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Nope, this is not what I am talking about. I am not talking about anything supernatural at all.

I am talking about regular old astronomy: the planets, sun, moon, and their positions relative to the stars.

The whole “Star of Bethlehem” business and “three magi from the East” had ASTROLOGICAL significance. It was not that there were missing days or new planets or anything supernatural. It was, rather, that the natural lineup of the planets and stars during that particular period had immense tension in them from an astrological standpoint, and the ancients - especially Middle Eastern “magi” - were very much into that sort of thing.

What this astronomer did was run the planet and star positions at various likely times in the 3-2 BC through 35 AD timeframe, and found the behavior of Jupiter, moving in various constellations (from the Lion, to the Virgin, conjunction with Venus, etc.) that would have produced a particularly bright “star” at a certain point in the trajectory. He shows how on April 3, 33 AD, a year in which Passover fell on the Sabbath, the Moon rose in full eclipse. A fully eclipsed moon is, of course, an eerie red.
The Gospels recall the crucifixion of Jesus on a Friday before Passover, and that the moon ran red with blood that evening. Well, on Friday, Passover Eve, April 3, 33 AD, the moon rose in full eclipse, and would have appeared as a rising blood-red moon in that part of the world.

There is nothing supernatural about what this astronomer is doing with his calculations of the star positions. The various planet positions DID happen, and (assuming he did his math right) the Moon DID rise in full eclipse on Friday, April 3, 33 AD. It was the astrological significance that superstitious people standing on the ground perceiving these natural phenomena that gave impetus to religion. The phenomena were real. It’s their interpretation that gives rise to faith or the lack thereof.

No, nothing at all like the medically documented (this is one key thing: the Western documented empirical science of Lourdes, as contrasted with the legends of elsewhere) healings at Lourdes happens anywhere else, with anything like the frequency.

And no, actually there was no spring of water there when Bernadette Soubirous dug it. It was in somebody’s field. She dug where she was told, according to her, and a spring came up. There weren’t any waters there before her. The reason people came is because she claimed the Virgin Mary appeared. The reason people KEPT coming is precisely the reason that people keep on going to the Hospital: there’s a good record of sick people being made well there.

There are legends everywhere. What makes Lourdes difference is not the legends of healings, but the sheer volume of ACTUAL healing, under the eyes of medical scientists who document it. This is in FRANCE, remember, the place where modern surgical medicine was born. The French are scientific. Cures - amazing things that medical science could not do then, and cannot do now - happened, and medical science wanted to know WHY and HOW? So there has been the International Scientific Committee there for over a century, collecting data on every alleged cure. These are physicians. In the really stunning cases, they go and check with the original medical records, social security status, etc. Actual medical bureaucracy looking at, studying, recording and collecting data on miraculous events. Many of the cases are studied and pronounced “Not medically explicable”. The difference between Lourdes and the Ganges or some faith healer in a tent revival, isn’t just the sheer volume of cures, but the fact that everything that goes at Lourdes happens under immediate scientific and medical supervision. Science has documented that an astounding number of people DO get instantly cured at Lourdes of real, long term or even terminal diseases. It happens practically routinely. Science does not know why, but it HAS documented “what”, and continues to.

This is what makes Lourdes different. Lourdes has medical charts, like a hospital. Each thing is recorded by medical science, and peer reviewed and reported. This ISN’T a case where the skeptical guy in the tent causes the faith healer to fail. The cures happen before the skeptical eyes of scientists and physicians, and being scientists, they dutifully record what happens.

This is why I reject the notion that it’s impossible to test the idea about Lourdes. Lourdes is a natural phenomenon. It is a physical place where real physical, medical effects happen. People who collect permanent disability insurance checks from their modern western governments and who have real medical dossiers at the Mayo Clinic and the Pasteur Institute go to Lourdes, and sometimes one of them will simply be cured of cystic fibrosis in an instant. Bam. This is a medical fact. HOW it happens is a mystery. But THAT it happens, is a fact. Cystic fibrosis doesn’t spontaneously cure itself. And congenitally blind people don’t grow new optic nerves, but both of those things have happened INSTANTANEOUSLY at Lourdes, and modern, at the time 20th Century Western Medical Doctors, with regular medical degrees, have collected the data, studied the cases, studied the medical records (and the social security disability checks), seen the obvious cures, and tracked the cured patients to see whether or not relapses happen, and have submitted their reports to peer review.

The medical records at Lourdes are as perfectly and correctly modern scientific as the medical records at the Mayo Clinic. They are part of modern medicine, not emotional religion. The cures are a documented fact. And not one, but hundreds. The Catholic Church has called 69 of them true miracles by the religious definition (which also looks into the moral character of the individual, as the true miracle is associated with beatification), but there are far more cases which 20th (and 21st) Century medicine has called “Not medically explicable”. Anybody who wants to can read the files that are published. It helps for somebody to understand physician lingo.

It’s not a question of the weakness of the evidence or even taking things on faith. With Lourdes, it’s actually the opposite! 100 years of hard science by modern, Western scientists at the site, and people still assert that it’s just mystic mumbo-jumbo. Tell them that, no, the records are like the Mayo clinic, and they actively DIS-believe it. The empirical evidence is there, but the choice is to obscure it and to assert that it ISN’T.

Why?

