Why the Bible Ain't Tellin' Me So

The other day I read what I consider to be the best deconstruction of the entire foundation of Christian Faith by hard and fast science I have ever read.


The article, entitled "Evolution threatens Christianity", by Paula Kirby appeared in the Washington Post on Aug 24, 2011. In it, she pointed out several reasons why Christians are afraid of evolution in a no-nonsense, dispassionate, straight-forward and iron-clad manner. Like a round-world advocate in a flat-earth society, she proved beyond any doubt that the entire foundation of Christianity was not just flawed, but outright impossible.


She pointed out that science has these things called facts and that facts, no matter how hard they are to ignore (and no matter how many people choose to ignore them) can not be disproved. She even went into why a theory to a scientist (which is what a scientist would correctly call Darwinism, Mutation and other proven - but not all encompassing in and of themselves - forces influencing Evolution) is not something that is "theoretical". A layman may look at a theory as something which is untested and unexamined, like a plan yet to be implemented. To a scientist, that's called a hypothesis. When a scientist talks about a theory, that's something which is proven, has observable, repeatable data and has been subjected to intensive peer review for flaws, errors or inconsistencies. It doesn't have to be all encompassing, however. It only has to describe one aspect of a known fact in such a way that the aspect is described scientifically and is not refutable or able to be disproved.


To describe a scientific theory versus a layman's concept of a theory, Ms. Kirby used her own methods, which, I feel were a touch high-brow. So I'll provide my own way of explaining the difference.


We all know bridges exist. We see them every day. We cross over them. We go under them. They are a fact. A Bridge is defined as a structure creating a span between two or more points across which travel between those two or more points is comfortably possible. This way we all know what a bridge is defined as.


A theory of a bridge isn't so much what the bridge is made of, but the design of the bridge itself - why the bridge stays standing. In some cases it's a suspension bridge - the weight of the bridge being redirected by cables or ropes to a strong supporting area. In other cases it's a rope bridge, either planked or unplanked, which is little more than a couple of ropes stretched over a chasm, river or other obstruction. There are truss bridges, and flat bridges and arch bridges. All of them are bridges, as described, but each stays standing by a different Theory - or reason it's stays standing instead of collapsing. No single Theory describes every bridge - every reason that bridge stays standing. But each one can describe an aspect of what we have defined as a "Bridge".


The same goes for Evolution. We know it happens. We see it in the fossil record. We even see it happening in real time We have reasons explaining why it happens. Scientists call these reasons "Theories". No single theory explains everything we see happening in Evolution, but like with bridges and the reason they stay standing, it takes a number of theories (or reasons) to explain every reason evolution happens. Like trusses, suspension, arch and other theories explaining the ways bridges stand, Darwinism (Survival of the fittest or natural selection), mutation (random changes in genetic code to create a new attribute - whether advantageous or not) and other lesser-known theories all explain a part of why evolution happens. Using the term "theory" is scientifically correct, but to the layman makes it sound like there is some uncertainty about it. There isn't.


Getting back to the article, Ms. Kirby points all of this out in a more high-brow manner, but makes the same case. But she leaves out some background about Christianity which, I think, would have made a more eye-popping, "Holy crap!" case for most people.


First of all, there are those who take the Bible literally. That is, they say it explains and describes everything exactly as it happened. Then there are those who say it's apocryphal. It's a collection of parables intending us to lead a better life provided you follow the teachings of Jesus. But no matter how you slice it, there is one point of convergence for Christians and Christians in particular.


It's pretty clear, whether you believe in the literal interpretation or are a member of of the apocryphal crowd that the only reason the Old Testament exists is to set up the coming of the Christ - the Redeemer. But there's something else that's glossed over: The reason we need a redeemer in the first place. That reason is Original Sin.


