The hiatus is over. The job search is not. If you want to pay me lots of money to do stuff, check out my resume at mikewittmann.com. Or, if you need a website, check out some of my work at wittmania.com. If you just want to read my occasionally humorous or even less occasionally insightful thoughts, well, keep on keepin’ on.
“A Christian is one who sees Christ everywhere.”
Alexander Schmemann, as quoted by Dan Seidell
I would really like to become a Christian…
In a five minute conversation, Obama tells this guy that the government is entitled to a larger cut of the profits from his small business so that they can “spread the wealth” around a little. Sure, he “respects” the guy’s hard work over the last fifteen years, but he also mentions that one of the keys to his success is that he’s, “frankly, been lucky”.
Obama wants to make sure that “everyone who is behind you has a chance at success.” You’ve got to understand, “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Well, everybody except for the people who are actually earning (i.e. producing) the wealth. As this astute plumber noted, he’s “being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream.” Why buy another truck? Why hire another plumber? In short, why work harder or invest more into this business just so Barry can take it and give it to someone else who hasn’t earned it?
BHO’s plan sounds all nice and fuzzy. Let’s help the little guys on the bottom. I mean, all they need is “a chance at success.” But let’s define some terms here. What’s the best shot at success the poorest among us have? It’s called a job. Do some work. Provide a good or a service. Be compensated for your production. Welcome to America.
Where do jobs come from? Small business owners like our plumber friend from the video. Bobby Eberle explains: “Those at the economic bottom DO NOT create jobs. Those at the economic bottom get hired for jobs. When the economy is robust, more jobs are created, thus more people get hired. There’s not a business existing in America today that doesn’t want to ‘do more business.’ In order to grow, more workers must be hired, and more capital purchased.” It’s these small businesses that Obama thinks should be paying more in taxes. This can only mean less money for paying employees, which translates into lower production, which leads to lower profits, and on and on and on.
I won’t even mention the LARGE businesses and, *gasp*, the evil corporations that give lots of people jobs. When you hear politicians talking about BIG BUSINESS building their empires on the backs of the little guy, this is what they are talking about: giving people jobs and paying them for their work. Yes, my employer is building its empire on my back. All I get out of the deal is a paycheck twice a month. Sheesh.
Eberle also does a little quick math in his article showing just how this wealth redistribution strategy affects the economy. The long and short of it is that when the government raises taxes, it takes money out of the economy (duh!), while leaving it in the hands of the guy who actually earned it does nothing but help the economy:
The person could save it, thus giving banks more leverage to do business. The person could invest it, thus helping new or established companies grow. The person could donate some to charity, thus helping organizations at the grassroots level do things more efficiently than the federal government could ever hope to. Or, God forbid, the person could simply go out and buy stuff. Two hundred thousand dollars of stuff is a lot of stuff! Imagine all that cash injected into society. Talk about a stimulus package. More goods being purchased, whether it is cars, clothes, furniture, food, or whatever, means that more jobs will be needed to produce those goods. It’s as simple as that.
Instead, Obama would prefer to take money from the people who are doing the work, providing the products and services that propel our economy, in order to give it to people who not producing anything. Like many socialist policies (and make no mistake, that’s exactly what Obama is espousing here), this all sounds really *nice* and just and merciful. That, I think, is what has attracted so many Christians to this guy. The problem is that it simply won’t work, and will actually make things worse. Let’s give small business incentives to hire more people, not fewer. Let’s give Americans a reason to work harder, not an excuse to sit at home waiting for money taken from someone who earned it.
This Bloomberg article has six paragraphs of detailed analysis of oil prices and speculation on future prices before ending with this little bit of information:
“The oil survey has correctly predicted the direction of futures 49 percent of the time since its start in April 2004.”
They’ve been right less than half the time over the past 4 years? Even meteorologists can do better than that. I think it might be time to try the dart board or coin-flipping model for commodity price prediction.
