“Death blowing bubbles,” 18th century. The bubbles symbolize life's fragility. This plaster work appears on the ceiling of Holy Grave Chapel in Michaelsberg Abbey, Bamberg, Germany. After the monastery’s dissolution in 1803, the buildings were used as the city's hospital.*
A BOOK OF MUSIC
Coming at the end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at the end. Rather I would like to say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.
~ Jack Spicer
Frida tells them the truth about love Oriana:
All romantic love ends — it either becomes transformed into a deep attachment, which arguably can be called “true love,” or the lovers part. But if they part, ideally they should remember that there was a time they truly loved each other, and they should honor this memory by refraining from vengefulness or any hostile acts. “We loved each other,” they should say, and hopefully understand how sacred those words are.
Mary:
Of course no better subject for Valentine's week than love. Something essential, it seems, for survival, for a life clear, strong and untwisted, for confidence in one's own worth and right to exist. If infants are not loved, especially if they are not touched, it does seemingly irreparable damage to their ability to feel, even understand, and certainly to experience this one essential. Those whose early times were loveless or traumatic may be ever hungry, ravenous, for love, and in their need and desperation, can overwhelm and devour their chosen, swallowing lives in an endlessly unfilled chasm of need. These are love's vampires. And they are legion.
Rather than that "two become one" idea of love that involves the unending search for that perfect 'other half' that will 'complete you,' I prefer Spicer's
......we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons.
Much better than all those jumbled fragments of bone, like a disarticulated jigsaw puzzle muddled up together in the grave. That image seems the ultimate of the romantic one and only, let us merge together and dissolve in each other kind of thinking, that, sooner or later, becomes a tragedy. For example: Bronte's Cathy and Heathcliff.
And even with all the varieties of dangerous and predatory love, the false and manipulative, the delusional and narcissistic, there is that sense always that love is what we want and need, what we must have, simply to be human.
Oriana:
Yes. Oddly enough, the most dangerous adult is someone who was seriously deprived of love as a child. Or rather, I should correct that to “who was abused as a child.” A friend who worked in in a maximum-security prison told me that they had a scholar interview the inmates: 100% of them were sexually abused as children. 100%!
And the abusers were very likely themselves victims of abuse. The astonishing and hope-giving thing is that some victims decide to break the chain. That’s what we should celebrate: that at least some people manage not to keep on acting out of their wounds, but break through to their essential humanity. And perhaps the most marvelous thing about humans is that no matter what our wounds, most of us don’t lose the capacity for love.
As for remaining two separate people, even some maturity and experience shows us that no, we don’t find the “missing half” or the soulmate. We don’t really “complete each other.” Those are destructive myths that have done harm. We have the grant our partner the freedom to be his own person — just as a cat has to do cat things and a dog has to sniff around. If we can respect the animal’s true nature (sadly, I’ve encountered people who just can’t let go of control, with people or animals), how much more this applies to humans.
Yes, we are separate and unique, and “two people who love each other is a miracle” ~ Adrienne Rich. But we need to shed harmful myths — “soulmate” is an example, especially if anyone believes that there is only one true soulmate out there in the world, and we must find that missing person. No, love is a process — a complex process which includes a lot of learning and growing up. And perhaps the greatest gift we can give to a lover, aside from affectionate nurturing, is being mature enough to give that person the space and freedom to be who they are. If we try to mold the partner to be closer to what we’d like them to be, then we are getting dangerously close to the kind of “delusional and narcissistic” love that Mary mentions. Healthy love is based on deep respect for the partner’s unique being — and wanting what is best for them.
Though I don't know if Chagall intended the winged figure to mean fleeing Eros, that's how I think of this painting.
“THE FAVOURITE”: FAKE LOVE VERSUS REAL LOVE
There is a Russian saying about the difference between fake and true love. Upon seeing you bareheaded during snowfall, the person who only pretends to love you says, “You look beautiful with snowflakes in your hair.” The true lover says, “Where is your cap, stupid?”
