Bill Gates: I don't pay enough tax!

rambot · Mar 1, 2012

It's difficult for me to understand where the lack of comprehension is kicking it.

"Charity is not taxes" seems like a really REALLY simple concept.

mindlight · Mar 2, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
In general however, addicts are very very difficult people to be around. They lie, steal and manipulate - it is the nature of the mental state addiction creates

True and I am not sure I have the patience for a ministry like that. I guess we have all had our own addictions over the years. We can guess from how intolerable we were like this how hard it would be for another to change us without our consent. But also there are patterns of behaviour we can discern in ourselves that we know we need to change but find very difficult to shift. So I do appreciate the dimensions of the problem.

And I'm not sure if you grasp how people like her are treated. We have a society which has no problem in treating people very differently based on their education, their social background and their ability to communicate.

Hey I live in Germany where I am currently looking for my 4th job in 5 years. I know all too well what it means to be excluded because one just does not fit in with the way of doing things that people expect or indeed speak the in crowds language. Germany does not have a class system , it has rules and structures which it implicitly believes to be perfect. The message from the culture is do it our way or be excluded from the privileges of the centre. There are advantages to the German way when it comes to solving basic engineering problems but not in my view with more advanced problems which require a little more mental flexibility - at least in the present age. In my view there is an implicit racism to the culture cause it really does consider its own ways superior by default. However I have also learnt (extremely grudgingly I might add) that I need to reach across these prejudices and learn to speak my host countries language however tiresome things like gender structures and number conventions (ein und zwangzig as opposed to Zwangzigeins for example makes no sense to me at all) may seem to me. These conventions and design features express associations and feelings of belonging without which Germans apparently cannot communicate meaningfully. This is a culture worth adapting to for all its faults. But I not to sure that some Glasgow cultures are worth preserving and a policy of extermination seems more in order- denying the group premises and breaking up the groups and teaching them more healthy languages of association.

But that was one small incident which really showed me how much of a difference class makes to how your are treated.

I had a similar experience when living with Muslims in the redlight area of my university town. Racists daubed the house I was living in crappy slogans. Ironically the Muslims were all on holiday and I had to clean up the mess. But I felt violated and degraded by people I would probably normally associate with in real life.

Poverty Truth Commission

Interesting

Scotland has for its size always produced more big hitters than we had any right to expect.

If you mean Adam Smith or Livingstone that was a while ago - if you mean giants like Gordon Brown and Fred Goodwin then we have different understandings of what his good big hitter and what a disaster waiting to happen.

Scotlands attitude to Thatcher is more justified than you allow for, and motivated by more reasonable feelings and experiences than those you put forward. In many ways she attacked and destroyed crucial parts of scottish society, and they have yet to recover. That is not to say that they were perfect or needed no reform.

Which is why you guys still go wild eyed and start frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of her name. She destroyed unions with which Scotland had too closely associated its identity and closed down the pretence that dead and unprofitable industries were still alive.

The whole thing is just more nuanced than the picture you are presenting. I think it would be interesting if you ever got a chance to spend some time here in Glasgow. Meet some of the people i work with, and see first hand what I'm talking about. Prosperity and poverty sit and have always sat side by side in glasgow. Crossing a road can often mean property dropping from values measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds to values measured in tens of thousands. Even within the areas of greater deprivation there is a huge range of different people backgrounds and attitudes.

I have enough trouble learning a language that may do me and others some good e.g. German, to consider learning the languages of failed communities that need to grow beyond themselves.

mindlight · Mar 2, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
merely explaining the bad decisions and point ing out the obvious consequences doesn't lift them out of the well.

Families are a part of the solution just as their disempowering by socialism and unemployment is a part of the original source problem.

the NHS .... still has a way to go before it is as effective as what exists in Germany or France or scandinavia. But we also have a way to go before it is as well funded as health is in those countries.

It is not just a question of better funding its the way things are organised. The NHS staff think they know better but as someone whose been a customer of both german and british systems and despite my national pride I have to say the German system is better even after 10 years of cost pressures. Reform is essential in the NHS and the doctors and nurses are actually part of the problem. The way they work does not work as well. This is not to deny the good they do- it is to assert that they can do better.

We are mixing things together here. I am talking about the super rich avoiding tax and not paying their share, you are talking about tax cuts which make a significant difference to families. I'm not against tax releif for those on which it would have a significant impact. After deductions I have about 2/3rds of my pay to take home, so any increase or decrease in taxation has a significant impact on me. But it is those who can most afford to pay more tax who manage to pay less and less.

We agreed that Bill gates should probably pay more tax. But where do you draw the line between families that will benefit and the superrich.

there is far more human cost to all of this than appears in your renditions of the colonial period.

I can't get past the fact that so much of empire was about I want, I am stronger, so I take. The fact that in some cases there were attendant benefits to some (and not all) indigenous peoples is very much a by product. And the hasty withdrawal when we could no longer afford an empire shows exactly how much the good governance and stability of those countries and people meant to us. We can overlay noble stuff, and we can focus on noble individuals within the process. But the motivations at their most basic level are there for all to see, and I have a hard time squaring that with a view that it was a generally positive experience for the world.

Maybe you needed to be there to really understand the value of the project. This is an ongoing discussion

we are all broken people. all of us.

Noone is righteous not even one....

mindlight · Mar 2, 2012

rambot said:
It's difficult for me to understand where the lack of comprehension is kicking it.

"Charity is not taxes" seems like a really REALLY simple concept.

Yes the 2 are different.

Faithful Skeptic · Mar 5, 2012

rambot said:
It's difficult for me to understand where the lack of comprehension is kicking it.

"Charity is not taxes" seems like a really REALLY simple concept.

The fact that giving extra in taxes would be charitable (even though government itself isn't a charity) has no bearing on whether or not Bill Gates is able to give extra taxes to the IRS charitably. He is perfectly capable of doing it. If he is going to go around advocating that others be taxed more as well, then the very least that he could do is willingly give extra money to the government in order to meet whatever tax percentage he deems appropriate. That is the very least that he could do.

He seems to think, though, that private charities are better places to donate money than the government, since he gives to the former rather than the latter. If that is his opinion, then maybe he should advocate for more private charitable donations rather than more forced taxes. Odds are, however, that he thinks that no one will listen to his appeals to give more willingly to private charity--and with good reason. So instead he advocates for greater taxation since the government has guns and can point them at the people who aren't behaving as well as he is; they can force those greedy people to give up some of their wealth. He appeals to violence because he can't get them to do as he pleases voluntarily. When people like this can't get their way for any reason, they always appeal to the government to do their dirty work since the government has the monopoly on violence.

I, on the other hand, agree with Robert Nozick: "What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus."

If Bill Gates cannot or ought not go over to their homes with a gun and threaten to imprison them in his basement if they do not donate a certain percentage of their wealth, then why is it perfectly OK for him to get someone/something else to do it for him? Is murder permissible if I hire a hitman? Calling the hitman a government does not nullify the implications of its actions as a hitman.

ScottishJohn · Mar 5, 2012

mindlight said:
True and I am not sure I have the patience for a ministry like that. I guess we have all had our own addictions over the years. We can guess from how intolerable we were like this how hard it would be for another to change us without our consent. But also there are patterns of behaviour we can discern in ourselves that we know we need to change but find very difficult to shift. So I do appreciate the dimensions of the problem.

