Author: purplesage41

Economist, theologian, public policy writer and advocate.

Let Me See

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments


I am a member of the silent generation. I think we World War II babies just got lumped into the Silent Generation, because we weren’t so silent. We were in college in the sixties along with the first batch of the Boomers, and we did our share of protesting and demonstrating. As we grew older, the challenges we were addressing didn’t get much response until those challenges started hitting the Boomers. Birth control. Menopause. The glass ceiling. Equal pay for equal work.(Yes, I’m sure the guys had issues, but gender issues were petty hot in those days.I can only speak for my own gender on health issues!),
For the past ten years, as my ability to read the fine print or thread a needle or see well enough to drive at night has diminished, there was no response from the larger society adapting to our needs. But now that the Boomers are having the same challenges (both genders, except maybe the needle part), perhaps we will see some awareness that changes are overdue.
Here is my list of grievances around which I wish to peaceably assemble (during daytime hours) and seek redress as I am promised by the First Amendment. Well, it promises I can complain. It doesn’t say anything about fixing things.

  1. Low contrast signs, pictures, etc. My congregation has a lovely tasteful sign outside. It is painted beige with white lettering. Most people can’t read it, not just old people, but sharper contrast does keep us reading longer. Hey guys, if you are looking for patrons or customers or employees, consider the legibility of your signage.
  2. Shrinking print size on everything from cooking instructions of foods to operating manuals to instructions of taking medicines, both prescription and over the counter. In case you haven’t noticed, those people with deteriorating eyesight are among your biggest customers.
  3. Night driving, night meetings, SUV headlights string at us directly in our smaller, low to the ground vehicles. I know that big hulking SUVs are already not designed with consideration for those who share the remaining space of the road, but car designers and insurance companies might have an interest in headline design that cause episodes of blindness in oncoming drivers. And voluntary organizations might want to consider offering more daytime gatherings, events, etc. for that age group who are often the bulk of their market. Matinees. 5 pm meeting instead of 7ish. It’s not just the night driving, it’s also a tendency among my fellow octogenarians and their trailing septuagenarian Boomers to feel their energy droop at the end of the workday or former workday. I have seen some signs of awareness of time-of-day issues in scheduling events, but it’s only a trickle so far.
    Is this a government issue? Maybe the car safety and the print size on drugs. But shouldn’t the market be responding to consumers? Is there any competition left? Instead of big meals or big Macs or big bargains how about offering customers or members big signs (with contrast) and big print?
    Oh, for the golden days of my youth when I did battle to allow girls to wear Bermuda shorts on campus and protested the war in Vietnam. I know I should be saving the earth and making it safe for democracy, and I do my best, but I could do better if I could drive safely at night and read the fine print.

Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

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Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.

All Saints Day

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

We, the living, are keepers of the memories

of those who came before

We all had parents, teachers, siblings, friends

Who are no longer present

But will live on as long

as we remember them.

We share the memories of good people

Who made a diffeer3nce in our common life

Great men and women whose prophetic voices

Called all back into covenant

With earth and fellow humans

and all living things..

Remembrance is our yearly payment

on the debt we owe

to those who blazed the path

on which we tread.

.

Hallowe’en Nostalgia

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The darkness begins

The faces of carved pumpkins

glow from lighted candles.

Children ring the neighbor’s doorbell,

costumed, in search of treats.

Or so it once was.

Today this holiday is sanitized for “safety.”

Fear of the dark is banished

by noisy crowds on sugar highs

costumed not as ghosts and devils

but TV characters and superheroes..

Without the fear and mystery of darkness

Without the silence in which to hear

the voice of nature once again

How can we claim our rightful role

As partners, not overlords

Of the turning earth?

To Endorse, or not to Endorse

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Both the Washington Post and the LA Times refused to endorse a candidate in the current presidential election.  I don’t know much about the Times, but I have been a faithful subscriber to the Washington Post ever since it became available online. I like their games, their news coverage, their columnist. Their owner’s cowardice, not so much.

Jeff Bezos is a bottom-line kind of guy.  He knows that Harris is the only person fit to serve in this office. If he doesn’t know that, he’s too dumb to own a major newspaper, and I don’t think that’s the case. It’s a matter of pure self-interest.  If Harris is elected, she will not take it out on him because—unlike Trump—she is a fully functioning adult. She doesn’t suffer from toxic masculinity. If Trump is elected, he will make sure that Bezos pays for his failure to make the Nazi salute.

Unbridled capitalism is a recipe for societal disaster.

Saving Social Security

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There are a lot of small steps that could be taken to save Social Security.  Raising the retirement age is not such a hot idea. It penalizes workers who work in more strenuous and low wage jobs, often accompanied by lower life expectancy. It assumes that all potential retirees ae equally able to continue working even if they are in declining health (but not bad enough to qualify for disability). 

