[Vision2020] Ed Iverson's Contact in Eastern Johnbirchistan

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

I'm still really far behind with everything that I want to, but I did manage to gather all my notes and write this up about Iverson.  

I don't know if this will be next week's commentary, because I do want to write something about the 6th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, then a column on the 454th anniversary of the burning of Michael Servetus, and then an endorsement of City Council candidates with a focus on the boarding issue.  I'm already exhausted just summarizing my tasks.

Nick Gier, who loves it whenever Wilson or Iverson take up their mice and keyboards.

P. S.  A caveat on the following piece.  I do not necessarily subscribe to the view that economic growth alone is the best way to measure the success of any country.  In fact, one could argue that an obsession with growth will increase the world's slide into environmental disaster.

	ED IVERSON'S CONTACT IN EASTERN JOHNBIRCHISTAN

In his column for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (10-5-07), Ed Iverson, librarian at Moscow's New St. Andrews College, writes about a sinister "Democratic Blueprint for Your Future."  

Instead of drawing on easily found economic statistics, as one would think a professional librarian would do, Iverson relies in a "contact" in an unnamed Eastern European country, "still emerging from the bad old days of Soviet-style socialism." I have carefully deduced, by a process of elimination, that this country must be Eastern Johnbirchistan.

Iverson's Eastern European country could not possibly be the Czech Republic with its 5.8 percent growth (vs. U.S.'s 2 percent) and its 4.3 percent poverty rate, tied with Denmark as the lowest in the industrial world. The U.S. rate of 17.1 percent is second worst behind Mexico.  

It cannot be the Ukraine with the best performing stock market in Europe, and an economy that has been growing 7.9 percent for the first six months of 2007. Nor can it be Hungary, whose economy is at least is growing faster than ours.  Nor can it be Russia, growing at 6.7 percent with a very respectable 5.7 percent unemployment rate. 

Iverson should like Polish government because of its anti-gay and anti-abortion policies, but that cannot be the reason why the economy is growing at 6.5 percent.

Iverson focuses his criticism on high taxes and especially the value added tax (VAT) that is used by all European countries, and one that is recommended by some leading Republicans.  Iverson's implication is that the VAT and high progressive taxation have ruined European economies and will wreck ours if we elect that "socialist" Hillary Clinton as the next president.

If Iverson had consulted any website with comparative economic statistics, we would have found that the U.S. has now lost its lead in nearly every category.  Working far fewer hours and taking at least three weeks more vacation than Americans, the French now have a rate of productivity equal to ours.  Making all those Freedom Fries was a real bust!

In a recent study on economic competitiveness by the World Economic Forum, seven European countries were ranked in the top ten. Sweden and Denmark were third and fourth, and the U.S. had dropped to sixth.

The Economist magazine has also rated Denmark, with a VAT of 25 percent and average income tax of 50 percent, as the least corrupt and most business friendly country in the world. Denmark, with an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, is currently running a budget surplus of .65 percent of GDP, while the U.S. is running a budget deficit of 4.5 percent of GDP.  Nearby Sweden with similar taxation is growing at 3.5 percent with 4.8 percent unemployment.

In addition to the irony of conservatives liking the VAT that Iverson hates, there are at least two more ironies in Iverson's ideological fog.  In one of his first columns, he praised Ireland as an economic success story, but failed to mention that the Shamrock Tiger's income tax rates top out at 41 percent and the VAT ranges from 13-21 percent.

As a student of theology and Christian history, I really like the third irony; it is really delicious. In his book "Evangelicals at an Impasse" evangelical Christian Robert Johnston discusses Biblical economics. He concludes that the Bible supports neither "to each according to merit" nor "to each according to a standard of equality"; rather, it teaches "to each according to need" (p. 98), the most famous phrase in Marx's philosophy.

This economic communism is found in the Book of Acts: "And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need" (2:44-45;  4:32-37).  That this was not just a temporary or isolated phenomenon is verified by  the Church Father Tertullian, who once declared, 200 years later, that "we hold everything in common except our wives." 

How about some Biblical Bolshevism, Ed?  Your pastor believes in Biblical Absolutism, which means that one should follow the Bible in all respects and should never be ashamed of what it says or teaches, including defending the South's ownership of slaves and the execution or banishment of gays and lesbians.