Tag Archives: insurance

Which industry enslaves you best?: 1 Cor. 7:21-23

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, , , , , , , , , ,

Were you a slave when you were called?
Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so.
For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person;
similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave.
You were bought at a price;
do not become slaves of human beings.
1 Cor. 7:21-23

What did your family or friendship circle talk about over the holidays? At our Christmas brunch, for a few minutes the conversation turned to slavery.

The education industry

I have a grandson ready to enter college (and highly qualified to do so!). The biggest question is: how much is it going to cost and how much debt is going to be accrued? I asked, in an apocalyptic tone in line with our times, “Can you avoid becoming a debt slave?” After all, Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”

President Biden tried to give borrowers some relief by plugging some holes in the leaky federal student loan system, like the  one leaking out the loan forgiveness built in for public service. He was not too successful, with the Congress and Courts as they are. Here’s a story about it from The Hill:

Lisa Ansell, an educator from California, was one of the people who got their loans cancelled in 2021 when Biden made those changes, after she was denied eight times.

“I should have been eligible for public service loan forgiveness in 2017, which would have been the first cohort, because public service loan forgiveness was signed into law in 2007. I applied in 2017 and, of course, I was denied, no valid reason. We know that the Department of Education likes to invent reasons to prevent people from receiving their lawful cancelation,” said Ansell, the California chapter president for Student Loan Justice.

Ansell said she was relieved, but “what I felt was anger and resentment because I had been kept in indentured servitude to the Department of Education for close to five extra years, and because of that, I was never able to save up any money.”

While Biden forgave the most student debt of any president, his efforts affected only a small portion of the 45 million borrowers.  (The Hill)

These stories are so painful for us Boomer college grads! My excellent college education in California was completed before the state stopped considering it an investment in the future. The school debt slavery so many experience now all started with Governor Ronald Reagan.

When Reagan assumed office in 1966, he changed the course of the state’s higher education system. In his eight years, he cut state funding for college and universities and laid the foundation for the tuition-based system there is today. Once he became president, he continued his quest. {Great article describing in in the UC Irvine Campus Newspaper from 2023]. The “intellectual curiosity” to which the university was devoted created protesting Berkeley “brats” he said. He preferred a campus-as-business model working to create more profiteers — at least the few who could make the cut.

Since Reagan, college has gotten more and more expensive. It is amazing, really. Just think, the average American saved $5,011 in 2022. That means it would take them about 75 years to save up enough cash to send one child to a top-rated U.S. university. If your child wants to go, you’ll either need to get very rich or sell her to the debtors. (CNN 2023)

The average tuition at U.S. private colleges grew by about 4% last year to just under $40,000 per year, according to data collected by US News & World Report. For a public in-state schools, the rise was less, about 1%. But it always goes up. Another take on the stats sees that small rise as a glass half full, since 20 years ago it climbed 68%!

At highly rated or selective schools, which are most likely to get you the lucrative job or your chance to be part of the 1%, the price tag increases substantially. Harvard University charges about $58,000 in tuition and fees, per year, for undergraduate students. When you add in housing, food, books and other cost of living expenses, Harvard says you should expect to pay over $95,000.

We’re used to being rolled over by the “anti-socialists” who believe the rich deserve to rule (just like Proverbs lamented above, perhaps with a picture of Elon Musk in mind),  so we  kind of think it is common sense for slavery to debt to be part of getting an education. This guy explains how it happened to us:

While we were at it (Merry Christmas!), we enumerated other systems that have gone through the same kind of process until what was once a sphere of the “common good” has ended up in the hands of people skilled in making profit/slaves. I just want to touch on them.

Healthcare / insurance industry

There are many reasons healthcare is so costly (link). But the big ones in my mind are mergers and insurance. Big health systems have eaten up smaller rivals until they can basically charge what they want.

Worked into the fees they charge are paying off insurance companies for fear of malpractice claims. So insurance companies have their hands out all along the way, as Luigi Mangione pointed out. On average, a single person will pay $12-25 a day to the insurance slaver or they will be personally liable for the astronomical cost of a hospital visit or procedure, which will be allowed by the master, or not.

Like with universities, healthcare is a good investment for profiteers, since everyone needs it. An investor can be assured that profits are available since the cost for drugs and medical care can go up to whatever can be tolerated by raising the cost of insurance. My insurance toll goes up every year.  A recent stay in the hospital for a family member for a one-night surgery cost over $100,000.

Porn industry

The average age reported for first viewing pornography is 12. Almost half of the reporters (44%) went looking for it, while slightly more than half (58%) encountered it accidentally. It is hard to miss. The total adult entertainment revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate  of 5.3% from 2024 to 2030, reaching nearly $248.18 billion by 2030.

There are legal arguments about what is obscene and so regulatable. But from listening to my twentysomething clients, the porn industry is not a discussion about personal choice, it is a slaver. Like any other addiction, there is an introductory path on the way to enslavement and profit engineered by an industry. Monetizing sexual desire is a growth industry. Under the spell of profit, people tend to think that is self-evidently appropriate.

Phones/gaming/social media industries

I got an ad for Royal Match on Bible Gateway (!) as I wrote this. That seemed about right.  We’re all getting squished or drowned no matter where we look and we have to complete some crazy puzzle (and fast!!) or someone is going to die. Our movies, games, and notifications are all full of this anxiety. That anxiety is not our fault, no matter what the powers that be tell us.

It is profitable, somehow, to produce endless ads for this game and loop us into it. The ads are incessant lures to get me hooked so I play the game on the subway instead of relating. Then the phone can report how much time I’ve spent with it every week and I can worry about that. There is nothing benign in our “economy.” No tools are provided for mere creation, we are the host for giant corporations to drain. The phone is like Neo connected to the Matrix.