The saying strikes me as quite perceptive. I don’t know if “stupid” is a requirement here, and that’s where Queen Anne’s original “favourite,” Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, perhaps overplays her hand. To prove that the affection of her rival, Abigail, is fake, Sarah says, “Sure, she tells you, ‘You are so beautiful. You look like an angel. I tell you that sometimes you look like a badger.”
This, again, is an accurate observation, but the sickly queen, who is certainly no beauty, doesn’t need to hear that she looks like a badger. A genuine lover should be able to tell the truth, even if it may displease the partner, but . . . there are limits. Sarah will not play with the queen’s rabbits and says, “Love has its limits.” But so does honesty. There is no need for cruel comparisons.
Queen Anne. Note the pendant of St. George and the Dragon.The queen needs to feel cherished, even if it means falling for Abigail’s flattery. She knows she isn’t beautiful, but . . . what woman doesn’t like being told she’s beautiful? Or being paid compliments in general? Both men and women seem to thrive on certain amount of flattery, but since this movie concentrates so much on women, let’s leave male-female comparisons out of the discussion. It could be said that the movie is about love in general: to what extent should we perhaps think more about kindness than about truthfulness in long-term relationship?
The Favourite does not claim to be historically accurate, as critics have pointed out. To this day we aren’t sure if Queen Anne had any lesbian relationships. She did seem to rely on the advice of female friends more so than male advisers — though in the end she made up her own mind, according to historians. The current view of her is not that of weak, timid, ignorant monarch with no views of her own, who did not rule so much as did the bidding of the Duchess of Marlborough and the favorites who succeeded her; rather, Queen Anne presided ably enough over England’s rise from a minor power to a major power, and the country unification as Great Britain.
She was also a patron of the arts, especially music (think Handel), but that’s a separate issue. The movie doesn’t concern itself with the complexities of the historical Queen Anne. It’s a movie about the nature of love.
The tragedy here is that fake love wins: Abigail triumphs while Sarah falls into disfavor — to the point of being dismissed from the court and seeing that it would be better for her and her husband, the Duke of Marlborough, to leave England. First, she has to surrender the huge gold key that is symbol of her power: the ceremonial Key to the Royal Bedchamber.
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of MarlboroughReading the history of the court intrigues of those years is dizzying. The rivalry between Sarah and Abigail was real, as was the rise of Abigail from a domestic servant to an influential courtier. The pet names of Mrs. Morley (Anne) and Mrs. Freeman (Sarah) were real too, attesting to the existence of a private language and real affection between the two women. Abigail’s alleged attempt to poison Sarah seems fictional. Sarah’s domineering nature and her wicked tongue caused quarrels, and that seems to have been the chief cause of her downfall.
Still, it was a genuine long-term relationship — Sarah was in fact Anne’s childhood friend, and the two appear to know each other very well. Nevertheless, Sarah seems to have been insensitive to the queen’s emotional needs. Love does indeed have limits, but it’s not love without kindness and deep respect. Sarah’s quest for power ultimately takes precedence, and she loses the queen’s heart.
Both Sarah and Abigail are ruthless manipulators, but Abigail, perhaps because she is a survivor of all kinds of abuse, turns out to be a greater expert. She understands the queen’s desperate need to be loved, and caters to it. She is dripping with flattery and sweetness. The queen eats up the sweetness — even in the symbolic form of gorging herself on cake.
The scene that reveals how mean Abigail truly is is the one in which she torments a little rabbit — one of the queen’s “children.” The queen is asleep, but the rabbit’s squeal under Abigail’s shoe wakes her up and she witnesses her new favorite’s cruelty. “This really showed Abigail’s hatred of the queen,” my friend remarked. Yes. In the movie, Abigail ends up paying a high price for this. But the queen wakes up too late, so to speak. She has already lost the woman who truly cared for her, and with whom she’d built a long-term relationship.
The scene with the rabbit is the turning point: not only for the queen, but also for the audience. At first we may sympathize with Abigail and are willing to see her as a victim first, a schemer second. But now we see she is evil — or rather, she is an extremely damaged human being. She is incapable of true affection — not even for a tiny rabbit.
One of the lessons of my youth was: if you meet someone who’s had a truly horrible childhood, run for your life. Such people, I discovered, can be cruel and dangerous. They can perhaps be rehabilitated by a gifted therapist, but the average person better stay away. It’s much too easy to fall for the sugary sweetness of fake love.
