The Semantics of Non-Renewable and Renewable Energy Sources

The mainstream American media follows the traditional mantra of if you repeat a lie or a deception often enough, the public will buy it.  Unfortunately, this is a particular shame when it comes to something as fundamental as the forms of energy utilized in Americathat have a direct and material effect upon our quality of life, for without consistent and reliable energy, the America that we know of, would simply not exist.  To put it in practical terms, most everyone has experienced an electrical "blackout" for at least some period of time, to which unless one is so foresighted as to have an alternate generator, no electricity is generated whatsoever in the dwelling that you are inhabiting, which means that you now have no lights, no power, no cell phone service, no air conditioning, and no heat.  So too, many people have suffered through oil shortages to which gasoline which is normally plentiful in its availability is basically unavailable because of a natural disaster, transportation disaster, or similar, so for a period of time, you are without gasoline, and no matter how fine your car is, if it runs on gasoline, it will no longer be an option for transportation.

The  semantics as noted above, signals basically to the common man that a "non-renewable" energy source sounds like a really good thing, since implied within that name is both that it's more natural, since it's renewable, and that its availability appears to be robust.  On the other hand, "non-renewable" sounds like something that we shouldn't be using at all, since it can't be replenished, so that hardly seems fair to future generations, that we are permitted to selfishly to use it all up.  The thing is though, these terms are incorrectly applied, that is to say, solar and wind are considered to be renewable; whereas oil is considered to be a fossil fuel and non-renewable and those classifications are unfair.

While it is true that the sun shines 24/7 and the wind blows all of the time, at least somewhere, these elements, in order to be utilized as consistent and reliable energy, have to be first harnessed and further they have to have special non-renewable equipment to properly harness this energy.  That is to say, there is very little solar energy generated reliably without installed panels containing numerous photovoltaic cells capturing the sunlight which are in turn tied to a control panel and then to a breaker panel.  In regards to wind power, this necessitates several non-renewal wind turbines, with its non-renewable connected transformer, substation, and transmission lines in order for electricity to be generated.

Most people have been told again and again that oil is a fossil fuel -- that is oil originates from many eons ago and represents the fossils of long since dead and decaying plants and animals and hence is therefore non-renewable.   The above is considered to be fact, but there are other scientists that dispute this "fact" and have proposed a different theory which is that oil is abiotic, which as defined, means that oil is derived not from biological matter but from non-biological matter, that is primarily a mixture of carbon and hydrogen occurring naturally within the earth's crust, creating what we know as oil. 

In actuality, the main reason why the media feels compelled to divide energy sources into so-called non-renewable and renewable categories is the fact that the media is part and parcel of promoting a certain, specific agenda which is attempting to advocate certain specific energy sources over other energy sources so as to enrich certain specific players at the expense of others.  As always, follow the money.

The Middle Class Health Insurance Squeeze

The Affordable Care Act was enacted into American law in 2014, and like most things that have certain specific intentions, there are always going to be in a country such as America certain unexpected outcomes, to which the Affordable Care Act suffers from greatly.  For instance, the middle class carries America, because they are the only class in America that carries the full weight of being an American, with no special privileges granted to them, and no special subsidies provided for them.  Not too surprisingly, the Affordable Care Act, has been particularly pernicious to the middle class, as for single people the phase out of subsidy for health care rests at $45,960 and for families of four it's at $94,200; and because the Affordable Care Act phase out does not take into account whether you live in a community with a high cost of living or not, this phase out is especially troubling for those that do.

The thing about employers is that they are in almost every instant in the business of making a profit, and therefore make it policy to pay especial attention to all phases of their ledger book, which would include expenses, and healthcare premium expenses that are paid for by the employer is one of those expenses that makes a material difference to a company's bottom line.  This means, when health care premiums rise, and they always seem to rise, those costs either have to be shared between employer and employee, absorbed by the employer, or just passed on to the employee.  The real world upshot of all this is that the employee in many companies is suffering the dual problem of having their premium responsibility that is deducted from their paycheck for healthcare increased, while on the other hand, their health coverage has gotten vastly skimpier, unless they opt in to a more comprehensive coverage, if offered, which will cost the employee considerably more in expense. This means in a nutshell, that the affordability of healthcare for the middle class has gotten appreciably worse since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The problem with mandates and regulations that go on for pages and pages and pages, and further that the legislators don't even bother reading, is that America has a multitude of highly trained lawyers, accountants, and special interest groups that do pay close attention to words and their meaning, and consequently make sure that in one form or another, employers will come out alright, as opposed to the real payers into the system, the middle class employees.   The sad thing is many employees do not know even how bad or how weak their company health insurance is, till they go on to utilize it for an emergency, something unexpected, or whatever, whereupon they find out that their coverage for necessary treatment is something far less than ideal. 

The way our healthcare system works currently is a federal law is passed, the employer receives a new mandate, figures out how to manage and manipulate that mandate so that it is business pretty much as usual for them, and passes onto the employee the real impact of such legislation, which, for the middle class, means lower net pay, higher deductibles, and the shouldering of the burden of taking on more responsibility for their healthcare as well as footing the bill for it.

Subjects, Citizens, and the Declaration of Independence

At the time that those involved in the construction of and the execution of our Declaration of independence, each one of these future signees were subjects to the crown of England, and therefore were not citizens, of the British crown, but rather its subjects.  A careful reading though of the Declaration of independence demonstrates that the final Authorized and signed Version as written by Thomas Jefferson uses the word people ten times to refer to the peoples that made up the "thirteen united states of America" and once was used the word, citizens, when referring to the present King of Great Britain, with: "He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas."  These words of "people" as well as "citizens" are words that we as a people, and we as citizens of this great nation, take for granted at the present time, but at the time of the Declaration of Independence, these words were, in fact, revolutionary.

The fact of the matter is that this momentous shift in thinking, as to what type of people that we were to become, did not even come immediately to the incomparable Thomas Jefferson, for as reported by the washingtonpost.com, in an earlier Declaration of Independence draft Thomas Jefferson as discovered by research chemist Dr. Fanella France reported that: "It's quite amazing how he morphed 'subjects' into 'citizens'".   Not only is this decisive change from subjects to citizens, from subjects to a people, the critical part of the very foundation of what became the greatest republic in the annals of all history, but it also set the stage so that our governing document, our present Constitution, was not a document, that created yet another king, and thereby a monarchy, but a President and a republic, with three separate and distinct branches of governance, rather than the European model of monarchies which our independence broke us free from.

