Lions and Eagles

I've had this idea rolling around in my head on the economic effects of health insurance coverage mandates. It started in my mind over contraceptives, but could be applied to just about anything, from prescriptions to doctor visits. My wife had an economics teacher who told her, "If you don't know about supply and demand, you will fail!" You have to understand supply and demand. Quick Micro Econ 101 review. Look at the graph over here. If you've taken an econ class, you should have seen variations on this again and again. The blue line shows that as price goes up, the number of people willing to jump in and buy goes down, and vice versa. Red line shows that when price goes up, sellers are more excited about selling. Somewhere in the middle, the quantity of product that buyers want to buy meets up with the quantity that sellers want to sell, and there we have what we call market equilibrium. That market equilibrium price is what you will pay without insur...

I recently ran across an article by a Presbyterian minister on 10 political things one supposedly cannot do while following Jesus. While I respect the author's viewpoints and even praise some of his motivations, I did personally find the article to be very heavily weighted towards one side of the political aisle. In order to offer a counterbalance, I thought I might offer my own list of 10 more political things, as seen from a different perspective. This will get long, but I'll ask you to bear with me. I feel it's very important to be clear not only with what I am saying, but also with what I am very specifically not saying. 10) Allow public expressions of faith to be silenced If you have good news, the best news in the world, do you not want to share it? If the news you have may save countless lives, are you not obligated to share it? The Gospel is Good News. Indeed, we have a Great Commission from our Lord himself to spread his News to every tribe, every tongue, every...

I realize I may be doing a bit of troll-feeding here, but I saw this image on a friend's Facebook page, and just couldn't resist the challenge. This is a sign from an anti-Tea Party rally. I believe that I can prove every point on this sign to be wrong, for both Jesus and Obama. As a disclaimer, I am not an official member of any Tea Party organization, but I have attended several Tea Party events, and I do consider myself to be a supporter of Tea Party values. Just for fun, I'll go in reverse order: Free Healthcare? Healthcare is provided by doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, who diagnose your illness, and  take care of you while you get better, or until you die, whichever comes first. Depending on how sick you are, this can be very expensive. Jesus never offered healthcare. He offers healing. Jesus's healing is this: "The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and ...

So one person gets a need fulfilled, and another person pays for it. If the payer is paying willingly, it's charity. Otherwise, it's theft for a noble cause. But the Bible doesn't say "Thou shalt not steal unless it's for a really good cause". It says "Thou shalt not steal." Sorry, sometimes the Bible is hard that way. What it means is that we have to save lives without stealing. But let's ignore the theft aspect for a moment. Let's focus on charity. I like charity. Charitable actions bring a multitude of spiritual rewards, both for the gracious, generous, and loving giver, and for the humble receiver. Throw government into the mix, on the other hand, and all spiritual rewards are lost. The givers (taxpayers) lose the chance to be lovingly and personally invested in the well-being of their fellow man, because the government's in the way. And the receivers lose any reason to be humble. Why offer up humble thanks for a government "righ...