Abigail Masham I realize that some viewers may insist that all we have here is fake love: neither Sarah nor Abigail can be said to love the queen. Each pursues her own agenda, and merely uses the queen for her own purposes. But I defend my thesis: while Sarah offered too little tenderness or even simple kindness, she did have a genuine long-term relationship with Anne, a deep intimacy they had built over the decades. The way the queen yearns for a letter from her is quite telling, as is Sarah’s ultimate choice of “My dearest Mrs Morley” as the heading of the conciliatory letter that Abigail intercepts. Abigail is excellent at pretending love, but she loves no one.
Also telling is the way Sarah and Anne can laugh together. True, they quarrel, but they also know how to enjoy being together. With Anne, Abigail is always performing, always trying to be sweet — which must be a strain. Even before the rabbit-torture scene, Abigail shows her true personality when she gets drunk (we don’t get to see chamber pots in this movie, but we do see the vomit vases).
By the way, the movie is visually splendid. It’s not only the costumes and the decor; it’s also the gorgeous horses, always either black or white. And a duck race. And all those outrageous wigs.
I should also mention the powerful acting. This is Emma Stone’s best performance ever.
*
The holiest of holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This looks so Dickensian, but it's a snowy night in Moscow. This is what all Europeans seem to understand, but not all Americans: one can fall in love with a city. Below: a sunset in Trieste.
*
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?” ~ Captain Ahab, toward (so to speak) the whale, Ahab’s only Valentine
*
“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.” ~ John Berger
Oriana:
“Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower” — that sounds so good, but there would be no breast left, only the bones. This is a prose poem about bones, and in principle it should stick to the bones. But every poet knows this problem: you find a great-sounding line that doesn’t quite fit, that is really its own separate poem — but you’re too in love with it to let it go, to “murder your darling.” And you hope that the readers will forgive you, and also fall in love with that line.
As for the rest of this peculiar valentine, it seems to hint that with men, sex drive truly never ends, not even in the grave. But one could object that Berger makes it sound “only physical.”
John Berger *
KINDNESS: ANOTHER MODERN VALUE
I'm pondering Kent Clark’s statement: "Today, if we asked people what quality is most important, the majority would say “kindness.” Yet Dante or St. Francis would not say that. St. Francis would have probably replied, “Chastity, obedience, and poverty.” Chastity more important than kindness? Apparently so.
Others in earlier centuries might have named courage, virtue, piety. Or endurance and self-control (Stoicism). John Milton would probably put obedience first. Depending on social class, other possible supreme values might be hard work and thrift. It was not until the 19th century that revulsion against cruelty (including slavery) began emerging. The novels of Dickens had an immense social influence — perhaps the most proud chapter in the history of literature, a showcase of how a novel can expand empathy.
A while ago I was astonished by an article insisting that Christianity is not about kindness. All those years I thought that Christianity WAS about kindness. In fact the teachings on kindness were Christianity’s saving grace, outweighing the barbarous human sacrifice, the “bloody ransom” that stood as the foundation. But it was possible to put the gory salvationism out of one’s mind and just follow the teachings on kindness. Forgiveness, compassion, non-revenge, helping the less fortunate — that, I thought, was the beauty of Christianity.
How misguided and un-Christian, the article argues. This sentence says it all: “To make kindness into an ultimate virtue is to insist that our most important moral obligations are those we owe are to our fellow human beings” (and to animals, I would add, who are also our brothers and sisters).
Our most important moral obligations AREN’T to our fellow human beings??
Well, no. To use my own lingo now, according to religious conservatives, your highest moral obligation is not to real beings, but to an imaginary being.
And it’s tricky to define our moral obligations to that imaginary being. Are we to wage crusades? If not going to mass on Sunday is a mortal sin, is it a greater obligation than taking the time to play with your children? Obviously everything depends on interpretation, meaning which century you happen live in, and which church you belong to.
I also remembered that for a long time numerous thinkers have argued that the divinity of Jesus was open to question, and he should rather be honored as a teacher of ethics. After all, that was the premise of Unitarianism.