Because if one accepts that the evidence is real, or maybe is, and consults it and discovers that this is within the realm of modern peer-reviewed scientific examination, one is suddenly literally forced to confront the reality of an apparent open source of nature-defying miracles, perhaps divine power, out in the open. And THAT forces the mind to accept the probability of God. What’s MORE, it forces the Christian mind to accept the importance of the Virgin Mary, quite explicitly. There are plenty of people who are so committed to their FAITH that would accept a fountain of miracles coming from a temple to JESUS without comment, but there is no such thing. The only case of it in the world is a Shrine to MARY, and THAT carries with it a sullen duty: every argument ever made about why Mary should not be venerated because she’s not in the Bible...and therefore the full sufficiency of the Bible as all you need, is wrong. Protestantism itself is mortally wounded by the admission of the scientific reality of Lourdes, because Lourdes says that God favors those who bend the knee to Mary with things like eyesight and cures from paralysis or spontaneous remission and disappearance of cystic fibrosis. Real, hopeless illnesses, irreparable, repaired in an instant. Under the eyes of science. It forces acknowledgment of the reality, and it forces acknowledgment of MARY, and that forces one to acknowledge that the Bible is NOT sufficient to explain everything spiritually, because - as is so often pointed out as a CRITICISM of those who venerate Mary - the high theology concerning Mary isn’t in the Bible. But there is Lourdes, explicitly Marian, indeed, IDOLATRY according to many within Christendom. But God only cures the paralytics and blind and sclerotic openly, repeatedly, under scientific supervision, at Lourdes. The cures are real. And unique in both their volume and verifiability. And they happen at a particular Christian shrine, not a lot of different places. And that Shrine is to Mary.

So, to a Christian, it’s either divine power OR it’s demonic power. Those are rational answers for a believer. Denying the reality, however, is not scientific, and not rational. Lourdes cures are within the realm of documented empirical science. They are data, not anecdotes.

“If Adam and Eve’s parent’s were just a tad lower than man and therefore Adam was the first real man, then how did the innocent state of the Garden exist and the Fall, as it related to Adam’s primate parents?”

They didn’t. Genesis is a moral allegory. As actual history, it is a myth, like all of the other creation myths. It didn’t happen.

“Hey, ya got to admit, there’s a little conquest thrown into the equation now and then. ;-)”

Conquest has proven effective at sweeping aside the organized human-sacrificing religions that held millions in thrall in Meso-America, that is true. And that conquest, although hard, was a mercy compared to what came before it

“One day I asked my Father for a gift, and not long after that day, I regretted my request.
Over the years, it has been made clear to me that a lot of other people also seem to regret that request which I made, because it was granted.”

Don’t keep us in suspense here.
What gift did you request, and what did God grant you?

I made it up while doodling in the toilet.

“That argument makes it pretty clear that the empirical facts related to spirutality can support any (or at least most) approaches to spirituality. It goes to my overall view that discussions that are akin to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (or whose church is right, who is a Christian, who will wind up in heaven, etc.) is really always moot and never absolutely proven.”

I disagree quite profoundly.

Let’s go through the facts again.

(1) There are NDEs, documented. They do seem to happen cross-culture. So yes, that supports spirituality.

But look at (2) and (3): THE healing shrine in the world, the one where a blind kid, born blind, grew optic nerves in an instant, and a Christopher Reeves-type paralytic got out of his wheelchair and walked, and thousands of other alarming cases, is one place. It is only one place. It is not two, or three, or five. Just one. And that ONE place is a Shrine to the Virgin Mary. What THAT tells us is something very specific: there is something about the Virgin Mary, specifically (and not anybody else, because there is not ANOTHER Lourdes devoted to a different principle), that is related to these healings. The fact that the only person who died in the 19th Century whose body remains undecayed (and unembalmed) in 2007 is Bernadette Soubirous, the girl who says the Virgin Mary told her to dig and a healing spring would come forth, reinforces the particulars of this. Reason tells us that any real religion devoted to a real master of the universe who really controls the laws of nature such that He/She/It can actually create miraculous healings MUST contain specific veneration of the Virgin Mary, because whatever or whoever this God is, the ONLY place that He/She/It acts the way He/She/It acts at Lourdes, is at Lourdes. From Lourdes and Bernadette we eliminate all religions that do NOT venerate the Virgin Mary. Which leaves us with Catholicism and Orthodoxy as the only candidates for true religion in the world.

Enter a third fact: Islam. Islam conquered all of Orthodoxy except Russia. Catholicism RECONQUERED the part of Catholic Christendom that Islam took (Spain). Communism conquered the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Communism always had a fight to hold onto Catholic Hungary and the Catholic Czech’s (the Prague Spring, Hungary), and it was the Catholic Polish Solidarity that ended up breaking open a fatal crack in the Communist Empire. So, all of Catholic Christendom fought off the Muslims and resisted the Communists, but practically all of Orthodox Christendom succumbed to both. And Lourdes is in Catholic Christendom.
So, if we look to divine signs to distinguish between Orthodoxy and Catholicism (given that Lourdes is unique, and Marian, and Orthodoxy and Catholicism are unique in their specific veneration of Mary), Catholicism is the clear victor.

And finally, we have the Shroud of Turin to prove the resurrection, and the astonomical calculations done by a NASA astonomer which give astounding verification of certain stellar events recorded in Biblical accounts.

Far from being able to support any approach to spirituality, I believe that the empirical evidence forces one to acknowledge Catholicism as the only true religion.

Fine by me.

(BTW, did I mention that ... based ... median family...?)