Yup it is a huge problem, it takes consistent support and the willingness to journey with someone despite the many setbacks and let downs. And it's not something that is offered or even available in many places. And there is also the fact that addiction is usually the result of many other factors - there is a desire to obliterate and block out. So to get past that there needs to be some kind of reason or postive influence to make that person feel like it is worth doing and that continually seeking to escape from the real world and all of the things that they find intolerable is something that they can stop doing - that their real world becomes somewhere that they want to live - and there are so many factors in that. Family, relationships, friendships, financial issues, and so on and so on. The problem is huge.

mindlight said:
Hey I live in Germany where I am currently looking for my 4th job in 5 years. I know all too well what it means to be excluded because one just does not fit in with the way of doing things that people expect or indeed speak the in crowds language. Germany does not have a class system , it has rules and structures which it implicitly believes to be perfect. The message from the culture is do it our way or be excluded from the privileges of the centre. There are advantages to the German way when it comes to solving basic engineering problems but not in my view with more advanced problems which require a little more mental flexibility - at least in the present age. In my view there is an implicit racism to the culture cause it really does consider its own ways superior by default. However I have also learnt (extremely grudgingly I might add) that I need to reach across these prejudices and learn to speak my host countries language however tiresome things like gender structures and number conventions (ein und zwangzig as opposed to Zwangzigeins for example makes no sense to me at all) may seem to me. These conventions and design features express associations and feelings of belonging without which Germans apparently cannot communicate meaningfully. This is a culture worth adapting to for all its faults.

I can imagine that must be extremely draining and hard work in lots of different ways. And without playing down the difficulty of that situation, I want to point out that you are (as far as I know) coming to those particular sets of problems with a great degree of resilience. You are strong in a number of ways. Forgive me if I am making assumptions, you don't get to know someone personally from debating online but you do pick up bits and pieces. But you have your faith, you are married and have that relationship to strengthen and support you. You are well educated and able to reflect on problems in a rational way. I'm not saying any of this to take away from the difficulty of what you are coping with, but I am saying that it is different from people who don't have those things in their life. Whose families have been part of what has hurt or destroyed them, whose education and upbringing have suffered, whose sense of self is tied up in failure and one crisis following another. These people are dealing with incredibly stressful situations one day to the next. And yes they make life worse for themselves. But it is difficult to see how they could do anything other than make poor decisions when their lives have been so disfunctional.

Resilience is something that we talk about a lot in the work that I do. I had coaching at work a couple of years ago and it featured quite highly in the training we were given and it makes a lot of sense. So it is something that we are trying to help build in people we work with. For example one of my colleagues works on a project called the GK experience. It is focussed around outdoor residentials for young people, and while that doesn't sound particularly original, it is targetted at the poorest 5% of the country, who would have extreme difficulty accessing mainstream traditional providers like outward bound or the Abernethy trust. A huge amount of that work is about buidling resilience, setting challenges that push boundaries. Offering space away from their own environment and using that time to encourage them to reflect on their lives and their potential and the way they make decisions. Building confidence in themselves. Helping them overcome some of the many barriers that they face in growing up. It's very different for people like you and me overcoming periods of extreme difficulty when they come, people who are living in poverty are often dealing with multiple crises continually. And we can be hard nosed and practical and point at the things that they do which contribute to their own circumstances. But I don't know that I can stand up and say that if I swapped lives with them I would do much better. I really don't.

mindlight said:
But I not to sure that some Glasgow cultures are worth preserving and a policy of extermination seems more in order- denying the group premises and breaking up the groups and teaching them more healthy languages of association.

I'm not sure that you understand those cultures enough to make that judgement, or have enough first hand experience of them. And I don't know that what you propose is practical bearing in mind that it is human beings that we are talking about and not livestock. If you turn up at anyones door - or in their community or wherever, and reject everything that is familiar to them, then you will find them set against you and everything you try and do from the outset. We can't make decisions for people, we can't use broad structures and impersonal edicts to change their lives. If their lives are going to change they have to want and make those changes, and if that is going to happen it will be because someone makes them feel they are precious as they are, but also that they could be an awful lot more. The only way to solve this pandemic is at a personal level. Bit by bit. Destroying all the existing bedrock of their lives - both functional and non functional - will only create more chaos and stress. It is a tempting way to think - much easier to wipe the slate clean and start over from the beginning - but it is not the way human beings work.

mindlight said:
I had a similar experience when living with Muslims in the redlight area of my university town. Racists daubed the house I was living in crappy slogans. Ironically the Muslims were all on holiday and I had to clean up the mess. But I felt violated and degraded by people I would probably normally associate with in real life.

Yup it's pretty nasty when you are confronted with the uglier side of normal people.

mindlight said:
Interesting

Yup, it is pretty cool, one of the people who has been so instrumental in making it happen is a guy called Paul Chapman. He is amazing. He's in his eighties and still working hard. He worked with Dr King on the civil rights movement and has been involved in so many different ministries. Such an inspiring guy.

mindlight said:
If you mean Adam Smith or Livingstone that was a while ago - if you mean giants like Gordon Brown and Fred Goodwin then we have different understandings of what his good big hitter and what a disaster waiting to happen.

There are people like Sir Ian Wood, Anne Gloag and Brian Souter, the Salvesen Family. Both incredibly rich and also great philanthropists. There are five scots in the top 100 richest folk in the country despite us being a much smaller and poorer country.

mindlight said:
Which is why you guys still go wild eyed and start frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of her name. She destroyed unions with which Scotland had too closely associated its identity and closed down the pretence that dead and unprofitable industries were still alive.

Ok lets go down a path. Say for example that we don't argue about your assesment of the unions and industry. Say we start the discussion beyond that at a point where we imagine that it has been agreed that the unions were bad and the industry was beyond saving. Which is not what I think, but just for the sake of argument. At the very best Thatcher only came up with one half of a solution to that problem. She destroyed both the unions and the industry. But she had no plan or clue about what to replace it with. There was no plan for how to deal with the thousands of people affected by her actions. That is why she is hated by some. That is why I cannot see any merit in what she did, because it was only half a job, and she did it ruthlessly, without grace or concern. That is why long term her actions have cost the country a lot of money, and will continue to cost the country a lot of money until we make some real progress to clearing up the human catastrophe which is her legacy.

mindlight said:
I have enough trouble learning a language that may do me and others some good e.g. German, to consider learning the languages of failed communities that need to grow beyond themselves.

Before you have any right to judge people and their communities you need to know them. Know them first hand. Not from the pages of the daily mail. Not everything in those communities are bad. Not everything is broken. And people have been trying to do what you are suggesting since the sixties, and all it does is break apart what little support these people have, and replace it with nothing. And round it goes again. They knocked down the slums and moved everyone about and housing that is now having to be knocked down because it wasn't much better. They experimented with city design and made a horrible mess. We need to stop doing stuff to people. The slogan from the poverty truth commission is 'nothing about me without me is for me' and it has struck a chord with a lot of people who have not been understood - who noone has tried to understand because they are so caught up in the idea that they have the answer and it's all so simple. But they don't have the answer and it is not simple.

ScottishJohn · Mar 5, 2012

mindlight said:
Families are a part of the solution just as their disempowering by socialism and unemployment is a part of the original source problem.

I am totally in agreement with support for families and policies and projects that strengthen family units. I agree that unemployment puts families under intense pressure. Where we disagree is in how we do that. In what is actually supportive to the families we actually have, rather than to an ideal of family which in many cases we do not have.