All Christians believe that no man born of woman is sin-free. They are conceived in original sin, and are tainted with the sins of their fathers and their father's father and their father's father's father ad infinitum. In short, we're all born sinners. Why's that? Because of the fall of Adam and Eve - who both lived in "innocence" until the infamous Apple incident (which makes me wonder about Steve Jobs, the snake and Jobs' choice of logo, but that's another blog), after which they realized they were naked, and got busy. That was Original Sin. We needed the Redeemer to redeem Mankind from the taint of Original Sin arising from the Fall of Man. That Redeemer was Christ, and that is why Christians are called Christians: "Followers of Christ".


This is the foundation upon which ALL versions of Christianity stand. It is the bedrock upon which all Christian faith is built.


So we have the fact of evolution. It's undeniable. It's proven. Like gravity, you may want to ignore it, but like gravity, it's going to affect you even if you try to ignore it or deny it. And we have Christian faith built entirely on the foundation of Original Sin and the need for a Redeemer from that Sin.


Now, to quote Ms. Kirby's article:

"Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place. "

Thus falls Christianity.


Way back when, my first blog post was "The Simple Truth". It tried to explain the reason we have a spiritual side, the need for expressing spirituality, and a "better" way of addressing that need. Christianity is merely one way of addressing the need to express spirituality.


Christianity has taken on the aura of sacred over the years simply because it's been around for so long, but the fact is, it hasn't. It's changed many times, often radically. The First Church was Catholicism, and even that has changed quite a bit since the time of the founding of the papacy in Rome. (At first, priests were allowed to marry, and they had female priests - both allowances abolished by later popes). The schism that broke the Catholics was Martin Luther, creating the Protestant Church (The Lutheran Church was the first Protestant Church), which itself underwent multiple schisms as each society tried to reconcile the word of the Bible with the way they expressed their spirituality. But no matter how different their rituals were, or their administrative practices, or their costumes or their songs, they all had one thing in common: Belief in Christ as the Redeemer of Man for Original Sin.


The bottom line is Christianity can be disproved. The need to address one's spiritual side (assuming, of course, there IS a spiritual side - or any sort of afterlife) remains. Evolution isn't going to do it, nor will Christianity (and, by inference, all of the major religions since all major religions rely on biblical accounts of creation as part of the foundation of their mythology, though not to the extent Christians do). But with yet another major religion destroyed at the very root of its dogma, how many more will we have to go through before we stop putting our faith in gods and devils and start doing the work necessary to make our lives, and the lives of our kids and their kids and their kid's kids ad infinitum better?


The time will come when the Bible, the Torah and the Koran will be seen as nothing more than a mash-up of impossibilities, thoroughly discredited as paths of any kind of "enlightenment" and spiritual dead ends simply because they rely on invisible sky friends, and a strong, powerful central religious "government" which control their believers very thoughts. Science will prove them wrong about everything. When you have proof, faith is the casualty, and faith in impossible, disproved things will no longer be acceptable.


But with the utterly factual deconstruction of the foundation of Christianity, it's obvious that people will have to find better reasons to be nice to one another than because it's "What Jesus Would Do".

Is It Just Me, Or Is It Getting Hotter In Here? (Part Two)

When reviewing some of the posts I've made, I realized I've actually mentioned this one before but it bears repeating because it's getting more and more obvious it's happening: Global Warming.

Everyone has an opinion about it and most of those opinions are wrong mostly because of self-imposed ignorance. If you want to be enlightened, read on. If not, well, Ron White was right: You can't fix stupid.

Trying to explain Global Warming's nuances is like trying to explain covalent bonds to a first grader. It can be done, but you need some background first and we need to use small words.

The background:

First of all, let's talk about what global warming means. It means a change in the climate so that things get warmer overall. There is also a difference between weather and climate. The short version is that climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Weather is the day to day stuff you encounter. Heat waves, cold fronts, storms, rain, snow, sleet, fog, etc. It's what you look for in a weatherman's forecast. When you ask "how hot is it?", you're asking about the weather. A day's weather usually has little to do with the climate of a place since it has more differences than what one would expect from the climate of a place. If you go to the desert and have it rain on you (As happens everywhere at some time), you don't think the climate of the desert is changing. It was just a freak weather pattern.

