…imagine how cool it would be if, by some twist of time, the National Archives were to make available detailed census information from nearly 70 years in the future ”” the 2080 census.

We asked James Dator, director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, what kind of information census takers will be soliciting seven decades in the future. Dator says that possible questions might include:

””Do you have a home, or “biophysical domicile”? If so, is it on Earth, the moon, Mars or elsewhere?

””What is your current sex?

””What is your permission number for drinking water?…

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Is the euro crisis back with a vengeance, or do investors have a needless case of anxiety?

Until very recently, the gloom over the Continent had seemed to be lifting, with the conclusion of Greece’s second bailout and the calming effect on the financial sector of cheap loans from the European Central Bank. But last week’s jump in borrowing costs for Spain and Italy provided a clear signal that the euro’s problems are far from solved….

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We are now in the middle of a long period of shuffling away. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam attributed the dramatic post-war decline of social capital””the strength and value of interpersonal networks””to numerous interconnected trends in American life: suburban sprawl, television’s dominance over culture, the self-absorption of the Baby Boomers, the disintegration of the traditional family. The trends he observed continued through the prosperity of the aughts, and have only become more pronounced with time: the rate of union membership declined in 2011, again; screen time rose; the Masons and the Elks continued their slide into irrelevance. We are lonely because we want to be lonely. We have made ourselves lonely.

The question of the future is this: Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating; is it a huddling-together for warmth or a shuffling-away in pain?

Well before Facebook, digital technology was enabling our tendency for isolation, to an unprecedented degree. Back in the 1990s, scholars started calling the contradiction between an increased opportunity to connect and a lack of human contact the “Internet paradox….”

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Pastors and members of several Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregations will gather Tuesday to show support for the Catholic Church’s opposition to federal Health and Human Services department rules requiring many religious institutions to provide employees with health insurance that includes contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

“We see this HHS contraceptive mandate as an attack on freedom of religion,” said Christopher Barnekov, a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church on Barr Street who is helping to organize the event.

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Prosecutors have uncovered more financial fraud in church networks than they ever imagined. “It took the financial downturn. Money was drying up””the new investors were not coming in, so Ponzi schemes collapsed,” IRS Special Agent in Charge for Criminal Investigations Ken Hines told Christianity Today.

Hines, based in Seattle, has helped expose Ponzis for more than 20 years. He has seen first-hand how the church environment has proven to be an ideal context for affinity fraud. “When you go to church, you don’t expect to get lied to or deceived or manipulated into losing your life’s savings….”

The sickening net effect of fraud puts a dark cloud over pastors and other leaders in local churches….If a faithful church member cannot trust his or her own pastor, whom can they trust?

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If I read my Twitter feed correctly, Jorg Asmussen, the German representative on the European Central Bank’s executive board, thinks that the ECB has already played its part as far as saving the euro is concerned with last December’s LTRO intervention; it’s now up to national governments to complete the process, he says, by undertaking the necessary structural reform (Mr Asmussen has been speaking at the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference in Berlin).

As is becoming ever more common when it comes to euroland, it’s a view which is quite at odds with the facts. True enough, the ECB’s surprise liquidity operation did succeed in dousing the crisis, at least temporarily. A Lehman’s style meltdown was averted. But the idea that the ECB can now sit back and let the politicians do the rest is surely deluded.

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…talk about landmark status for the perpetually unfinished Episcopal church is starting to percolate again, as developers ready plans for a new apartment building on leased cathedral property along 113th Street in Morningside Heights.

Real-estate firm Equity Residential hopes to start construction on the 15-story apartment building next year. The new structure’s footprint would be some 70 feet north of the cathedral itself, replacing large metal sheds and parking spaces in the area now.

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[STEVE] INSKEEP: You’re touching on the part that is maybe even more poignant, that this is a guy, as his story unfolds, who, early in life, had an opportunity for adventure – go off to Alaska, something – and seems to have turned that aside in order to get security. He thought that selling was something that you could do all your life, you could do as an old man and support yourself. And in the end, he doesn’t even get the security.