To be a subject is to be under the thumb and domain of a power that is sovereign unto itself and thereby has the power to dictate to its subjects what they can or cannot do, in conjunction with parliamentary protocol along with the inevitable political give and take.  On the other hand, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a nation of citizens that have a voice, and with that voice they can freely assemble, so too they can petition their representatives and their government, they have enumerated rights, a government of both checks and balances, and a government that is responsive to and must answer to its citizenry. 

There can never be equality under the law, in a country to which you are a subject, but equality under the law is a fundamental tenet of citizens in a free country to which all are entitled to take part in the beneficence of its collective wealth and productivity.  America is great because it has responsive citizens, and each of those citizens are gifted with the same inalienable rights, and not one of these citizens will ever be compelled to bow or genuflect to any domestic earthly king.

Sharing an Internet Connection with a Neighbor

The first idea that you might be able to share an internet connection with a neighbor is the fact that when you first setup your Wi-Fi system inside your house, you will often see that there are several networks of varying signal strength all listed on your computer.  These networks listed are your neighbors, and quite logically when you notice that the signal strength of a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection is strong, it is fair to conclude that you probably could connect to their network, if you had their password, and hence be able to access the internet by piggybacking onto their network.

The way housing is structured in America, is that you have situations in which the housing is quite dense, such as apartments, condos, and townhomes, along with single family homes, to which typically the more windows a given dwelling has and the closer in proximity you are to each other, the easier it is to access your neighbor's internet and the more reliable and speedier that internet connection will be.  While it is almost always true that a wired internet connection will be both more reliable and faster than wireless, a wireless connection is often acceptable for most people in their typical internet activities. 

The main reason to consider sharing an internet connection with a neighbor is the fact that the cost of internet service can range from $30 to $70 a month, so the sharing of such, would equal to some considerable savings over a period of year, which as they say, "a penny saved is a penny earned".  If you are fortunate and have a good relationship with a particular neighbor to begin with, it's certainly a reasonable subject to bring up, to which the objective should be to test out the theory first, without the need for anyone to get any additional equipment, by simply having one party providing to the other party, their password to their Wi-Fi and then taking it for a ride.  Assuming that the test runs successfully, it then can be further discussed  based on the results whether a Wi-Fi extender is something worth getting, or even installing a Wi-Fi antenna on your roof to make the signal much more powerful, all depending on the commitment neighbors have to one another.

Obviously, when there is sharing between neighbors of anything, there has to be general rules and responsibilities that each party must live up to, especially if your internet provider has a data limit, so that as long as there is a good understanding between neighbors, the savings for each neighbor more than makes up for any small inconveniences that must be overcome. 

The bottom line is that there are many items that can successfully be shared neighbor to neighbor, and internet sharing is one of the more straightforward things to share of them all, as in most cases, you are simply sharing a password, and possibly equally the one-time expense of the modem/router and that is pretty much it.  Remember that anytime that you log onto a public Wi-Fi network such as at a Starbucks or similar, you are sharing an internet connection, so in fact, internet sharing is done all the time; why not consider saving some dollars and doing the same thing at home.

Public Schools, Teachers, and the Bible

No country on earth has as many lawyers as America, and the problem with too many lawyers, is that in order to stay busy and to make money lawyers like to stir up mischief, to which this mischief making can have quite negative consequences.  For instance, in today's America, there are all sorts of legal cases in regards to religious liberties, permissions, and prohibitions that are so convoluted, twisted, contradictory, and troubling that it isn't really clear what teachers can or cannot teach or permit within their classrooms in regards to religious expression or the teaching of such.

The most fundamental error that has been permitted into American jurisprudence like a virus that cannot be eradicated, is that somehow, somewhere, within our Constitution, or Declaration of Independence, there is some clearly delineated statement to the effect that this American government has mandated that there is to be a separation of State and religion, and that this specific separation must have an unbreachable wall between State and church.  The effect of this sort of misguided interpretation of Constitutional law and the policy forthwith that follows is that by forcefully eliminating the Bible, religious thought, religious interpretation, and religious interrelation with great literature and their interrelationship from the very foundations of this country's schools you have effectively torn down the very edifice that this great country rests upon.   

Most teachers in public schools, whether religious or not, want to be not only good teachers, but also want to obey the law, to which today's law puts any teacher who is religious or a respecter of such, under severe pressure to eliminate religion and all aspects of religious thinking from the classroom at all costs.  This means, in absence of religion, in absence of an admittance of a Creator, that students are compelled to believe that their existence itself is material only, and without purpose or morals or anything other than happenstance. 

The fact of the matter is, if a teacher cannot affirm the importance and influence of any Biblical passages whatsoever; that she cannot site in class specific Biblical passages, or their meaning, or anything touching upon religion, even unable to write a scriptural passage into a student's yearbook, than whatever is being taught to students is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but is, in essence, a grand deception foisted upon these impressionable students.

While it is one thing to say that Christianity cannot be held to be the established religion of America and be right about that; it is an entirely different thing to say that the teacher's rights or the student's rights at a public school, paid for by the taxes of the people, cannot thereby exercise their Constitutional right to have religious expression when they enter onto public school grounds. 

The Bible is the most important and the most influential book in the history of Western mankind, so then to eliminate this good book, to pretend that this book violates within school premises Constitutional law, is wrong and the doing of such, is the very ruin of Western civilization.  If schools are not about truth, or the search for truth, than they are effectively propaganda machines of the State, and this godless State, and all those that support such, are in the process of and have re-birthed a new America: enslaved, lifeless, suppressed, despairing, and without liberty.

Mortgage Leverage on Housing is Way too high

The most expensive material asset that the typical American will ever buy is the home that they purchase and live in.  The buying of such a home usually is considered to be part of the American dream, not only does it represent the family's castle, so to speak, but also is a positive indication that this family has put down roots within their community, and a family that is committed to their community, makes for a better community.  Not too surprisingly, the Federal Government believes that Americans should own homes and have constructed policies to make housing more accessible for citizens by providing the guarantees behind the banking mortgage loans and valuable tax breaks for the buyers of homes.

The thing is, while the governmental desire for more Americans to own homes seems to be the right thing to do, the structure and pricing of housing today is out of sync with the realities of family size, savings, income, and leverage.  For instance, the average size of families has declined from 3.67 persons in 1960 to 3.14 persons in 2015; additionally the average size of households (all persons living under one roof) has declined from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.54 persons in 2015, yet despite these changes the average size of a house in square footage as reported by Trulia.com was approximately 1,540 sq ft in 1960, as compared to 2.370 sq ft in 2010.  Additionally, the savings rate for Americans was about 8% in 1960, whereas it's 5.4% as of February, 2016.  In regards to income, as reported by davemanual.com, the median income inflation adjusted income was $53,657 in 2014 as compared to $44,284 in 1967, or a modest increase of just over 21%; all this despite the fact that the labor participation rate by females has grown considerably since that time, and to which there has been a near doubling or more of married families in which both parents are working.

