Why I Call Myself a Jedi

I take part in religious discussions almost as often as political ones. Inevitably,  this leads people to become curious about my  own faith, and for several years  I’ve claimed to be a Jedi. Invariably, this causes people to look at me funny. What varies is the meaning in the look. Sometimes it’s accusing me of being a wise-ass, sometimes it’s judging me to be a Star Wars fanboy. Either way, it destroys all my credibility on the topic and kills the conversation. While I can be a bit of a wise-ass, and I do like Star Wars, neither of these is the case. I’ve put a lot of thought into this version of faith. To understand how I came to this decision, you first must understand how I define God, and then how I interpret the Old Testament and the New.
God is not some dude sitting on a throne in the clouds with a righteous beard, as he is often depicted in pop culture. I think this is how churchgoers, Hollywood, and even preachers have come to picture him over the centuries. Not that I think our religious leaders picture him as the only 5-fingered character in the Simpsons, but they picture him as physically a man. The Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is a depiction of 3 separate entities that function interchangeably and simultaneously. Of course God must be a man, because we were created in His image, right? I’ll come back to that.
God is an intangible entity. God is love. God is goodness. God is life. You cannot see Him, but you can see evidence of Him, and if you open your heart and mind, you can feel Him. He is in everything, and every person. He is your conscience, your good idea, your urge to hold someone who is crying. The Chinese concept of chi is actually more accurate than the Western idea of a man. When we were created in His image, it doesn’t mean we were created with our eyes, hands, toes, and buttocks in the same place as the Almighty. This means we were created with His love, goodness, life, and conscience.
God’s angels in similar fashion, are not winged humans. That is an artistic representation by Michelangelo that was adopted by the subconscious of western culture. Angels are agents of God. They are his fingers, working for the goodness and love that is God. When someone feels like something isn’t quite right, so they check it out, that is angelic inspiration. When the investigate, find someone in need of help, and help them, they are an angel for the time being. If you’ve been stranded on the side of the road, but someone stops to help change your tire, you were helped by an angel.
The Bible is also very much taken too literally. If you’ve ever opened it, you’ve noticed it is subdivided into Testaments, Books, chapters, and verses. These individual verses are then taken out of context, studied, and argued about. Wars have been fought over individual verses of the Bible. The Old Testament was written by barely literate Hebrews living in the desert, based on divine inspiration and their own spin on life. It was written by them, and for them. Genesis, the story of creation, was written in such a way they could understand. There’s no way to explain eons, dinosaurs, ice ages, and evolution to them. If you lie the timelines of Creation and the Big Bang side by side, they look pretty similar. First, there was nothing, and God said, “Let there be light.” First, there was chaos in the form of an electron field, until electrons managed to bump into each other at just the right force and angle that a photon was created. It continues from there. Leviticus was written to help them survive and prosper. At the time, procreation was absolutely necessary for survival, so homosexuality was a bad thing. Tattoos were forbidden because they would die of hepatitis. The New Testament was written after Jesus of Nazareth denounced the old teachings, and the old churches, and taught his followers that times had changed and that it’s okay to not fight. It’s preferable to love one another.
Sometimes, we forget that science and religion are not exclusive of each other. Science is a method of study and discovery, not a belief system. Science has neither proven nor disproven the existence of God. It has proven the existence of goodness, and love, and conscience. That is God. That is the intangible entity that is God. That is the intangible force that makes us want to do good things. That intangible force is simplified to the Force, and my belief in that doesn’t make me a Christian in the traditional sense of the word, so I don’t identify with that definition. What can you call a man that believes in, and strives to understand, commune with, and serve the Force? The only way I could answer that question is: I am a Jedi.

Minimum Wage: Myopic, Ineffective, and Harmful

There has been a lot of talk about increasing minimum wage in Alberta ever since the NDP was elected to a majority government. The current minimum wage in Alberta is $10.20 per hour, unless you're a liquor server. If you're a liquor server, it's $9.20 per hour because you are supposed to make decent tips serving alcohol. The government wants to increase minimum wage to $15.00 per hour by 2018. The government feels this will reduce poverty in Alberta, but in reality it will actually increase poverty for families. It will do absolutely no favours for minimum-wage earners, and it will do severe damage to rural economies in Alberta.