Perhaps not surprisingly, though somehow I was surprised, what followed in that article trying to define Christianity was a sermon on sin and fearing god and obeying the commandments. As for kindness, the author reminds us that “Jesus did not heal everyone who asked to be healed.” Sometimes, apparently suffering from kindness fatigue, Jesus would go off by himself to rest and pray. (True. Christianity doesn’t insist on excessive, pathological altruism that would destroy our health. Only “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Not more so.)
But somehow the commandment of love is never mentioned in the article — though I admit that the command to love god caused me much grief since I could not feel the slightest affection for the mean old man in the sky who threw children into hell by the million (all the non-Catholic children, back then). But I loved St. Paul’s “though as speak with the tongues of men and angels . . .” If only it had occurred to me back then (as it did much later) that a nun threatening children with hell is like the clashing of cymbals.
But at the time, it didn’t yet occur to anyone that threats of hell were a form of child abuse. A mild form, I admit, compared to severe beatings, and worse, that used to be normal child rearing practices in past centuries. The levels of stress had to go down for cruelty to lessen too. Dickens and Victor Hugo had to write his novels about the sufferings of children and the poor, so that “kindness” could take root in the collective psyche.
The early deities were cruel. Times were harsh, and this was reflected in the various religions. The preaching of loving kindness by the Buddha and Jesus was indeed revolutionary. But for kindness to become more of a reality, life had to become less harsh — and that is fairly recent. The levels of violence had to go down, as has indeed happened in a significant portion of the world. When we feel secure and when our physical needs are taken care of due to greater prosperity, we then have the luxury (in contrast with the past centuries) of practicing kindness. We can even speak out against spanking and other cruelty against children. We grow intolerant (and justly so) of even petty violence and malice. We start imagining a world at peace, a world where everyone is kind.
Pessimists might reply that that is an unachievable ideal. Cynics might laugh — but not as loud as they would have during the Middle Ages. Against many odds, progress has been made. One indicator of it is indeed the high value we place on kindness. The gap between the ideal and the practice is undeniably there, but I argue that the very visibility of the ideal is already a fact to be celebrated.
As for the concept of hell, I'm told that in liberal Protestantism hell is not even mentioned anymore. Mark my words: eventually hell will go. Theists still believe in angels, but the percentage believing in the devils is decreasing. It is a trend, one that reflects the great value that we moderns have learned to place on kindness.
Mary:
If kindness and empathy have become more possible as we have become more able to afford them . . . perhaps becoming more valued, even required of each other, as we move farther away from having to spend all energies in the struggle to survive . . . what bright hopes arise! For all the violence and injustice we see, it is yet a world away from what was commonplace and unremarkable even 100 years ago. Values, norms, expectations, have shifted, and even the resurgence in open hate speech evident in the US today appears like something pulled up from history's old root cellar, coarse and grotesque — most importantly — not invisible — not just part of the scenery — no longer accepted as the usual and even necessary order of things.
Oriana:
“For all the violence and injustice we see, it is yet a world away from what was commonplace and unremarkable even 100 years ago.” Yes! There is less acceptance of cruelty and overt racism and bigotry of any kind. It may seem irrelevant to bring up the success of the anti-smoking campaign here, but I don’t think it is. When a vigorous effort is made to raise awareness that something is harmful, most people eventually “get it.”
I think even without a coordinated effort, the very fact that we are exposed to “the other” on mass media is tremendously significant. A close-up of a human face, regardless of the person’s color, still shows a face that we recognize as similar to our own — the soulful eyes with fear and hope in them, the soft lips made for kissing. If we love animals the way we do — but note, cruelty toward animals also used to be commonplace — if we recognize ourselves in animals too, recognize their capacity of affectionate attachment — how much more so our own kind.
I must have said it a hundred times by now — progress in medicine and technology has made life less harsh, and child rearing has become less harsh as well. No doubt there have also been other changes that combined to produce this effect, but simply receiving more love in childhood leads to an improvement in the person’s capacity to love — to recognize the humanity of others.