A careful look at the facts of the situation, would imply, that housing rather than getting bigger in size and hence more expensive to buy, own, and maintain, should, in fact, be getting smaller in size as a fair reflection of near-income stagnation,  general  job insecurity, smaller household sizes, and a significantly less savings rate of monetary savings.  Instead, despite the housing meltdown of 2007-2009 of overpriced, under qualified and highly leveraged housing collapsing upon itself, America and its policies have not learned or changed much in the interim, with the exception of basically eliminating the most egregious errors such as "liar loans".  The fact of the matter is that the more highly leveraged any investment is, the more volatile and hence the less secure that investment will be, and housing is, obviously, no exception to this rule.  Housing is the only investment, to which it is typical that payments will extend out for thirty years, to which your employment years might only be some forty-odd years, signifying that for most people, a mortgage payment will coincide with a paycheck for the vast majority of their working life.

The bottom line is that the housing market in general has far too many houses for sale that are larger than really needed, for more money than is necessary, for less down payment than what is prudent, and for a longer period of payment time than is sensible.  All of this combined, means Americans are insensibly paying for more house than they really need, and often purchasing such homes, before establishing a 20% down payment, a proven savings as well as earnings record, while also lacking an appropriate debt-to-income ratio.  It then follows, since housing is overall highly leveraged, that housing prices reflect this leverage by being higher than what they need to be, and therefore the consumer is paying more for a home than necessary; whereas more prudent and sensible standards for loans in the first place, would actually make housing both more affordable as well as more practical.

Clothing is Incredibly Inexpensive

There isn't a day in your life, when you aren't in one form of another wearing clothes, sometimes, in fact, making several clothing changes throughout your day, and almost always without exception, the origin of the clothes that you are blithely wearing are not from America, and haven't been made in America for over a generation, as they are predominantly made overseas in Asian countries, such as China, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam.  Offhand, there isn't a thing wrong with wearing and purchasing clothes manufactured from overseas, as first of all, your consumer choice in regards to this issue is rather limited, since pretty much all of these various pieces of apparel are predominantly being sold to you from big box stores such as TJ Maxx, or Forever 21, or Marshalls, or WalMart, and so forth, so it isn’t like you are buying your clothes in some underhanded manner.

In fact, clothing appears to be on the surface one of those delightful win-win situations, as it most definitely is a win for the big box retailers, as their cost for product has remained flat for twenty-five years, meaning that they have been able to pass on these savings to consumers throughout America by maintaining insanely low clothing prices on behalf of a nation that loves to shop for clothes.  In actuality, the Consumer Price Index for Apparel was at 127.5 in April 1991 and as of FEB 2016 it was at 127.5.  This means, that for twenty-five years there has been no inflation in apparel whatsoever, yet there has been inflation in America, as demonstrated by the fact that Consumer Price Index itself was at 135.2 in April 1991 and now rests as of FEB 2016 at 237.11, or an increase of 75%.

This points out again, that it isn't your imagination that the pricing of clothes has remained flat for twenty-five years, a boon to consumers as well as to stores, with consumers able to consistently take advantage of either "everyday low pricing" or the invariable discounted specials which seem to occur at just about every day in some store in America.  However, all of this good stuff for cheap has a hidden cost to it, and that is the fact that the clothes being manufactured for our utilization and benefit are being done overseas, and while most Americans pretty much follow the policy of "out of sight, out of mind", there most definitely are human hands in impoverished countries that produce our clothes for cheap, that were these workers in America, would be considered to be exploited.

While on the one hand you can make a strong argument on behalf of the garment manufacturers that their employees are better off in a factory rather than in the outside world of poor rural communities, without real or good access to education, modern amenities, healthcare, or clean water; that argument though is countered by the conditions of these factories which are centered primarily on treating humans as pretty much cheap and replaceable cartel, to which their only true worth is what they can produce and make via quota, period. 

The bottom line is that efficient overseas factories utilizing cheap labor can readily produce clothing that undercuts all domestic manufacturing of such, because the labor costs in America are way too steep.  This means in practicality that the clothes that we wear each day on our backs in a manner of speaking comes via the sweat of an ill-educated foreign woman's brow.

Can Dividends be Gamed?

In an era in which investors don't make a dime in a money market fund, or a savings account, and 10-year treasuries yield less than 2%, the making of money on money, has become far more difficult than a generation ago, and while pundits and governmental authorities state over and over again, that interest rates will go back up, when this one thing or that other thing happen, it just hasn't been happening for the last decade, which makes one to reasonably conclude that it isn't going to happen in reality, anytime soon.  All of this means, for conservative investors, that they are literally between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere safe to park their money to which they can be assured of both making a smallish profit as well as being secure that their investment is sound.

However, if one looks at the stock market, there are a fair amount of seasoned and well tested stocks, that have dividend yields of 4% of greater, such as Ford, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Philip Morris, and Abbvie, to name just a few of them.  In today's world, a yield of 4% is definitely something to pay attention to, but as you might expect there are a few caveats.  For one, dividends themselves are not guaranteed, they can be lowered, raised, kept the same, or eliminated, and that decision is left to the Board of Directors; that said, though, companies with long standing historical records of consistently paying out dividends have a strong tendency to keep doing the same thing, come thick or thin.  Another issue, perhaps the elephant in the room, is that stock prices are not stable, they can go up or down, so that in theory, on the one hand, you would not only get your dividend but also stock price appreciation, then again, you could also get the dividend but stock price reduction, placing yourself in the position of receiving the 4% yield, but having that yield wiped out by a greater than 4% loss in the subject stock price.

The way most dividends are paid in America, is that they are paid out quarterly to those that are the stockholders of record, and the stockholder of record, is he who owns the stock before the ex-dividend date, so if you buy the stock before the ex-dividend date and then decide to sell the stock on the ex-dividend date, you will still receive that dividend.  This means, quite simply, that you don't need to own the stock for one year to receive dividends, nor ninety days, you only need to own the stock for one day, and that day has to be before the ex-dividend date and if done correctly you will receive that scheduled dividend payment.   However, there is an important caveat, which is that on the ex-dividend date typically the stock price is set to open at the previous close minus the dividend share dollar amount, so that if the dividend paid was $1 on a $100 stock, the opening would be set for $99, thereby canceling out your entire dividend payment.  That said, the fact of the matter is, that on any given day, stocks fluctuate and never remain stagnant, so that the stock price during that day and subsequent days will not remain the same. 

