This I Believe

I was unable to upload a mp3 file to Blogger.... apparently it is not allowed on this blogging medium.  So here is a link to my TIB. You may have to sign into a gmail account to view the file.  It is on Music Player for google drive

This I believe... not everyone can be equal.  All my life I have been aware of how people are different, which is not a bad thing.  When I was young I was aware of how my twin sister was different from me.  She possessed talents I did not; she was an artist and possessed a level of social intellect well beyond me.  Would it be right of me to envy and want to take from my sister her social and artistic intellect?  No, it is okay to be unequal.  This belief that there should be equality in every aspect of our lives is dangerous.

I remember back to my time in high school, as a student and as an athlete. I was motivated both by a drive to be different and be better than my peers.  In sports these inequalities are what make you the winner or the loser.  In school it is what motivated me to develop my college application better than those I was competing against.  The concept of inequality fosters competition and drive, which increases performance.  While conversely, equality kills motivation and drive.  

If I would have known that myself and my other high school classmate mates would all get into the colleges we wanted, I would immediately lose motivation to perform. My performance in school would no longer be incentivized.  A world of inequalities raises motivated, driven people.  If it does not motivate you to go out and perform in whatever way you are gifted there is something wrong with you.  

For society to function a lack of equality has to be present.  Everyone cannot be equal.  Not everyone is born the most athletic, or the prettiest, or the smartest, or any combination of these traits.  These inequalities are not decided by society but they lead to different opportunities in society.  How much sense would it make to have hiring equality in the fashion world.  Would an unattractive model be able sell clothing or represent the company well?  Would a five foot four un-athletic individual make a good NBA player?  Would someone who is not the brightest make a good NASA physics?  The answer is no.  People posses different abilities.

My Dad has been telling me since I was a little boy, “ You were created by God with a purpose, and everyone was created with a purpose.  Find what you were intended to do.”  I have not found what I intend to do, but what I do know is not everyone will be able to do what I decide to do, and that is perfectly acceptable.  As I will be unable to accomplish what many others can.  This does not mean I should feel insulted by my lack of equality in these certain areas, and others should not be insecure about what they are not good at.  

Inequality is what makes us human; disparity between intellectual traits and physical traits within the human population makes us diverse. Diversity is something, which is commonly hailed as being good and epitomizes the uniqueness of the human population.  Highlighting how not everyone can be equal which is an often-unheralded gift to the human race that has allowed it to accomplish many great things.  

Equality is a double-edged sword, it sounds great but is impractical. Equality I believe is an argument given due to corrupt human nature, to take what you want the easy way, by evening the playing field.  The only place where equality is not an evil idea is in the category of human decency and respect.  Everyone should command equal respect from his or her peers and self.  This respect should be award regardless of income, performance, race or abilities, this is the only place in society equality has a place.

CI#2: Presidental Candidates

A civic issue that has been in the news recently is how to make college more affordable?  One presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, has been claiming to make college free for everyone.  How would this work? And what are the issues  with such a statement? 

According to Bernie the US is being crippled by the fact that not everyone is able to go to college.  He says it is the best interests of the United States as a whole to invest in the future... which is the next generation of workers.  Along with many people not attending college because of financial reasons, many student graduate college with mountains of debt.  The financial burden of college is carried with many students for years and even decades. 

The question is when you dig deeper into Bernie’s policy proposals what is in their.  How are things paid for, how do you qualify for free college?  Not everyone qualifies for free college under Bernie’s plan, on those from low-income families. 

The controversy arises as always with the question of money.  What will Bernie do to fund this idea and what will be the consequences?  On the Bernie Sanders webpage he has a whole section dedicated to showing how much each of his proposed ideas cost and how he proposes to pay for them.  For his proposal of subsidizing and socializing higher education he has tagged it with be paid for by a tax on Wall Street Speculation-which he says will raise 300billion a year. 

What this tax does is it reduces the tax break that wall street and banks receive for incurring risk.  When a bank gives a loan their risk is the possibility they will not get back the money they loaned.  Incurring risk is how the economy grows; there is no risk free investments (the closest thing is government backed bonds).  So what this tax will do is tax every single person that has any form of investments in the stock market, bond market, or derivative markets. 

This is a clever way to increases taxes on everyone except the lower class who have no money to invest.  Sanders regularly champions the fact that he is taking from the RICH(only the rich) and giving to the poor and middle class, this is not the case.  He is raising taxes on everyone is ways that are just not commonly known.  Taxes like income tax will be reduced for the middle and lower class, but these tax breaks will surely be made up through other taxing programs, started by Bernie. 

If you go to Sanders website and look at how he plans to pay for his policies you will find a bevy of programs that will strengthen the government and IRS hold on the people. 

Also as education is concerned, in an economic sense supply determines demand.  What happens when the number of individuals in the work force with a college education go up.  The value(Demand) of that education goes down.  It is not true that more educated people will lead to more jobs.  There is a fixed number of jobs and those are created by the people Bernie is going to hurt the most with his policies. 

Unfortunately, the proposals Bernie makes all sound great, but we do not live in a utopia things do not work as well in practice as they do in theory. 

There are things that can be done to reform education but the drastic measures of making is relatively free is not the way to go.  The place for reforming higher education should be on reforming the student loan program.  The US government profited over 110Billion dollars in recent years on student loans.  Student loans should have a reduced interest rate. 

CI#1: Presidental Candidates

This being the first Civic Issues (CI) post, I will be explaining what my series of five posts will be centered around. 

For my CI blog I hope to be able to not just tell you about a civic issue but to foster a interest in learning more on your own.  In a series of short blog post it would be impractical to go into any more depth than is needed to simply make you, as my readers aware of the issue. 

My approach to this blog will be to examine five different civic issues that have been permeating social media due to the actions/beliefs of a presidential candidate. For my first one I will be talking about the issue of government transparency, which has been highlighted by the Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton.

Recently two actions have come to the public's attention on Hilary Clintons actions while she was Secretary of State under Obama, first the Benghazi incident and her personnel email server.  Which has been found to have been active in sending and receiving classified information.  In both these instance it has taken a few years before much information is made known about them.  As it turns out Hilary Clinton in the early stages of both investigations made statements that contradict what has been revealed through the investigations.  She continually made statements to try to miss -construe what actually happened. Through these two investigation it has is becoming apparent how much she actually lied.

Its not that this strategy is uncommon in politics, what is uncommon is that these actions are actually being investigated and a blind eye is not being turned.  This facts leads to the logical question, how many incidents similar to these are out there?  How many people in authority are simply choosing not to investigate?

The e-mail servers are significant to the transparency issue in the government because nobody in the government even knew about this.  A lot of times the people are the ones information is withheld from, but in this case the government-to-government relations are not even transparent.  How can transparency expected to be practiced between the government and its’ constituents if this is the case?

For many people who wonder why the email server issue is such a big deal it can be seen in the punishment of former Army General and Director of the CIA David Petraeus. Petraeus was given a $100,000 fine and will never be able to hold a high-ranking government job again.  This came about by simply having some old top-secret information in his personnel archive at his house.  Then letting his biographer look at the information. 

The FBI investigation is still ongoing in Mrs. Clintons case, but if the presidents set from the David Petraeus case is any indication of a possible punishment.  Hilary Clinton could be ousted from politics.