St. Francis in ecstasy; Giovanni Bellini, 1480. Note the wonderful landscape and the animals — and the city in the background, with a castle on the hill.*
REASON AND PROGRESS: THE CRYSTAL PALACE
“You believe in a crystal palace that can never be destroyed—a palace at which one will not be able to put out one's tongue or make a long nose on the sly. And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this edifice, that it is of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one cannot put one's tongue out at it even on the sly.” ~ Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
from Wiki: ~ The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Following the success of the exhibition, the Palace was moved and reconstructed in 1854 in a modified and enlarged form in the grounds of the Penge Place estate at Sydenham Hill. The buildings housed the Crystal Palace School of Art, Science, and Literature and Crystal Palace School of Engineering. It attracted visitors for over seven decades.
Sydenham Hill is one of the highest locations in London; 109 metres (357 ft) above sea level; and the size of the Palace and prominence of the site made it easy to identify from much of London. This led to the residential area around the building becoming known as Crystal Palace instead of Sydenham Hill. The Palace was destroyed by fire on 30 November 1936 and the site of the building and its grounds is now known as Crystal Palace Park. ~
For Dostoyevski, the Crystal Palace was a symbol of blind belief in progress and the triumph of the values of the Enlightenment. D was a great psychologist who understood the power of the irrational. Reason too is a slave of passions, many writers and some philosophers have concluded. Indeed, emotions are crucial to our decision making, and the intellectually gifted, contrary to the stereotype, tend to be emotionally intense.
Hamlet to Horatio:
Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart.
~ Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF FINLAND’S BASIC PERSONAL INCOME TRIAL
~ “Tuomas Muraja’s life took an unexpected turn at the end of 2016. He received a letter telling him that he would be getting a monthly sum of €560 ($640) from the Finnish government, no strings attached, for two years.
“It was actually like winning the lottery,” said Muraja, who was one of 2,000 people randomly selected from a pool of 175,000 unemployed Finns, aged 25 to 58, to take part in one of the most prominent universal basic income trials in the world.
The trial ended in December. While final results won’t be available until 2020, preliminary results were revealed on Friday.
On employment, the country’s income register showed no significant effects for 2017, the first year of the trial.
The real benefits so far have come in terms of health and well being. The 2,000 participants were surveyed, along with a control group of 5,000. Compared with the control group, those taking part had “clearly fewer problems related to health, stress, mood and concentration,” said Minna Ylikännö, senior researcher at Kela. Results also showed people had more trust in their future and their ability to influence it.
“Constant stress and financial stress for the long term – it’s unbearable. And when we give money to people once a month they know what they are going to get,” said Ylikännö. “It was just €560 a month, but it gives you certainty, and certainty about the future is always a fundamental thing about well being.”
“When you feel free you are creative, and when you are creative you are productive, and that helps the whole of society,” said Muraja, who has written a book about his experiences with the trial.
The policy has supporters on both sides of the political spectrum. Those on the left say it will help tackle poverty, reduce yawning inequality and help people fend off the threat of their job being automated. For advocates on the right, UBI is seen as an attractive way to simplify complex systems of welfare payment and reduce the size of government.
Tech billionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have thrown support behind the idea amid anger over their own extreme wealth. It’s also caught the attention of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D.-N.Y.) who has floated UBI as part of a Green New Deal – the umbrella name for a host of policies to tackle climate change and reduce inequality.
The end of the scheme was a shock, [one recipient] said, for everyone who participated in the trial. “We all are in big trouble now to be honest, because what would happen to you if your income decreased by €600?”
She’s still working at her job, but is already running up debt and desperately searching for better-paying work.
The end of Finland’s scheme was also a blow to those who had hoped the trial would be expanded and extended. Politicians “wasted the opportunity of a lifetime to conduct the kind of trial that Finnish social policy experts had done preliminary research for for decades,” said Antti Jauhiainen, a director of the think tank Parecon Finland.
But there are experiments that are still going. A program in Kenya, for example, run by the charity GiveDirectly, has been giving out unconditional money since 2016 to more than 21,000 people in villages across the country in a trial set to last 12 years. Initial results show a boost to the well being of participants.
