If Only They Taught Math in School

Sometimes the level of stupidity in the public debate is simply mind boggling. If you can think for yourself, and add and subtract, this discussion might be interesting.

First, we hear that the top one percent need to pay their fair share of tax. So before you read any further, what would you consider a “fair share” for the richest 1% of people? How much of the total tax burden should they pay for?

Ok, let’s get on with our facts:

• the top 1% pay 45% of total taxes.
• the total assets of all the billionaires in the country is about $2.5 trillion.
• the federal government spends about $4.5 trillion per year.

So let’s Play With Numbers a bit. There’s a big push these days (early 2019) to “eat the rich”; take all the money from the billionaires and make a Better Society. So let’s go with that. Suppose we take all their money. Wait, let’s do this typical left-wing-revolution style: let’s bust down their doors in the middle of the night, drag them out into the street in their pajamas, and put a bullet in the back of their head. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Castro, Guevarra and all the Legends of Socialism will be smiling down on us. Ok, so now we have their $2.5 trillion. First question: how long can we run the federal government with that money? That’s right: almost a whole 7 months!!

Ok, so by July 15th we are out of money again. And now that we’ve decimated the top 1% (not precisely correct, but still), what has happened to our tax revenue? Oh, my, it’s dropped by 45%! So we can still make it through this year, but next year we need to cut government spending by almost half. And there ain’t no more rich people to go after. Darn.

And actually, let’s go back to our first point. How do you think billionaires hold their money? Do you think there’s a billion dollar bills under their beds? Actually, it’s all invested in companies, houses, cars, yachts, artwork, lent out to the government, etc. So when we take all the billionaire’s wealth, the government will have a bunch of Van Gogh’s, treasury bonds, and gated mansions. How exactly are they going to use this to help society? And don’t say “sell them and use the money” – once all the rich people are dead, who will pay $200 million for a Van Gogh? I suppose we could give it to a poor family, and they could use it to start their fireplace. That would certainly improve society. And all the homeless people could go live on George Clooney’s yachts.

Lots of companies need investment to start up and create jobs and innovative goods and services. Where does investment come from? You guessed it, it comes from rich people. But now they are all gone. How are new companies going to start up now? The goverment can’t give any money – their revenues are down 45% (not to mention they almost never invest in anything worthwhile – how many solar panels did Soladyne manufacture?).

I showed these simple numbers to my high schoolers – they got it immediately. Which doesn’t say too much about the blithering idiots in Congress, who are signing up for the Green New Deal, which is expected to cost $100 trillion. I’m not sure how we are going to survive with some of the biggest morons in the country in leadership positions. Maybe we can get Jim Carey’s “Dumb and Dumber” character to run for office.

I used to be very interested in Chinese history. If you read about the 1960s, you can see how the Great Leap Forward led to the Cultural Revolution. They killed all the rich people and then had 15 years of unimaginable poverty. Only when Deng started to allow a market economy did things begin to improve. And by embracing market economics, in one generation China lifted over a billion people out of abject poverty. Read about the Cultural Revolution – it seems our leaders are determined to take us down that path as well.

Flight from Enlightenment

For over a decade now, I’ve been troubled at how technology appears to be leading us further from the goal of spiritual englightenment. Now it seems the culture is making a full-scale retreat from anything remotely spiritual. From the hippie days until the turn of the century, more and more people were becoming aware of spiritual traditions, and many spiritual teachers spoke of an imminent tipping point where humanity would suddenly blossom and become more mature and enlightened. From my current perch in 2019 America, let’s just say that reports of our spiritual evolution have been greatly exaggerated.

Buddists, like Shinzen Young in his Science of Enlightenment series, have often spoke about the need to avoid “monkey mind” – that tendency we all have to flit from thought to thought, our attention captive to the whims of the fickle mind. Instead of bright-shiny-object syndrome, teachers enjoin us to focus and willfully direct our attention. However, cell phones are the antithesis of this. With their constant alerts, notifications, buzzing sounds, flashing lights, etc., they are practically monkey mind training devices. Feeling too calm, peaceful, and centered in your life? Buy a cell phone!

Another principal focused on by Young, and others, is that of not attaching unnecessary meaning to sensory inputs. If someone says something mean to you, what is that really? Just some acoustic vibrations in the air that die away within milliseconds. Surely nothing to get worked up about. And yet, in attaching meaning to those vibrations, people have taken it as cause to harm others, or themselves. Note that Young does not suggest never attaching meaning to our senses (when the cop shouts “put your hands up!” it’s generally benefical to understand the meaning in those vibrations), only that we should, whenever we want, be able to enjoy the pure sensations without impugning them with meanings – meanings that are generally meant to attack us personally.

Eckhart Tolle has spoken of the tendency we have to focus on narrative, on the “story of me”. As he says, it’s a sad story, that hasn’t worked out yet, usually because of other people or circumstances beyond my control. I’m the victim, see? As soon as the universe realizes how badly it’s treated me, and amends its ways, then and only then is there a chance of my story coming out well. Tolle talks about how this habit holds us back from happiness and enlightenment and prevents us from enjoying and living in the Now. However, cultural narrative and stories of victimhood have become part-and-parcel of mainstream American discourse here in 2019, to the point that other types of thinking and communication are shouted down and suppressed with violence.

The Apostle Paul urged us to return no man evil for evil. That concept has gone out the door. It’s now considered acceptable that if someone that looked vaguely like you injured someone that looked vaguely like me, even a couple centuries ago, I now have a claim to visit violence upon you, your children and community, basically until the end of time, as far as I can tell.

This is all very sad and disturbing. Shinzen Young details how the opposite of englightenment leads to pain, suffering, violence, and war. And American culture appears at the moment to be running as fast as it possibly can away from enlightenment. I fear for the future.