In defining a climate, there are two major ways of doing this. The first is to record the weather over a long period of time and average it over the years. The second is to try to figure out what the climate was like from things like ice layers, tree-rings and soil samples. We've gotten rather good at this, so we have a pretty good picture of what the climate was and is. What we are less clear about is what all the things that can effect it are and exactly what kind of effect those things may have on the climate.

In taking the two together, any one place, on average, has a certain kind of weather which, on any given day, may not be what the "average weather pattern" (which is to say the climate) would normally be. One can use the two ways of figuring out what the climate of a place was to see how that climate has or hasn't changed over a long period of time. It takes a lot of changes in weather to make a small change a climate.

Another thing to keep in mind is that science doesn't usually have certain answers. It has theories which are what we think is going on or how something works. The theory of evolution is often used by the ignorant, uneducated and stupid to prove that science is somehow uncertain about the fact of evolution. This is not the case. Evolution is an established fact. Just as one can determine the climate of a place by study, one can determine that evolution happens. The theories are why they happen. In evolution's case, there's Darwinism, (Survival of the fittest), mutation and others. Each one explains evolution in part but no single one of them explains it in whole. Put them all together and you have a pretty clear picture that there are a lot of things that make evolution happen.

The same goes for climate change. We can see the climate changing. Glaciers are retreating at a pace never before seen in modern history. The polar ice caps are melting more and faster than ever recorded in the last million years. The seas are rising faster than at any other time known to man. Plants and animals are dying off or migrating to new places where they've never been found before. Drought is hitting places which normally saw good rainfall while other places that were normally dry are seeing record rainfall. This isn't just a local thing. It's global. And the indications are that it's been getting hotter around the world for the last fifty or sixty years, but really getting hot over about the last 20. For whatever reason, global warming is a FACT.

(Note to you pseudo-science geeks: Yes, there are variations, but we're looking at the overall trend here. Stop nit picking the trees while the forest is on fire.)

Way back in the 1970's the word was "Ice Age" and the thought was that, according to historic trends and cycles, we should be getting a colder planet. What science we knew of at the time - at least popularly speaking - seemed to support this conclusion. But science doesn't sit still when it comes to observable facts. Unlike religion which can afford to be dogmatic and unyielding regardless of whatever nonsense it says is "true", science must always fit the facts and the facts, even then, indicated there was a flaw in the "soon to come ice age" conclusion. It wasn't widely known back then, but several climatic scientists were noticing that if the ice age was going to arrive on time, it was going to have to get a lot colder a lot faster than it was actually doing because instead of getting colder, it looked like things were really getting warmer.

But it wasn't a LOT warmer, so not a lot was said about it at the time. There are minor variations in climate over the years - cycles were very big back then because they tended to explain the periodic ice ages the Earth has experienced over the last 250,000 years or so. WHY these cycles happened wasn't really known. The theories were a longer-term cycle in the sun's activity (brightness, heat, solar storms, etc,), shifts in the planet's axis, continental drift or even differences in how the heat and light of the sun hit the earth as the solar system traveled around the galaxy.

But it takes 250 million years for the earth to orbit around the galaxy, and the changes in climate couldn't be explained on that time frame. The cycles of the sun could be measured by the traces of solar particles embedded in ice and soil over the eons. As technology improved, and global weather patterns could be modeled on computers, climate changes could be better predicted and traced.

The current reason given for ice ages is the way the earth's orbit of the sun varies in regular cycles. Called the Milankovitch cycles, it basically alters the amount of radiant energy (heat) that hits the northern hemisphere (where the greatest amount of land is at this point in Earth's life). As the cycle occurs, the amount of heat hitting the northern hemisphere changes, going up and down over the cycle. The more that hits it, the hotter it gets and the ice retreats. The less that hits it, the less the ice melts in the summer, and the more ice there is overall.