[PHILIP SEYMOUR] HOFFMAN: No. But it’s his son. It’s his son. You know, he had sons. He really did give his life for his sons. He didn’t do it in a way that, obviously, was effective or got what he wanted or actually nurtured his sons in a way that was going to help them, but he did.
INSKEEP: Has your job of portraying this disappointed father affected your thoughts at all when you go home and you go home to your three kids?

HOFFMAN: Well, it’s – you know, it affects your life. It’s – I really do think it’s one of those plays that just seeps into – as we talk about all these aspects, I mean, it’s never that simple. I mean, this play really seeps into why we’re here, you know, what are we doing – family, work, friends, you know, hopes, dreams, careers….

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Almost nine out of 10 charity bosses fear big donations from wealthy backers will be hit by Chancellor George Osborne’s cap on tax relief for charitable donations, according to a survey.

The findings of the survey of 120 charity chief executives and senior executives conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) will intensify the pressure on the Government to rethink its plans unveiled in last month’s Budget.

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Check it out (very bottom on the right).

President Obama’s signature health reform law will add as much as $527 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, not cut them as advertised, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Affordable Care Act will add as much as $1.2 trillion to federal spending between 2012 and 2021, the report also finds. Charles Blahous, who serves as one of Medicare’s trustees, wrote the report, published by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

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The Spanish reading public now has a very good grasp of the fundamental realities of EMU. This will have consequences. Spain is not on the fringes of the Balkans, terrified of being cast into Ottoman banishment. It is not a small country that can be pushed around for year after year.

How and when all this will end is anybody’s guess but I have suspected for a long time that Spain is the lynchpin of the system. The intellectual atmosphere has changed entirely. Politics must surely follow.

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Higher commodity prices, however, are a cost borne by businesses and consumers and this has mitigated the economic stimulus provided by prior bouts of QE. Higher equity prices, alas, can’t offset pain at the petrol pump and the supermarket for many consumers.

All that raises the prospect that introducing QE3 simply runs the risk of entrenching the economy in its post-financial crisis mode of a stop and start recovery.

In fact, advocates of QE3 are really betting that the Fed will err far more on the side of risking much higher inflation in the long run as it seeks to lower the unemployment rate towards 7 per cent.

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…if anyone is eager for encouraging signs, it’s worth pointing out that the very broadest measure of unemployment actually improved this month. This is the U-6 metric, which tallies up all unemployed persons, plus people marginally attached to the labor force, plus people employed part-time for economic reasons. Jim Pethokoukis likes to call this “perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health.” And U-6 dropped from 14.9 percent in February to 14.5 percent in March. Anyone trying to dig around for optimistic signs should start there.

Still, it’s a weak report all around. And we’ll know in a few months if March was actually as tepid as everyone thinks. In theory, the real significance of this report should be whether it convinces Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve that a little more monetary stimulus is needed. But how likely is that? The unemployment rate is roughly in line with what the Federal Open Market Committee has been expecting. And if the Fed’s content with the current state of affairs, then more help may not be on the way after all.

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St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, one of seven Anglican congregations that are parties to the church property case brought by The Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, celebrates taking a stand for the Gospel truth amidst settling its property involved in the case.

The settlement calls for St. Margaret’s Anglican to turn over to the Diocese its real property, including the parcel the parish bought, improved and maintained for fifty years. St. Margaret’s Anglican will vacate the property by April 30, and will turn over to the Diocese a portion of the liquid assets on hand when the lawsuit commenced in early 2007. St. Margaret’s will retain a portion of those liquid assets and a valuable hand bell collection that was a gift to St. Margaret’s from a parishioner.
St. Margaret’s was one of many Virginia Episcopal congregations who voted overwhelmingly to disassociate from The Episcopal Church and the Diocese in order to remain faithful to the historic doctrine of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

“This settlement is good news to us,” stated Alan Clark, Senior Warden of St. Margaret’s Anglican. “We are ready to move on in our mission of proclaiming Jesus Christ. Together, putting the legal dispute behind us, we celebrate who we are as Anglicans and followers of Christ. We trust in the path God has laid for St. Margaret’s Anglican, and look forward to where He plans to use our congregation to spread His transforming love.”