This means that at a minimum you have gained the dividend, and if somehow or someway, you were to average selling back the stock at a price to which you have sacrificed, for instance, only half of the dividend payment, such as fifty cents of the $1, by selling at $99.50, and do this time and time again, on various other high yielding dividend stocks you will make over a period of time a fair amount of money, readily.  However, there are two more considerations; one is the tax consequences of all this trading in and out, as well as also the commission costs of buying and selling of these equities.  In regards to the former, there are no tax consequences if these trades are made through your IRA, and in regards to transaction costs there are brokerages that offer either free trades as a matter of policy or for a period of time and those too that offer significantly discounted trading costs which are almost immaterial.

There are websites that allow you to practice theories without costing you a dime of real money, and while practicing specific techniques, such as trying to game dividends, is never going to be quite the same as trying to do it in the real word, it will afford you the opportunity to test out a theory without sacrificing anything other than the time to do so.  The bottom line is that every day there are buyers and sellers of equities to which each side believes that they are getting over on the other, in regards to dividends, and the correct pricing of the stock come the ex-dividend date, it's no different.

Trailer Park Homes

In you drive around just about any community far enough and in every conceivable direction; you will often eventually find a trailer park.  These trailer parks willvary considerably in quality, location, desirability, and looks, with some being near a beach or river and on land that appears to be of high value whereas others look run down, forgotten, and in areas that seem to have been abandoned or forsaken by time.  As reported by bbc.com: "Mobile homes make up 6.4% of the US housing sector," which certainly means that manufactured housing in America appeals to a fair amount of people for whatever reasons, with affordability and freedom being the most prominent ones.  The basic situation in most trailer parks is that the occupant of the trailer owns the trailer itself, but rents the land that it rests upon, and depending upon the trailer park may have amenities such as a community pool, playground, cable hookups, and so forth, but at a minimum the rent paid to the landlord will include the right to their lot locale, access to water and trash removal, with the tenant being responsible for the paying of his own heat and electricity.

The quality and age of trailer homes varies considerably, from park to park, and from person to person, so that while there are some trailers that appear to be on their last legs, there are, on the other hand, trailers that have both the look and the space on the inside that would remind most people of a real home.  There isn't any doubt that nicer looking trailers as well as the more pleasant or desirable looking trailer parks have a different demographic than most trailer parks that you might run across on a given day, and the reason for that, is typically the type of person that is attracted to or makes a decision to make their residence within a trailer, is the type of person that doesn't usually have access to a lot of income, yet prefers the more open space and room that a trailer represents as well as the impression that by owning their own trailer, they own their own housing, even though they still have a landlord, and a HOA to respond to, and in most cases it is the land, not the trailer, that will appreciate in value over time.

Because there are so many trailer homes in America and the fact that so many of them appear to be in various states of disrepair, those that own trailers, have typically been confronted at one time or another with being summoned by the pejorative term: "trailer trash", and/or people that come across as low-class, crude, dressing poorly, smelling, are often associated with the same term: "trailer trash", even if it is pretty much understood that they don't actually come from or live in a trailer park home.  That, unfortunately, for better or for worse, is the way trailer residents are viewed often by those that don't live in them, don't care to live in them, and don't really care to know anything further.

In an era in which typical housing for sale such as townhomes, condos, and houses may be permanently out of the reach for a significant swath of Americans and with an understanding that apartment dwellings themselves are expensive for what they bring to the table, an opportunity to purchase a trailer is something worth considering as not only is that trailer home your own castle, it is and can be a way to raise a family that feels traditional, and pretty much works.

The Japanese Stock Market Peaked in 1989

On December 29, 1989, the Nikkei Index  stock market index peaked at 38,915.87. As of March, 29, 2016 it stands at not even half of that amount at 17,103.53, which means that those that have invested a substantial amount of their savings into the Nikkei Index or a basket of stocks that are part of that index, have seen their investment eviscerated over the last twenty-six years.  Japan is not some third world country, as it was for a considerable period of time, the second largest economy in the world, second only to America, and even today, it stands as the third largest economy worldwide.  The fact that the Nikkei index has done so poorly in recent times, should be a wakeup call to stock market pundits worldwide, to which, it can be said, that stock markets price in anticipated future events and when that future looks rather bleak for GDP growth, along with aging demographics, little or no population growth, and declining labor participation rate in the workforce, than the stock market will surely reflect those facts.

For instance, as reported by socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com, the decade of 1980-1989 saw Japan's annual GDP growth of 3.95%, followed by a GDP growth rate for the next decade at just 1.19%, and then the GDP growth rate of 2001-2010 was just 0.75%, with the projected rate of GDP growth for this current decade expected to stay under 1%, which is has for the first five years of this decade.  The aging of Japan's population has increased dramatically since 1989, to which at that point, approximately 12% of the Japanese population was 65 or older, whereas as reported by zerohedge.com in 2015, this percentage had increased to an incredibly high 26.7% of the Japanese population, a more than doubling of just over twenty-six years ago. The population of Japan in 1990 was 123,611,000 and by 2015 had grown to just 127,110.00 a paltry increase of less than 3%, but even more worrisome for Japan, in 2010 their population was 128,057,000 so in the ensuing five years, Japan's population had actually decreased, and is projected to continue to decrease, essentially because of Japan's no or very limited immigration policy, with deaths of an aging population now exceeding births.  Finally, in order for GDP to grow, you need both workers and machines, and while the industrialization of Japan is high, its workforce as reported by tradingeconomics.com was at: "…an all time high of 74 percent in June of 1955 and a record low of 58.50 percent in December of 2012," and now rests at 59.30%. 

The bottom line is the underlying fundamentals of a given country are going to be reflected in their stock market and those numbers for Japan have been rather bleak, but a fair reflection of the fact that there is little hope, if any, that their GDP will ever again hit around 4% per annum, as it did during the 1980s; as their population is too old, and older people do not produce nor care to produce as much as those that are in their prime years which is further why the labor force participation rate will not come close to approaching 74% ever again, nor do senior citizens consume as much as those that are in their 30s or 40s or 50s, and with net deaths outnumbering net births in Japan there isn't any realistic prospect of internal growth. 

The thing about stock markets is that they are international, and money has a tendency to gravitate to where both the bargains are, or more importantly, where the growth will be, and that picture would imply that Japan has seen better days, whereas a country such as India has plenty of room to grow and prosper.