The earth's landmasses have moved around a lot which is why ice ages haven't been happening all along. Most of the last 600,000,000 years, the climate of the Earth has been a lot warmer than it is today. The next ice age is due in around 30,000 years, according to the Milankovitch cycles.

Now, since the 1970's, as has been pointed out, science has developed much better tools with which to examine our planet. This is why there's a major discrepancy between climate thought 40 years ago and today.

One of those "discoveries" made during that time is how different natural gasses effect climate. Methane, water vapor (yes, that's a gas), carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and a host of others play a significant role in how warm or cold our planet can become. Methane tops the list in warming gasses. It's about 25-33 times more "warming" than the currently talked about carbon-based gasses (CO2 and CO). Fortunately, there's not a lot of methane in the air or things would be a lot hotter. (I won't go into the Methane Hydrate thing here, though it can have a catastrophic warming effect on the planet and is becoming an increasing concern as things heat up overall.)

And in those discoveries was the amount of gasses that are not naturally occurring - man made gasses - which seem to have risen in pretty much the same way the planet was apparently heating up. It was an apparent cause and effect link between the two. It appears (and still does) that man-made pollutants (those gasses that man has pumped into the atmosphere) can and have caused the earth to start to get warmer on a planetary scale.

Now, the Earth is a complex place. It has a lot of natural things that happen to it in ways that aren't always fully understood. Like I said, science doesn't always give an exact or precise answer to questions about what's going on with our universe or even our little piece of universe.

Is mankind causing global warming?

The definitive answer is: We don't know. The scientific answer is, "We think so, but we're not 100% positive."

The whole point is that IT IS HAPPENING. Whether or not greenhouse gasses (the gasses that make the planet get hotter) are the cause, warming is happening, whether because of natural causes or not. Is man responsible? Science says "Probably", but like the theories of evolution, no one "theory" explains everything.

But the bottom line is that global warming is happening and that, regardless of the cause, adding more and more of the ingredients which WILL increase the heat - the speed at which our planet gets hotter - isn't very bright on our part.

Let's face it, even if the gas didn't start the house on fire, throwing more of it on the fire isn't going to help put the fire out. It will have the opposite effect.

So them's the facts about Global Warming. Let's now look at how those facts have been used.

We'll start with the left of the political spectrum: The tree huggers. It would seem these people would be happy if mankind were to disappear and leave Mother Earth alone. The truth of the matter is that they just want mankind to live "in harmony" with the Earth. That would be fine if we knew how to do that in the first place. We don't. There is no formula for it. There are no societies on the face of the planet that do. The best we can hope to do is to reduce our impact on the planet as much as is reasonably possible and settle for that.

The left side has taken the global warming issue, the correlation (The close relationship) between man-made pollutants and the rise in global temperatures as a clarion call proving that man's impact on the planet is bad and that we all have to go back to eating vegetables and living in communes or some terribly impractical thing like that.

But, as usual, it is the right side that has caused the most harm. They are the side which supports the status quo (remember, conservatives do NOT like change, and global warming is also known as "Climate Change"). This means they don't want anything to change. They want us to continue to buy gas, gas guzzlers and eat cows until we explode. Or something like that. The point is they have gone out of their way to discredit the link between man-made greenhouse gasses and global warming. They have hired "scientists" (another word for them are educated, paid actors) to say that mankind has had no impact on global warming. Some even go so far as to say mankind can do nothing about global warming because it's all entirely a natural phenomenon, so eat, drink and be merry, and, oh, yeah, fill up your car and buy oil products.

They both miss the point.

Global warming is a FACT. Like Evolution is happening, the planet IS getting hotter. The evidence for this is undeniable. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF MANKIND CAUSED IT OR NOT, YOU DON"T THROW GASOLINE ON A FIRE TO PUT IT OUT!