The data in the second post is related to me, and does not depend on the data in last night’s post, which was drawn from public sources. Such adjustments as I made to that data, in order to make it correspond to the median New York family income, which I analyzed,
in order to make it correspond to the median New York family income, which I analyzed,
in order to make it correspond to the median New York family income, which I analyzed,
in order to make it correspond to the median New York family income, which I analyzed,
(per your request, above),
were based on assumptions which I stated in my note.

It’s ok to wait, of course - that’s up to you - but there will be no new information in the weekend’s data that will add anything to last night’s data (which was for a New York City median income family, in case I failed to mention it).

Rien que des boules, malheureusement.

Perhaps, but this is the first time you have acknowledged it.

I will.

The concrete number I have shown you thus far is that a median income New York family, earning about $45,000 a year in wages, and going into negative-wealth credit card debt while doing it, pays at least 23.5% of their income to government in the form of taxes, fees, surcharges, excises et al.

This weekend, I will show you that an upper-income New York family, earning about $380,000 in wages and bonus, with about $300,000 in capital gains, interest and dividends of various kinds, pays less than 23.5% of their total wealth increase to government for taxes, fees, surcharges, excises, et al.

That is the key fact, because it speaks to the fundamental inequity in our system of taxation. It’s not an illusion, and it’s not political demagoguery. It is true.

And it is wrong.
That’s a Christian value judgement, not a Democratic or socialist one.

The question then becomes: what do we do about it?
Not “Fair Tax” consumption taxation, which absolutely hammers the bottom half, and makes the inequity worse than it is now.
The answer must lie somewhere else. My proposal is a wealth tax, which I will discuss in good time (you are, in effect, asking me about the tax base for the wealth tax, because the starting concept for figuring out that tax base is gross national wealth). There are other ways to do it, of course.

Todd, I am not going to be drawn into a discussion of national wealth until I have demonstrated that rich people like me pay less in taxes, as a percentage of increases to our wealth, than median income people do.

Once I have demonstrated that using real numbers, I will return to the national wealth question and lay out those numbers.

Moving to national wealth now will merely serve to obscure the analysis presented last evening, that median income individuals are going into debt to support an average American lifestyle, and that they pay 23.5% of their annual wages. My wealth inflows were about nine times the New York median last year, and I paid less as a percentage of my taxes. That is the key point.

National wealth comes into the equation when I propose a wealth tax to offset the unfairness of the current tax system.

You object to using national wealth, my definitions of it, etc. That’s fine. When we get there, I will discuss it.

You ALSO object to my assertion that median income people pay a greater percentage in taxes than I do. And that is what I am going to put to bed first, concretely. Once I have established that truth, which is politically alarming, then I will turn to the alternative idea of taxing wealth.

Not before. National wealth is not relevant to the issue of existing differential taxation.

Finding that source is not easy at all, because National Wealth is not a standard econometric compiled by the USA. Other countries do it, but the USA does not. So, you have to go find the component parts, which is to say, the data produced on the gross wealth of the states, and then add to that the value of federal assets. About three years ago I compiled the number, and it took me several days of research to do it. Of course the number is only tentative, but it is a ballpark. I do not have that research in my possession any longer, and it is possible that I do not remember the numbers correctly. Because national wealth is the key concept behind the wealth tax that I have suggested, I will recompile the figures and post them. To the extent that I have to revise my earlier published statements, I will do so.

None of these numbers are easy to get. If they were easy, then the things I am saying would be obvious. They are not obvious, and it requires work to unpack the pieces to really see what is going on.

I will do the national wealth statistics for you and publish them, but it will take time. In the meantime, I will not be drawn off my point, which is that a rich guy like me pays less in taxes, as a percentage of increases to my wealth, than a median income person.

You are correct that what I posted to you last night took a lot of work. The debate is always had on the level of income taxes, but that is incomplete. I provided you a much more complete and exacting analysis of ALL of the different taxes and government fees buried in little nooks and crannies, that end up pulling quite a bit more money out of people than the regular income tax + social security analysis captures.

At this point, I expect that we’re the only ones still communicating on this thread. By your tagline I presume that you think of yourself as being economically savvy. Therefore, I ask you to read what I have posted last night any think about it.

Those really are the taxes paid. We can quibble a bit about the distribution of expenses, but practically all of it gets hit with the sales or use tax, either at the state or federal level, or by both, because at that level of income, all expenditures are for living, and almost all living expenses are taxed - some of them such as fuel and telecommunications, quite substantially. When a choice had to be made, the numbers I used were conservative, and I just used the generic sales and use tax. There are special surtaxes on things like parking in New York, or lodging during a family vacation, that exceed the basic rate I applied. In short: the sales and use taxes, and government fees in my analysis of last night were conservative and lower than they really are.

When I publish my own financial information over the weekend, the key differentials between the two situations will stand out. As a wealthy person, a lot of my increases to wealth are not taxed at all, in any way, and what is more, the purchase of additional capital assets which generate more wealth for me (generally untaxed) is itself untaxed or, to the extent it is taxed, the tax is deductible from my regular income taxes. I have to pay user fees and sales taxes just like the median income person, but a lot less of my income, as a percentage goes to just plain living. So, while my accretions to wealth last year were equivalent to about 9 times the median income person’s income, my expenditures on living expenses subject to the sales and use taxes, etc., are only 2 to 3 times his. The rest of that excess income/wealth accretion goes into capital assets without having a surcharge applied to it, and generates more wealth.