NFL Games Times Need to Be More Varied

The majority of NFL games are played on Sunday, and depending upon what part of the continental United States you live on, those games could start as early as 10 AM Pacific time, or as late as 4:25 PM Eastern time, with an additional evening game typically at 8:30 PM Eastern time.  The NFL has 32 teams, of which 17 are in the Eastern time zone, 8 are in the Central time zone, 2 are in the Mountain time zone, and the balance of 5 teams beginning in the 2016 season are in the Pacific time zone.  In every other major sport, except for the NFL, the game time of the sport is typically based on the time zone that the team is located in, so that in basketball the Washington Wizards game would typically start at 7:05 PM Eastern time, whereas the Chicago Bulls game would typically start at 7:05 PM Central time, which is 8:05 Eastern time,  the Denver Nuggets game would typically start at 7:05 PM Mountain time, which is 9:05 Eastern time, and the Los Angeles Lakers game would typically start at 7:05 PM Pacific time, which is 10:05 Eastern time, thereby essentially making each of the games tipping off at the exact same local time, which makes sense, because if 7:05 PM is in the NBA's opinion the best time to schedule a game, they then make sure to schedule it for that local time in all of the markets that the NBA has teams.  On the other hand, the NFL, breaks down their time schedule into essentially two zones, to which the Eastern and Central-based teams typically have their games scheduled at 1 PM Eastern time, which means the Central division home games at actually being held at 12 PM in their respective time zone, and these two time zones as of 2016 season encompass 25 out of the 32 teams.  The Pacific and Mountain-based teams typically have their games around 4:15PM Eastern time, or 1:15PM Pacific time, and therefore 2:15PM Mountain time, for the balance of the 7 out of the 32 teams.  Because of the game time structure as well as the fact that there are many more teams located on the Eastern and Central time zones, most of the NFL games on any given Sunday are the "early" games, meaning that there are far fewer selectionsto watch in the afternoon games.  In addition, probably not taken into account often enough, when a West coast team visits an East coast team, the visiting team is typically playing the East coast team at 1 PM Eastern time, which equates to 10 AM Pacific time, probably giving the East coast team, an additional small percentage of favor against their West coast opponent.

In any given sport, and the NFL is no different, people that live in close proximity to a given NFL team, have a more abiding interest in that local team, so that it makes much more sense that schedules should reflect that fact, indicating that first off, if 1PM is the magic local time for games to be played at on the Eastern and Western coasts, it should also be the magic time to be played at for the Mountain and Central time games.  Additionally, with the exception of games not coming into conflict against the late Sunday night game, NFL teams should have more flexibility to determine their game times so as to maximize their revenue and viewership, in addition to the fact that the NFL should make a concerted effort to have far fewer games scheduled at 10 AM Pacific Time for America's most popular sport.  The bottom line is the NFL needs to take a much more discriminating look at their game times, as by so doing, viewership and interest should incrementally increase.

Mandatory Fingerprints for a Driver's License

To the best of my knowledge there are four States that require either a fingerprint, or thumbprint, in order to receive a driver's license in that State, which are: California, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas; in addition Texas is the only one of these States requiring a complete set of fingerprints in order to receive a driver's license, to which, this law, was overturned in February of 2015.   The fact that these States collect fingerprints whatsoever is disturbing as a driver's license is the primary way that most adults identify themselves.  For many people, fingerprinting carries the stigma of guilt and is typically mandated only for those that are arrested for certain criminal offenses as well as for those that are required to submit to background checks for certain, particular employment opportunities. 

The general purpose of fingerprints is to correlate fingerprints to a database of crimes that have been committed for review, and the fact that all citizens of these respective States have to submit their finger or thumbprint in order to receive a driver's license from such State, seems of questionable Constitutional validity, as this gives the State government, in one place, facial (as in the driver's license color picture), current address of the driver's license applicant, physical description of the driver's license applicants' height, weight, date of birth, as well as eye color, all of which is individually applied to that unique driver's license number, along with the finger or thumbprint to which all of this information can easily be analyzed, correlated, and processed through databases supposedly to make sure that the driver's license applicant has not fraudulently applied for more than one driver's license, to which this information can easily be cross-checked against numerous other databases for crimes of the past, now, or in the future.

When you take a finger or thumbprint along with the other physical and factual characteristics of an individual or instead take his DNA, you have effectively made it public or in this particular case, State policy, that any citizen, using his most likely source of identity, his most likely source to have a means of independent transportation, his most likely source for employment or enrollment of all sorts, a de facto ward of the State, under the thumb of the State, unable or not easily able to escape from the watchful eye of the State.  Today, it is finger or thumbprints, in order to have the privilege to drive in certain States, tomorrow, it may well be DNA, and DNA is considered to be the most accurate forensic tool for law enforcement agencies.

As always, laws such as these are justified by stating that they are to protect us from criminals, terrorists, or to identify illegal aliens, amongst other hobgoblins of fear that the populace needs to be protected from, and as good citizens, it is our duty to obey.  The truth of the matter is that fingerprinting for a driver's license is just one more forge in the chain of our own making, that makes us lesser citizens to those that control our fates, to which these authorities answer to no one but their own fellow privileged and elite mates, who want us docile and under their collective thumbs for their continual exploitation of and for their own enrichment of in return for the safety a hamster gets in a cage with a wheel that goes nowhere but to travel back to where it began.

Knowledge--From Previous Generations to the Next

Knowledge may be acquired by many means of which one of them is experience, and while experience can be a great and wonderful teacher, it isn’t necessarily the best way and certainly isn't the only way to acquire knowledge.  In fact, a significant amount of knowledge that we acquire each and every year comes from school, mentors, fellow associates, and documents in any of its many forms.  This knowledge that we draw upon can be numerous generations old, or of more recent vintage, and all of this knowledge is necessary for the world to continue to advance and to become a better place.  That is to say, it is because of the hard work and discoveries that we have from previous great men and women that we are able to build upon that base and to create even more of worth for our fellow members of mankind and to learn from history of our errors.  This then signifies that knowledge and the passing on of it, is fundamentally a gift that is of great service to our communities and country.

Because knowledge is so important it certainly makes sense to state that those that are selfish in their discoveries and wishing to keep such special knowledge that they have developed to themselves, are doing a grand disservice to mankind, whereas those that take their knowledge and collaborate and pass on this information to others, understanding that a team working together, brick by brick, from one generation to the next, are brightening and making the world a better place.  This signifies that scientific papers, research, conferences of like-minded people, active listening, and good communication, are absolutely essential for the continual improvement of not only people in your community, your State, your country, but also the world at large.

