Early on, as a certain kind of conservative (I thought there was only one), I embraced radical individualism, and never thought it could ever be challenged by a true patriot, and even less so, by a Bible-believing kinda guy. But then I began to see the confluence of Christianity with radical individualism, not so much as a Christian movement, but a political movement. I began to challenge myself to look at the data and what I began to find out was that, while I still consider myself a conservative in many respects, I found that there was too much trust in human nature for my Christian worldview, and too much distrust in governments role in the affairs of men. I moved away from radical individualism because the lack of empirical data to support certain policies and over-emphasizing some principles gleaned from the Scriptures over others, e.g., personal responsibility vs. structural responsibility, personal evil vs. collective evil, consequences for sin vs. compassion for sinners, distrust of centralized power vs. God-given role for centralized power, et.al.. So for those who have historically argued against raising the minimum wage (we will not attempt measuring the working persons wage with that of corporate for the last thirty years, but suffice it to say min wage would be about $22 an hour) on the basis that it hurts the economy and employment, I ask, Is the logic here for 1) therefore eliminate the minimum wage or lower it as much as possible? Just let the market do it all? I believe it was Alan Greenspan who said his main contribution to the 2008 financial crisis was, Too much trust in human nature or to paraphrase Let the market regulate itself (yes, he is a libertarian...hands off kinda guy). I find it less than a full-orbed Christian position to affirm a fully unregulated market, or in this case, to argue against min wage, because structures need hedging just like individuals. Indeed, I find the data for its support to be lacking, but am open to contrary to fact empirical data. Here is my attempt: truth-out.org/news/item/14050
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 13:46:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015