In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing. The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical…
Once in a while, I tune into KJSL, a St. Louis Christian talk radio station. I do this as part of a conscious effort to make myself listen to people with views that are dramatically different from my own. Perhaps I will understand those views better if I take the time to listen more.
While I was driving last week, the station featured a show called “News and Views,” hosted by a man named “Dr. Larry Bates.” The host repeatedly painted the future of the US as bleak, thanks to irresponsible financial policies by the federal government. Because I have some sympathy with that general conclusion, I continued to listen. It turned out that Bates was predicting the imminent financial collapse of the United States. Although I doubted that conclusion, I continued to listen.
Bates then indicated that he is also a big proponent of religious “End Times.” In short, he believes that Jesus will soon be returning to Earth in order to sort things out. I have no sympathy for this religious view. In fact, I find End Times beliefs to be irresponsible and destructive for the numerous reasons. For example, I do not hold the Bible to be inerrant. Based on my study of the Bible, although it offers some good stories and some reasonable moral instruction, it is also rife with bad advice, contradictions and senseless violence.
“Dr. Larry Bates” wears many hats. He claims to be an economist, publisher, editor, …
In recent news, another highway bridge collapsed. Every 20 years or so, a major bridge fails unexpectedly. The nature of civil engineering is to understand how things fail, and design the next generation to avoid that failure. Each failure leads to better designs. Each of the major bridges that collapsed…
The topic of usury laws and payday loans arises frequently these days. Payday lenders commonly charge interest rates of 300%, 400% or more on their loans to desperate consumers. Why do I suggest these consumers are desperate? It’s because they are writing postdated checks to payday lenders, agreeing to give up a large chunks of their next paychecks, and paying exorbitant interest rates in the process. How many people who are not financially desperate would be willing to sign away the proceeds of a future paycheck and pay 450% interest for this “privilege”? With repeated real-life scenario as the backdrop, the question often arises: do usury laws exist anymore? This topic has been addressed by Christopher Peterson in a comprehensive law review article entitled “Usury Law, Payday Loans, and Statutory Sleight-Of-Hand: an Empirical Analysis of American Credit Pricing Limits.”
It’s not hard to determine what motivates Peterson’s work. He writes that the American consumer is now dealing with “a new, largely unregulated credit marketplace.” The center of the storm is the payday lending industry which, “despite spending millions on lobbying and public relations, is at the center of an inferno of rage and public controversy.” Peterson takes time to discuss the history of usury laws throughout the history of the American republic. Usury laws, according to Peterson, have “historically been the foremost bulwark shielding consumers from harsh credit practices.” At the time our country declared its independence, no state had an interest of greater than 8%. Benjamin Franklin warned of …
I was checking on the latest news about the Creationist Museum, and found myself browsing a conservative blog site, Townhall.com. The hot issue of the day is debunking the whole Al Gore Global Warming issue. Try this post, for a taste.
What truly bugged me is that, among the innumerate and sometimes marginally literate responses, there was a kernel of actually reasonable doubt. Those who follow the actual science (a minority on that site) know that there is no doubt about the present warming trend, nor about the unprecedented rise in fossil CO2 in the last century. However, there is no certain model for the causality leading to or spawning from these facts.
Doomsayers love the fantastic, sudden, apocalyptic models of global warming that Hollywood likes to portray. It’s quite dramatic, and cannot be ruled out. However, most models show that the big and civilization-altering changes that are likely to occur will take generations to notice. The present conservative movement is more interested in the next fiscal quarter than the next generation. Therefore, this is not a “real” problem.
The real problem with the Gore campaign is that it is covered as a binary issue. Either Global Warming is a big and serious and immediate problem that requires drastic solutions, or it an imaginary scare tactic. The truth is somewhere in between. Fossil atmospheric carbon dumping is (and will be) a tiny blip in history. Maybe three centuries total out of the almost hundred centuries (so far) …