While it is intriguing when two disparate groups are able to essential discover another scientific truth thru independent paths, there are unfortunately far more groups that come to an impasse, for lack of knowledge of things that have previously already been discovered, but unfortunately for these people, they are blithely unaware of. That is why in this era of the worldwide web, so much of our scientific knowledge, should be readily available throughout the world, and thereby like the editors of Wikipedia, that allows worldwide contribution from all, or open source code that allows others to modify the code or to enhance it, changes and improvement can be made "on the fly".

The importance of knowledge being passed successively from one generation to the next, can be viewed as understanding that if each generation had to count on re-discovering the things that other great scientists have discovered, we would, almost at best, barely be able to tread water, which is why we have had epochs such as the "dark ages" to which mankind in a lot of respects, lost the continuity and knowledge of the previous age and regressed in their growth and development to the detriment of living standards, freedom,  happiness, and health. 

The thing about knowledge is everything of worth that you have learned and understood, if you are unable to pass that knowledge onto either your family, friends, or associates in some way, form, or manner, than that knowledge dies within you and will therefore have to be re-discovered or unearthed by someone else, whereas all that you pass on to your progeny or associates will continue to live on in the minds and ideas of generations of today and hopefully for generations yet unborn.  To be selfish with your knowledge is to die onto yourself, whereas to be selfless is to never taste death because your knowledge lives on and is transported through the wisdom of others.

John 10:11-12

In Holy Scripture at John 10:11-12 we read: "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep."  This passage is very important because it echoes and crystallizes many of the other actions and sayings of the Christ in his ministry, to which truths built around sheep and shepherds are common throughout scripture, because it was an era when the people were intimately familiar with the importance of both sheep as well as the need for a good shepherd because the community understood well the value of sheep, as sheep provided meat, wool, hides, skin, and milk.

As with many passages of the Christ, there are many layers of interpretation, to which quite clearly we can see that Christ indicates that he is the good shepherd, that is to say, that he is the one to monitor and to take responsibility of his sheep, of his flock, and of his people.  This signifies for the flock that Christ the Shepherd is the one to follow and to respect because He is the one that will protect us and guide us, even unto His own death.  The fact that Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd is of immense importance, as in other Biblical passages He said that only God was good, so the declaration that he was the good shepherd, indicates that he is one with God. Then too, there is a comparison of the hired hand to a shepherd, to which Christ quickly discriminates between he who cares and is willing to sacrifice all for the good of his community as compared to a man merely working for wages so that when the going gets tough and this hireling finds himself in difficulty of life or limb or of having to take an action of courage, abandons the sheep, because the sheep are not of his own.  This abandonment leaves the sheep without a leader, leaving the sheep susceptible to the ravages that a wolf brings as part of his natural character, along with the fact that the sheep are no longer united, but have scattered to the winds.

This demonstrates too the importance of having true leaders, to which it can be said, that those that perceive that they have no skin in the game, will, when the going gets tough, often abandon their posts without any unnecessary compunction.  Additionally, Christ makes it clear that he is no "fair-weather" shepherd, indeed that He will not as the flock's shepherd abandon his charges, even unto death; it is this sort of responsibility that demonstrates the true merit of a man, it is not therefore how a man behaves when the going is good, but instead how a man behaves when the going gets terribly wrong. 

Christ makes it clear that in this world our decisions matter and that those that profess that they know what is best for us, must not just preach the word, but must also live the word, because the difference between a good shepherd, a hireling, and a wolf are as follows: one will do all he can to protect and to lead his charges, dedicated inexorably to their welfare; while the hireling is just a shell of a man, just a pretender; and the wolf will do what wolves do, which is to exploit situations and weaknesses to their advantage, testing the waters, so as to know whether the shepherd that leads the sheep is the real deal or just a pale imitation of.

Hotels That Refuse to Service Locals

I was very surprised to discover that there are some hotels in America that refuse to provide accommodation for "locals", to which their verbiage reads something like: "No Local rentals, any guest checking in with a ID within a radius of 30 miles from the property will not be able to check in."  In general, a policy like this smells distinctly like another form of discrimination but under the color of, an arbitrary callout, of "no locals". 

To begin with, hotels in general are always going to get a certain percentage of business from locals, for a variety of reasons, some perhaps eminently justified such as needing a room to accommodate unexpected guests, defective plumbing or other issues within their current residence making it uninhabitable, or a prudent break from a spouse to escape from an escalating argument; as well as fairly obvious reasons such as a rendezvous with someone for pleasure, or a meeting with someone about business that rests outside the law, or for general partying.  In all of these above cases, people are going to want to rent at a local hotel because it is convenient for them, which means, that any hotel refusing business to locals, are most definitely turning down business.

From a hotel perspective the reason why a hotel would have a policy of not renting to locals, probably comes down to two basic reasons: the first is that their experience has been that locals have utilized their hotel in a manner that causes inconvenience or headache to management such as noise, unwelcomed visitors, and general partying; the second reason would be that the hotel prefers to rent to tourists because tourists spend more money and are in general, easier to deal with.  Still even taking into account that there might be legitimate reasons for a hotel to want to promote their brand exclusively to non-locals, in general, the more people that you draw upon to stay at your hotel, the higher pricing you will often get, because higher occupancy typically means higher hotel rates.

The real reason though that certain hotels refuse local business, is, no matter how they package it, to be discriminatory, to which the first step, is to paint with a very broad brush stroke, and gave yourself the power to refuse everyone within your community, and then within that power, allow exceptions.  This then follows the path of the old discrimination to which the target, whether they are of the wrong race, creed, age, or whatever, is denied admittance because that is the company policy, to which you as the hotel proprietor simply shrug your shoulders, and state, that is just the way that it is.  The thing is that isn't legal, and no matter how you dress it up, when you make it a policy not to rent to locals, and then proceed to allow in exceptions for those that have the right and appropriate demographic, code words, or excuse, that isn't right.

Now, no doubt, some of these hotels will argue that they really don't rent to any locals, whatsoever, ever.  The thing is what is really the point of a policy like that, because if your concern is that locals will run down the place because they are too loud, too destructive, too much this or that, there are plenty of laws on the books that are able to deal with real disturbances; so then rather than judging all guilty for a few bad apples, why not deal honestly with the content of a man's character.

