At Cymplify in Gainesville.
In Micanopy.
Category Archives: Political thoughts
On the road again…
List of crossings of the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I hope to update this much more often … especially over the next few weeks as I just took on a new client and will be going all over Florida for them. Be prepared to be wowed and awed with stories AND photos! Ok, there might not be so much in the way of awe but it will be more fun. Check back soon!
The Hobby Lobby decision is about much more than reproductive freedom.
I wrote this a while back about Hobby Lobby but it wasn’t published in the place I expected it to be so I am putting it here.
Labor, Athletes and Sherpas
Nepali sherpas guiding climbers up Mount Everest may not seem to have much in common with Northwestern University football players, but both were in the news this week due to labor issues. As different as they seem, both form elite groups whose work is exploited by others for profit. That profit is large.
Nepal is one of the poorest, least developed countries on the planet. The term sherpa refers to a small, ethnic minority, but has come to be synonymous with the elite climbing guides who work throughout the Himalayas. The job of sherpa pays well. In a country where most people live on under $300/year, the prospect of making $6,000 or more for a season is very enticing. The Nepali government also makes millions from climbers. They actively encourage men to take this on as a career. So, the climbers get a great experience, the touring companies charge a fortune and the government rakes in the fees. Sherpa deserve a bigger share of profits from an industry that they make possible.
Likewise, college athletes work and take risks for others’ amusement and profit. Like the sherpas, they are equally celebrated, and the risk football players take is considerable. Football is a dangerous sport. The NFL recognizes this and takes care of its retired players, maybe it’s time universities do the same. This is a multi-billion dollar business. Fans have a great time, television networks make a huge profit and universities gain prestige and make money. Everyone involved seems to profit more than the people on the field.
When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited Everest in 1953, Hillary said he “didn’t think the world would care too much about a simple bee keeper from New Zealand.” He spawned a multimillion dollar industry. The world of college sports has grown in the same way. The time has come to recognize how these sports have become businesses, and treat the people who make them happen accordingly.
We deserve better
Conventional Republican wisdom is that the fewer taxes people pay and the simpler the tax code is, the happier and wealthier we all would be. In fact, our economy would soar and it would be utopia. Thomas Piketty’s recent book, Capital in the 21st Century claims the opposite.
Piketty, a French economist known for studying inequality, argues that progressive taxation reduces it. Psychologists find that people are most satisfied, not when they have the most of something (like money), though some probably are, but when they don’t see a huge difference between themselves and the people around them. The Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) puts out a yearly list rating the quality of life around the world. They rank: 1. Australia, 2.Sweeden, 3. Canada, 4. Norway, 5. Switzerland, 6.the United States, 7. Denmark, 8. the Netherlands, 9, Iceland and 10. the UK. Of the countries on the chart, only the UK follows us. Everyone on the list pays higher taxes.
The 2011 paper , Progressive Taxation and the the Subjective Well-being of Nations (Dr. Shigehiro Oishi from the University of Virginia) found, “Respondents living in a nation with more-progressive taxation evaluated their lives as closer to the best possible life and reported having more positive and less negative daily experiences than did respondents living in a nation with less-progressive taxation.”
When Bill Clinton was president, some on the right claimed that he was destroying our way of life because he was making “taxation acceptable.” His argument was that people would start getting something good in return for their taxes and not mind paying them. According to the right, this would lead to the apocalypse.
The right doesn’t hate President Obama just because of the Affordable Care Act, they hated him long before that, but it is one reason. Obamacare is a tangible way people can see their taxes in action. In the same vein, they aren’t trying to cut education funding for just that reason, they just think the only things our tax dollars should go to is the military and investigations into the Obama administration.
Republican Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Maybe we need to stop demonizing taxes and wonder why making things essential to life such as health care, an education, shelter, etc. is so bad. The citizens of such a great county as this one deserve better.