If the mortgage bailout doesn’t go through, maybe banks should consult this website before trying to turn their foreclosed properties.
It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! is “A collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings. With love.” A couple of them (1, 2) are right here in Lincoln, but this one is probably my favorite.
HT: Challies
As promised, Elsie and I went on a date last night. She loved her pink earrings, and she had all the pizza, salad, breadsticks, and soda that she wanted at Olive Garden. On our way back out to the car she decided we should dance together in the grass for awhile. I kindly obliged.
This evening, a couple of our friends from church are getting married, so I’ll get to dance with the *original* princess tonight. What a lucky guy!
I’ve heard this list attributed to one source or another, but I found it here today. It’s a list of questions that need to be answered before we do anything drastic about global warming.
(1) Is it occurring?
(2) If it is occurring, is it bad overall?
(3) If it is occurring and is bad overall, is it caused primarily by human factors?
(4) If (1) , (2), and (3) are true, can humans do anything significant about it that is not overbalanced by detrimental factors?
(On global warming, see the chapter on global warming in Tom Bethell’s delightful book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.)
After talking about this issue with Jared, I’m willing to concede that #3 isn’t critical to the logical cohesiveness of the list:”(Assume, for a moment, that global warming is occuring, that it is bad, that it is caused by intestinal gas passed by eels, and that we could do something to stop it without an abundance of detrimental factors. Even if we’re not causing it, we should probably do something to stop it.)”:, but I would suggest that most folks that are truly concerned with this issue haven’t answered (even in their own minds) #4. I would further suggest that many of them have barely answered #1 (can you say “scientific consensus” ten times fast?), and have used this as a launch pad for crusades involving funny-shaped light bulbs and unplugged cell phone chargers.
Anyway, back on track. Consider the following scenario: The earth is really getting warmer, and every one degree increase in the temperature will lead to the extinction of one endangered species. Our nasty addiction to internal combustion has been proven to be the cause, and the only way to turn the tide is to stop pumping oil out of the ground and instead to run cars on pure ethanol. While this course of action would guarantee the reversal of an increasing greenhouse effect, it would also lead to the collapse of any vestige of civilization in the Middle East, leading to civil wars and terrorist acts that would kill nearly a billion people throughout Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. One other byproduct would be for the U.S. to invest all surplus corn, wheat, soybeans, and any other food crop into clean fuel production, instead of exporting them, leading to the starvation of 750 million starving people in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
Now, I’ll admit that this scenario may be far-fetched. However, humor me for a second. If the “cost to cure” global warming would be the death of 1.75 billion people, would it be worth fighting in order to save polar bears? What if the number was *only* 1 billion? Would that be any different? What if coastal flooding, induced by the complete disappearance of the polar caps, would kill or displace 100 million people, while global warming counter measures would kill or displace 200 million? No matter what you believe, you would have to admit that efforts to combat global warming come with a price tag.
I saw one estimate the other day that said it would take $45 trillion to effectively fight global warming. The Global Warming Zealots will tell you that this “investment” would actually have a positive effect on the global economy, but that can’t possibly be true. Every dollar that is invested into the science of “carbon capture and storage”, for example, is a dollar that won’t be invested into the production of something that would actually be useful. Look at it this way; I could pay you $45k a year to walk in circles in my back yard all day, and that would impact the economy because you now have a job, you pay taxes, and you spend that money on “stuff,” which keeps the economy rolling. Or, I could pay you $45k to tend a garden in my back yard, producing $10 a week in vegetables that wouldn’t exist if not for your hard work. In scenario 1, the “investment” of $45k yields less per year in productivity, because in scenario 2 I still have all of the benefits of scenario 1, plus $520 in fruits and vegetables.
Now, think about the effect of pulling $45 trillion out of the global economy to produce goods and services nobody really wants, nobody really needs, and that will likely decrease global production instead of increasing it. You think high gas prices are hitting the economy hard?