The Flawed Logic

Few people remember it, but the New Democratic Party actually used to be called the Communist Party. They are considered much more socialist than communist in this age, but we are already seeing the beginnings of communism from this government. Think back to junior high social studies. The first thing that a communist government does when it comes into power is called Redistribution of Wealth. While this sounds like a wonderful idea to the lower class, a cool idea to the middle class, and a terrible idea to the aristocracy, it truly is just a bad idea on the scale of a province. Trying to redistribute wealth in a province of a much larger country will simply drive the wealthy to other jurisdictions. Alberta has been thriving for decades largely because other provinces have tried to redistribute wealth, and that has driven the wealthy towards Alberta.
There is a saying among the proletariat classes: "From below, everyone above you just looks like an ass." We resent the wealthy because we are envious of what they have. Step back and take a look at the larger picture. It is the wealthy who invest money in our province. They pay taxes (although arguably not enough), they invest in charities, they spend money on community initiatives (parks, etc), and they are the members of service clubs. I am a Rotarian, and when I joined Rotary, I heard the joke that some clubs are considered ROMEO's. That stands for Rich Old Men Eating Out. That is a large part of what several service clubs do with their time, but it's at those dinners that they discuss where they can invest their money and volunteer their time to help people. So many communities around the world have benefitted from the wealthy spending their time in clubs like Rotary, Lions, Kin, Knights of Columbus, Stonemasons, Kiwanis, and so many others. These clubs aren't exclusive to the wealthy by any means, but it's definitely the wealthy that provide the lifeblood and make the initiatives of these clubs possible. If the wealthy all move to other areas of the country, or other countries, we will only suffer as a whole. We all want a bigger piece of the pie, but it's there to earn. Take careful risks, make good choices, get educated, and make it happen. Don't rely on electing the right person to legislate it to you. That's lazy, weak, and whiny.
The main idea behind increasing the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour is that the "living wage" in Calgary is $17 and change. Those in favour of a minimum wage increase argue that you cannot make a living and support your family on the current minimum wage. In order to live in relative comfort, you must make at least $17 in Calgary. The main problem I have with that is that I don't think anybody is actually expected to make a living and support a family on minimum wage. Minimum wage jobs are meant to be entry-level jobs for people who are just joining the work force, and they have minimal skills, minimal experience, and minimal employability. These people are youths, students, underachievers, or people that have fallen on hard times. The kid pumping your gas, or carrying your groceries, or sweeping your shop floor are the ones who are making minimum wage. They are learning what it's like to be in the workforce, to be part of a team, to show up on time, and to learn to earn more. That's what these jobs are meant for. As the people in these jobs learn, they will receive wage increases, or promotions and no longer be minimum wage earners. As they improve themselves with knowledge, experience, and education, they will make more money. If they don't make more money, they will leave the job they're at and go work for someone else. Wages are policed by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand of Capitalism, because if you're not happy with what you're making, you're going to work for someone who's paying better. It should not be the government's role to police wages. The exception to this is servers, who rely mostly on tips, and as a result can make just as much money as anyone else, if they're good at what they do and work in a busy restaurant or bar. However, higher minimum wages will destroy these restaurants and bars, so servers won't be able to make any money at all, will they?

The Wage Scale

In a blog post I wrote a few years ago, I alluded to the concept of "relative wage." Someone else may have come to this concept before me, but this I conceived it on my own, so if my theories don't mesh perfectly with what you've already read in an economics textbook, it's because I didn't read that textbook. My theory is that all wages are relative to the minimum wage. If you make $12 per hour, but minimum wage is $5 per hour, your wage is $7 per hour relative to minimum wage. Imagine wages as weights on a scale. When you weigh food on a scale, you have to zero the scale first, right? If you're going to weigh soup in a bowl, you must first put the bowl on the scale, and zero it. That way when you measure the soup, you get only the weight of the soup, not the bowl. Minimum wage is that zero point. If you make $20 per hour, with our current minimum wage of $10.20 per hour, your relative wage is $9.80 per hour. If we change the zero point by increasing minimum wage to $15 per hour, your new wage is $5 per hour. Does this still sound like a good idea?
The most obvious myopia of increasing minimum wage is that it will devalue everyone else's wages. For instance, I have worked the same job for almost 5 years, but I haven't seen a wage increase. Even though minimum wage has increased 3 times in the past 5 years, my wage has stayed the same. I suspect that is the case for a great many people. My relative wage has actually decreased 3 times in the past 5 years, and yours may have, too. Unless you work for a very generous employer who has increased your wage at a rate higher than all the minimum wage increases that have been imposed on us, then your relative wage has also decreased. The naïve people of our middle and upper classes think that increasing minimum wage will cause employers to increase everyone else's wages, too. We're just redistributing the wealth, right? Wrong.

