A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Bear with me for a second here. Earlier this year, I read a book I very much enjoyed, Born to Run by Chris McDougall. In it, among many, many other things he mentions the beneficial aspects of chia seeds which the Tarahumara Indians of the Copper Canyon region of Mexico eat and which, apparently, assist with their ability to run insane distances without a great deal of injury. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law came for a visit, and she brought some chia seeds. (Yes, this is the same stuff they use for Chia Pets.) So, I figured what the hell, and I started eating them before runs.

And, sure enough, I felt like I had more endurance for the runs after eating the chia seeds. When I mentioned this to my sister but minimized the significance by suggesting that it may well be a placebo effect operating, my sister responded, “so what? If it works, it works.” Placebo effect doesn’t mean the effects are illusory, it means that our brains are capable of operating on our bodies in ways we don’t quite understand.

So, that was floating in the back of my mind this morning (I ran a few miles before work after fueling up on some yogurt & chia) when I was thinking about the significant number of people against whom I am trying to collect debts who are in one stage or another of applying for and/or receiving social security disability benefits. There are some who are very clearly disabled. But there are also plenty where I look at them and, not to put too fine a point on it, call bullshit.

I’m sure there are a non-trivial number who are flat out frauds. But the placebo effect discussion got me to wondering whether there are some who suffer disabling symptoms because something in their brain perceives a need to be disabled in order to get benefits. Maybe on some level, they can’t find or don’t want to work and aren’t, initially, in that bad of condition physically. But, they become aware of the possibility of disability benefits and, while they aren’t consciously seeking to cheat the system, on some level they come to see disability benefits as a lifeline – a steady source of income in a world where income can be uncertain. With those conditions, I wonder if disabling symptoms can begin to really set in with the actual cause being something akin to a placebo.

Like I said, random thought. Whatever the cause, in my collections business, the volume of people telling me they can’t work and have “applied for disability” is a source of annoyance. I’m happy it’s there for people who really need it. But, I’m convinced there is a significant freeloading component of the population trying to take advantage of it.

The Associated Press has an article on federal income taxes and the fact that about half of Americans don’t pay them.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.
. . .
In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

As usual, I have mixed views here. On one hand, I think taxes have civic virtue. Paying them makes everyone invested in the community to some extent – sort of a pride in ownership effect. On the other hand, in political discourse these days, some folks have almost made a fetish out of the federal income tax, as if it’s the only sort of tax that matters. You’ll routinely hear a wailing and gnashing of teeth about how so, so many poor people (subtext: freeloaders) “don’t pay any taxes.” If you push, you’ll get a concession that it’s federal income taxes they don’t pay.

The people not paying federal income taxes are often paying other sorts of taxes: sales taxes, payroll taxes, property tax, user fees, excise taxes, etc. But, for whatever reason, those don’t count.

And, it’s no accident that the federal income tax soaks the rich. That was pretty much its entire purpose. The 16th Amendment allowing the income tax came from the socialists and the progressives agitating for a graduated income tax. And there is some justification to the disproportionate share of taxes paid by the wealthy. The wealthiest 25% of Americans control something like 87% of the country’s wealth. And, contrary to what we’d like to believe about ourselves, wealth (not that I have any great deal of it personally) isn’t solely (or even, arguably, primarily) a function of hard work and ingenuity.

A lot of it has to do with the system into which we were born – Gates simply wouldn’t have made his billions if he were born and raised in Somalia. And, apart from the system, there are obviously advantages to the particulars of one’s family and the like. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about this sort of “unfairness.” But, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to require the prime beneficiaries of a system to do the lion’s share of funding it.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Spring. Every winter, it occurs to me that, once again, I’ve forgotten to leave Indiana. And, every Spring, I’m a little happier to see the warm weather return. Easter, among other things, is in the great human tradition of rebirth celebrations. Jesus joined the ranks of Osiris, Baldr, Persephone, Adonis, Mithras, Inanna, and other deities who died and came back to life, frequently in the Spring.

I can only imagine that the importance of “rebirth” in the Spring would be that much more significant for folks in an agrarian society where famine was much closer at hand.

Another thing that struck me while I was poking around the Internet for background on some of these gods is just how many different gods have been worshiped over the years. And to wander even further afield, Neil Gaiman has a fun take on gods who have fallen into disuse in his book American Gods.

The central concept is that gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought dwarves, elves, leprechauns, and other spirits and gods with them, but their power is diminished as people’s beliefs wane.

Anyway, Happy Easter everyone.

MSNBC has a story which is the latest installment of “every generation sucks a little worse than the one that came before.” Apparently 20 somethings don’t talk about their work ethic or “respect” as much as older people.

I’ve harped on this before, but was there ever a generation that viewed the younger generation as having it tougher, working harder, or listening to better music than the one that came before? I doubt it. But I’ve been hearing about the Decline since the 70s. If folks grousing about the kids actually knew what they were talking about, we should be living in huts, wearing rags, and starving by now.

The Slacktivist has a very interesting discussion on the difference between virtues and, particularly as Glenn Beck uses the term, values. This is a follow up to a previous entry on the same topic. The primary distinction is that “virtues” require being and work. “Values” generally require nothing more than saying one “values” something.

I was struck particularly by the discussion of two of Beck’s values: charity and personal responsibility. On the surface, these sound like good things, but there is a certain Orwellian “up-is-down” character to them where charity absolves one of any duty to help anyone and personal responsibility refers not to one’s own personal responsibilities but the lack of duty to anyone else.

What does Glenn Beck mean by “charity”? He means “charity” instead of justice. Charity as opposed to justice. He means charity as a strictly voluntary, optional, extravagant (in nature, if not in scope) act.* He means he owes nothing to the needy, that the rich man owes nothing to Lazarus at the gate.

This is a redefinition of charity that was invented expressly for the purpose of defending a lack of charity. It is “charity” that proclaims the right not to share, not to give, not to be affected at all by the need of others. It is a denial of obligation, a denial of connection and of interconnection, a denial of kinship. It is the charity of Cain, rejecting any obligation to be one’s brother’s keeper.

That same insistence — we are not our brother’s keeper — is also at the heart of what Beck means by the term “personal responsibility.” For the 912 Project this does not mean that you must take responsibility for your choices and actions, not blaming others for your misfortunes. It means, rather, that you are responsible only for yourself and that you are free of any and all responsibility for anyone else. For Beck, in other words, “personal responsibility” is a declaration of irresponsibility.

This idea combines with the stunted anti-justice redefinition of charity to rationalize the refusal to assist others as a humane “do not feed the bears” policy. Which makes sense if you think of the world as an uncivilized jungle. And if you think of people in need as subhuman beasts.

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” one of Beck’s 912 disciples said to The New York Times’ Kate Zernike.** That man collects unemployment and Social Security, but spends most of his free time angrily making sure no one else can.