Interesting Links for a Quiet Afternoon

Another side to the health care debate. One that probably should be obvious but for some reason isn’t.

Scot McKnight, in response to Glenn Beck & Jerry Falwell, JR..

A brilliant Sri Lankan pastor on responsibility.

A new free alternative to Basecamp opened yesterday: Freedcamp — Project Management made free and easy.

Back in politics, I found this report from the NY Times interesting: Basically, the tea party crowds are intentionally ignoring divisive social issues (think homosexuality/abortion/etc) in favor of collecting numbers.

And even more interesting, this note on banks and economics. Basically, a Citibank Investment Advisory Letter from ‘06 referred to our economy as a “plutonomy”. In it they detail that “the rich take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years, to the extent that the rich now dominate income, wealth, and spending in these countries.” “In total, the top 20% accounted for 68% of total income; the bottom 40%, for just 9%.” And even better:


The writers of this letter point out that in other places, such as Japan and much of Western Europe, the rich were confined to pretty much the much the same share they had in the 80’s, but in the plutonomies, such as the US, the “capitalists benefit disproportionately from globalization and the productivity boom, at the expense of labor.” In other words, the imbalance is not necessary, but a creation of particular forces within the plutonomies.


Switching gears again, here is a hope filled article about potential angelic visitors. This is far and away one of my favorite blogs written by someone I don’t know. Almost everything he writes is great (I’ve linked to quite a few of his posts).

2 responses
The link that you included about health care and abortion is interesting, but I find it rather incomplete. Of course I haven't really put time into any research on the topic.

I think that they are probably right that universal healthcare could decrease the abortion rate, however the information they provided was far from definitive. It seems that they were trying to imply a relationship between the availability of healthcare and the abortion rate without providing any real evidence. Statistically speaking, their implications had no justification.

Now, I am an advocate for health care for everybody in the U.S. and I believe abortion is a great injustice, so I'd like to see somebody provide some real evidence of a relationship between them. Otherwise, articles like the one linked above seem to make people that share our mindset seem a little unintelligent and biased in our discernment of facts.

Just some thoughts of mine. Of course, if I'm really passionate about this subject I guess I should go do the research myself. I appreciate that there are Christians that are both pro-healthcare and pro-life.

God bless in Africa.

Oh, by the way, is universal healthcare on the horizon for South Africa any time soon? That'd be sweet.

-----------------
Update: After writing all of this, I looked at the actual Washington Post article that was linked. Nevermind everything I said above, except the part where I wish you God's blessings. Talk to ya later, Brandon.

Glad you clicked thru to the WashPo article :) I linked the blog because I like that particular one and like directing traffic to blogs (when possible).

Universal healthcare is quasi here. They have a combo public/private system that insures coverage for everyone (but costs $$ if going the private route). It's not the best but it is coverage. And, because I was interested their abortion rate is 7ish% vs the US's 22ish%. (from here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html and here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-southafrica.html )