And there are others on the horizon. In the U.S., a trial is about to kick off in Stockton, California, that will give $500 a month to 100 low-income families. And in Oakland, the tech incubator Y Combinator intends to start a UBI trial this year that would hand $1,000 a month with no strings attached to 1,000 people across two U.S. states for three years. In India, the main opposition party is running on a pledge to introduce a guaranteed minimum income for the country’s poor.
Finland is readying itself for elections in two months, and some hope that UBI could be back on the table. Kauhanen is among them. “I loved the basic income experience,” she said, “and I wish that it would be for all people in Finland. I know it’s expensive, but on a smaller scale, I think it would be just what we need because right now in Finland, the poor people are the ones who are getting cut off.” ~
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/universal-basic-income-finland-ontario-stockton_us_5c5c3679e4b00187b558e5ab
No surprises here: people’s mental and physical health improves as financial stress decreases. School performance tends to go up, and young people tend to remain in school longer. With less pressure to provide a second income, new mothers tend to choose staying home with their newborns. Money can’t buy happiness? Yes it can — up to a point.
President Nixon, of all people, has proposed a negative income tax: those earning less than a certain amount would receive a monthly payment. But the proposal didn’t pass.
Finland: Osterskar Island*
“Basic income would give people the most important freedom: the freedom of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their lives.” ~ Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists
“A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country sets sail. Progress is the realization of utopias.” ~ Oscar Wilde
Shangri-La(the movie’s actual title was Lost Horizon, directed by Frank Capra; I loved the movie)AMERICA IS FINALLY FALLING OUT OF LOVE WITH BILLIONAIRES
~ “Our emerging political debate over taxing the rich seems to be getting bogged down in details — how high a tax rate, should we tax income or wealth, etc., etc. But this fixation on nuts and bolts is obscuring what may be the most important aspect of the discussion: America is becoming fed up with its billionaires.
Since the Reagan administration, the political establishment has strived to convince Americans that extreme wealth in the hands of a small number of plutocrats is good for everyone. We’ve had the “trickle-down” theory, the rechristening of the wealthy as “job creators” and their categorization invariably as “self-made.” We’ve been told, via the simplistic Laffer Curve, that if you raise the tax rate you get less revenue.
There are three main subtexts of these arguments, all of which show up in the email in-box whenever I write about wealth and taxation. First: The extreme wealth of the few creates wealth all along the income scale, for the masses. Second: It’s immoral — confiscatory — to soak the rich via taxation, at least above a certain level that never seems to be precisely defined. And third: If we torment the wealthy with taxes, they’ll pack up their wealth and leave us, whether for some more accommodating nation on Earth or some Ayn Randian paradise.
Experience has shown us that the first argument is simply untrue — extreme wealth begets only more inequality. The second argument raises the question of where reasonable taxation turns into confiscation, although the level of taxation of high incomes today is nowhere near as high as it was in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, when economic gains were shared much more equally with the working class. As for the third, Warren’s answers to capital flight include stepping up IRS enforcement resources, which have been eviscerated by political agents of the wealthy, and imposing an “exit tax” on any plutocrat renouncing his or her U.S. citizenship to evade U.S. taxes.
Why are billionaires beginning to be treated so skeptically?
One reason surely is the evidence that extreme wealth has a corrosive effect on the economy. Wealth inequality places immense resources in the hands of people unable to spend it productively, and keeps it out of the hands of those who would put it to use instantly, whether on staples or creature comforts that should be within the reach of everyone living in the richest country on Earth.
Multimillionaires and billionaires love to describe themselves as “self-made,” but the truth is that every fortune is the product of other people’s labor — the minimum-wage workers overseas who assemble Michael Dell’s computers or the low-wage baristas in Howard Schultz’s Starbuck stores, or the taxpayers who fund the roads, bridges and airports that help keep their businesses profitable.
Examples have been proliferating of the inability of the super-rich to spend their money productively or for the common good. Last week it was reported that Daniel Snyder, the owner of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, was spending $100 million on a 305-foot super-yacht complete with an on-board IMAX screening room. It’s his second yacht, after a 220-foot version.
