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on Northwest Passages: Donald Miller
4) the way we engage with the culture outside of Christainity: We're really tired of trying to use the political system to tell people outside of the church how they should live their lives. Instead of that we should take care that we're living right ourselves. The Religious Right was a movement based on fear - they feared that they were losing control of the culture. They decided to get politically involved to try to make the outside look nice. It was worse than a failure. Whenever you try to marry church and state the church loses something very important. It loses it's true identity. See Constantine. We're hoping that we're done with that.
5. A return to an emphasis on social justice instead of just on personal piety. Yeah, this could really conflict with #4 if we politicize it - it would lead to the Religious Left. Much care must be taken here as the pendulum swings. But the idea is that Christ cared for the poor and downtrodden. We as Christians should also be very concerned about those who are on the margins.
Much of what's going on is an exampination of how Modernity influenced the Church and there's a huge interest in looking at the prectices and theology of the Pre-modern Church (even the ancient Church and the Jewish influences on Christianity that existed then)
That's just a quick summary from where I sit. Others will have different perspectives on what's changing. Christianity is not nearly as monolithic as you seem to paint it.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on Northwest Passages: Donald Miller
"Christians don't even have to work as hard, they don't even have to put in the effort, or live up to their own alleged standards and morals, they have rewritten them---they can have their cake and eat it too. It makes everything easier."
scottmil - actually, from the "inside" I don't think that we've "rewritten the rules" - certainly there's a lot of diversity on this, though, and other groups may have "rewritten" them. Here, as I see it, are some of the changes in the "Emerging Church" (and I hesitate to use that title as it means a lot of different things even inside the movement at this point):
1) An emerging environmental ethos: Well, to clarify, it's an emerging ethos for Evangelicals - the Orthodox Church and some other parts of the Christian Church have had this ethos for quite some time. Basically the idea is that if the creation is God's "artwork", who are we to destroy it? We need to be curators of that art.
2) Changing views of Heaven (and again, we have to realize that we're going back to a much older view - we had a period of time from perhaps the 1800s till now when the view became aberrant). Look to the writings of N.T. Wright here, especially his writings on Heaven not being our "home". This is a much more earth-centered theology that looks a lot more like the Orthodox Church and the Jewish view that existed at the time of Christ. The quick summary is: we got stuck in a "pie in the sky in the sweet by and by" and "the Rapture will rescue us" mentality in the Western Chruch and now we're trying to see a the greater importance of the here and now.
3) views of Hell. Hell is still there. It hasn't been removed. But the view is much closer to CS Lewis': we choose it ourselves. Tim Keller has a great talk on this - I think it's on YouTube.
cont'd
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on Northwest Passages: Donald Miller
scottmill - sorry about us new non-racist, green Christians. I would think that you would be glad that a huge part of American culture (Evangelical Christians) are coming around on a lot of these issues. As the young evangelicals displace the old guard there will be a big change politically - and you could benefit from this potentially.
Ghandi said something like "Christ I like, but his followers I can't stand". We Christians have definitely been awful at following Christ and his teachings, we do need to get better at being his followers.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
"No, they would not fall. Houses and land have actual worth."
@slakr: nobody's saying they don't. But it's a matter of supply and demand. If suddenly there were no possible buyers at $200K (because there was suddenly very little access to loans of that amount) then prices would fall. They'd have to. The value would still be there, but the price in dollars would adjust.
"It's not like there is some cabal of people that just decides the price of houses and they are running up the price because of the availability of credit."
Who says there's a cabal? Again, do the thought experiment. Pretend there's no loans for houses. What does that do to demand at current prices? How about if you require 20% down (as has been the case in the past)? That certainly moderates demand because it takes some number of years for the buyer to save up the down payment.
"As far as cars go... Why shouldn't I be able to buy a $40,000 car with a loan? I can afford the payment and still run a surplus into savings. It is far more convenient than saving up $40,000 to buy the car and for that convenience I pay interest. Why shouldn't that option be available to me?"