Oil is a limited natural resource. Coal is an extremely polluting one. Both produce gigatons of carbon gasses per year due to man-made machinery. Both have a heavily negative impact on our environment and the people, plants and animals therein. Oil is produced by many middle eastern nations which overtly or covertly support or tolerate terrorism and oil proceeds often are used to fund terrorism. Big Oil hired fake scientists to prove mankind isn't the cause of global warming, but no amount of fakery can disprove the fact that man-made pollutants, like gas on a fire, cause an increase in retained atmospheric heat.

The bottom line is Big Oil wants to protect itself from losing money due to more efficient, cleaner ways to produce energy. They will say that destroying Big Oil and the things that go with it will destroy the world's economy - and with the world's economy already in the toilet, now is not the time to be looking to other things to use for energy production.

Well, I dispute that completely. The fact is, now IS the time to be looking to new things. Obviously, the status quo sucks. We need a change and clean energy is the way to do it.

I don't expect any one thing to become the "new energy" of the future like oil has been up to now. There are too many different ways of producing clean energy for us to focus on one to the exclusion of all. Big Oil has gone out of its way to discredit each individual method (too expensive, too impractical for one area or another, etc), but taken together, they can actually do the job. Big Oil has ONE commodity: Oil. Energy production tends to focus on coal as a catch-all means of energy production.

Energy production isn't limited to one method, folks. But in order to produce cleaner energy, we need to get away from the "one means fits all" mentality the energy producers in the world are saying is our only option.

As for the economic impact, let's look at this like businessmen. You have an established business that performs it's role, but is extremely polluting, increasingly expensive, often unreliable, limited in what they can produce in total and inherently dangerous in that it increases the amount of global warming the planet is experiencing. It's an extremely profitable business, but if we destroy the planet in the process of running the business (or make it so miserable, millions, if not billions, of people will perish), there won't be a planet in which to spend the profits.

(Yes, there are people who are that short-sighted as to not care that this will happen).

But from a business point of view, these detriments of Big Energy are actually a business opportunity. There is a need for a clean, renewable way to produce energy for our modern society. Further, that "way" doesn't have to be limited to a single method, but can be tailored for a region if there is a particular thing about that region which lends itself to energy production. Even within that region, there's no reason to limit energy production to one particular, regionally advantageous method.

When it comes to green-tech, there's no limit, which means the opportunities for business investment and return on that investment are equally limitless. The economic boost to creating an entirely new branch of industry (Green tech in all its forms) can be what drives the economic recovery we so desperately need. All we need are enough people of vision to see that cleaving to the past will not address the future.

We need new ways to deal with global warming - new technologies that can cope with a changing climate and new ways to reduce the impact global warming will have on us. Green tech in all its variations is the way to go. Create a new industry to replace the moribund and ultimately dead-end way we deal with energy production now.

Global warming is happening. The economy sucks. In combating the former, we can fix the problems with the latter and, maybe, help make a planet that, even if it's going to be warmer, will be cleaner for all of us to live on.

The Necessary Demise of the Free Market

One of the views I tend to hold regarding economic models is often cited (when such things are cited) as why some folks believe I'm a screaming liberal. This conservatively offensive view is that a free-market economy is doomed to fail.


In essence, a free market economy is where businesses compete openly for customers without much (if any) regulatory control. Supposedly with its own built-in checks and balances it is thought (erroneously, as it happens) that the market is self-stabilizing and that any necessary corrections for imbalances will happen automatically by enlightened captains of industry and finance because it's for the good of the market. Yes, people actually believe this nonsense. But the flaws in this thinking were highlighted all too glaringly when the flaws in the free market model destroyed the world economy two years ago, the effects of which are still being felt today.


On paper, it DOES work. Then again, so do all pie-in-the-sky economic models. Paper isn't human and the human factor is why they all fail. In fact, there's only ONE human factor involved in all economic models which causes them to fail: Greed.