Now, in one sense, this is very good, because it certainly allows for more rapid wealth accumulation. I like that. But my point is that it is not FAIR that the middle pays a greater portion in taxes than I do, especially when it forces them over the line of debt just to maintain a perfectly average American standard of living. My further point is to directly challenge the often-made, false assertion that the rich pay a lot more of their income in taxes than the middle class do. It is certainly true that the rich pay more money in absolute dollars than the middle class (because 25% of $40,000 is $10,000, but 25% of $400,000 is $100,000), but my little exercise here is demonstrating to you that, as a percentage of increases to wealth, the rich pay less than the middle class.

I know you don’t believe that. That’s why I am going through the time to lay it out in concrete numbers.

At this point I will simply note your question on national wealth and promise to return to it, but not until I have fully ventilated the issue of comparative taxation.

Do you agree that the analysis I presented last night was fair and reasonably complete and accurate? If not, what is your objection (that it is going to be used to prove a political point you don’t support is not an objection).

Your tagline indicates that you think proper economics should dictate policy. I agree. I’ve provided you with a careful taxation analysis tied to real numbers and real tax rates in the real world. I do not start with an a priori political position and then seek to muster numbers to prove it. That is what politicians do. I look at the numbers to see what really IS, and then form an opinion based on that.

My opinion at this point is contrary to yours when it comes to taxation differentials. I have presented the first half of the proof: what the median income person up here pays. Over the weekend, I will present the second half of the proof: what people like me pay. The disparity will be clear, and I think you will be obliged by the numbers to admit it and change your view.

What to DO about it is a far more difficult question, and one that depends, in part, on that national wealth number which I will produce for you after the tax analysis is completed.

You wanted data, so here it is. The analysis is long of necessity, because there are many, many taxes that tax away a larger percentage of the income of the working class than of the upper class, but to really see it, the full picture must be presented.

The following income statistics are pulled off from the Statistical Abstract for the United States for 2004, produced by the US Census bureau, except where noted. We can, if you wish, use other income statistics, so long as you cite to the source and it is a reasonable source.

I have not been able to find median income statistics for New York City from Census Bureau data.
The 2004 AVERAGE income before taxes in the New York Metropolitan area was $71,247.
According to New York City Housing Department information, the median family income in New York City proper is approximately $49,000.
Money online publishes a current median family income for New York City of $45,788, but does not indicate the source.
The Census Bureau publishes a median family income for the State of New York, in 2006, as $60,850, but none for the City of New York or New York metropolitan area. Of course the state of New York includes the higher income suburbs, etc. all of which tend to pull the state median upwards from the median of the large poorer and working class areas in the City proper.

Because some of the analysis below requires pulling the pieces of data out of the overall income number, it is important to settle on whether we are going to use a median income number, or an average income number.

The advantage of using the median income number is obvious: 50% of the populaton in the area studied falls below that level. An average income figure suffers from the effect that very high incomes have in pulling up the overall average (for example: the AVERAGE income of one millionaire and three street bums who manage to find $1 a year in change is a few pennies over $250,000, but their MEDIAN income is $1.) Median income more accurately represents the real middle of the group than average income does.

What’s more, median income is a better measure of what we are looking for, which is to compare the tax burden of the bottom half to the tax burden of people like me. My assertion is that I pay less overall to the government in taxes than lower middle and working class people do, and that this is a systemic unfairness which should be changed.

Therefore, I will use the Money.com $45,788 New York Ciry median income figure, because it will best illustrate my point. If you would prefer to see me use one of the higher median income numbers, or the average income number, to make the same calculations I will make below, please let me know and I will do so.

The disadvantage of using median income is that it makes direct comparison with the Census Department Statistical Abstract data more difficult. The Statistical Abstract has a section, Table 666, which gives average expenditures of “consumer units” (families, in our analysis) by metropolitan area. These numbers are a wealth of detail directly applicable to my analysis, including the average family annual expenditure in the New York City area on
a whole list of specific items, listed in detail below.

The problem is that these are average numbers, and the average income for the area in the report is $71,247, about $25,000 above the median income. I would use median expenditure data if it existed, but it doesn’t, so I will have to make a reasonable adjustment to the average expediture figures to make it comparable to the median income. I am assuming linearity in the decrease of expenses with decrease in income. The median income is 35.73% lower than the average income for the area, so I am deducting 35.73% of the expenses for the list of goods and services provided below. This is, no doubt, excessively conservative. The expenses for certain things such as food consumed at home do not decrease linearly with income - there are certain minima below which people cannot go; nor do they increase linearly with income - even the very rich can only eat so much. Nevertheless, to use the full average income values would greatly exaggerate the effect I am seeking to prove, and would make my case even stronger than it is. I prefer a more conservative, defensible approach.

So, having made these initial choices and assumptions,
let’s analyze the tax burden on this median New York City family.

First there is the business of adjustments to gross income. Of all of the normal family expenses, only employer-provided medical insurance costs and money put into a Flexible Health Savings Account (FSA) is paid for out of pre-tax dollars. The median family spent $1429 on health care in 2004, so IF the employer offers health insurance (a big “IF” for the working class) and/or IF the employer offers a Flexible Health Savings Account option, this entire amount would be subtracted from income before assessing any taxes. We will assume that this family’s employer DOES provide health insurance and an FSA, and that the family structures its FSA payments sufficient to cover all health insurance, so gross taxable income is reduced by $1429, to $44,359. This is the Adjusted Gross Income of the family.

Now let’s look at their income tax and payroll tax obligations to the state and city of New York. We will look at these first to see if they reach the threshhold necessary to surpass the federal standard deduction of $10,300.