Are you feeling entitled to the loan? Getting the banks to loan again would actually not be a good thing at this point. It's like more booze for the drunk to prevent the DTs.
This is off topic, but if you want to waste you money that way, well then so be it ( you lose big on the depreciation of the car in the first year or two and you lose by paying all that interest) But you would be a lot better off financially to pay cash for a solid used car and use all that savings to help fund your retirement or perhaps to prepare for long bouts of unemployment in your 50s... Our standard of living was already falling before this financial crisis hit. That fall has now accelerated. Best to be frugal and prepare.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
"Yeah, everyone should have to buy a house or car in cash. That would work great."
@slakr007: What's the problem with paying cash for a car? Many of us do that. We buy used cars and drive them till they're dead. I've had my current car for almost 23 years now. My wife's we bought used in 1999 and it's still going. If I need to replace one I'll buy another used car with cash and drive it into the ground.
As far as paying cash for houses go: What if you suddenly had to pay cash for houses because loans weren't available? I'd guess that home prices would eventually be affordable again because there would be a lot less money chasing houses - prices would fall rapidly. We need home prices to go down so that we can adjust to the new normal for the American worker - lower wages due to global wage arbitrage. The best thing that could happen for most workers would be lower home prices because it would mean that less of their income would go towards housing.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
slakr: eventually the money has to be paid back. If not, we default. Where does the money come from to pay down the debt eventually? Higher taxes. On everyone. Which will dampen economic growth. And we'll have much higher interest rates if we continue on this path, which is again a drag on growth. There's no free lunch. We either pay the piper now, or pay later and make things even worse.
The problem we have now is that future incomes will likely continue to be either stagnant or even lower than they are now as our standard of living falls to meet the rising standard of living of places like China and India - in a global freemarket system for labor such as we have now, labor prices seek their lowest level. Our incomes are falling due to outsourcing while theirs are rising. So in the future we likely won't have the incomes to support deficits at this level - at some point we will not be able to service the debt. Then things get very dire for us.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
So basically you want to borrow money from China so people will go out and buy Chinese products? How is that a good economic plan for the US? That's essentially what Bush did in 2008 (and earlier in 2003).
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
I agree with you. And I want the $200B to go towards reducing the deficit (actually, I don't want that $200B borrowed in the first place - I think that's a more accurate way to put it). But you're right, we can't reduce taxes at this point either - in fact a lot of taxes will likely have to go up especially on higher incomes.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
Japan engaged in a huge amount of deficit "stimulus" spending all throughout the 90's and it continues now... and didn't get them out of their recession. In fact now Japan is back into deflation and they plan another stimulus plan. Their national debt is now well over 200% of GDP - their borrowing cannot continue forever.
Also, you have to remember that the Japanese are savers. This is what has allowed them to run these kinds of deficits for so long because they are able to fund the vast majority of their deficit spending from within. The US, on the otherhand, has not been a nation of savers for a good 25 years. Our people have a huge amount of debt and a large portion of incomes go to service that debt. So the Japanese actually had the advantage of savings going into their downturn in the early 90's. The US does not have that advantage - we must go hat in hand to places like China and Saudi Arabia to borrow money to fund our deficits.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
Yeah, the Republicans spent like drunken sailors during the Bush admin.... that doesn't mean that we can continue the irresponsibilty forever.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
Indeed. The "consumer" is tapped out. They've over consumed. Now is the time for them to learn to live within their means and rebuild savings.
BTW: I hate to be referred to as a "consumer" - I'm a citizen and my purpose is not just to consume things.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
Some of us would rather not be sheep. But if you'd like to be that's fine.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on $200 Billion Bucks
It's ridiculous to say that we have $200Billion extra - no, we just didn't spend as much as planned, meaning that we won't have to borrow as much from places like China if we don't spend that $200Billion.
We shouldn't borrow more money we don't have.
posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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on Home Buying
I do not see how expediency is necessary.
Would you like to have 10 or 20 years of stagnation (like what has happened in Japan) or would you rather get it over with in 2 or 3 years and then move on to a more organic recovery? I would prefer the latter. Yes the quicker correction would be painful, but we wouldn't be drawing it out over 10 or perhaps even 20 years.