Dress it up howsoever you want, but greed is the nexus that breaks all economic models tried so far. Greed drives people to better themselves economically (keeping up with the neighbors' acquisition of "things", getting a better job to buy the things that mark one's status in society). No economic model so far created has ever adequately taken human greed into account.


Communism fails because people aren't interested in the greatest good for the greatest number. They are looking out for number one - themselves. Socialism fails because if you satisfy the needs of the people without requiring the people to work, the people won't work. After all, why bother? And with capitalism, if you are a have, you only want more, to the expense of the have-nots. And you will do everything you can to keep the have nots from becoming haves.

These economic theories all fail to take into account human greed.


Now, one could say we need to change as human beings, and I couldn't agree more, but realistically, that ain't gonna happen anytime in the next thousand years. Mankind is still too close to his animal roots to know when he has "enough" and that more than that is too much, not a good thing and can lead to disaster. Unfortunately, we live on a planet where the resources are limited and when one person has more than enough, it's inevitable that others don't have "enough".


So the trick here is to acknowledge greed as a driving force, but to place breaks on it so that when one has enough, they strive to be satisfied with that. All the while you have to provide incentive to continue to excel, so a reward system has to be in place for the go-getters and the doers which doesn't necessarily result in tangible rewards, but in rewards which are satisfying enough to seek none the less.


This is probably an impossible task on paper, and let's face it, there are people out there who will defy all attempts to plug them into any economic model.


So instead of inventing a new one, let's look at modifying one that is somewhat more successful in acknowledging greed: Capitalism.


The problem with capitalism is that people don't acknowledge when enough is enough. I'm not saying that everyone should have a yacht in their back yards. After all some people just aren't that motivated. Nor am I talking entitlements. Those who can't work at a conventional job should have some kind of task they can perform for an income. Regardless of one's ability, employment of some kind - even if it's just to do the work of living - by everyone is vital to the revised capitalist economic model. Everyone should have an income based on their own efforts at earning one even if it isn't derived from a standard "job".


The next thing you do is cap income and profits. There are people out there making obscene amounts of money just because their companies make obscene amounts of money. Profits should be capped at a percentage plus inflation (Say what a US savings bond would earn in total back when US Savings bonds were worth buying). Since inflation varies, call it inflation plus 15% just as an example. The idea is to target the most egregious profit mongering, not to retard the average business's incentive to earn income. It's important to note that profits are what's left over after all research and development has been done, everything's been paid and all is good and right with the company.


The excess should be funneled into building roads, schools, new infrastructure and other civil projects which require vast amounts of money no one seems willing to spend on these days.


Now, greed would ask once a company has made X amount of money above their expenses and maxed out their profits, why would they bother working any harder? After all, they can't earn any more. What's the point of continuing to push?


That's where the trick comes in. They HAVE to work harder to MAINTAIN those profits, because if they do two years in a row, the next year their profit cap is allowed to increase by enough to make the effort worth it. If they fail to meet that cap, it's maintained at the higher level, but not raised. If they fail two years in a row to reach that cap, their cap is lowered again.


This way, there is more incentive to improve profits than there are penalties for not profiting, but they're always capped.


You do this for people, too, albeit in a slightly different fashion. Income is capped at a high, but not obscenely high level. Whatever pays for government, infrastructure, education, defense and the things that taxes help pay for would be the cut off the top and the rest would be used as the way to figure the cap. An example of this would be to take the average of the actual income (before taxes) of working Americans, multiply that by 10 (or whatever number is appropriate to allow for a lot of worker bees and not so many queens based on the boss-to-worker ratio averaged over the last 10 years or something like that) and call that the income cap. More knowledgeable people than I can work it out.


Income is all actual funds gained in a year from all sources - Profits on property and personal belonging sales, inheritance, expenses that are reimbursed above actual costs, sales of stocks, etc.