I'm not sure I follow you on how socialism has undermined families. I can think of examples of socialism far beyond what we have acheived in this country which has strengthened the family unit - such as maternity policies in some of the scandinavian countries. But even in the UK policies like family allowance and tax credits have offered some level of support to a lot of families. Although there are flaws in the tax credit system.

There are all kinds of policies from both sides of the spectrum which might offer more support to families, but we need to make sure that the support we offer is going to address existing problems and is actually targetted at the reality we have rather than an ideal we would like. We never get a fresh start, we always have to deal with the imperfect situation we find ourselves in.

mindlight said:
It is not just a question of better funding its the way things are organised. The NHS staff think they know better but as someone whose been a customer of both german and british systems and despite my national pride I have to say the German system is better even after 10 years of cost pressures. Reform is essential in the NHS and the doctors and nurses are actually part of the problem. The way they work does not work as well. This is not to deny the good they do- it is to assert that they can do better.

I'll need to read up on the health bill to offer anything constructive to this conversation. And in general I agree with what you have said. It is certainly not just a matter of funding, although if we want to have a system approaching the levels of competency and service that there is in Germany and France, then we would need to approach the level of funding as well as deal effectively with the restructuring. I think that in some cases doctors and nurses may well be part of the problem. I think that is equally true of politicians. And I think reform has to be cross party, has to be about what is best for health and not what is best for any one party. It needs a longer view. We don't have the cailbre of politics or politicians we had when the NHS was created, and such a project would be impossible to create now. Like you say, what we have is good, but it could be an awful lot better.

mindlight said:
We agreed that Bill gates should probably pay more tax. But where do you draw the line between families that will benefit and the superrich.

I don't know. It's a hard line to draw. Where would you draw such a line? It just seems utterly injust that some people have more money than they could ever possibly spend while others struggle every day. Even leaving unemployment out of it, there are those who work hard all their lives in low paid jobs and pay taxes, pay their way, tax cuts for them funded by taxation on those who - lets be honest - would not miss the money in terms of their day to day lifestyle. I'm not pretending I have the answer. I just posted this because I think it is interesting, I think Gates is admirable in coming forward and saying what he has said. I think it is worth trying to build a fairer society, and I think when it comes down to it, greed is the main barrier to that. I suppose I kind of wish that there was some wider support and recognition of the flaws in the existing state of affairs from those who are more wealthy. Living on half of £200,000 compared to 75% of 15,000 is a big difference. (The numbers are not as clean cut as that - there are allowances and so on - but you get the general idea. )

mindlight said:
Maybe you needed to be there to really understand the value of the project. This is an ongoing discussion

I'm not sure it was a project. It was an accident. The empire was built up over a centuries, and not always intentionally. A lot of it was reluctant annexation to protect private trading companies and their income. Noone woke up one morning and decided Britannia should rule the waves and bring peace and civilisation to the world. Gradually bit by bit we found ourselves in control of large parts of the world, and always the expansion was motivated by financial benefit.

There are defining characteristics of the British empire and its growth that I have a huge problem with, slavery, opium trade, the arms trade, the exploitation of less advanced cultures. These were incredibly profitable, but not very moral.

rambot · Mar 6, 2012

Faithful Skeptic said:
The fact that giving extra in taxes would be charitable (even though government itself isn't a charity) has no bearing on whether or not Bill Gates is able to give extra taxes to the IRS charitably. He is perfectly capable of doing it. If he is going to go around advocating that others be taxed more as well, then the very least that he could do is willingly give extra money to the government in order to meet whatever tax percentage he deems appropriate. That is the very least that he could do.

So again, you are missing my point. Bill Gates is saying he should be LEGALLY OBLIGED to pay more. Full stop.

He seems to think, though, that private charities are better places to donate money than the government, since he gives to the former rather than the latter. If that is his opinion, then maybe he should advocate for more private charitable donations rather than more forced taxes. Odds are, however, that he thinks that no one will listen to his appeals to give more willingly to private charity--and with good reason. So instead he advocates for greater taxation since the government has guns and can point them at the people who aren't behaving as well as he is; they can force those greedy people to give up some of their wealth. He appeals to violence because he can't get them to do as he pleases voluntarily.

1) I just want to point out that the highlighted piece completely undermines the right wing argument of "take away our taxes and we'll donate more to charity".
2) The government does NOT have a monopoly on violence.
3) Increasing taxes is NOT the employment of violence against a people. Aggressive or repressive tax structures that jeopardize lives are unjust and detrimental to a society, but those that doesn't make them, in and of themselves, violent. Violence and a lack of justice are not the same thing. Besides, Gates does not appear to be advocating for ANYTHING of that measure.

Quick test:
4) Out of curiousity, do you think that an increase in government revenue would a) Help or b) Hinder the current debt situation in the US?

When people like this can't get their way for any reason, they always appeal to the government to do their dirty work since the government has the monopoly on violence.

"people like this"? You mean like the "Koch brothers" or is this solely a left wing hate tactic?

I, on the other hand, agree with Robert Nozick: "What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus."

If Bill Gates cannot or ought not go over to their homes with a gun and threaten to imprison them in his basement if they do not donate a certain percentage of their wealth, then why is it perfectly OK for him to get someone/something else to do it for him? Is murder permissible if I hire a hitman? Calling the hitman a government does not nullify the implications of its actions as a hitman.

*Sigh*. Taxation is not "donation"; it is a purchase.
Also, I didn't read the article in the OP, but wasn't gates saying that HE doesn't pay enough taxes?

Faithful Skeptic · Mar 6, 2012

rambot said:
So again, you are missing my point. Bill Gates is saying he should be LEGALLY OBLIGED to pay more. Full stop.

And you must be missing mine. If you think that your LEGAL TAX OBLIGATION is inadequate, then that means you are perfectly fine with giving up more of your money. Just because paying taxes is a legal obligation does NOT mean that taxes must be viewed as a legal obligation. When you ask to pay more, you are denying that you are paying taxes because you feel obliged; what you are effectively saying is that you pay taxes because you feel that is what people need to do, regardless of the law. If, say, the draft was reinstated and military service was legally mandated, but I already had plans to join the military anyway, am I really being drafted or am I volunteering? Say the draft only lasted 2 years and I thought that it should last for at least 4 years, don't you think that means that I should at least reenlist. If you did think that draft should be lengthened, didn't reenlist yourself and went around complaining how everyone ought to be drafted for at least 4 years, yourself included, what do you think people would say about you? You would be telling people that you were more than willing to stay in the service for at least 2 more years, but only if the government forced you. At the very least, people would think you were a hypocrite. Odds are, though, they'd think of you as something worse, since you'd be advocating that others ought to be forced into doing something against their will just because you feel like they should. I don't understand why taxes would be any different, so please explain. Like I said, you deny the LEGAL OBLIGATION--the force/violence inherent in taxation, at least as it applies to you--when you ask for more taxes to be levied on yourself. When you ask for more, that not only means that more is permissible, but also that the current amount, though apparently inadequate, is also permissible. There is only ever force involved when someone is forced to pay taxes under the threats associated with failure to pay them.

rambot said:
1) I just want to point out that the highlighted piece completely undermines the right wing argument of "take away our taxes and we'll donate more to charity".

That's nice, because I'm not a right winger. My objection to taxation is entirely moral, even though I think that there are other perfectly valid objections. I just think other objections must always yield to morality. I know what I said when I said that. I'm not denying that there are selfish people out there in the least. I hope you did get to enjoy your 'gotcha' moment, though.

rambot said:
2) The government does NOT have a monopoly on violence.