Hedge Fund Managers Pay Dominates CEOs

If you didn't know any better, you would think, have to think, that the CEO of companies such as Walmart, McDonalds, IBM, and so forth, that employ hundreds of thousands of employees would be the highest paid Executives on earth, and you would be wrong, by a very long shot.  The fact of the matter is even though CEO pay is absolutely currently insane for so many of the largest public companies  in America, to which their pay as reported by Fortune  magazine was brought to light by the reality that: "the ratio between average American CEO pay and worker pay is now 303-to-1," and with huffingtonpost.com reporting that: "In 2014, CEO pay had risen to an average of $16,316,000 compared to only $53,200 for workers,"  you might think with that pay that the monetary compensation for CEOs of the most powerful corporations in the world is insurmountable by anyone else at anytime;  this wouldn't even come close to the real truth, is not even in fact in the same picture frame, as the truly astronomical salaries of today's most highly paid hedge fund operators which are absolutely beyond belief.  For instance, the Institutional Investor reported that the top paid hedge fund manager in 2014 and 2015 was Ken Griffin,  who made $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion in each of those years, respectively, whereas in 2013, the highest paid hedge funder manager, David Tepper, made $3.5 billion, and the numbers of the rest of those in the top 25, in 2015, still are staggering, as the bottom man on that list made $100 million, whereas in comparison in 2015, there was only one CEO that crossed over $100 million, that being Charif Souki of Cheniere Energy.  When it is all said and done, the average yearly CEO pay of an astonishing $16,316,000 in comparison to Ken Griffin's $1.7 billion indicates that Griffin's ratio to average yearly CEO pay is a stunning 104:1.

While hedge fund managers can talk all day about how they have "skin the game" as they invest their own money in their fund and further that nobody is forced to invest with them, and also that their returns on the money invested with them is stupendous, or whatever, even if it really isn't, the bottom line is that hedge fudge managers don’t actually produce anything, they make their money via leverage, arbitration, market inefficiencies, derivatives, information, sources, superior technological throughput, and whatever else that they can successfully exploit for their benefit, which means in a nutshell, that greed  for them is very, very good.

All of the above might be okay, on some basic capitalistic level, but as always, the most powerful and richest people in the world, have unfairly gamed the system for their own benefit, and in this case, probably the most important asset to hedge fund managers, is the fact that their income is very tax efficient because of their ability to use the carried-interest category which allows their gains on investments to be treated as long-term capital gains at a much lower tax rate as opposed to the significantly higher tax rate of ordinary income, to which the likes of you suffer to pay via our hourly pay rate; in addition, they also make it policy to park their assets outside the USA via reinsurance and hence defer profits from any taxation till repatriated back to the United States. 

While CEOs of major corporations are in the business of actually providing a desirable product to customers throughout the world, and subsequently are running companies that provide a valued good or service, hedge fund managers are simply in the business of making money on money, for the sake of making money, while providing nothing of real merit, nothing of real value to society at large, nothing real but their profits at the world's expense.

Debt Accumulation, Debt Payback, Inflation, and Deflation

To anyone that remembers the very high inflation rates that America when through from 1973 through 1982, it may come as a surprise, that pundits  today as well as government policy are intent that there should be a modest inflation rate as promoted by the Federal Reserve of around 2% yearly.  Because inflation erodes the value of money over time, as well as the fact that the rate of inflation has immense implications when it comes to business, corporate, as well as personal investments, you would think that having a stable currency without inflation would be preeminent, but in point of fact, while in a perfect world, that would be true, in the real world, a little inflation is considered to be necessary so as to ward off all fears of the pernicious effects of a downward spiral of economic slowdown or inactivity and pricing declines that outright deflation brings, which occurred to America during the Great Depression, that brought to the fore financial destruction, massive unemployment, and ruin to a wide swath of humanity.  In today's society any return to a depression like economic condition, would bring massive and dangerous civil unrest and thereby must be avoided at all costs.

There are two basic types of money in America, real money in the sense that this is money that you have earned and saved, as compared to money that you have borrowed from a bank or other financial institutions through consumer loans such as a mortgage, car note, school loan, or through a credit card.  Borrowers in America come in all sorts of flavors and sizes, such as: individuals, companies, corporations, stock and bond investors, and government entities of all sorts, and typically the accumulation of that debt has the tendency to become inflationary because that expansion of easy money chases too few goods which artificially pushes up the price of those goods.  It then follows that when borrowed money is being paid back, when debt is being paid off, such as student loans, or credit card debt, or margin accumulation, that because there is now less money dedicated to the purchasing of goods that therefore the pricing of goods must now decrease as well as businesses, in general, slowing down.

A case in point, is the stock market crash of 1929, which is attributed to the fact that speculators need only put down 10% of the value of a given stock, and could therefore leverage up the balance of 90%, so that in point of fact, a brokerage account with a cash deposit of just $10,000, could control $100,000 worth of stock, and while this can be a powerful way to leverage up and make easy money while the going is good, it can also be the fast route to financial ruin when the going gets really bad as it did during that crash.  The bottom line is that when any economy runs on borrowed money and the amount of that money being borrowed hits a ceiling or comes close to maxing out for whatever reasons, than pricing overall will begin to deflate, because the capacity of money has hit a plateau.  In addition, money is loaned out by banks and bank-like instruments to which those banks are dependent upon that money being paid back, as if it is not, than the banks themselves become subject to failure and collapse, because their loans have to be effectively written off or discounted heavily, signifying that the elasticity of money has snapped.

This means that in general the accumulation of debt is inflationary for the economy and correspondingly the paying back of that debt is deflationary, so that when a country and its citizens have borrowed as much as they can reasonably borrowed and probably beyond that prudent point, pricing for goods as well as labor, must fall.

America's ticking Deficit Debt Time bomb

In 1981, America's accumulated public debt first crossed over the $1 trillion dollar mark, to which America's GDP at that point was $6.59 trillion, or a ratio of GDP to accumulative debt to be about 6.5:1.  America, has not had a surplus fiscal budget since 2001, and in the four years of 2009-2012, ran a deficit amount of over $1 trillion dollars in each of those respective years, so that at the present time, our federal accumulated deficit is estimated by usgovernmentspending.com to be at $19,199,207,411,000, of which none of that deficit amount takes into account unfunded liabilities to entitlement programs such as Medicare or Social Security, and America's annual GDP is currently estimated to be at $17,419 trillion or a ratio of GDP to accumulative debt to be about a troubling .907:1, with all this happening in less than two generations.

This type of historic shift to which the accumulative deficit now exceeds the GDP of this great country, as well as the fact that this deficit has picked up an enormous amount of momentum since the turn of the century, basically only indicates one fundamental thing and that is that this government has no intention whatsoever of ever making good on this debt.    We know this because this nation has not been in any Congressional declared war, although it has been at war, since World War II, in addition to the fact that America has not suffered the economic woes of the Great Depression, although it has been in a great recession.  The problem that the American federal government has is basically that they want or demand both "guns and butter" to satisfy both major parties and they don't have the resolve to force the taxpayers to pay for it all.