The Rt. Rev. David Bena, Interim Rector of St. Margaret’s Anglican, added, “Throughout these past several years of costly court battles, I have been humbled to bear witness to St. Margaret’s faith-filled stand for the Gospel truth at whatever expense.”

“We appreciate the good faith of Diocesan officials in negotiating the settlement, and we’re thrilled to be part of growing entities such as the regional Anglican Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (a member diocese of the Anglican Church in North America) and the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. The death and resurrection of our Lord this Holy Week remind us that God is ultimately in charge. Our parishioners are ready to fully focus our energies on preaching, teaching, healing and making disciples in Jesus’ name. We may have lost the buildings, but we’ve kept the faith!” concluded Bishop Bena.

As I am in the US for the first time in many years, I find myself longing for the simplicity of Maua, Kenya, during Easter time. There Easter has none of the commercial trappings we find here. As I enter grocery stores, discount stores, and department stores I am shocked at the amount of space taken by the Easter candy, bunnies and stuffed animals, baskets, decorations, and new spring clothing. These items take more space than any grocery store has for all their goods in Maua.

I recently read that an estimated $2 billion will be spent on Easter candy this year in the US. Two billion dollars to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who asked us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty, house the homeless, care for the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.

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(The full title is: “White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You”)–KSH

What was the main difference between Great Britain and France? It -wasn’t the size of their national debts: at the time of the French Revolution, Great Britain’s debt per person was much larger than France’s. The difference was politics. In Great Britain, the political system was dominated by elected representatives who supported an activist government and were willing to endorse the taxes necessary to pay for its resulting debts. In France, the government did not have the legitimacy necessary to raise the money to service its smaller debts. And although its tax rates were lower than Britain’s, the problem of taxation without representation was an important cause of the Revolution.

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…a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures.

“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio.

“Last year was an anomaly, and not in a good way,” he said.

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When the European Union’s finance ministers met in Copenhagen on 30 March they gave the clearest indication yet of what has been clear to most observers for months: that the 27 member states cannot agree a tax on financial transactions. A tax on share deals modelled on the UK’s stamp duty might be possible, but a wider tax on financial trades is off the agenda for the foreseeable future. The German finance ministry, one of the strongest supporters of the tax, admitted as much at the meeting, calling for work to focus on a tax on share transactions.

Since June 2011, when the European Commission announced it would propose an FTT, it had been obvious that the plan would not fly…
Apparently heedless that the object was immoveable, José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, last week made yet another attempt to exert irresistible force in support of the tax. He told members of national parliaments and the European Parliament that the revenue raised by the tax would allow member states a cut of up to 50% in their contributions to funding the EU.

Perhaps Barroso’s intransigence is inspired by the unfortunate fact that the FTT proposal was central to the Commission’s plans for financing the EU’s multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014 to 2020. Removing the idea of an EU-wide tax from the agenda leaves a big hole in Barroso’s plans for financing the MFF.

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Does this mean we should not enjoy all the earthly riches and goods? No. Enjoy them. Earn them. It is a misconception that one has to be poor to be spiritual, and that hard work should not be rewarded. What is important is finding the balance between greed and having enough, and defining what a joyful life means to us….
So how are we to correct the negative traits of capitalism? A Robin Hood tax, or Tobin tax, has been suggested. Yet there is a risk that such a tax is more likely to hit investors than banks. And it is not yet clear how it would discourage risky behaviour by banks.

We cannot tax ourselves out of this and hope that this will solve the problem because we are not addressing the root cause of the behaviour. We are in self-denial because we are treating the symptoms, not healing the patient.