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of presenting the theory (which is less theory and more observation) here: Monopoly on violence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

rambot said:
3) Increasing taxes is NOT the employment of violence against a people. Aggressive or repressive tax structures that jeopardize lives are unjust and detrimental to a society, but those that doesn't make them, in and of themselves, violent. Violence and a lack of justice are not the same thing. Besides, Gates does not appear to be advocating for ANYTHING of that measure.

That's because, like Bill Gates, you are working from the premise that taxes are perfectly permissible and therefore you deny the obligation and avoid the force inherent in it. If someone disagrees, however, and does not wish to be taxed, then that is where force/violence comes in. Say someone didn't want to pay their taxes and therefore chose not to. What do you call it when the IRS comes knocking on their door with guns and handcuffs? If it was me doing that to you without a uniform, wouldn't it be violence? Why does a uniform negate the violence that you would otherwise recognize?

rambot said:
Quick test:
4) Out of curiousity, do you think that an increase in government revenue would a) Help or b) Hinder the current debt situation in the US?

That's a bad question, imo. Of course it would help the debt situation, at least initially. All you asked there was if 2 + 2 = 4. The question should have asked, however, if it would fix the economic situation. The two are not the same thing at all. I happen to think it would make the economic situation much worse. Taxes are already being increased on us through inflation anyway. Every time the government prints another dollar to pay off the debt, the dollars that I have are worth less. That is indirect taxation.

rambot said:
"people like this"? You mean like the "Koch brothers" or is this solely a left wing hate tactic?

People that ask the government to do their dirty work for them. I'm not a particular fan of the Koch brothers, but I don't know enough about them to say anything like that. I know enough to say it about Bill Gates because I can see what he said. I'm not sure where you read "left wing hate tactic" into that. Maybe you shouldn't assume that I'm some sort of anti-left right-winger. I'm ideally an anarcho-voluntary-socialist, but an anarchist (non-violent) first and foremost. Stressing voluntary anarchism and non-violence over socialism, though, tends to get most "anarcho-socialists" mad at me. I'm a rare breed.

rambot said:
I, on the other hand, agree with Robert Nozick: "What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus."

Were you saying that you agreed with him, too, or did you accidentally leave that out as part of a quote? That was the primer to what I said after it.

rambot said:
*Sigh*. Taxation is not "donation"; it is a purchase.

Saying that it is a purchase is entirely inadequate. What kind of purchase is it, and is it the same purchase for everyone? If you are willing, yourself, to pay taxes, then yes, it is a normal purchase. You give money in the hopes that you will receive something that you want in return. I stress yourself because your will has no bearing on the will of anyone else. Just because you like paying taxes neither means that everyone likes paying taxes nor that everyone ought to like paying taxes. Now, if you are not willing to pay taxes, for whatever reason (greed, moral or because you think they are impractical/inefficient), then it is a very different purchase. It's more like you walking into a store, looking around, and then deciding that you don't want anything that the store has to offer. Instead of letting you leave, however, store security accosts you and demands that you spend at least 20-40% of what is in your wallet. If you fail to pay, they'll throw you in the mall lock-up until you do. The trick is, though, that you don't know what it is that you're buying yet. You give them your money under duress up front, and then the store's purchasing board determines how they are going to spend your money.

rambot said:
Also, I didn't read the article in the OP, but wasn't gates saying that HE doesn't pay enough taxes?

Tax laws are not written for every single individual. By saying that HE doesn't he is implying that WE don't. Sounds like the royal we.

You completely ignored that last part, anyway, aside from the quibble about the word donation, so I'm going to quote it again here:
"If Bill Gates cannot or ought not go over to their homes with a gun and threaten to imprison them in his basement if they do not donate a certain percentage of their wealth, then why is it perfectly OK for him to get someone/something else to do it for him? Is murder permissible if I hire a hitman? Calling the hitman a government does not nullify the implications of its actions as a hitman."

mindlight · Mar 7, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
But you have your faith, you are married and have that relationship to strengthen and support you. You are well educated and able to reflect on problems in a rational way. I'm not saying any of this to take away from the difficulty of what you are coping with, but I am saying that it is different from people who don't have those things in their life. Whose families have been part of what has hurt or destroyed them, whose education and upbringing have suffered, whose sense of self is tied up in failure and one crisis following another. These people are dealing with incredibly stressful situations one day to the next. And yes they make life worse for themselves. But it is difficult to see how they could do anything other than make poor decisions when their lives have been so dysfunctional.

Believing in Jesus is crucial and is in my view the solution to the problems you describe. It's people who have lost their faith that follow these paths to self destruction and make decision upon decision that compounds the problems they and their dependents face. Of course there are believers in this mix but they suffer the consequence of the deluge of bad choices being made all around them and very often get dragged down by these cultures to contribute to the mess.

Resilience is something that we talk about a lot in the work that I do. I had coaching at work a couple of years ago and it featured quite highly in the training we were given and it makes a lot of sense. So it is something that we are trying to help build in people we work with. ....But I don't know that I can stand up and say that if I swapped lives with them I would do much better. I really don't.

Yes tenacity /perserverance / resilience is absolutely crucial as in the bible book of Hebrews. We live this life for but a short time and really its just a short interview to see if we are up to what follows. Too many people give up at the first hurdle disbelieving that God is edging them on. In too many places people grow up fatherless unused to a strong challenge to excel against all odds and to show initiative and rather seeking only soft assurances and insisting they be treated right. A culture needs to actively engage with its own demons to defeat them rather than passively go with generations of failure.

There are people like Sir Ian Wood, Anne Gloag and Brian Souter, the Salvesen Family. Both incredibly rich and also great philanthropists. There are five scots in the top 100 richest folk in the country despite us being a much smaller and poorer country.

Ian Wood (businessman) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Gloag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
She seems a good example of how to respond to redundancy. She created her own business with Brian Souter.

Brian Souter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interesting man, brave to take on the gay rights establishment but foolish about scottish nationalism in my view. I admire his faith and entrepreneurism.

None of these guys were products of the Glasgow cultures.

At the very best Thatcher only came up with one half of a solution to that problem. She destroyed both the unions and the industry. But she had no plan or clue about what to replace it with. There was no plan for how to deal with the thousands of people affected by her actions. That is why she is hated by some. That is why I cannot see any merit in what she did, because it was only half a job, and she did it ruthlessly, without grace or concern. That is why long term her actions have cost the country a lot of money, and will continue to cost the country a lot of money until we make some real progress to clearing up the human catastrophe which is her legacy.

Think you as with most Scots are missing the point of the Thatcher revolution. Its not the states job to run your lives. It's up to you. Examples like Brian Souter demonstrate this. You are waiting for help but actually the message was show some spark- create something yourself. After generations of being dependent this is what is so difficult for Scots to grasp. The State is parasitic off the real economy. It is for Scots to decide if they are parasites or active players.

Before you have any right to judge people and their communities you need to know them. Know them first hand. Not from the pages of the daily mail. Not everything in those communities are bad. Not everything is broken. And people have been trying to do what you are suggesting since the sixties, and all it does is break apart what little support these people have, and replace it with nothing. And round it goes again. They knocked down the slums and moved everyone about and housing that is now having to be knocked down because it wasn't much better. They experimented with city design and made a horrible mess. We need to stop doing stuff to people. The slogan from the poverty truth commission is 'nothing about me without me is for me' and it has struck a chord with a lot of people who have not been understood - who noone has tried to understand because they are so caught up in the idea that they have the answer and it's all so simple. But they don't have the answer and it is not simple.