Again, housing is not a productive asset. More money diverted into houseing means less money in other areas of the economy - less saving which leads to less investment and ultimately higher interest rates. Less going out to eat because you've got a large percentage of income going into housing. Less consumer spending in general. My premise is that if we let housing return to longterm price trends (as a percentage of income) we'll be able to have a real recovery instead of a fake recovery that's only held up by things like Cash for Clunkers and the first time homebuyers credit. More household income will be freed up for other things.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
A loosening of regulations does not really qualify as the "watchdogs not watching."
There was a lot of both... just look at the Madoff case; he could have been stopped back around 2000 when several people were raising questions about his operation to the SEC - but the SEC ignored these warnings.
And, in this case, their intervention is necessary to help clean up the private sector's kegger.
but again, what is the problem here? Speculation led to home prices going up much faster than incomes rose thus making homes much more expensive than they should be relative to incomes. This was, of course, aided by all kinds of crazy, exotic loans (Option ARMs, for example) that people shouldn't have been put it. The thinking in the general public from 2001 till early 2008 was that you could make money without any hard work; all you had to do was buy a house with as little down as possible and wait a couple of years.
So why do we want an intervention that helps prop up home prices? No intervention would be better than that, especially since we heard on the show today that there were bidding wars breaking out again - that's exactly not what we want now. We want people to get away from the idea that homes are speculative investment vehicles.
Look at California: it was one of the first states where prices fell. And in the Spring of this year we started to see sales volumes pick up a good bit... and this was before most of the government intervention started. Why? Because prices had been allowed to fall to such an extent that it brought buyers back into the market. That will happen in other areas as well if we allow prices to correct.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
fgrewe: please have a look here for an example where the borrower has a 53% DTI:
http://market-ticker.org/archives/1455-CORRUPTION-More-FHA-Bad-Underwriting-Proof.html
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
I'm all for bringing back Glass-Stegall slakr007. Actually, the private sector didn't destroy the market all by itself - there was plenty of collusion from government - the watchdogs weren't watching.
In fact, that collusion led to home prices rising much more than incomes could sustain - the tax credit only serves to slow down the needed price correction. We'll get there eventually, but it would probably be better if we got there in a couple of years instead of after a decade of the government trying to tweak the market.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
Why do people need to "move up"? To keep up with the Joneses? Maybe people can be quite satisfied with their first home. I've been living in the same house (my first) for about 20 years now. It still meets my needs quite nicely. And it's great not having to pay a mortgage payment anymore!
The people pushing the "move up" idea have been the Realtors and Mortgage brokers who make their money off of people moving. But I think a lot of people now are rethinking the idea that they need to move up every few years. Especially during this downturn people are thinking about living more simply and reducing debt.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
All this whining for tax credits... basically you're saying that the market cannot work without government intervention. If you keep extending these tax credits, people will expect them - like an addict being addicted to drugs or alcohol, our economy will be addicted to government intervention.
How about a tax credit for food? A tax credit for gas? Hey, that would help a lot of people, wouldn't it? Eventually we'll get to the point where we just hand out $10K or $20K to everyone - and the dollar will become worthless.
Also, asking a Realtor if we should extend the tax credit is like asking the fox if the door should be removed from the henhouse.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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on Home Buying
marksiebold: (can't reply to a reply)
Unemployment is the big issue now. We can expect unemployment to remain elevated for many years to come. I bought my house 20 years ago. It cost 1.5X my income (not even counting my wife's income). We were able to pay it off within 10 years. That's pretty much impossble now since incomes have not gone up anywhere near as fast as home prices. In fact by many estimates real incomes have been flat for 20 years.
Also, the Federal Government is the entire mortgage market now - there's probably less than 5% of mortgages (very high end mortgages) that aren't somehow being guaranteed by the Federal Government (FNMA, FreddieMac, GNMA, FHA) - there is essentally no private enterprise mortgage industry now.
posted 3 years, 7 months ago
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