I just discovered the table in the Pew study of religion that breaks out Protestant income levels, and it shows that Jews have surpassed their traditional competition in the wealth race, Episcopalians, by a significant margin.
Listed as Anglican churches, 39 percent of Episcopalian households make over $100,000–compared to 46 percent of Jewish households. Then look at the lower end of the scale. Well over a third of Episcopalian households are under $50,000 a year (36 percent). Only a quarter of Jewish households are that low. (I know, Mom, there are poor Jews, just not that many of em).
The truth is the proportionate number of poor Jews in any host nation has always been significantly lower than the proportion of
the host's non-Jews. Feudalism has just evolved with the evolution of money up to the latest hedge funds and mortgaged-backed securities. The predator and the prey both seek something for nothing; the predator twists on to the next level, the prey dies or is supported by the rugged individualists–until they too, ready to drop, start a new mas movement, using violence against legal theft backed by official force.
How are you doing financially Phil?
I'm making ends meet.
Do you contribute to political campaigns? I give $20, to add my voice, but without breaking the bank.
It irritated me that John Edwards took my $20, then quit the race. I gave another $20 to Obama.
Maybe I'm a failure. When I visit my cousins, I feel that I haven't put my weight into my success.
My cousins: Lawyers, doctors, one teacher. I'm an accountant, but for a small natural foods manufacturer, not a three-piece suit guy (though I once was). When I visit my cousins, your family is there. And there you are: published in the elite publications, your brother and sisters, doctors mostly. (I don't know all of them well, so maybe I'm wrong.)
My successes are in my failures. Producing audio books of progressive material, starting a loaning library of spoken word materials of progressive spoken word materials, starting local currency movement (not alone), starting auto sharing cooperatives.
All suggestive, but not sustaining.
If it means anything, my failures are also my successes in my own eyes. I also feel I haven't put my weight into my success as an attorney. On your other note: I gave $150 to Ron Paul.
RE: "It irritated me that John Edwards took my $20, then quit the race. I gave another $20 to Obama."
TAX RELIEF: Obama and Edwards would shift the income tax burden. Edwards' $25 billion per year plan would cut middle-class taxes by raising the capital gains rate on people making more than $250,000 per year. Obama's plan, projected to cost $85 billion a year, would be funded by raising the capital gains rate and closing some corporate tax loopholes.
RETIREMENT: With Social Security projected to run out of money in the next 40 years, Obama and Edwards say they would consider increasing the level of income that is taxed to provide benefits. (To fund the system, the government currently assesses a 6.2 percent tax on incomes up to $97,500.)
Kudos to both these approaches. Ron Paul would do even more at the systemic root, the ponzi schemes A, the Federal Reserve System, and B, the related other ponzi scheme, the investment bank rip-off.
I'm not surprised at these numbers. Many wealthy (or well paid) Episcopalians are leaving the Episcopal Church USA for more Scriptural denominations or even orthodoxy. I'm a former Episcopalian, and while no Buffett or Turner or Gates (Episcopalians all, at some point), I would have helped the numbers.
With many others of my class and sensibility I left after Gene Robinson was made bishop of New Hampshire, while the smaller number of those who are joining the Church seem for the most part to be what my grandfater called riff-raff. This exodus will continue, with a concomitant diminution in the quality of the community and its social prestige. Like the Ivy League since WWII.
"there are poor Jews, just not that many of em"
Phil, you've really committed an "ugly" here. "Not that many of em?" Try visiting any of the Jewish homes for the aged or social service agencies in NYC & tell me you still hold by that statement after your tour.
There are far too many poor Jews. And there are many more poor Jews living in NYC than proportionally say in Omaha or Providence. So why do you have yr head in the sand?
Not just that, but there are many more poor Jews OUTSIDE the U.S. as well. Don't get trapped in statistics, Phil. They only tell half the story & sometimes less than that.
Like to match the number of poor jews in NYC with the number of poor non-jews in the rest of the USA?
LOL