At the same moment, hedge fund owner Ken Griffin was disclosed as the buyer of the most expensive home in America, a $238-million Manhattan penthouse. According to Bloomberg, he already owns two floors of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Chicago ($30 million), a Miami Beach penthouse ($60 million), another Chicago penthouse ($58.75 million) and another apartment in Manhattan ($40 million).
Griffin, to be fair, also deploys some of his wealth philanthropically. But that only raises the question of why that sort of spending should go to the recipients personally favored by a billionaire, even with the best intentions.
Computer entrepreneur Dell unwittingly raised exactly this question during a panel discussion at the recent financial powwow in Davos, Switzerland, where he dismissed calls for higher taxes on the super-wealthy by declaring that he contributed to society via a family foundation. “I feel much more comfortable with our ability as a private foundation to allocate those funds,” he said, “than I do giving them to the government.”
The only answer to that is: Sez who? As I observed at the time, Dell’s multibillion-dollar fortune is based on mail and online orders of computers — in other words, on infrastructure created and funded by the government he disdains.
People like (Starbuck’s) Schultz “live what is, for almost all practical purposes, a post-scarcity existence,” Paul Campos observes aptly at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog. “If you have three billion dollars, then you can buy almost anything without even bothering to consider what it costs, since what it costs is, to you, practically indistinguishable from ‘nothing.’ Given that everything is for you already basically free, why would you even care if your tax bill goes up?
Especially given that you live in a society in which, despite what is by ... historical standards an almost inconceivable amount of total social wealth, lots of people still have to worry about getting enough to eat, not freezing to death in the next polar vortex, etc?”
Keynes today is treated as an icon of liberal economics, but he was a capitalist through and through. His theme here was that the accumulation and investment of capital had created a world in which the economic struggle — the “struggle for subsistence” — would be won within 100 years.
That brought Keynes to a critique of “the money motive.” He looked ahead to a world in which “the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance” and society could rid itself of “many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.”
Chief among these was “the love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life.” The pursuit of excess wealth, he projected, “will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”
We are almost at Keynes’ 100-year deadline. He was half right. We have the resources at hand to win the “struggle for subsistence.” But we haven’t come full circle to regarding the love of money as a pathological, “somewhat disgusting morbidity.”
We may be getting there, however. Ocasio-Cortez and Warren have shown that casting a critical eye on accumulated wealth can garner public approval. Schultz’s campaign, based as it is on a quest to keep the wealth he has, is collecting brickbats and ridicule. The process is only beginning, but it’s desperately needed.
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-billionaires-20190201-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1fdk834GTRusNS08UkkYsokczAhSQnWklZnkzBmXN_3-KbcNYY_R-4PcI
RUTGER BREGMAN: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER ABOUT TAXES
~ “Back in January, the world’s economic elite gathered together for the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The four-day event featured discussions on climate change, the fourth industrial revolution, and the current state of the global economy.
But the biggest news may have been a two-minute rant against tax avoidance by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. During a private panel in front of some of the world’s wealthiest people, he chastised them for not addressing the elephant in the room.
“I mean 1500 private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how we’re wrecking the planet,” Bregman said. “I hear people talking the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency.”
“But then almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance,” he said to a shocked room. “And of the rich just not paying their fair share. It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one is allowed to speak about water.”
As a historian, Bregman was in a unique position to speak truth to power.
“Two days ago there was a billionaire in here ... Michael Dell, and he asked the question, 'Name me one country where a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent has actually worked?'” Bregman said.
“And, you know, I’m the historian, the United States, that’s where it has actually worked. In the 1950s ... the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 91 percent for people like Michael Dell. The top estate tax for people like Michael Dell was more than 70 percent.”
“We can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes, we can invite Bono once more, but, come on, we got to be talking about taxes," Bregman continued. "That’s it. Taxes, taxes, taxes — all the rest is bullshit, in my opinion.”
https://www.upworthy.com/this-historian-was-hired-by-the-super-rich-to-give-a-speech-instead-he-gave-them-a-blistering-rant-that-is-going-viral-for-the-best-reasons?c=upw1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKcaIE6O1k
*
Inventing unreal reaches is a thing humans do. Accounts of the follies and angers of gods, fairy tales, folk tales, Trickster tales, parables, and stories of super-heroic doings are found world-wide . . . They hold things we hunger for but cannot eat, except by feasting in sleep, in daydream, in childhood play, in art. Slaves and prisoners singing of freedom may feel, for that moment, free. ~ Jane Hirshfield
Hercules and the Hydra*
I think the only joke (of sorts — an “off-color joke”) in the bible is the story of Jacob’s thinking he’s marrying Rachel, and in the morning he discovers it’s Leah. That’s why the last part of the cartoon below doesn’t work for me. Tyrants don’t seem to have a sense of humor. When they laugh, its cruel laughter.
