On-Line Donations

* For decades, I have contributed to almost 50 nonprofits by check every December. Last year I realized that my 77-year-old eyes and arthritic hands made this too painful, so I included a note with each check, saying that my future donations would be made on line via PayPal. Most of my favorite nonprofits ignored my note. Considering the ease of setting up PayPal on a web site, this failure is astonishing.
* To donate by PayPal, one clicks on the PayPal button, types the amount to be donated and clicks on two more buttons. That's it. The needed personal information accompanies the donation automatically.
* By contrast, giving on line by credit card is harder than giving by check in the mail. For each donation, one must fill in personal information, type the amount to be donated, type 20 hopefully private digits, select several more numbers, then click on one or two more buttons.
* The money I didn't contribute to recalcitrant nonprofits will approximately pay for my new dentures.

Pride or modesty

* In my declining years, I've been wallowing in existential angst, questioning every source of pride and suspecting that much modesty and even some shame might be appropriate.
* The greatest generation and my generation enjoyed a golden age of resources and advantages which we squandered. Consider the Fleetwood Cadillac.
* We white male American Christians dominated and exploited every other kind of people not so specified, assuming that it was the natural order. I can remember greatly admiring the British empire, over which the sun never set.
* The opportunities for justice and peace that we had within our reach and wasted are enough to make one weep. Is our society or civilization the best that a society or civilization can be? If not, what would be?

Wealth gravity

* The following MotherJones article summarizes some important policies, trends and dynamics that could be the basis for some interesting ethics discussions: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/01/matt-yglesias * Reagan believed increasing wealth of the already rich to be good, as do contemporary Republicans. For whom? How? Why? * Unbridled imbalances in an organism are deadly. Far too many Americans lack access to legitimate jobs with apprentice potential. Far too many Americans are becoming hopeless, demoralized and disaffected. That is nothing to celebrate. Can the earth support macroeconomic solutions to such problems? * Was the transfer of wealth from middle class to rich and to other destinations inevitable regardless of policies, eg owing to production technology and international competition? Even if so, government taxing and spending should not be designed to exaggerate and accelerate the trend. * Imagine an economy in which the burdens and opportunities are more widely shared. Imagine a society in which joys and satisfactions are more scattered throughout the socioeconomic pyramid.