The prophets made that movie in 1999! Lots of people listened to them, but they got rolled over anyway (maybe the medium is the message). Besides, even by 2011, only 35% of Americans owned a smartphone. But by 2024, 91% of them did. Now we are enslaved to it. I can’t leave the house without it, I might need to satisfy a 2-step verification to get to my money or need Siri to tell me where the nearest Chipotle is.

Sorry

I’m kinda sorry I want you to be ramped up with me.

I will look for something more uplifting to talk about next time. I know most of us are upended by Santa Ana winds in January spreading fire in L.A. Trump is setting Canada and Denmark on edge for some reason. And Jimmy Carter is dead. Anxiety is in the air and we need some relief.

But seeing what we are up against at least gives us some juice to move with the ever-rebellious Paul, and not bend the knee to the norms of a sin-fueled world. “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings.”

Ronald Reagan opened the door to the American henhouse and the foxes are finally in charge of it, now — in Paul’s time, it was Rome eating up the world. But as Paul and Jimmy Carter exemplified, you don’t need to offer yourself up to be breakfast. You might even change the world, as a result.

Six reasons why we don’t care about Palestine

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

Why can’t we care about much of anything beyond getting through this week?

I suppose a few of us feel some crushing guilt when we hear such a question. A few of us effectively screened out questions like “Why don’t you care?” a long time ago. We exempted ourselves, because we don’t want to feel guilt anymore. It crushes us.

Ideally, we think of ourselves as caring people. If we are Jesus followers there is quite a bit of pressure to care about others. I think most of us think we are doing OK at meeting the standards. We are probably more caring than other people — especially Israelis who are creating an apartheid system in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians like Hamas who would sacrifice their whole people for their ideology.

college gilr

You probably are more caring than they are, and I like to think I am too. But let’s face it. When it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy the vast majority of us have just barely heard about what is going on — that’s true even though our own church people have been talking about it regularly for over two years.  We didn’t read a blog post, we didn’t go to the movie, we didn’t read a newspaper or listen to a broadcast. What’s more, we did not pray about it; we did not figure out how to give money to help suffering people; we did not support others who care more than we do; we did not protest to our elected officials who fund the whole thing; we did not demand an end to weapons production and distribution, etc. If we care at all, why don’t we do something?

I think there are a lot more reasons for not caring about Palestine than we are just wicked, guilt-resistant, pseudo-Christians.

I think we may be dramatically underestimating just how powerful and demanding the powers that be really are, and way underestimating just how damaging it is to buy the philosophy of self-reliance and “freedom” capitalism keeps selling.

Here are some good reasons you don’t care, or at least don’t do much to show that you do:

1) You’ve got student loan debt that must be paid off.

It is the all-purpose excuse millions of people have for tunneling into their careers and keeping whatever job they have at all costs, working whatever hours are required to do so.

2) You either have high rent or you are stuck with a high mortgage.

Nationally, 50% all renters are now spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to a comprehensive Harvard study, up from 38% of renters in 2000. In PA the average renter needs to bring in about $17.21 an hour to make the average rent for a two-bedroom. The stats show that the phenomenon of twentysomethings living with mom and dad is proven by more than anecdotal evidence; the few who have ventured into their own homes spend all their hours making money to make the payments.

3) You need to pay for private school for your kids.

This is mainly because people do not want to pay taxes or sensibly elevate standards for public education. The average private school tuition in the U.S. for a non-sectarian elementary school is $15,945 a year, and $27,302 a year for secondary school. Catholic elementary school will run you on average $4,944 for elementary school and $7,826 for secondary school; other religious schools average $6,576 for elementary and $10,493 for secondary. Everywhere we turn, some giant institution is costing a lot!

4) You have to master the insurance system and might need to pay exorbitant rates.

This is mainly because people do not want to share in each other’s well-being. In PA the average monthly health insurance cost for a single person is $271 but could be as high as $1200. If you actually go to the doctor, be prepared to take the day off as the system tries to frustrate any use of it.

motherboard

5) You have to master technology that is too complex to master.

That is just in order to participate in the society. Plus, you have to pay a fee to do so at every step: internet, phone, TV, security systems. And those are just the systems we can see. Behind every institution from law to transit, the complexity is increasing exponentially. Many of us would love to respond to injustice if we could get our computer to work.

6) You have to master consumer capitalism.

We did a kitchen in our home a few years back. We already replaced the dishwasher. Last week we paid $350 to fix the fridge. Our beloved repairman told us there were no better machines available. They all have the same problems and they are all junk because people have learned to expect them to fail and to change them like they are fashion, not utilities. Such obsolescence is a business strategy. To stay on the treadmill takes economic staying power. Which means a lot of time on the treadmill, which does not leave a lot of time for Palestinians.

I still ask for outrage

I sometimes ask my favorite twentysomethings why they are not more rebellious. A lot of them gave it a whirl with the Occupy movement — and some are still engaged in the aftermath of that. Some are implementing beautiful responses to the traps the culture has set for them. But most of them are just too busy and tired to do anything. I feel their plight. It is hard to be an agent of transformation when the powers that be are so damnably well-outfitted. For instance, whatever one might try to do just might be filmed and analyzed by some faceless authority  That alone could make you want to hunker down with a good video game. If anyone is choked by the cares of the world, the transformers are. If they complain, they get, “You’re free. Make any changes they want. Just DIY. You’re special and your country is exceptional,” shoved down their throat.

I hope my honesty about what it is like for many people also sounds like sympathy. We want to care about Palestine and much more. But a lot of us are pretty busy just trying to get through this week. Even saying “Jesus will give you strength,” just sounds like there will be another duty to perform if he does! But Jesus is the master of overcoming gigantic powers. If you are doomed to some kind of slavery, He’s your savior.