The New York State and City standard deduction is $15,000. The personal exemption applies only to dependents, and is $1000 per child.

So, we subtract $11,300 in deductions and exemptions from $44,359, and we have a New York taxable income of $33,059.71. This is hit by three municipal taxes: state, city, and unemployment tax, for a total state tax burden on wages at the source of $2601, which is far below the $10,300 federal standard deduction, so will not be deductible.

Turning to Federal wage taxation, we have the 7.65% Social Security + Medicare tax applied to all income, and then the Federal Income Tax applied to the taxable income, which in this case is $23,959 ($44,359 - $10,500 std. deduction - $9900 for three personal exemptions). The Federal wages tax total is $6234.

So, the total wages tax is $8835, which is 19.30% of income.

We are, however, by no means done taxing this hardworking family!

Their disposable income left after the wage tax bite is $35,524.

The first piece that comes off of this is rent. The median family rent in New York City is $909/mo., which is to say $10,908 per year. Fortunately this is not taxed. After paying the rent, the family is left with $24,616.

The next crucial expense is food. The adjusted average expenditure for food eaten in the home is $4534. This, too, is not taxed, but it is just about the only thing left that isn’t. The family has $20,082 left.

Meals eaten out of the home, such as the daily lunch run of working people, coffee and doughnuts and the like, ARE taxed at New York City’s 8.375% goods and services tax. The family spends $2040 per year on food outside of the home, $171 of which are taxes.

Most people drink alcohol, and when they do, they get taxed by both their state and the federal government. The median New York City family spends $362 on alcohol. The alcohol tax varies based on what is consumed. Beer is taxed at 69.06 cents a gallon, which is to say 26 cents per six pack. Wine is taxed at 44 cents per bottle. Liquor is taxed based on strength, with strong liquor taxed at $5 per quart. So, if a 6 pack of Miller is $5, 26 cents of that, or 5%, is tax. If a bottle of wine costs $6, 7% is tax. And if a bottle of tequila costs $25, $5 of that, or 20%, is tax. The National Instiute of health tells us that the relative volumes of wine-spirits-beer consumption in America is 1:2:4, so if we break down that $362 into 7 parts of about $52 each (all figures are rounded to the nearest dollar), then $52 was spent on wine, of which $3.64 ($4) was tax, $104 was spent on spirits, of which $21 was tax, and $208 was spent on beer, of which $10 was tax.
This all assumes that the alchohol was bought and consumed at home. Of course, if the liquor was bought in a bar, the alcohol tax isn’t paid, but the sales tax is. For comparison’s sake, a can of Miller in a six pack costs 75 cents and has 4 cents of tax on it. A Miller bought in a bar costs 1.50, and has 17 cents of tax on it. We can’t reasonably divide the alcohol consumption between home and the bar here, so I wuill use the more conservative figure and assume that all alcohol was bought and consumed at home. $35 was spent on alcohol taxes, and the family has $19,720 left.

Besides eating and drinking, a family has to heat and light it’s home. Because most people in the median income range in New York have to rent (housing prices put a home out of reach), heat and water are usually provided by the landlord, but electricity isn’t. The average electric bill in America is $1400 per year (New York average figures cannot be broken out from the aggregate utility services regional number in the Statistical Abstract, so I am using the national average. New York City electricity is in fact more expensive, so this is a conservative number. $117 of it is tax. The family is left with $15,320.

People can’t walk around naked. The median family spent $1724 on clothes and shoes. $144 of that was taxes. The family has $13,596 left.

Automobiles are expensive, and in New York City they are particularly expensive to keep and operate. And yet, people do, especially if they live in the “outer boroughs”. Paradoxically, yuppies living in the tony parts of Manhattan, like I used to before I got richer and moved out to the Gold Coast of Connecticut, don’t need cars, because the subway system is very dense. But people living in the outer boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx) - which is where our median income New York family is almost certainly forced to live by the inability to find any affordable housing in Manhattan - have cars because the subway and train system is very spread out and cannot be relied on to provide transportation everywhere people need to go. In any case, along with a house, a car is a basic part of the American dream. Houses or apartments in New York are out of reach for anybody earning the median income, but at least they can have a car.

Average Annual auto insurance premia in New York City are $3165 per year; 158 of that is taxes. Our family has $10,431 left.

To own and operate a car in New York City, like everywhere else, you have to register it, keep on re-registering it annually or every two years. You have to have a safety inspection sticker and an emissions sticker. The total cost in taxes and fees of registering an average car in New York City is $59 per year. $10,372 is left.

Most people finance cars. The cost of finance is not deductible, and the cost of the sales tax paid on the car is rolled into the price of the car. The median family spends $1717 per year financing a vehicle in New York. $144 of that is taxes. $8655 is left to the family.

Gasoline is expensive, and it has gotten more expensive. Back in 2004, when the Census numbers for the Statistical abstract were taken, gas was hovering at $2 a gallon. Now it is over $3 in New York. The median family spends $1155 on gas and oil. Of that, $231 is a combination of federal and state fuels taxes, excise taxes and sales taxes. $7500 is left.

To drive, you have to have a driver’s license. It costs $135 and lasts for 8 years. It’s all payable at once, but for these purposes we will average it over the course of 8 years to $17 a year. The family has $7483.

People spend money on their children’s education. The median New Yorker spent $866 on it for various things, books fees, school supplies etc., lessons, etc. $73 of those expenditures are goods and services taxes. The family has $6617 left.

