and somebody calls the cops.

One day I took the bus to work, as usual.  After the two block walk to the loading dock, I had to sit down and rest.  I couldn't go on.  I told my boss I was too sick to work and went straight back to the clinic. This time I got a different doctor; she had my chest X-Rayed; then came back with a worried look on her face.  She showed me the X-Rays. "You have double pneumonia and your lungs are 40% underwater," she said.  "You need to be admitted to the hospital right now." 

Five days later, and $12,000 in debt, I emerged from the hospital. That doctor saved my life, of that I am sure.  And it was like a resurrection. Not consciously, I didn't have some kind of overt epiphany.  As I recovered my health, I began to see the world around me and to take stock of my possibilities.  Within a year, I was working as a telephone technical support "engineer" for Gateway computers.  Two years later, I went to work for WebTrends providing support for the software.  Professional services; then independent consulting. In five years, I went from living in an SRO without even a bank account, to flying around the country on an expense account.

I often look back, and see where I came from.  I didn't get here because I'm "special," or some kind of ubermensch.  I'm nothing special at all; just another guy, with bad habits and an occasional good day.  God put me on a path that led me to a home, a family, a job that pays well.  He let me see my daughter again; he let me keep my friends of 40+ years; he let me live on both sides of the street.  And that's why, every day, I say "Here I am, Lord.  Send me."

Dirt Cookies

There is something about these cookies that won't leave me alone.

http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/02/19/dirt-poor-haitians-eat-cookies-made-of-mud/4120/



I watched this video about 10 months ago, and still, I keep coming back to it. These kids are happy -- happy! -- to eat a dirt cookie.  It's not a joke, not a put-up job. The grownups, their parents, know better. They know the cookies are nasty, but there's nothing else to feed their children.

Today, I'm giving a brief "Mission Moment" at church, in preparation for an offering to "One Great Hour of Sharing". And as I prepare to make my pitch for donations, those cookies are very much in my mind.