Not at all, when immersed in such networks it is my experience that you simply grow overly sympathic to them and start to miss the big picture. The statistics are obvious - e,g, economic outputs and inputs, incidence of alcoholism, drug abuse , marriage failure. % of kids growing up without fathers, levels of church attendance etc etc. The simple answer is to relocate the human beings in these communities to new locations which are actually working and where they can begin to thrive again e.g. Aberdeen or Perth for instance and as thinly spread as possible. The message is close down Glasgow , stone by stone if necessary.

mindlight · Mar 7, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
I'm not sure I follow you on how socialism has undermined families. I can think of examples of socialism far beyond what we have acheived in this country which has strengthened the family unit - such as maternity policies in some of the scandinavian countries. But even in the UK policies like family allowance and tax credits have offered some level of support to a lot of families. Although there are flaws in the tax credit system.

There are all kinds of policies from both sides of the spectrum which might offer more support to families, but we need to make sure that the support we offer is going to address existing problems and is actually targetted at the reality we have rather than an ideal we would like. We never get a fresh start, we always have to deal with the imperfect situation we find ourselves in.

I think the delegation of authority to state appointed experts is one of the largest undermining factors to families. Of course on occasions police, or medical experts are required to sort out crimes and disease but there has been an undermining of the self-sufficiency of families by the smothering influence of the state. A strong family does not need misinformed academics lecturing it on educating its kids to be tolerant of a gay lifestyle, that its OK to have an abortion and this is how and that all paths lead to the same God. I wonder at how much the intrusions of the state have undermined families as experts suggest to a woman who was hit in a fit of rage to sue or leave her repentant husband rather than to see if the situation is retrievable.

But so also there are ways in which tax incentives and maternity laws can aid families. Many women in Germany as much as in the UK feel that if they have a baby their careers may be irretrievably undermined and it can be very difficult for them to get back into the workplaces after having had kids. Also the cost of child care and housing is undermining families significantly in the UK both adding to the financial stress of parents with young families.

I think reform has to be cross party, has to be about what is best for health and not what is best for any one party. It needs a longer view. We don't have the cailbre of politics or politicians we had when the NHS was created, and such a project would be impossible to create now. Like you say, what we have is good, but it could be an awful lot better.

I agree on that. The games between politicians are undermining the efforts to reform this costly institution as both sides seek to be seen as on the side of the doctors and nurses who looked after little Jimmy or grandad in the hospital the other day. Also for the reforms to be enduring they need cross party support. I think the solutions are really for the technocrats rather than the politicians here. The smart thing the politicians can do is appoint someone like that and just let them get on with it.

I don't know. It's a hard line to draw. Where would you draw such a line? It just seems utterly injust that some people have more money than they could ever possibly spend while others struggle every day. Even leaving unemployment out of it, there are those who work hard all their lives in low paid jobs and pay taxes, pay their way, tax cuts for them funded by taxation on those who - lets be honest - would not miss the money in terms of their day to day lifestyle. I'm not pretending I have the answer. I just posted this because I think it is interesting, I think Gates is admirable in coming forward and saying what he has said. I think it is worth trying to build a fairer society, and I think when it comes down to it, greed is the main barrier to that. I suppose I kind of wish that there was some wider support and recognition of the flaws in the existing state of affairs from those who are more wealthy. Living on half of £200,000 compared to 75% of 15,000 is a big difference. (The numbers are not as clean cut as that - there are allowances and so on - but you get the general idea. )

But it is not even as simple as that. My experience of wealthier people is that is that they often have a large number of dependents e.g. students, kindergarten workers, cleaners, gardeners etc etc. Its these luxuries that get axed from the budget when times get hard and the cost is borne by the people who lose their jobs (often immigrants with few other opportunities). Also there is the question of incentive. What's the point of working if some mealy mouthed taxman or bureaucrat is simply going to steal all your money away from you.

Also like it or not but there is a class of immensely rich people who tend to live where the tax rate favours them. If you increase it they move and you lose all advantage. So the income that could have been used to help poorer people is lost.

I'm not sure it was a project. It was an accident. The empire was built up over a centuries, and not always intentionally. A lot of it was reluctant annexation to protect private trading companies and their income. Noone woke up one morning and decided Britannia should rule the waves and bring peace and civilisation to the world. Gradually bit by bit we found ourselves in control of large parts of the world, and always the expansion was motivated by financial benefit.

There are defining characteristics of the British empire and its growth that I have a huge problem with, slavery, opium trade, the arms trade, the exploitation of less advanced cultures. These were incredibly profitable, but not very moral.

What we brought was usually far superior to what we displaced. Also in the main these were a bunch of heathens who had put their trust in false gods. The opium wars were wrong, we ended up removing the slave trade (one of Britains Empires greatest achievements), we built railways and introduced the colonies to global trade. Ultimately we gave these people freedoms they never had before and left a great many democracies all round the world. We defeated Kaiser Wilhem and Hitler at the cost of our imperial riches and might. No empire is perfect but ours was not that bad

ScottishJohn · Mar 7, 2012

mindlight said:
Believing in Jesus is crucial and is in my view the solution to the problems you describe. It's people who have lost their faith that follow these paths to self destruction and make decision upon decision that compounds the problems they and their dependents face. Of course there are believers in this mix but they suffer the consequence of the deluge of bad choices being made all around them and very often get dragged down by these cultures to contribute to the mess.

I don't know, I think it's fairly simplistic and unrealistic to suggest that all that needs to happen is for people to turn to God - we need to deal with the reality, that there are many people who live lives that are not in chaos, but who have no interest in God. There are as you say, many people who live in chaos and have a strong faith. And there are those whose lives could be better than they currently are, even if they did not find faith.

My experience is that the number of people who want to make a committment, who feel moved by the spirit, who feel like that is what they need is small. I am not going to limit my activity only to those who seem interested in God. God plays a part in this too. Coming to faith is a long journey for most people with many steps, and God knows best when to push and challenge and when to leave well alone. I can be a stepping stone in that process over and over again, without seeing any final committments. There are two challenges laid out to us in the gospels. One is to evangelise. The other is to take care of the most marginalised around us. Some of them may never make committments, but we can still leave them in a better place than we found them. And I have a huge problem with projects that make people feel like they are only worth something if they buy into what we are all about. I see a big part of my job being showing people that regardless of what has happened to them, of what they think about themselves, that they are precious. And that is not conditional on them believing in God. Yes faith would make an impact, but in my experience if people are going to turn to God they have to have experienced him in some way or another, and that is most likely not going to be through someone like me giving it thehard sell, but more likely through someone showing them unconditional love and acceptance as they are, while still helping them to move beyond the things that hurt them.

mindlight said:
Yes tenacity /perserverance / resilience is absolutely crucial as in the bible book of Hebrews. We live this life for but a short time and really its just a short interview to see if we are up to what follows. Too many people give up at the first hurdle disbelieving that God is edging them on. In too many places people grow up fatherless unused to a strong challenge to excel against all odds and to show initiative and rather seeking only soft assurances and insisting they be treated right. A culture needs to actively engage with its own demons to defeat them rather than passively go with generations of failure.