Let’s explore a couple of options that would shift more of the cost to those who need Social Security least. First, remove or at least greatly increase the cap on how much of your wages and salary are subject to social security taxes.  Second, put a cap on the amount of your income that is counted toward determining your benefits.  And finally, rethink the COLA.

The first two are not complicated.  There has always been a cap on the amount of earnings that are taxed, although there is no good reason for it. Higher income workers often have additional non-wage, non-salary income that is only subject to ordinary income tax, not Social Security taxes.  Average workers seldom do. Those who don’t work at all but live off their income from capital don’t contribute anything. Whatever happened to the social part of Social Security, which suggests we are all in this together?

For 2024, that cap on social security taxes is set at a wage and salary income of $168,600, adjusted each year based on the percentage increase in average wages. I don’t see any particular need for a cap, other than lobbyists for wealthier citizens appearing to have the ear of Congress. But if there is a cap, it should be set at something like 80th percentile of wage and salary income. (That’s the amount that has 80% making less and 20% making more.)  That way, when people get outrageous salaries for heading a nonprofit, a corporation, a university, or a football program, they will be carrying a fairer share of the cost of keeping our old folks out of poverty.

We don’t want the very wealthy to get more benefits just because they increase their contributions, so the wage /salary base used to compute the monthly check should be capped at some at something like the 60th percentile of the individual’s average wage and salary income used to determine benefits.

Lastly, the COLA or cost of living adjustment , which is based on the inflation rate for the 12 months ending the previous June 30th.  COLAs are a great engine of inequality.  In South Carolina, pension reform a decade ago included a cap on increases..  We state retirees get a one percent increase every year regardless of actual inflation, but there is a cap is of $500. That’s one percent of $50,000. Any pension greater than that gets the same $500 a year raise.

Think about it.  Jane’s Social security benefit check is $2,000, just a shade above the average of $1907.  average, about $1900.  Dick’s check is the maximum of $4873, which we will round down to $4800 for easy calculation. . Both must contend with higher prices for housing, groceries, and insurance. This year’s 2.5% COLA gives Jane $50 more a month while Dick gets an extra $120.  The percentage gap between their incomes is unchanged, but percentages don’t pay the electric bill. The dollar gap has risen from $2800 to $2870, and that gap grows year after year.A cap on the COLA like South Carolina’s (about $5 a month) would be more equalizing. Or setting the cap at the COLA percentage of the average benefit and give that to everyone, which would do ven more fot those at the bottom of the scale. Let’s think creatively here!

After we survive the election, let’s go back to thinking about how a civilized society that believes in fairness would shore up Social Security with more revenue and slower growth of overall benefit, with the scales tipped toward the lower half of the income spectrum.  And January is not too soon to get started. We can call it The Other Project 2025.

Voting Matters

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There is a meanness in our world

Driven by lust for power, greed for wealth,

Is life a zero sum game

Which we can only win when others lose?

Collaboration, once an honored act

Now seen as sleeping with the enemy.

This pettiness is armed

With powers of destruction and confusion

Never known before.

Technology weaponized in the media

Can destroy social networks

A nuclear blast to the web of community.

Where is the yellow brick road

To lead us through the evil wood

into a world of peace and harmony?

Elections matter.

Five Pieces a Day

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My mother was not a very good housekeeper or cook, but she did pass on some interesting habits. A fine seamstress, she was attched to the care of fabrics, and one of her passions was that everything–even my brother’s underwear–should be ironed.. That was a lot of ironing for a family of four, especially when you had to sprinkle the clothes and heat the iron on the stove. (Eventually she was able to afford a steam iron.)

Facied with this perpetual task, she committed herself to ironing five pieces of ironing a day. She probably had a similar way of dealing with other repetitive tasks, but that is the one I remember. When she would visit my brother after he married and moved away with his wife who hated to iron, our mother would tackle the ironing basket and perhaps exceed her daily quota,

I carry that habit into my daily life, and it has served me well. Faced with readinga 500 page book, I assign myself 25 or more pages a day. I set a goal for how much to write in a day, or walk,. When I co-authored a book with my friend Fran on downsizing and decluttering, I picked up a similar household maanagement trick from her. set a task, any task.. Organizing the kitchen drawers. Cleaning the pantry shelves. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and keep working at the task until the timer dings. Whether it is five pieces or fifteen minutes, breaking down a very large challenge to a manageable series if pieces is a very helpful, very effective way of getting things done.

I was reminded of my mother and my friend Fran this week as I worked on sending postcards to voters in rural North Carolina, There were cards to address, add a stamp on the front and a sticker in the middle of the back, , writing the message in multiple colors of ink. It was a very tedious task for the 60 postcards I had taken as my share while recruiting friends to do the rest of our 200. I broke the task down to various parts–address, stamp and sticker, followed by writing theteext as instructed in various pen colors, one color at a time. First step was the address and stamp and Dear Mr/Ms blank on the other. Break. Later in the day , or the next day, same twenty cards with a line iin a the top iand another halfway down with blue pen. Third installment, perhaps in the evening, or the next day, 20 cards with a second line and a fifth line in red. Final installment, finish with the purple pen..