*
Notre-Dame of Laon. It occurred to me that part of the reason I like churches when they are empty is simply the large space — just as I like large living spaces, with at least the living room and the master bedroom having a certain “sweep” — and why I visually prefer the West coast, which offers such spectacular stretches of nothing.
I realize that when it comes to Gothic cathedrals, it’s the vertical spaciousness that is most striking. But that too is the luxury of a vast stretch of nothing. It’s the opposite of the clutter of poverty where every square inch has to be utilized. Make no mistake about it: Catholic churches are about wealth; they are about luxury.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF KEFIR
~ “Yogurt is the best known probiotic food in the Western diet, but kefir is actually a much more potent source.
Kefir grains contain up to 61 strains of bacteria and yeasts, making them a very rich and diverse probiotic source, though diversity may vary.
Other fermented dairy products are made from far fewer strains and don't contain any yeasts.
Kefir Has Potent Antibacterial Properties
Certain probiotics in kefir are believed to protect against infections.
This includes the probiotic Lactobacillus kefiri, which is unique to kefir.
Studies demonstrate that this probiotic can inhibit the growth of various harmful bacteria, including Salmonella, Helicobacter pylori and E. coli.
Kefiran, a type of carbohydrate present in kefir, also has antibacterial properties
Kefir Can Improve Bone Health and Lower the Risk of Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is characterized by deterioration of bone tissue and is a major problem in Western countries.
Full-fat kefir is not only a great source of calcium but also vitamin K2, which plays a central role in calcium metabolism. Supplementing with K2 has been shown to reduce your risk of fractures by as much as 81%.
Recent animal studies link kefir to increased calcium absorption in bone cells.
This leads to improved bone density, which should help prevent fractures.
Kefir May Be Protective Against Cancer
Cancer is one of the world's leading causes of death.
It occurs when abnormal cells in your body grow uncontrollably, such as in a tumor.
The probiotics in fermented dairy products are believed to reduce tumor growth by stimulating your immune system. Therefore, it is possible that kefir may fight cancer (15).
This protective role has been demonstrated in several test-tube studies (16, 17).
One study found that kefir extract reduced the number of human breast cancer cells by 56%, compared to only 14% for yogurt extract (18).
Keep in mind that human studies are needed before firm conclusions can be made.
The Probiotics in It May Help With Various Digestive Problems
Probiotics such as kefir can help restore the balance of friendly bacteria in your gut.
This is why they are highly effective at treating many forms of diarrhea.
What’s more, ample evidence suggests that probiotics and probiotic foods can alleviate many digestive problems.
These include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcers caused by H. pylori infection and many others.
For this reason, kefir may be useful if you have problems with digestion.
Kefir Is Low in Lactose
The lactic acid bacteria in fermented dairy foods — like kefir and yogurt — turn the lactose into lactic acid, so these foods are much lower in lactose than milk.
They also contain enzymes that can help break down the lactose even further.
Kefir May Improve Allergy and Asthma Symptoms
Allergic reactions are caused by inflammatory responses against certain foods or substances.
People with an over-sensitive immune system are more prone to allergies, which can provoke conditions like asthma.
In animal studies, kefir has been shown to suppress inflammatory responses related to allergies and asthma.
Human studies are needed to better explore these effects.” ~
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-health-benefits-of-kefir#section1
We shall meet again in Petersburg
as if there we had buried the sun,
and then we shall pronounce for the first time
the blessed word that transcends all meaning.
~ Osip Mandelstam, tr Merwin and Clarence Brown (slightly modified)
St. Petersburg, the Lion Bridge
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