Now before I go on, a word on inheritance. Inheritance is a time-honored tradition whereby someone gets someone else's stuff when that someone else dies. You can't take it with you, after all. Unfortunately, there are people out there who leech off their rich parents (or husbands/wives) who are pretty much wastes of sperm in the first place and have never really worked a day in their lives.


So here's how it would work: For those who stand to inherit anything in excess of the annual income cap, there are consequences. All monetary assets would be placed in a trust. All property assets would be allowed to transfer to the beneficiary. If the beneficiary liquidates any of that property at any time during the beneficiary's life, those assets would also go into the same trust. The idea here is to limit income to the personal cap per year using the funds in this trust. If a person continues to keep the property, it isn't considered income. A cherished family home can be passed from generation to generation without tax or penalty.

The trust into which liquid assets and the proceeds of inherited property sales are placed would be passed on to the next of kin upon the death of the beneficiary who inherited the trust in the first place.


After all, property is NOT income. It may have a great deal of value, but unless you sell it - and at a profit - that value is virtual rather than actual and it's only valued at the profit for which it was sold. Yes, it can be used as collateral, but then a business receiving the property in the event of a default wouldn't be allowed to keep the income from it if that income made the lender's profits exceed the cap.


A little on this property as income thing. The government considers property sales as "income". It does not consider the purchase of property a "loss". So you end up paying taxes on property you sell regardless of whether you make a profit on it or not. The income cap says you can only make X amount per year in actual cash. Property purchases are NOT deducted from your income, but if you sell it at a loss, you don't exceed the cap in income provided the sale is in the same year as the purchase. If it is, and you have the receipt from the purchase you're covered. If it isn't, then it's income for that year. If you get more than you paid for it, it's income for that year. A simple-enough concept to follow. People could "save" by purchasing property with their income while they are working and augment their income by selling it when they're not, or are working for less. As long as they don't exceed the cap for that year, they can keep all proceeds from property sales. Income would be based on money actually received between January 1st and December 31st for one calendar year.


The funds in the trust may be donated to non-profit organizations which provide for the public good, to venture capitalists who have not exceeded their profit cap, to non-profit medical research for incurable diseases and to other causes which promote good things for everyone rather than just a few.


Of course, this issue will have their detractors. After all, men of industry who are "worth" billions of dollars might take exception to cutting their kids/spouse down to "only" the maximum income per year, but if they still have homes whose maintenance alone exceeds the personal income cap, finding a supermarket from which to buy food would be problematic for someone whose income is capped.


I say, "Tough." If you have so much that ten million dollars a year isn't enough to cover your expenses, you have too much. Part of that "more than enough" stuff. I say liquidate the excess, keep the heirlooms and sentimental stuff and live off the trust fund if you're not making the max per year.


What this will do is get those outrageously over-the-top mansions for one person and a staff of fifty off the market entirely in a generation. They'll be torn down and turned into housing which someone making ten million a year can afford, instead. It's not exactly spreading the wealth to everyone, but it is putting a halt to egregiously "more than enough" living.


Now, back to incomes...


The personal income cap is problematic for the simple reason that once a person hits it, they tend to slack off. This means you have to keep them at it and motivated or the slackers of the world will unite. The first thing you do is monitor their performance. If they don't perform like they did in getting to the top, you don't pay them as much and they don't earn the cap. This makes salaries tied to performance.


What is "performance"? In essence, performance is doing what is expected of them for the company. It is "average". They are meeting all job requirements and fulfilling all necessary expectations. Someone may bust their ass to get to the top, then just coast. That's their right. But if their performance drops, they get less income for it.


Now, there are people who are highly motivated and want to be rewarded for a better than just an "average" performance. This is not an unreasonable demand. Performing above and beyond the call of duty must be rewarded and there are many ways of doing this that don't necessarily involve raising the cap, primarily through peer recognition and acclaim.