The basic reason why taxpayers aren't stuck making good on all these deficits is not because the middle case or median paid worker isn't paying enough or their fair share in taxes, because they basically are, but because so many multi-national corporations as well as sophisticated, powerfully connected, and elite rich people aren't paying their appropriate share, but even if all were being taxed fairly, this country would still be running significant deficits, that would still be unsustainable, but not as extreme as they have been over this last generation.

The real issue with this ever growing deficit is the fact that America keeps postponing till tomorrow what it needs to address today, and will not make the cuts necessary in their budget, nor close the loopholes in the tax system to amend these problems, and all that, at best, would perhaps just stop the rot, but do little, if anything to knock down the actual deficit.  When you live in a country to which nobody ever wants their policy budget to be cut, but instead demands or requests more, and further that in this country, nobody wants to pay any more than necessary to the tax man, as even that is too much, and further when you have feckless politicians that just pander to the crowd, and say one thing while doing the exact opposite, than you are dealing with a country that fundamentally is dishonest, imprudent, and a poor steward of its people's money and governance. 

The bottom line is that you wouldn't keep loaning money to a "friend" if he didn't even try to pay you back, and his monetary requests kept getting larger, and he kept postponing paying you back, and he spent your money on wine, woman, and song; you would, at some point have to cut him off.  The party in America keeps going on and on and on, the lies keep growing, but the train long ago left the station, and the people if not of this present generation, than of future generations, will pay for the sins and malfeasance of their fathers.

Honor Killings and Southern Honor

It seems almost inexplicable that honor killings, that is killings of family members for bringing shame upon the family unit, as in a given female family member refusing to participate in an arranged marriage, inappropriate contact by a female with an outside male, elopement, fornication, victim of rape, and other various unsuitable behaviors that demonstrate either outright rebellion against the family unit, or unacceptable events that have disgraced the family,  or in particular obstinacyin any of its forms against one's parents , may lead to actual honor killings in this day and age, but in point of fact, they do.  Perhaps even more upsetting is the fact that these killings against defenseless females are typically not contracted out to "hit men" such as it might be done in America, but are actually committed by family members, against their own family member -- making this filicide or sororicide.   The belief, held by these families that commit these honor killings is that in order to maintain their "honor" within their community they must kill their own daughter or female member that has brought shame of some form onto the family, and only by this blood sacrifice can their family name and status be faithfully restored.

In the antebellum south, there most definitely was a code of southern honor, a code that any good southerner obeyed and was not often recognized as existing in those that hailed from the northern climes.  This southern honor code was primarily based around family and class, especially in recognition that the father was the head of the family, and that females of that family, must have their virtue protected and secured by the males members of said family, as well as for family to maintain at all times, the gentility, manners, courage, and respect that southern blood was made for.  Not too surprisingly, there were times when that southern honor was invaded or violated, to which as part of that honor, the patriarch of the house would for sake of the family and of their honor, respond to this provocation.

The most significant difference between honor killings of today as opposed to southern honor back then is that while the former is the killing of a family member by a family member, sanctioned by the head of the family, the later is the defense of a family member by a family member, sanctioned by the head of the family.  The southern way was never to believe that their woman had voluntarily given themselves up to another man, or compromised themselves in some way, but to believe instead that the honor of their female member had been violated or seduced under false pretences somehow; whereas in honor killings of today, the female is considered to be guilty and held to blame for whatever violation she is accused of, with the family name and position trumping all else.

Primarily, honor killings as well as southern honor both suffer from the same vice, which is the sin of pride.  It is this pride that wrongfully puts family honor as perceived by the patriarch, above all; above truth, above justice, above love, above grace, and above true honor, for to truly honor someone is to humble oneself in front of He who has gifted us all, recognizing that we have, each of us, been founding wanting, yet in His wisdom, our Creator waits for us in timeless patience, wanting to take us back into His fold, for we once were lost, but now we are found.

Welfare Benefits and Labor

 In 2 Thessalonians 3:10 we read: "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat."  It certainly makes sense that all should contribute in their own way for the benefit of themselves and as members of a given community, and while some may be limited in their contributions by virtue of their age, their health, their mind, and other pertinent considerations, most everyone in some sort of way can provide some contribution to the whole.  In America, aid for the poor and indigent is provided via church organizations and other organized aid facilities akin to it, along with this aid being supplemented or replaced by various governmental welfare agencies.

In regards to churches and the like, the aid that they receive comes from the donations of their constituents, which is primarily voluntary and without compulsion.  However, for various governmental facilities welfare support is provided by compulsory taxation, of which some of that taxation is from the current generation, but yet a significant portion of that relief is provided by future generations that are stuck with paying for the relief and aid of the current poor and indigent, that is passed to them by virtue of the deficit that our federal government runs on a seemingly continuous basis.

America is quite generous in providing welfare benefits for all, including apparently those that are quite capable of contributing to the good of our nation but for whatever reason choose not to do so.  For instance, in any nation or community of substance charitable welfare must be provided for the truly indigent and weak, such as the feeble elderly, the helpless newborns, as well as others that are handicapped to such an extent that they aren't able to provide for themselves without aid.  On the other hand, there are many people that physically and mentally are fine, or at least are capable of being fine, but for whatever reason, aren't willing to apply themselves to work whatsoever for various reasons, some legit, and some most definitely not.

The thing about welfare benefits and aid is that these provisions are not provided out of thin air, instead they are in essence provided by other productive individuals to which, some recipients of said benefits are merely milking the system to their benefit.  This signifies that the government has an obligation to good tax payers to make it their mission policy that those that are desirous of the State providing them with foundational aid in the form of shelter, food, and money, or its equivalencies must also make sure that individuals that are capable of contributing to their community in whatever way, provide a reciprocal service to the State at some minimal level.

If you look around this country, and around your community, there are always things that need improvement or to be repaired or people that need comfort or attention, to which those that desire benefits from the State must do their part in order to serve their community.  The provision of welfare benefits should be carefully monitored for many good and valid reasons, as the more benefits that are handed out as aid to which the government demands nothing in return, or attempts to get nothing back, the more nothing that will be received, and thereby the more corresponding burden that will be placed upon the shoulders of those that are productive, subsidizing in effect those that will not work, have no intention of working, and in effect, supporting the failure of those that will not even try or be held accountable for their lack of labor in any of its myriad forms.