Jesus met people where they were. He started with where they were. Not where they should be. He was gentle in his rebukes. He did practical and loving things to show his solidarity with them. He talked to the samaritan woman and drank from her cup. He went to Zacchaeus's house. He allowed the woman to bathe his feet.

There is a hardness and inflexibility in your approach - a reaching for the simple black and white, and it doesn't equate to what is there on the ground. We are talking about people. They are not all the same. Each of them has a different story. Each of them has different barriers. Each of them is worth something.

mindlight said:
Ian Wood (businessman) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Gloag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
She seems a good example of how to respond to redundancy. She created her own business with Brian Souter.

Brian Souter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interesting man, brave to take on the gay rights establishment but foolish about scottish nationalism in my view. I admire his faith and entrepreneurism.

None of these guys were products of the Glasgow cultures.

There are entreprenuers in Glasgow too. Lots of them. Both large and small. Those are the legitimate ones.

Drug dealers are also entrepreneurs. Also very successful. Benefits fraudsters are entrepreneurs. The minister at this church wants to see a scheme which redirects the cunning and ingenuity of those abusing the system into running business.

To say that there is no entreprenuership in Glasgow, to say that entrepreneurship is an anathema to Scottish thinking, is just to speak from ignorance.

mindlight said:
Think you as with most Scots are missing the point of the Thatcher revolution. Its not the states job to run your lives. It's up to you. Examples like Brian Souter demonstrate this. You are waiting for help but actually the message was show some spark- create something yourself. After generations of being dependent this is what is so difficult for Scots to grasp. The State is parasitic off the real economy. It is for Scots to decide if they are parasites or active players.

I think you miss the point - you created a problem larger than the one you solved, and you did that by hiding away in your castles of black and white and ignoring the people you were destroying. I would like to see the state try and run the lives of people in Glasgow. They would be seen off fairly quickly - as Thatcher was when she tried to use Scotland as a lab rat for her poll tax. The problem was not looking for the state to provide anything, it was that the state removed what was there and didn't have any idea about what might happen next. Thatcher left a vaccuum, and that is why she only did half a job. The solution did not have to be socialist. If she had some economic stimulus for the area to provide growth and jobs, but she just shut everything down and walked away. She took a group of people who were working for their living, and put them all on benefits with no hope of employment.

Even from a market perspective you must recognise that it is jackanory expect 1 in 5 people in this country to suddenly become entrepreneurs, with no startup cash, no business experience. It's just ridiculous.

mindlight said:
Not at all, when immersed in such networks it is my experience that you simply grow overly sympathic to them and start to miss the big picture. The statistics are obvious - e,g, economic outputs and inputs, incidence of alcoholism, drug abuse , marriage failure. % of kids growing up without fathers, levels of church attendance etc etc. The simple answer is to relocate the human beings in these communities to new locations which are actually working and where they can begin to thrive again e.g. Aberdeen or Perth for instance and as thinly spread as possible. The message is close down Glasgow , stone by stone if necessary.

That is hilarious. Good luck with that.

ScottishJohn · Mar 7, 2012

mindlight said:
I think the delegation of authority to state appointed experts is one of the largest undermining factors to families. Of course on occasions police, or medical experts are required to sort out crimes and disease but there has been an undermining of the self-sufficiency of families by the smothering influence of the state. A strong family does not need misinformed academics lecturing it on educating its kids to be tolerant of a gay lifestyle, that its OK to have an abortion and this is how and that all paths lead to the same God. I wonder at how much the intrusions of the state have undermined families as experts suggest to a woman who was hit in a fit of rage to sue or leave her repentant husband rather than to see if the situation is retrievable.

Yeah I'm not sure where the socialism lies in that. I don't know of any mainstream party which would promote any other message other than one of tolerance towards homosexuality and I know that you have some disappointment with Cameron on this front. I think that is less political and more about your own personal stance on this being at odds with the prevailing view.

Battered women go back to their abusers over and over and over. At some stages it is necessary to help them escape from the constant threat of violence. But that needs to be assessed on a personal level. Basically it is not always wrong to get the woman out. And I've certainly never come across anyone in that field of work who would give that kind of advice lightly. Most often outside agencies get involved right at the end after the abuse has become so intolerable that the woman has broken free and shared the secret with someone. It is unusual for it to happen after a one off. It is unusual for there to be a one off occurence.

mindlight said:
But so also there are ways in which tax incentives and maternity laws
can aid families. Many women in Germany as much as in the UK feel that if they have a baby their careers may be irretrievably undermined and it can be very difficult for them to get back into the workplaces after having had kids. Also the cost of child care and housing is undermining families significantly in the UK both adding to the financial stress of parents with young families.

Yup - there is a great deal that state intervention can do, and has already done to help with this.

mindlight said:
But it is not even as simple as that. My experience of wealthier people is that is that they often have a large number of dependents e.g. students, kindergarten workers, cleaners, gardeners etc etc. Its these luxuries that get axed from the budget when times get hard and the cost is borne by the people who lose their jobs (often immigrants with few other opportunities). Also there is the question of incentive. What's the point of working if some mealy mouthed taxman or bureaucrat is simply going to steal all your money away from you.

Also like it or not but there is a class of immensely rich people who tend to live where the tax rate favours them. If you increase it they move and you lose all advantage. So the income that could have been used to help poorer people is lost.

I think that is unfortunate - greed is pretty disgusting and is one of the main things lurking at the centre of what rots our country and our society. It may be the central tennet of capitalism and fundamental to a model of growth which we seem tied to, but it is ugly and wrong.

mindlight said:
What we brought was usually far superior to what we displaced. Also in the main these were a bunch of heathens who had put their trust in false gods. The opium wars were wrong, we ended up removing the slave trade (one of Britains Empires greatest achievements), we built railways and introduced the colonies to global trade. Ultimately we gave these people freedoms they never had before and left a great many democracies all round the world. We defeated Kaiser Wilhem and Hitler at the cost of our imperial riches and might. No empire is perfect but ours was not that bad

You need to go read some history. And then look at the areas today that are formal colonial posessions. Look at their history over the last sixty years. I really don't know what it is that you think we gave compared to what we took. We build railways for us. So we could get their natural resources and wealth to the coast more quickly. We pocketed the income from global trade. Before abolishing the slave trade, and then later slavery, we were one of the biggest slave trading nations. The opium wars were wrong - and were not the only example of utter moral flexibility in the face of profit. I see no evidence AT ALL of the colonial project being about anything more than money in our pockets instead of someone elses.

mindlight · Mar 9, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
I don't know, I think it's fairly simplistic and unrealistic to suggest that all that needs to happen is for people to turn to God - we need to deal with the reality

I believe it is faith that halts the downward momentum and chaotic as many Christians initial responses are the direction will always be positive overall in the long run. There is an associate problem here with churches failing to lead Christians on to maturity. Too many Christians are bearded babies to use a well known picture to illustrate.

There are two challenges laid out to us in the gospels. One is to evangelise. The other is to take care of the most marginalised around us.

Evangelism and worship are the main challenges in the bible and teaching Christians to follow the example of Christ. We will always have the poor with us but the priority is doing what Christ says with our lives. Also helping the undeserving poor e.g. lazy Christians or most non Christians is not as clear in scripture as you say. We have argued this before. You say Good Samaritan - I quote proverbs , the parable of talents, "what you did for the least of these BROTHERS of mine" etc.