Here’s the bottom line. Global warming may or may not be happening. Global warming may or may not be bad. Global warming may or may not be caused by man. That’s not the point. Even if these three things are true, before we start taking action we first need to realize that such actions will have consequences. And, if these consequences outweigh the initial threat proposed by global warming, then the best course of action would be to just get out of the way and to try not make things worse by starving people and shipwrecking economies in the name of environmentalism.
I’m not normally one for making New Year’s Resolutions. I think they’re cliche, and most of them are forgotten about by the time the Super Bowl rolls around. If you become convicted that you need to change something in your life, don’t wait until New Year’s Day to get it right. Imitate the disciples who immediately left their nets and followed Him.
Having said that, some resolutions are best timed in correspondence with the starting of a new year. The missus and I have talked, and we’re both tired of *knowing* that we need to be reading God’s Word on a daily basis while *living* as if that weren’t true. We are, just like most Americans, “too busy” to find 15-30 minutes a day to spend in the Bible, but can watch 2 episodes of season 3 of The Office before we go to bed. We also both have our fair share of biblical/theological training in our pasts. It’s just enough to make us both sound like we know what we’re talking about on Sunday mornings, but we both realize the dangers of living off of meals from years ago.
I come from a background in college that hyper-emphasized spiritual disciplines. If you were having seven “quiet times” a week, coupled with regular progress through the Topical Memory System, you could be pretty sure you “meant it” when you got saved. OK, so it wasn’t quite like that but a person could get the feeling that failing to keep pace on the spiritual disciplines treadmill was a sign that his “walk” wasn’t what it ought to be. The up side of this attack was that I left college with a wealth of biblical knowledge. The down side was that when the pendulum swung the other way, I had enough biblical knowledge to keep me ahead of most other Christians around me, making it easy to find excuses to not crack open my Bible.
Hopefully I’ve come to a point that I can find a balance somewhere in the middle. I know that if I don’t have a system in place, I won’t do it. I also know that keeping up with the system isn’t the goal, but rather a means to an end. Just like a financial budget (I’m not so great with those, either), having a daily reading plan in place will help me to allocate time to something that I have already decided should be a priority. I also expect that each day of building this routine will make the next day a little bit easier.
We decided that the best plan would be to get through the whole Bible in a year. We both realize that there are going to be days where we fall behind, so Sundays will be our catch up day. Also, it doesn’t hurt that it’s a leap year so we’ll actually be reading through the Bible in 366 days instead of the customary 365. If ever there was a time to go for it, this is it!
Once my mind was made up, the only thing left to do was to find a plan that would get us through the Scriptures in a year. I don’t really like the cover-to-cover variety. If a guy can make it through Leviticus, he shouldn’t have to face Numbers and then Deuteronomy. Yes, these books are equally inspired. No, they are not as easy to read as Genesis or Acts. Through the magic of Google, I finally found a couple of plans I thought might work. I was originally leaning toward M’Cheyne’s Daily Bread. I really liked that it had two passages for reading as a family at meal times, and two to be read privately. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that reading one chapter each from four different books seemed like it would be tough to follow, like watching clips from four different movies each day and trying to keep them all straight.
So, I finally settled on a “blended” plan from Back to the Bible. I like that it has just two different readings each day, with about a chapter or so from the New Testament and two or three chapters from the Old Testament. It doesn’t jump around as much as some of the “thematic” plans out there since each book is read with the first through last chapters in order. It does, however, jump around in terms of the order of the books (eg. Gen. – Isa. – Ex. – Job…) so you don’t get bogged down in any one section or type of literature.
I took some time and put together a PDF with all of the months neatly laid out on three pages. If you’re interested, you can download the PDF here. I think it would be kind of fun to have two or three others “out there” keeping the same pace. If you’re in, leave a comment to let me know.
Jared is right. This is funny!
“And friends are friends fa-eva… and friends are friends fa-eva…”
Word.