Speaking of children. It costs $35 to get married in New York, and a hell of a lot more to get divorced. The marriage fee is certainly a tax. The court costs of divorce are also a tax. Since I am comparing these folks to me, and I have been married once and will stay that way, and I am using me for comparison purposes, we’ll just amortize the cost of marriage over 35 years at $1 a year, and consider that the $1 after that would be the equivalent interest on the time value of money of that $35 lump sum invested 35 years prior. This effective “tax on marriage” is $1 per year. The family has $6616 left.

I have a pet, and I obey the law, which means I license my animal. Half of New Yorkers have a pet, and we are looking at the median family here, not the poor living in public housing. The tax for the privilege of having a pet is $11.50 cents. Figure $1 a year in tax. The family has $6615 left.

Running a household is not free. The cost cleaning supplies, toilet paper, replacing windows and screens and the like averages $1037 per year for the median family. $87 of that is taxes. The family has $5578 left.

Median families have TV sets, radios, furniture, even computers (more and more). In New York City, they spend $1156 a year, on average, to furnish their home, replace appliances, etc. $97 of that is taxes. They have $4422 left.

Men get haircuts. Women get hairdos, and sometimes get their nails done. They also buy deodorant, toothbrushes, etc. The median New York City family spends $429 a year on these things. $36 of that is taxes.

People read newspapers and buy books and magazine. On average, the median family spends $97 per year on these things. $4 is taxes. They have $3896 left.

The median family spends some money on tobacco. I presume that you don’t care about the smokers having to pay taxes, and don’t care that it’s regressive (as a larger portion of smokers are in the lower income levels). Similarly, I presume that you consider the lottery to be a voluntary tax, and do not want to see me deducting lottery ticket costs as “taxes” either. I agree with you on the lottery, but disagree on smoking. Tobacco is a legal product which people have the right to use. It is very heavily taxed, and the tax is particularly regressive precisely because a much larger percentage of the underclass smoke than the upperclass. The adjusted number from the Statistical Abstract of the US tells us that the median New York family spends $165 per year on tobacco.
The state minimum price for a pack of cigarettes is $6.43, of which $2.31, 36% are taxes. The median family spends $59 a year on cigarette taxes, and has $3731 left.

People communicate, and in New York City, everybody has a telephone, and most people have cellular phones.
The tax charges on a standard Cingular wireless account($39.99 per month) collected by Cingular are 9.415% plus $1.25. $47 of the $480 per year cost of the family’s cell phone is in taxes. The family has $3251 left.

People also have land-line telephones. Land line service in New York City is $49.99 a month, $8.98 of which are taxes and government surcharges. The family spends $600 a year for basic phone service, $108 of which is taxes. They have $2651 left.

People watch TV. In New York, rabbit ears reception doesn’t work much, and everybody has cable built into the apartment. “Expanded basic cable” - the kind of service that 84% of Americans with cable has, is $30 a month. About 5% of that is a “franchise fee”, which is a fancy name for a tax. $18 a year in taxes for the TV, and $360 a year for the service. The family has $2291 left.

People need access to the Internet in this day and age. Remember again, we’re not talking about the poor. We’re talking about the median family. I cannot find adequate information on internet connection taxes, so I will not reduce the amounts here for taxes. Basic internet access is $10 a month. The family has $2171 left.

People who have cars have to repair their cars. AAA says they spend an average of $531 a year doing that. In New York, the family spends $44 on taxes to boot, for the privilege of fixing their car. The family has $1596 left.

And finally we get down to the last two major categories of expenditures on the Statistical Abstract: entertainment and “miscellaneous”. The median American family, in New York and everywhere else, goes to movies. They go to plays or spectacles or amusement parks. They go on family vacations, or travel to see relatives. And they spend about $1467 a year doing it, of which $123 is taxes. This leaves them with $129.

And then, there’s everything else. Club fees, door fees, gifts for family members, cards, mementoes, impulse-bought candy bars at the check-out, children’s toys, you name it. The median New York family spends $519 a year on this sort of thing, $43 of that in taxes.
You may discern something: the median family has gone $319 in the hole. The median American family credit card debt is $4000. And it keeps going up.

You might notice something else: no savings. No college savings. No retirement savings. No life insurance (other than the effective life insurance component in the form of survivor’s benefits) of Social Security. No disability insurance (other than via Social Security).

We are not talking about the poverty-stricken here. We are talking about the top of the bell curve, the middle median family in this area. The numbers are different, but the story is the same.

Go through those expenses. What should these people cut out? The annual vacation? Entertainment? Movies? Remember again: we are not talking about the poor here, at all. We are talking about the MIDDLE of the country. Half the country is below this family, and another significant portion is right above it. If the broad middle of America can’t afford a family vacation and internet access without going into debt, we are in trouble. What would we have them do? “Tighten their belts” and not take vacation? If the broad middle of America actually did THAT, the economy would sink like a stone, for it is in spending, in buying goods and services, that the economy runs.

There is something else to notice here too. The proportion of money spent on income tax is relatively small, only about 20%, but most money goes to goods and services. Those who are enthusiastic about slapping a 25% “Fair” tax on goods and services and eliminating the other taxes need to take a good hard look at the median families budget and thing about precisely what that would really DO to them, since MOST of their income is spent on NECESSARY goods and services.

Anyway, let’s tally up all of those pieces of tax:
$1910 in sales and use and services taxes and fees + $8835 in payroll taxes. Total taxes: $10745, on an income of $45,788. 23.5% of income, at least, spent on taxes, leaving the middle of America and below with absolutely NOTHING they can use to save for anything.