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In 1956, [William] Shockley won the Nobel Prize for co-inventing the transistor. His next dream was to make transistors out of silicon; he decided to set up his lab in Mountain View ”” near Palo Alto ”” largely for personal reasons.

“He’d grown up in Palo Alto,” Berlin says. Most importantly, she says, “his mother was still living in Palo Alto.”

Of course, it helped that nearby Stanford University was also doing federally funded electronics research. Shockley was a magnet who drew more brilliant scientists to the valley. Among them was Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and the man who would come up with Moore’s Law ”” the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.

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The average wage, calculated by the International Labour Organization, is published here for the first time. It’s a rough figure based on data from 72 countries, omitting some of the world’s poorest nations. All figures are adjusted to reflect variations in the cost of living from one country to another….

Read it all and do your own calculation.

While many of Google’s products are free to users and supported by advertising, Google for Nonprofits gives charities breaks on several products it charges for, including Google Apps (its competitor to Microsoft Office) and free advertising in its AdWords program. It is also rolling out some services first to its nonprofit members. Last week the company said it would first offer live streaming video on YouTube to its nonprofit members.

“We’re constantly evaluating our services,” said Google spokesman Parag Chokshi. “Since launching Google for Nonprofits as a consolidated offering last year, we’ve received feedback from many organizations and believe this change will allow us to help more organizations take advantage of Google services.”

Tim Postuma, web manager for the Christian Reformed Church in North America, said the change was unexpected but welcome.

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Federal Reserve policymakers have backed away from the need for another round of monetary stimulus as the U.S. economy gradually improves.

Minutes of the central bank’s meeting published on Tuesday showed only two of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee’s 10 voting members saw the case for additional monetary stimulus.

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While millions of workers used money from their retirement savings to pay expenses during the Great Recession, African Americans and Hispanics dipped into their 401(k) plans at a much higher rate.

The rise in 401(k) withdrawals, loans and cash-outs among African Americans and Hispanics represents a major setback for their long-term retirement security, says Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, co-sponsor of a survey on the recession’s impact on retirement plans.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all–KSH.

As the total amount of student debt topples over $1 trillion, many have begun to question just how expensive a college degree is. The Student Loan Forgiveness Act was proposed in Congress at the beginning of March, but in spite of the large number of students facing debt, the bill has received much opposition.

When a bill to forgive student debt was proposed, some complained that students who had less money should have attended a public University, assuming that the large debts were the result of a private education. That is not necessarily the case, however. USA Today revealed that at the end of 2011, the cost of public universities and colleges had increased by more than 8 percent.

In 2004, tuition at public schools increased a shocking 11 percent. One couple commented on Forbes that the cost of their son’s tuition nearly doubled during his 4-year tenure….

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Books on the decline of America are coming thick and fast. The latest, Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Descent, by The Financial Times’s chief US commentator Edward Luce, is published this week….In summary, he concludes that global economic dominance, having quit Europe around the end of last century, moved west to the United States and now, after another hundred years, is relocating to Asia. Nothing can be done about this, he says. It is just the way it is. China and India (and he throws in Indonesia for good measure) are simply too big and too industrious not to fight it out for the soon-to-be vacated Number One slot.
But ”“ and this is where it gets interesting ”“ Luce is frustrated by the way in which the US, outside of rhetoric, is capitulating to the inevitable, giving up almost without a fight. Were its leaders to defy history, he suggests, they would quickly regain the world’s respect and write a new and valuable interpretation of the American dream.

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The decision to deconstruct Christ Church Cathedral is supported by Canterbury church leaders.

An open letter of support from 70 churches and Christian organisations was presented to the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews, at St Peter’s Church in Upper Riccarton yesterday. The letter affirmed that the Anglican Church had the right to decide the fate of its cathedral.

“God’s real Church is the people, and people matter more to God than any building,” the letter reads. “We pray for the bishop and other leaders as they face the challenges this brings.”

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The burden of paying for college is wreaking havoc on the finances of an unexpected demographic: people 60 and over.

New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans in that age bracket still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.

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