My mother’s way stuck with me through years of grading papers, writing textbooks, preparing letures. I would grade one question at a time on all the papers so they were each held to the same standard. And take a break in between. As I started my own home downsizing project 12 years ago, I was faced with 5000 slides in carousels to sort through. I did two carousels each night, until I had reduced the stash from 5000 to 1000, and could send the survivors off to be digitized.

Occasionallhy, I rebel. This spring I was watching The West Wing (I somehow missed it in its original airing), IObe eouside a day, That worked for the first six seasons,, but my the seventhseasn I started binge watching to see howw ended. The value of self-discilpline does have limitations !

Five pieces a day was one of the must useful lessons I learned from my mother. What useful habit did your mother install in you?

.

What are your ‘isms?”

~ purplesage41 ~ 4 Comments

When I was in college, back in ancient times (the early 1960s), I was an economics major.  One of the most popular courses was called comparative economic systems—communism, socialism, capitalism. Despite the then-recent history of World War II, we did not discuss fascism, which is another form of economic governance, a governing structure based on an alliance of industry and authoritarian control.  Today capitalism seems to have triumphed, although triumph always reveals the greatest flaws of the victor. Socialism, communism, and fascism are thrown around indiscriminately in public dialogue as objects of scorn.

There are lot of other kinds of isms out there, some not as easily adopted or hurled as identifiers. Schools of art—-Cubism, impressionism, romanticism.  Prejudice also has isms—racism, sexism, ableism, and to borrow an “ism “from Spanish, machismo. But the ones that I am focused on here are those that reflect a positive world view, The way we  choose to experience, process, and participate in the world around us.  Those ”isms”  come from religion, philosophy, and personal experience.

Most but not all religions end in ism, from paganism to Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and animism.  (Look that one up if you need to.)  Exceptions are two of the world’s most popular religions, Islam and Christianity. Although some of their subsets are described is isms. (Sufism, Wahhabism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Methodism, etc.). This usage of “ism” is more what I have come to think of as a category, a set of shared beliefs or values as well as rituals, holidays, and practices. My own chosen faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism (at one time before merging, Unitarianism and Universalism) is grounded in shared values and rituals. I started down that path by embracing the heresy of Arianism, the early Christian doctrine denying the trinity.

After much soul searching, I have concluded that my values and my actions, my vocation and my worldview partake of three positive isms. (Meaning that they would always be used, at least by me, and an affirmation or compliment and never as an insult or criticism.)

The first one that entered my life, as It does for many of us, was mysticism—a sense of reverence, awe and wonder, of the presence of the holy in and around us. That experience can come through traditional religion, private spirituality, or the natural world. Of my three, this one is probably the most universal.

The second “ism” began to form in late adolescence as I rejected the standard options for careers for women–ideally, a homemaker and mother, but possibly a nurse, teacher, or secretary. My feminist self took shape and form as new options opened up with Sputnik, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem. As I left my home town, intending never to return, I echoed the words of Miranda in The Tempest, “Oh, breve new world, that has such people in it!.” College was an invitation to rethink everything I believed, thought, or was taught.  I became a Democrat, an economist, and an academic. When my beloved husband (also a feminist) and I were blessed with three girls we had a good opportunity to pass on our feminist values, which they have lived with far more sense o discovery than I did. Also became deeply involved in the League of Women Voters, found feminist heroines to admire (including a great-grandmother who marched for women’s suffrage).  Over time, I built friendships and communities among women that have sustained me over my very long life as a feminist.  Feminism is not sexism, which would discriminate against men as a class. It is an affirmation of both quality and uniqueness, and a commitment to support future generations to preserve, protect and defend our equality and our specialness..

When I went off to college, having begun my long embrace of feminism, I intended to be an engineer.  There I discovered a third -ism, utilitarianism.  Utilitarianism is one several ethical schools in philosophy, one that is easily summed up as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” It is the foundation of economics as an academic and policy discipline, and it was there that I found my vocational home as a mystic feminist utilitarian. I caution that in my view and that of many of my fellow economists, utilitarianism is more suited to be a guide to how to govern a city, state country, or community than for individual and household/family behavior. In the family I tried to be a good Marxist– ’’from each according to her abilities, to each according to her needs.”

In my retirement years, I discovered that I had over the years adopted without realizing it a personal philosophy of stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that is often lightly summarized by the prayer associated with Alcoholics Anonymous—the courage to change the things you can change the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Stoicism requires daily practice and reflection on your interactions with others  It is well worth the effort.

I am ready to order my customized T-shirt, regretfully leaving off my beloved utilitarianism as a public and not a private ism. Here is what it says:

I believe in

Mysticism

Feminism

Stoicism

How about you?