I fall back to the military in this aspect by creating levels of rewards for consistently high performance. You CAN reach the cap by being average in a vital field. But to go beyond that, you must maintain a higher than average level of performance for a long duration. One starts with special recognition for a couple of years. And then one starts increasing the cap, along with the special recognition. Once the cap starts being raised, the performance must INCREASE to get it to go higher again, all the way up to doubling their personal cap in $500,000.00 increments per year. Their annual evaluations will be filed with the IRS and they'll be allowed to earn based on their performance rating and years of service with a particular company.


Now, of course, not everyone is going to make it to that cap. That's fine. The cap is in place to decapitate the wealthiest and spread the wealth.


Oh, I believe I failed to mention that income, corporate and sales taxes would be abolished. In fact, all funding fees (those which are in place strictly to fund projects and programs) would be abolished as well. The government would be financed by the money that would have been paid to people who earn more than ten million a year, plus the excess profits companies make. To highlight how effective this would be, the wealthiest 10% of the country makes something like 60%-70% of the income. That leaves about 30%-40% of total income in the US to be spread among the remaining 90% of the population. There is MORE than enough money coming in to run the government, and all programs currently funded, with plenty left over for a rainy day.


The income and profit cap would also be tied to the amount of money coming into the coffers of the state, so that if more is coming in, the cap would be raised and if less was coming in, the cap would be lowered.


Keep in mind, also, that $10,000,000.00 is a hell of a lot of money for one person for one year. I used it as an example. It could be set at 5 million dollars or 1 million. How much money does one person need, after all? If they're married, the combined income would be maxed at 10 million, and 2 live cheaper than one, so it's not like anyone would be enduring any hardship. The point is there needs to be a cap that reduces the gap between the haves and the have nots. - whatever that gap turns out to be. At least 25% of the total income earned should be used to pay for government, infrastructure, social programs like education, school construction, assistance and such. Whatever is left over should be averaged for the total working population, multiplied by ten and set as the cap. The concept of "per capita" income is a fail since it relies on income reported in tax forms, including things like property values and such. They are often reported after deductions, and are not necessarily all actual income.


I don't think the average income earner would complain about this concept of mine since you get to keep all of what you earn. I also don't think too many people would be affected by the "I'm not getting enough so I'm not doing anything more" syndrome. It also provides for checks and balances for slackers.


In the end, it would be a relatively simple system to understand, if not necessarily implement.


Now, this is a "detailed plan". The concept here is to reduce the amount of earnings or profit one person or company can make on average, but still allow for the greed, "I want more" incentive. Additionally, it creates an environment where government is less intrusive (and better funded), simplifies the tax structure, helps reduce the gap between the haves and the have nots, allows someone to rise to their level of "enough" and still allows for incentive and growth. What I've detailed may have fundamental flaws, but they're merely a suggestion in trying to implement the concept. Someone with more knowledge of human nature and economic theory may have better luck.


The on-going increase in the gap between the haves and have nots is the widest it's been in history, and it's getting substantially wider. In times of relative prosperity for all, the masses aren't terribly motivated to correct this gap. Their levels of greed have been mostly accommodated. However, in times of economic crisis and recession (such as now - thanks to a government run mostly by men and women who are in that top 10% of income earners), the masses are much more critical of the fact they are getting less, while the wealthy aren't getting any less, and are, in fact, getting even more. This has a much greater potential for the outbreak of social unrest. It's happened before - many times - in human history. There's no reason to believe it won't happen again.


The sad part is that social unrest, revolution, whatever you want to call it, may be the only way to initiate this new economic model. I don't see billionaires divesting themselves of their wealth to help reduce the rising social tensions over the wealth gap anytime soon. Nor do I see investors and captains of industry willingly giving up their profits above and beyond "enough". But when the masses rise up, crying "Enough!" and tear it all down, then, maybe, some bright boy or girl will see the flaws in the capitalist economic model and finally do something to prevent such an egregiously huge gap from ever forming again.


And that cry of "Enough!" may come sooner than later.