The Effect on a Rural Economy, and the Hospitality Industry

In a hypothetical anecdote, I'm going to refer to a shoe store in a small rural town, not unlike my current town of Taber or my home town of High River. Jane has been running this shoe store since the mid-90's, and employs 5 people. She has 2 high school girls working in the evenings, making minimum wage, 2 people in the daytime making a relative wage of $7, and a manager responsible for the scheduling and helping with administration, making a relative wage of $12. It's a fairly prosperous business, and she pays herself a relative wage of $18 and she supports her family on that. Of course, minimum wage is $10.20, so her students make $10.20, her full time salespeople make $17.20, her manager makes $22.20, and she pays herself $28.20. This is a decent situation. The government increases minimum wage to $15. Legally, she has to pay her students more, so they get a raise up to $15 immediately. This comes directly out of her own pay of $28.20, so now she makes $12.60. (hey! She is paying herself less than minimum wage!!! Who is going to protect her from that?) She wants to give her other employees a pay increase to be fair to them, so she increases the price of shoes. Because every other store owner in town is doing the exact same thing, the price of everything is going up, so people can't readily afford to buy new shoes at the increased price. She starts selling fewer shoes. One of her full-time sales people is dissatisfied with a relative wage of $2.20, so she quits, leaving the owner short-staffed. She doesn't save any money on that because, she is now selling less product. She ends up closing in evenings because she can't afford the minimum wage of her students, so they're now without work. Again, she doesn't save money because she's not selling any shoes in the evenings, now. Our heroine continues to try selling more shoes at the higher price so she can pay her staff more and still support her family. She can't. Eventually, she gives up. What choice does she have? Next week, she is selling shoes for Wal-Mart in Calgary for $17, because that's the only possible way she can support her family. Every small business owner in my hypothetical town goes through a similar problem, so now my hypothetical town becomes a shadow of its former self, employing nursing home workers because retired seniors are the only people who can live there.
This sounds like a worst-case scenario, but I'm seeing evidence of it happening already. Take a drive through downtown Taber. How many empty storefronts do you see? SAAN is gone, the Bargain Shop is gone, the men's clothing store is gone, so many stores are gone! There are other factors, but I promise this is a big one. It's not profitable to own a small store anymore, so nobody does. When your store can only afford to pay you less than you'd make at Wal-Mart, you go work at Wal-Mart. It's the only thing that makes sense.

What can we do?

Please contact your local MLA. It's surprisingly easy. Click on https://www.assembly.ab.ca/net/index.aspx?p=mla_home and select your area. Send them an email. You can either write how you feel, or just simply send them a link to this post and tell them you are not in favour of a minimum wage increase. They work for you! Tell them what you want them to do. Please. It's the right thing to do to protect your job, your business, and your livelihood.

American Involvement in Syria

American Involvement in Syria

Here’s the question: Should America take direct involvement in the conflict in Syria? There are a lot of opinions on this matter, and I’m going to share my own Thinkin’s.

President Obama, his administration, and most American politicians seem to be saying yes (MARK LANDLER, 2013). Of course, my information comes from the media, which I don’t trust, so I really don’t know what the feeling is in Congress, the Senate, or President Obama’s cabinet. They say that the Assad regime in Syria illegally used Sarin gas against its own people during their civil war (CBC News, 2013). Early in the conflict when the American government was considering whether or not to be involved, I think I remember reading that President Obama would only consider direct involvement in the case of illegal action such as chemical or biological warfare. Now, I can’t find anything supporting that statement aside from my own vague memories. If I’m right about that, then President Obama’s administration may find itself in a case of making idle threats. If America said they’re going to do something about it and then they don’t, they will wind up with more severe problems down the road. America isn’t planning any “boots on the ground” approach, but they have many other tactics available. They have been positioning and posturing for quite some time, now.  

(British Broadcasting Channel, 2013)

There are some politicians that feel America shouldn’t be involved. One West Virginia Senator said that we don’t have a dog in this fight, or a friend there, either (The Tennessean, 2013). Russian President Vladimir Putin is not convinced that Syria did use illegal chemical weapons and has called upon President Obama to prove it on the world stage before taking any action (British Broadcasting Channel, 2013).

The United States cannot let this go unanswered. Every free man has a moral obligation to stand up to anyone doing evil. However, the USA is not the world’s police force. They have no allies or enemies in this conflict. Any military action by the United States will likely be declared illegal by the UN (Serwer, 2013). Here is what needs to happen: America and her allies need to make a case to the United Nations. If warranted, the United Nations should summon Assad to The Hague to defend himself against the accusations. If Assad fails to show, then the UN Security Council should issue a warrant for the arrest of Assad, with authorization to attack any military asset under Assad’s control until he has been brought in. The Security Council should then appoint an interested party to bring in Assad, and this is when the United States should act. This way, nobody can accuse the USA of doing whatever it wants, or being a bully, or only being after natural resources, or anything else they have been accused of in the past. Action would be backed by the UN, including Russia. Of course, Russia has a veto vote on the UN Security Council and they are strong supporters of the Syrian government. I don’t think that Russia is evil, though. If it is proven that Syria has used chemical weapons, the Russia would have to support action.

Bibliography

British Broadcasting Channel. (2013, August 31). Russia's Vladimir Putin challenges US on Syria claims. Retrieved September 3, 2013, from BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23911833

CBC News. (2013, September 2). Syria 'clearly' used sarin gas, French spy dossier says. Retrieved September 3, 2013, from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/09/02/france-releases-intelligence-report-on-syrian-chemical-weapons-use.html

MARK LANDLER, M. R. (2013, September 3). House Speaker Backs Obama’s Call for Strike Against Syria. Retrieved September 3, 2013, from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/us/politics/obama-administration-presses-case-on-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Serwer, A. (2013, September 3). UN suggests American attack on Syria would be illegal. Retrieved September 3, 2013, from NBC News: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/09/03/un-suggests-american-attack-on-syria-would-be-illegal/

The Tennessean. (2013, August 31). Alexander 'concerned about the consequences' of potential Syria strike. Retrieved September 3, 2013, from The Tennessean: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130831/NEWS08/308310070/MTSU-expert-Not-enough-support-war-Syria?nclick_check=1