I want to re-emphasize that we are focused on the MEDIAN INCOME FAMILY here, not the poor. The family we’re looking at is smack lick-a-dab in the middle of the economic bell curve. Half of the people are above them, but half are below them. They’re not rich by any means, but they are certainly not poor. Half of New Yorkers are poorer than these people. But take a look at how strained their budgets are, and take a good look at how the sneaky little taxes, on everything, in every nook and cranny, tax away their wealth. Remember: the rich, like me, have more income, but we DON’T spend massive amounts more on things like food and electricity, heat and clothes and the like. We do spend more, but not proportional to our income at all. Over the weekend, I will post my own numbers for comparison’s sake. Yes, I eat out more than the median family does. Yes, I spend more on clothes (or rather, my wife does). But no, it is not 9 times more, which is what it would have to be relative to the median family’s income in order to be comparable. Truth is, these sales and use taxes and fees that I am tallying up here are very regressive, and they tax away substantially more, as a percentage, of the income of the bottom half than they do me. Because the bottom half, as we are seeing, spend most of their income just on living, and it all gets socked by a sales tax, or user fees, licensing fees, “inspection” fees. I get hit by the same taxes too, but my expenditures are not proportionally higher.

So, when I publish my next bit here, on the taxes assessed on my own income, and you see that it is LESS than the taxes that have socked this median income family, it will perhaps give you pause. Our current tax system, with its favoritism for people like me, isn’t sustainable.

“Which is exactly my point—one cannot discern spiritual matters by looking for proof based on reason.”

To a point, that’s true.

However, once one finds empirical facts, then one can reason from the empirical facts to understand and believe in things one cannot see.

There are four powerful empirical facts, and a fifth interesting hypothesis based on a reasonable set of assumptions, that allow anyone who studies them to reason his way to a strong faith.

The most recent in time are the four independent, controlled, peer-reviewed, published long term (10 year) hospital emergency room and intensive care studies of so-called “near death” experiences, in which persons who are clinically dead have been revived. A certain number of them recall events during the time of their clinical death, and statistically, these recollections are very sharply consistent across all four studies. From these studies’ results, it is then reasonable to consider the literally tens of thousands of comparable experiences recorded outside of the confines of controlled medical studies, which say the same things that the controlled studies said. The studies’ results convert anecdote into additional data, certain pieces of which (notably the blind, the fully brain-dead in “stopping” operations, and certain veridical experiences which allow for external verification of certain things otherwise unknowable to the person who knew them) strongly indicate that there is, in fact, a continuation of consciousness after physical death and brain death, at least in about 20% of people. From these empirical facts, one can reason that there is life after death, and that the mystics over the ages who have reported the same things were, in fact, reporting fact and not reveries.

The second powerful fact set are the medically inexplicable healings at the Shrine of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, France. The volume and singularly powerful cures that have occurred there with stunning regularity, as well as the concentration of sick people at the site owing to its reputation, caused the medical community to establish a large presence there, both to tend to patients and to collect data. The International Scientific Committee at Lourdes collects data on all alleged cures, and evaluates them based on the illness and the patient’s medical history. It is a full-time, long-running institution, staffed by physicians of all faiths and no faith, who scientifically study what happens there. The dossiers of the most stunning cases are available to read, if you are inclined. Lourdes is real. To say it is “faith healing” may be true, but there is more to it than that. There are many places in the world that have reputations for being healing springs, etc. But noplace has the volume of medically stunning, inexplicable “miracles” as Lourdes. It is not simply a function of numbers, but also of kind and frequency. HOW and WHY something happens at Lourdes cannot be explained by science, but THAT something happens at Lourdes with statistically abnormal significance is an empirically observable fact, contained in data scientifically collected and peer-reviewed. Lourdes itself is real. It is a fact that healings happen there. It is a fact that certain healings that happen there are unique. Where else has a paralytic gotten up and walked, and it been scientifically observed, recorded and verified? Nowhere else. The reasoning part then takes over: amazing healings happen at Lourdes, which are not scientifically explicable. There is no-place else in the world like Lourdes. Lourdes is specifically a Shrine to the Virgin Mary, which is built at a spot where a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, said the Virgin Mary appeared to her in 1858 and told her to dig. She did, and a spring came forth, and the flood of healings has never ended. One can pooh-pooh the apparition, but one cannot pooh-pooh the fact that a young girl dug up a spring, said it was from the Virgin, for healing, and the world’s most amazing and consistent stream of medical miracles has flowed from there.
Reason tells us that we cannot rule out the Virgin Mary. When coupled with the empirical evidence of life after death in the NDE studies, the empirical cornerstones are there for a substantial piece of the Catholic edifice. After all, the ONE place in the world that has the medical miracles like that is Lourdes, and Lourdes isn’t just a Christian shrine - it’s a Shrine explicitly to the Virgin Mary. How many other Christian religions pray to the Virgin Mary? Only Orthodoxy (and Orthodox lands have almost entirely fallen to Muslim or, for a long period, Soviet Communist atheist). Not only that, but this one place in the world with all of these miracles is at a Shrine to Mary on a spot where Mary is said to have appeared. From NDEs and healings and the juxtaposition of Mary to these experiences, we can see a reasonable basis for believing there is something to Catholicism (which venerates Mary). That is the second stunning empirical fact.

