–It’s an interesting way to look at it. I sometimes find myself thinking of things this way: Maybe it’s okay to eat a creature whose passing would not be missed by its relatives or friends. Would a relative or friend pig or cow feel pain at the loss of the pig or cow that you killed to eat? I think it’s possible to argue the answer is yes. Would a relative or friend fish (”peer” fish? are fish capable of befriending each other?) feel pain at the loss of the fish you killed to eat? I think it’s possible to argue that mama fish doesn’t suffer the loss of daughter fish.

Mrs. Frugal Folkes
the5and10.blogspot.com

On the question of America moving in the right direction… You haven’t covered how you think America fares on Family Fabric and Marital Happiness…

Count that as a next question from me….

Do you think America fares well on the parameter of Happy Families ?

Love your Q & A and wait for it…

Best Wishes
WhirlMind

*faithfully and *recommend

=)

Mrs. Folkes
(a 25 year vegetarian, who’s tired of talking about what’s on everyone’s plate.)

I love your blog and have been faithfuling reading for a couple months now. My question is regarding with holding and taxes. I am 21 and always have trouble figuring out how much to withhold and what to claim on the W4’s. Any advice or sites you could reccomend??

Thanks for your time!

Sonya

I can’t go along with your vision of “America” doing just fine for one reason: THE JOB MARKET. When college-educated and other hard-working Americans, who want to work, can not find jobs even half-way comparable in pay to those they lost, that’s a serious problem.

My husband is thankfully employed, but has been downsized 3 times in mergers. He’s been looking for a new job for 4 years, now. My teacher-friend with a Yale education doesn’t think he’ll ever be well-employed again. He’s just patching together work here and there with freelance “gigs.” Other friends who have lost jobs have found themselves unemployed for up to a year. You can say they should forget about engineering and programming and whatever they were educated to do, and just accept a job at McDonald’s…but here’s the problem, particularly for single wage earners: 1)It won’t pay the mortgage or the rent. 2)In our area, many of those jobs are already occupied by various economic refugees from other countries. And #2 has been an on-going problem for my neighbor across the street. She doesn’t have a college education, and is repeatedly hired, asked to teach administrative skills to foreign-born workers, then laid-off when the lower-paid employee has learned what to do. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a have a problem with immigration. I have a problem with the Bush economic policies that made it so hard for all of us to find well-paying jobs in this land that I love! My best friend, a computer programmer, immigrated here from India 19 years ago, and found the U.S. a land of opportunity and a great place to raise her children. Recently, the company she works for was purchased in a merger. Now, if she loses her job here, she’s seriously thinking of going back to India because the job market looks more promising there, and her income will stretch to include maids and other luxuries, to boot. I never thought I’d see the day when anyone would leave America for a job in a third-world country.

Trent, I’m glad the kids are playing happily across the street from you. They are playing here, too. But if you go inside and meet the parents in my New Jersey neighborhood, I think you’ll find quite a few who are worried about losing their jobs, and wondering how they’ll ever find another that will cover the mortgage or rent.

Mrs. Folkes

Last I heard, my parents were planning on dividing their money equally between the three of us, but it wouldn’t bother me at all to find they left more to a sibling with a much lower income or that they had helped one of my siblings out of a crisis. I have been told that if we fight over money and property she will come back and haunt us.

Growing up, two of us had braces and one didn’t. They didn’t give the third the cash equivalent. Nor, as far as I know, did they give my brother the average of what they spent on mine and my sister’s weddings.

1. There is already more than enough food produced to feed every single human being on the planet. The problem is not the quantity of food. The problem is corruption, theft, taxation, regulations that prevent access at a cheap price.

2. A large percentage of the world’s dry land is not suitable for crop cultivation. It is too arid or the soils are unsuitable. These lands are best used for ranching – i.e. meat raising. Switching these lands from ranching to crop growing would produce an environmental nightmare far worse than anything we are facing today.

Vegetarianism is only better for you IF you learn how to cook first (I’d go as far to say that you would have to enjoy cooking and learning recipes so you get the variety of food that you need).

People are vegetarian for lots of very different reasons – economical, ethical, environmental, and health-ical (!). As far as the ethics go, I would have liked Trent to dig a little deeper, because the ethics of this issue are related to personal finance. Comparing the pain and psychological degradation caused by factory farming to whatever stimuli a plant “feels” when harvested is like comparing stepping on grass to kicking a puppy. The grass grows back, but the puppy never forgets!

These food-related myths from the last 100+ years

There is a moral argument not to eat meat at all, and i’m not making any arguments against it, but this is a thought to keep in mind for people who do eat meat.

I appreciate your disgust with industrial farming methods, but it doesn’t change the fact that a true herbivore diet for humans is dangerous to their health.

Many supplements that vegetarians consume to compensate for mineral and vitamin shortfalls are often sourced from animal products, as animal sources are the only sources for certain nutrients. It is true that these days, people do not “need” to consume animal products directly in order to meet their nutritional needs. However, there are many nutrients that can only come from animal products, which are offered to the human herbivore community in the form of supplements sourced from animals.

The Hindu and Seventh Day Adventist examples are usually taken too far. Hindus who appear to eat truly herbivore diets are eating food that are not as thoroughly cleaned as they are in the West. Insects, larvae, and other residues are consumed with the food. It is where they make up their shortfalls – albeit unknowingly. The sweeping health claims associated with the Adventists usually omit other health risks that rise with their dietary choices.

I don’t need to discuss this further, as you clearly have your own firm position, Ryan. But to anyone else reading, do your research first. Read the following link and read up on material from and associated with Weston Price and other doctors.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/04/02/vegetarian-myths.aspx

Good health!

Rights yet (working on it now) and the question I posed came from hearing his logical argument second hand and my own

mis-interpretation. It’s not whether something has an interest in continuing to exist, but rather whether something has an

interest in not feeling pain/suffering.

Humans have a moral interest in not suffering and in not being treated for the exclusive use of other humans (ie. slaves).

Other animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, etc.. are sentient in that they can also feel pain/pleasure and can suffer. One

can make the logical leap that if something can feel pain/suffer then it has an interest in avoiding such situations where

pain/suffering may occur.

In this, humans share a common interest with animals. So since we share the interest, we are morally obligated to treat

those interests in the same way and not treat animals as our property (ie. slaves).

That is the core of Francione’s take on things and there is no morally justifiable reason for humans with easy access to

plant based products that provide all the nutrition we need to use animal products.

For a Vegan take on Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma chapter, go here. For a summary of answers to many of the issues people ask in the comments here, including the plant issue,

and comment #36 go here.