Jesus met people where they were. He started with where they were. Not where they should be. He was gentle in his rebukes. He did practical and loving things to show his solidarity with them. He talked to the samaritan woman and drank from her cup. He went to Zacchaeus's house.

Evangelism - but he led these people out of their respective messes.

He allowed the woman to bathe his feet.

He blessed an act of worship despite the judgmental blindness of those around to this womans heart.

There is a hardness and inflexibility in your approach - a reaching for the simple black and white, and it doesn't equate to what is there on the ground. We are talking about people. They are not all the same. Each of them has a different story. Each of them has different barriers. Each of them is worth something.

Things seem simpler to me than you. Recognising the richness and complexity of individual stories does not necessarily negate the overall impression that something is deeply wrong with the community and the overall insight remains valid as a basis for policy. However within that picture I fully accept there are diamonds in the rough that against all odds sparkle in the light.

There are entreprenuers in Glasgow too. Lots of them. Both large and small. Those are the legitimate ones.

Drug dealers are also entrepreneurs. Also very successful. Benefits fraudsters are entrepreneurs. The minister at this church wants to see a scheme which redirects the cunning and ingenuity of those abusing the system into running business.

To say that there is no entreprenuership in Glasgow, to say that entrepreneurship is an anathema to Scottish thinking, is just to speak from ignorance.

The way you associate entrepreneurs and drug dealers is interesting. For you there is something dirty, greedy and exploitative about being an entrepreneur even if you never say this directly. Again the overall pattern is that there is a problem in Scotland

BBC News - Business start-up rate in Scotland 'worsening'

I think you miss the point - you created a problem larger than the one you solved, and you did that by hiding away in your castles of black and white and ignoring the people you were destroying. ....Thatcher left a vaccuum, and that is why she only did half a job. The solution did not have to be socialist. If she had some economic stimulus for the area to provide growth and jobs, but she just shut everything down and walked away. She took a group of people who were working for their living, and put them all on benefits with no hope of employment.

Thatcher doled out the medecine across the whole UK for the British disease of overunionised and overly socialistic mentalities. The Scottish response is the issue and the main problem here. These guys can always move to England like many Scots have done over the last 30 years.

http://www.sociology.ed.ac.uk/youth/docs/UK_sociodem.pdf

mindlight · Mar 9, 2012

ScottishJohn said:
Yeah I'm not sure where the socialism lies in that. I don't know of any mainstream party which would promote any other message other than one of tolerance towards homosexuality and I know that you have some disappointment with Cameron on this front. I think that is less political and more about your own personal stance on this being at odds with the prevailing view.

Actually no my viewpoint here is the traditional Christian stance on homosexuality that has always been argued by the teaching authorities of the major churches (except in the more compromised liberal wings of the Western church that is)

Battered women go back to their abusers over and over and over. At some stages it is necessary to help them escape from the constant threat of violence. But that needs to be assessed on a personal level. Basically it is not always wrong to get the woman out. And I've certainly never come across anyone in that field of work who would give that kind of advice lightly. Most often outside agencies get involved right at the end after the abuse has become so intolerable that the woman has broken free and shared the secret with someone. It is unusual for it to happen after a one off. It is unusual for there to be a one off occurence.

That's interesting thanks.

I think that is unfortunate - greed is pretty disgusting and is one of the main things lurking at the centre of what rots our country and our society. It may be the central tennet of capitalism and fundamental to a model of growth which we seem tied to, but it is ugly and wrong.

Greed is the perversion of a good thing - e.g. aspiration to provide for dependents, to achieve excellence, to fulfil ones calling . Too many socialists try and kill the whole thing and miss the wood from the trees.

Home | Values & Capitalism

You need to go read some history. And then look at the areas today that are formal colonial posessions. Look at their history over the last sixty years. I really don't know what it is that you think we gave compared to what we took. We build railways for us. So we could get their natural resources and wealth to the coast more quickly. We pocketed the income from global trade. Before abolishing the slave trade, and then later slavery, we were one of the biggest slave trading nations. The opium wars were wrong - and were not the only example of utter moral flexibility in the face of profit. I see no evidence AT ALL of the colonial project being about anything more than money in our pockets instead of someone elses.

You are blind to the virtues of the empire and are determined to see only its faults. This is an ongoing discussion.

mindlight · Mar 9, 2012

Also on the theme of the superrich and their obligations to tax and their disposition towards charity. I am struck that much like Solomon certain people have been given an opportunity to choose their way from a position of almost unlimited options. This is an amazing gift and one the rest of us should ponder rather than resent. If our highest vision is merely to distribute the wealth as far as possible to create a class of mediocre clones without aspiration or any feel for a higher vision or standard of excellence then its small wonder these choices were never given to us.

A super rich man who buys a quality product for instance will insist on the highest standards and a luxury of finish that creates a new bench mark of what is possible for the rest of us one day.

Only a hundred years ago motor cars, air travel and laundry service were things only the superrich could afford. Now we have cars, cheap flights and washing machines. So why stop there. The trickle down effect is real.

Pondering the insides of a superyacht is much like trying to envisage the throne room of God for the majority of us. Without that glimpse of possibility there is nothing to stretch us. Personally I think God Himself gets excited about what we might aspire to. Of course a superrich Billionaire can fill that space with harlots and mafia bosses but he has the choice not to also.

ScottishJohn · Mar 9, 2012

mindlight said:
I believe it is faith that halts the downward momentum and chaotic as many Christians initial responses are the direction will always be positive overall in the long run. There is an associate problem here with churches failing to lead Christians on to maturity. Too many Christians are bearded babies to use a well known picture to illustrate.

I'm not in disagreement with that. I just think we do a disservice to people when we present it as a simple option. Coming to faith is a journey and it's not just about choosing one thing or the other. It strikes me that it is often a similar thing to the impulse to free yourself from addiction. YOu can rot away in the mess for years but for some reason one day you feel differently and act differently, the world looks and feels different and things slot into place in a way they haven't done previously, and thats the first step to getting out. It's difficult to pin down why that precise moment. And in a journey to faith there are a number of steps and challenges and barriers, and there is God playing his part and knowing when the time is right.

mindlight said:
Evangelism and worship are the main challenges in the bible and teaching Christians to follow the example of Christ.

That is a very narrow view of what is in the bible. The most concise Jesus gets is when he says love God with all your heart mind soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. There is nothing in there about evangelism, but a clear responsibility to those around you. Likewise Matthew 25 places a clear responsibility to those around us.

This is my problem with conservatism. The gospel is not individualistic. It is not about me first me first. Or even me and mine first. It is about others.

mindlight said:
We will always have the poor with us but the priority is doing what Christ says with our lives. Also helping the undeserving poor e.g. lazy Christians or most non Christians is not as clear in scripture as you say. We have argued this before. You say Good Samaritan - I quote proverbs , the parable of talents, "what you did for the least of these BROTHERS of mine" etc.

I just don't think you get to decide who is deserving and who is not. I don't think you have any mandate to do that. There is no reason to choose to limit who those verses apply to other than to get out of a hard task. Some translations say brothers, some say least of these, I think we had a conversation before about the greek word used here.

What Christ said to do with our lives was loving our neighbour as ourselves. Too often we fall into the trap of only telling people about the gospel, its much more effefctive to show people the gospel in action. You can't do that by preaching at people while their lives are in freefall and doing nothing to help them. That's not just running counter to Christs ministry and to our calling, it is morally bankrupt. Those are the lazy Christians.

mindlight said:
Evangelism - but he led these people out of their respective messes.