And here is the third. A very few people in this world, when they die and are buried, do not decay. Their unembalmed bodies remain intact, for years and years after their deaths. This does not occur randomly in the world. Rather, the few dozen cases that there have been of it are very heavily concentrated in the Catholic Church, which calls these undecayed bodies of the dead “incorrupt”. There are a couple of Eastern Orthodox incorruptibles. There is one Bhuddist incorruptible. The Catholic Church puts these incorruptible bodies on display. They are alarming. St. Julian was a bishop who was killed in Roman Illyria (today Asia Minor) in the 5th Century AD. His body is incorrupt. He was not embalmed. If you are in Croatia you can go and see the body of a man who died fifteen-hundred years ago, still bearing the wounds that killed him. He is on public display. There is no decay. There are a few other incorrupt bodies, these few people who, for whatever reason, didn’t rot when their body died. Often this was discovered years after their death, when their tombs were opened for some other reason, and there they were, undecayed. Certain incorrupt bodies of “saints” are on display since they died in the 1500s and 1700s. Now, here is the stunning coincidence which forces reason to ponder. As far as we know, there are only one or two incorrupt body from the entire period of the 1800s. Remember, these are bodies that were never embalmed, but they simply did not decay after they died, and still have not. To see proof of this, one merely needs to go to the churches where these bodies are on display. If incorruptibility is a purely random natural process, which a hard secularist or skeptic would assert, that is well.
But then this fact gives pause. The one single person who died in the 1800s whose body did not decay, and HAS NOT decayed to this very day, even though it was never embalmed, is the body of Bernadette Soubirous, the girl who said she saw the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

Reason demands that a CAUSE be attributed to this. A claim of randomness exceeds the bounds of reason.

The fourth empirical fact is the forensic evidence concerning the Shroud of Turin and its companion, the Oviedo Cloth.

The interesting hypothesis was devised by an astronomer with some affiliation with NASA, who calculated the star and moon positions in the early First Century, and presented a startling series of planetary celestial phenomena which, in terms of the symbology of ancient Hebrew belief, was powerfully indicative of a messianic event.

It is not, of course, in the same league as the empirical facts recounted above. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence which leads the reason to faith, leads it to interest in a plausible scientific explanation for the Biblical Star of Bethelehem.

All of that is a very long-winded way of saying that I think spiritual matters CAN be discerned by looking for proof based on reason.

“one need only look at the course of nature—fathers were once like sons, and sons over the course of time become like fathers.”

But fathers are not sons, and sons are not fathers. They remain, forever, two entirely separate and distinct beings. Moreover, they both die.

These things don’t help me relate God, Jesus and reality at all.

Well, the quiz says I’m a liberal Quaker, and goes through a whole bunch of other funky options.

1. Liberal Quakers (100%)
2. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (99%)
3. Bahá’í Faith (97%)
4. Orthodox Quaker (92%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (90%)
6. Jainism (85%)
7. Mahayana Buddhism (84%)
8. Sikhism (84%)
9. Hinduism (83%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (79%)
11. Eastern Orthodox (74%)
12. Roman Catholic (74%)

My actual religion and beliefs, Roman Catholic, came it at number 12. I suppose it’s that 26% heterodoxy that pulls up the other things ahead.

Interesting.

You didn’t ask ME that question, but I’ll answer anyway.

Of course Adam had a belly button. It’s where his placenta was attached to his not-quite-hominid mother. Was Adam hono sapiens? Or was this plant-eater homo australopithecus?

“you want common sense or Biblical verification?”

Biblical “verification” can’t work any better for traditional Christians than referencing their own internal texts does for Mormons. The Bible itself is only convincing to those who a priori accept that there is authority in the Bible. To someone who is not a traditional Christian and doesn’t start with that a priori, holding up the Bible and saying “This is verification that Jesus was Son of God” has precisely the same strength as me holding up a piece of paper saying “I am the Son of God”, and when challenged to prove it, pointing to my piece of paper.

A common-sense proof of Jesus as Son of God, or the Resurrection, is not really to be come by either (although I would certainly like to see your effort at it). By common sense and simple observation, we can agree there is natural law, which is certainly godlike. We can observe our own intelligence and analogize that there is probably a similar intelligence over nature. But past that, using common sense to identify a particular person who lived long ago as literally divine, and resurrected even...well...I don’t think it can be done. That lots of people believed in it and sacrificed much to hold onto that belief is also true of each of the other major religions, so if that’s the basis, common sense would lead one to argue that they ALL are true, which is certainly the opposite of Christian belief.

I arrive at a specific belief in Jesus through the Resurrection.
I arrive at a specific belief in the Resurrection through the empirical fact of the Shroud of Turin. I do take on faith that the various scientific reports I have read are not made up or falsified.

This miraculous Shroud is then connected to the medical miracles at Lourdes. The empirical evidence of the afterlife is found in the controlled hospital NDE studies.

All of this provides me with a scientific, empirical basis for believing in life after death, and miracles specifically identified with the mother of Jesus, which then ties back to the singular inexplicable image on the Shroud of Turin, which is powerful evidence of the Resurrection, just as when John wrote about it in his Gospel.

And that opens the doorway, for me, to real faith. Real faith that has its foundation is real fact.

I certainly cannot get there Biblically, because starting with faith in the Bible, out of nothing and without evidence, is a non-starter. And common sense, while it may get me to God, gets me to a pantheist deity, and not the individual deity on the Shroud of Turin. For THAT, it takes, well, the Shroud of Turin!