aka the real grimoires which drive the reader insane and gibbering…
The Necronomicon, pfft, a harmless pamphlet! The Liber Paginarum Fulvarum? A handy doorstop.
Tolley’s? Run, screaming…
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The Bible, whatever it’s flaws, is also a historical document of people in the past. An imperfect and self-serving one, to be sure, but it’s not entirely without value for historians of the ancient world. Jubliee is a good example of that.
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Maybe mere mortals wouldn’t be drowning in debt and could more fully participate in the economy?
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That sucks. For you, and for the rest of us. Maybe you would have been the next (insert famous physicist here) or maybe not. But for the rest of us, it should be worth the money, especially if education would get back to educating and get out of the resort, advertising, public relations, and MBA employment business, be less expensive, and be supported by the rest of us. I feel my taxes are too low, and misused for really useless, stupid things.
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Of topic, but I’ve recently been thinking about reading the full New Testament which I have never done. It occurred to me that it is the stories of my ancestors.
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True. The more modern versions have also been filtered through various changes by either the Catholic church or the various protestant churches.
Since my ancestors are Scottish and English, it seems like I should read an appropriately bastardized and anglicized version for full effect.
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This is what happens when there is insufficient financial support for public universities. The whole point of public colleges is that they are affordable to the middle classes in the states or cities they are in.
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As a pretty hard core athiest, even I can look at the bible as having a lot of moral lessons. Some of them (liking stoning people*) need to be ignored, but I agree that loans that unfairly enrich the lender (usury) are a bad thing.
*correct me if I get something wrong.
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And then you should blog it! I’d like to read that! Especially if you read a translation that has a history attached to it (such as what the changes were based on what the ideology of the contemporary king).
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My uncle looks exactly like Bob Carrolgees. It’s uncanny.
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The complexity is due to all the thousands of loopholes. These allow rich people to whine that “taxes in the US are the highest in the world!!!” while effectively paying a low rate via the loopholes. They can afford the accountants and lawyers to do the job for them, while less-well-off people can’t afford it (and there are few loopholes applying to them anyway).
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Sorry, I have to.
Hadoken!
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I was able to pay off my student loans within about five years of graduating, but it wasn’t easy, and my college experience was unusual.
For one, I went to a state college with an integrated co-op program, where you’re required to work a full-time job as an intern in your field every other quarter. So, three months of school, then three months as a paid employee at a design agency, for five years. Finding work every three months and arranging housing was anything but easy, but I graduated with work experience and a small amount of income (living in SF on an intern’s wages isn’t easy).
Second, I also worked two part-time jobs all through school. I didn’t sleep much, but it helped pay the bills.
Having seen what tuition is at that school these days, I was lucky. But I honestly don’t know why more colleges don’t have co-op programs. Having done it, I can’t imagine graduating school with zero experience whatsoever.
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Oddly, perhaps, I don’t think that is the real issue. Most of the battle took place in the 4th-5th century when the decision was first made in what to include in the Bible, and then at the Protestant Reformation when the Prots decided what to leave out. You might for instance argue that anti-Semitism led to the removal of books like Maccabees, or that it was simply that it was too secular.
But the biggest problem with English (or Latin) Bibles is simply lack of understanding of the meanings of words, and that not necessarily due to not consulting Jewish scholars or the Greek Orthodox Church, because they too had lost track of context and meaning. We can’t even be sure how often was the Jubilee, for instance.
I think the Bible has enough internal contradictions (it is after all in no way a sustained narrative or exposition) that people can read pretty much what they want into it. No editing to suit kings required. One thing we can be reasonably sure about is that it is not an economics textbook and doesn’t present a consistent approach to debt.
We can’t even be sure that when Jesus says “then give Caesar what is Caesar’s” he is (a) telling people to pay their taxes without complaint (b) giving a sneaky answer to avoid trouble with the authorities or (c) telling his hearers to keep their financial and religious affairs separate - or any combination thereof.
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Not sure how that’s an answer to the question asked. And mere mortals are participating fully in the economy right now. Excessive debt is a problem for some, and for the ones for whom it really was unavoidably not their fault could be addressed in about 100 different ways other than chucking out the entire concept of long term investment and private property to boot. IMO for that particular issue, Jubilee is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I read it as part of my Bible as Literature class on my way to my humanities degree. It is a revealing, challenging, and elucidating text. I’m so grateful for my degree.
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Well I’m not really subsidising you so much as I’m subsidising the university. If they put their fees up and it costs me more in taxes but you get the same degree as before, then my problem is with the person who sets the fees.
edit: I guess my argument depends on whether getting a degree benefits you beyond affecting your future earnings.
There’s certainly a difference in social prestige when you can say you went to uni, so maybe we should think of student loan schemes as a tax on social status, or more accurately on social climbing since they tend to hit harder on people who start poor and work their way up than on someone who goes in with cash up-front.
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Yes, a tax on social mobility, because we don’t want any of that.
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Well, sure, you’re always participating in the economy. But when people are carrying heavy debt loads, they spend less on any number of things. They go out less, they put off having a family, buying a house, getting a new car, sometimes medical needs are put off until they become catastrophes. You’re always part of the economy, because you got to eat, pay rent, and cover up your nakedness. I think you’re truly underestimating the problem of excessive debt. Nearly everyone I know has debt to some degree, some to near bankruptcy degrees (but of course, they can’t get bankruptcy that wipes the slate clean, so it keeps them in a debt much, MUCH longer).
Our goal should not be to give credit lenders more power over the economy. it should be to help balance the economy and make credit useful to consumers. The only winners in the current model of getting in debt up to your eyeballs is private credit companies. Getting in debt isn’t always about long term investments, either. In this case we’re talking about a 4 year degree, not a house - school should be more affordable so more people can go, have more economic options because they have more earning power over the course of their lives. Shifting student loans over to private companies was a huge mistake, IMO.
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