I think it is more that meeting with him inspired them to live differently. People change when they encounter Christ - that is one of the truths in the gospel. Not because he forces them or applies guilt trips, not because they feel obligated, but because they want to - they respond freely and joyfully to Jesus. They give him all they have and all that they are. In some cases he said very little to them. His actions were profound. If we can include actions of compassion and caring in evangelism and less hot air, then I'm on board.

mindlight said:
He blessed an act of worship despite the judgmental blindness of those around to this womans heart.

Thats a pretty cold reading. Theres way more to that incident than you allow for.

mindlight said:
Things seem simpler to me than you.

Things rarely are simple. The gospels have been around for a long time, and they are not simple enough for anyone to have provided a definitive reading of them, or even a definitive translation. The things we are talking about are not simple. If you had the time to spend with the kind of people I'm talking about you might understand that. IN fact you know that you would lose your overly simplistic 'bigger picture' because you could not be confronted by the things these people face and remain unchanged by it. You can call that being overly sympathetic if you want to, but given a choice I'd rather be the mug and leave the judgement to God. At least then I know I'm on solid ground.

mindlight said:
Recognising the richness and complexity of individual stories does not necessarily negate the overall impression that something is deeply wrong with the community and the overall insight remains valid as a basis for policy. However within that picture I fully accept there are diamonds in the rough that against all odds sparkle in the light.

You don't know anything about the community though - thats the point. Your image of Scotland and Glasgow is woefully stereotyped and lacking in depth. We're talking about a number of communities I have lived in and worked in for the last ten years dealing directly with these problems, you've never even been here and you still feel like you can put forward grand solutions like decanting half of Glasgow to Perth and Aberdeen?? I really don't know how you expect me to react to that, these are not cattle, they are real people. Perth has a population of about 45,000. How many Glaswegians are you going to parachute in there? Aberdeen is about 200,000. It is just not realistic or practical. Not including the richer suburbs Glasgow has a population of about 600,000.

Unemployment in Glasgow is lower than in other major cities in the UK as of Jan 2012. The highest unemployment claimant level is in Glasgow east - 7.3% Compared with the worst areas of London and Birmingham and areas of the North East that is about three percent lower.

You paint this image of workshy wasters living off the state, but it is simply not the case. There are huge and significant social problems here. But there are similar issues throughout the rest of the UK - and plenty of other areas thatcher destroyed and is hated in.

mindlight said:
The way you associate entrepreneurs and drug dealers is interesting. For you there is something dirty, greedy and exploitative about being an entrepreneur even if you never say this directly. Again the overall pattern is that there is a problem in Scotland

I think theres a couple of things to point out here - the linking of the drug dealing and benefits cheat to entrepreneurship was something I heard from a local minister and found interesting. It does take an degree of enterprise to be successful at both. I have friends who run their own business (yes in Glasgow, it does happen.) When I was married my wife ran her own business. She still does. My problem is not with enterprise, or with making money. It is with that becoming the only purpose for everything. The only thing we respect or recognise. And I do have aproblem with greed.

mindlight said:
Thatcher doled out the medecine across the whole UK for the British disease of overunionised and overly socialistic mentalities. The Scottish response is the issue and the main problem here. These guys can always move to England like many Scots have done over the last 30 years.

You can keep batting out the soundbites - but it doesn't alter the fact that Thatcher is going to end up costing a lot more than she was going to save.

ScottishJohn · Mar 9, 2012

mindlight said:
Actually no my viewpoint here is the traditional Christian stance on homosexuality that has always been argued by the teaching authorities of the major churches (except in the more compromised liberal wings of the Western church that is)

I'm not arguing with that - I just said it was not the prevailing view. I'm sick of the argument on homosexuality, it just goes round and round. Theres no point to continuing. There must have been a similiar thing when the church revised its position on slavery, or during the reformation. In any case the view of the church is not the prevailing view. Church attendance in the UK does not give us a majority by any stretch of the imagination. Only about 15% of the country make it to church once a month. Only 26% if you widen the net to include those who manage once a year.

mindlight said:
Greed is the perversion of a good thing - e.g. aspiration to provide for dependents, to achieve excellence, to fulfil ones calling . Too many socialists try and kill the whole thing and miss the wood from the trees.

That's just rubbish. Greed is greed. Not a perversion of anything.

mindlight said:
You are blind to the virtues of the empire and are determined to see only its faults. This is an ongoing discussion.

No I just don't think they outweight the faults, and in the few areas where there were virtues, they were not by design. They were accidental. Fortunate side effects. The main thrust was a grab for other peoples resources. That is what empire is for. It's theft. I'm not determined to see faults - its just that you cannot look at empire without seeing them. It's like you're criticising me for looking at a forest and saying I see trees. Your colonial relatives may have been good an noble people, I assume they were. But that does not make the empire all about them and the small area they operated in.

jgarden · Mar 18, 2012

Well, in a succinct email to me (Charlie Rose), Debbie Bosanek, Assistant to Warren Buffett, says: Mr. Buffett is agnostic.

Warren Buffett Agnostic, Bill Gates Rejects Sermon On The Mount, Not Huge Believer In Specific Elements Of Christianity

Interviewer (Walter Isaacson): "Isn't there something special, perhaps even divine, about the human soul?"

Bill Gates: "I don't have any evidence on that, I don't have any evidence of that."
"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
- January 13, 1996 TIME Magazine

Warren Buffett Agnostic, Bill Gates Rejects Sermon On The Mount, Not Huge Believer In Specific Elements Of Christianity

How are conservatives supposed to reconcile that Buffett and Gates, their 2 most prominent "poster-boys" for American capitalism, are not only agnostics/atheists but make public comments undermining the position that the top 1% should not be subject to tax increases!

How ironic that these agnostic/atheist billionaire philanthropists have more insight into the social responsibilities of distributing the world's wealth, than the vast majority of Christians!

Romney, Santorum and Gingrich continue to "talk the talk" about being practicing Christians - but its America's 2 wealthiest billionaires, who question the very existance of God, are acting more like Christians when it comes to "walking the walk!"

mindlight · Mar 19, 2012

jgarden said:
How are conservatives supposed to reconcile that Buffett and Gates, their 2 most prominent "poster-boys" for American capitalism, are not only agnostics/atheists but make public comments undermining the position that the top 1% should not be subject to tax increases!

How ironic that these agnostic/atheist billionaire philanthropists have more insight into the social responsibilities of distributing the world's wealth, than the vast majority of Christians!

Romney, Santorum and Gingrich continue to "talk the talk" about being practicing Christians - but its America's 2 wealthiest billionaires, who question the very existance of God, are acting more like Christians when it comes to "walking the walk!"

American conservatives and especially Christian ones do seem blind to the needs of poorer people. I would agree with them that there is no obligation on Christians to help non Christians in poverty. However like Scottish John I would support the existence of a welfare state not on grounds of compassion like him but on the grounds of efficiency.

It is simply poor stewardship to allow people who have accidents or illnesses and their entire families to be completely financially wiped out by these. Private health care schemes for instance have proven immensely inefficient and systems like the NHS are simply more cost effective as well as providing comprehensive care.

Also the levels of tax paid by Americas billionaires is simply unfair and has nothing to do with incentivising people or cultivating a society of aspiration. They are simply not pulling their weight or honouring their social obligations.

Bill Gates: I don't pay enough tax!

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