Nov 26th, 2020
Vol. 7
BELFIELD BANTER THE
Th e S t . Anne ’s - B el fi el d S choo l S tud en t New s l etter
In This Issue:
SOME SUFJAN ON THE SIDE STUDENT POETRY: Hans Bai THE U.S. TAX SYSTEM: TOWARDS WHOM IS IT ACTUALLY UNFAIR? SPORTS UPDATE: STAB TENNIS EDITOR’S NOTE: JACK DOZIER
SOME SUFJAN ON THE SIDE by Ellie Powell
– Thanksgiving break has always served as a period of reflection for me. In addition to taking a short break from my academic classes, this period of time allows me to take a moment to ask myself what it is that I am truly thankful for. Naturally, I always start with my family, access to shelter, food, and my love for everyone within our school community. I truly do not know where I would be without the resources I am so lucky to receive from my parents and this school. In making my list, however, I realized that I would be remiss to neglect mentioning the gratitude I feel towards Sufjan Stevens this holiday season. If you do not listen to Stevens’ music regularly, you may be put off by the jarring nature of Illinois, or the breathy similitude of Carrie and Lowell, but I insist that you keep listening. The first time I introduced my brother to the work of Sufjan Stevens, he told me that “Chicago” was the only Sufjan song worth listening to. With its catchy mel-
ody and lyrical drama, I understood this assumption entirely. Indeed, after half-listening to Illinois two years ago, I felt as though I only connected with “Chicago,” and further decided that perhaps Stevens simply was not for me, a fact that now seems totally ridiculous. Nonetheless, last year, I decided to listen to my first Sufjan album in full, and I am pleased to say that it may have changed my life. At its most simple, the 2015 album Carrie and Lowell concerns its artist’s grief for his mother. Stevens opens with a song named for the Oregon Death with Dignity Act of 1994 that explores the unique heartbreak that comes with losing an estranged parent. As the Oregon piece of his fifty states project, this album utilizes one of Stevens’ greatest strengths: his specificity. Lines that seem relevant only to Stevens’ experiences suddenly ring true to all listeners due to the songwriter’s firm grasp on the human experience. Immediately, Stevens sets his tone as one of sincere self-reflection after having been struck by a traumatic loss. Despite my greatest flex as a seventeen year old girl being a fantastic relationship with each of my parents, I found myself stuck pondering lines like “The past is still the past / The bridge to nowhere / I should have wrote a letter / Explaining what I feel, that empty feeling.” For context, in 2019, I spent two months alone in Boston to study Ancient Greek. I was farther away from my family than I had ever been before, and while I never felt isolated, upon listening to Carrie and Lowell, I began to worry that I wasn’t doing enough to connect with my parents. The word “regret” seems to color my interpretation of much of Stevens’ discography. Though this hardly feels like a sufficient word with which to capture the undercurrents of Stevens’ songs, the artist’s exploration of his mother’s death certainly carries a wistfulness for what might’ve been. Indeed, in “Romulus,” my favorite track from an earlier album of Stevens’, he contemplates a similar theme of filial remorse in his refrain of “I was ashamed of her.” I will admit that after hearing this line, I often need to take a deep breath and remove my headphones. In truth, I think that everyone has been embarrassed by
a parent at some point or other, but now in my senior year of high school, I feel deeply ashamed of ever having felt this way. Stevens puts it best in his commentary on Romulus: “Our parents do the best they can, under the circumstances. They do what they can, and it is always the very best. Who’s to say if you were not loved or touched. There was too much to do, there were too many children, too many meals to prepare, too many sheets to fold, too many socks to match, too many floors to sweep. Oh the terrible burden, each of us doing the very best we could. Try to imagine yourself in their shoes. Living their lives, mowing their lawns, hanging their laundry, cleaning their clothes, arguing their arguments. You would do far worse. You would fail completely.” Unlike many, I have been blessed with truly wonderful parents who do their very best at all times, and succeed on all counts. It is for this reason that I feel horribly guilty for ever having lied to them, keeping secrets from them, or fighting with them. In other words, I feel terribly for being a normal teenage girl because I think my family deserves far better than that. This is, of course, irrational; we are all allowed to learn and grow throughout our lives, and to expect perfection is to doom ourselves to failure and disappointment. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful for everything that they have done for me, and everything that they continue to do in order to make me the best version of myself I can be. I am also thankful for the music of Sufjan Stevens, as it has inspired me to think deeply about the nature of regret and the importance of a strong family.
Nov 26th, 2020
Vol. 7
CULTURE– STUDENT POETRY Seperating for Solution by Hans Bai
– Families are like salt cubes with its routine curbed, And its ions Bonding with each other Firmly, softly, Coating their core against the harsh wind through eighteen winters. Without warning, Water starts to tickle, First in droplets and gradually becoming streams, The once-tough crystal, falling apart, feebly, bit by bit in the flow of time. You might find it hard To recount those good old moments, And travel back to the days, When you were close-knit. You might find it painful To accept his leaving, Deviating from your planned course that leads to the Hudson River. However, While we can’t resist chemistry, Remember to sing him to sleep once again, Before his ultimate departure To embrace the broader world And follow his dedication With the ones he loves. The solution will come after the ions separate.
THE U.S. TAX SYSTEM: TOWARDS WHOM IS IT ACTUALLY UNFAIR? by Qiming Fu – The US tax system is a flawed system. Regardless of one’s political affiliations, most agree that our system of tax distribution specifically is unfair. Generally, people are divided by whether to raise the general tax rate, or to lower it; to increase the tax rate for the “rich,” or to raise the rate of taxation for the majority of individuals. Our respective positions are influenced by those around us, be they political constituents or family members, and we may not possess enough individual knowledge to successfully defend our ideas. Personally, I believe that our generation should understand the current federal system, and build our political--or apolitical--perspectives from scientific evidence. According to the TPC, the current federal tax rate is organized as follows (Please note there are various tax systems, there may exist light differences in numbers with different sources):
I apologize for the headache that all Honors Integrated Math 3 students must be getting from this flashback to recently solving tax system problems, but taxes present a real-world mathematic situation that must be discussed outside of class. From what you can see, the rates of taxation gradually increase as an annual income increases. Recognizing the federal goal of maximizing annual tax income, and that the average American household makes around $33,000 annually, the surface conclusion would be that we must raise the tax rate in the second tax bracket [View Table 1] to generate more profit for the government. In reality, however, that is not the case. While everyone knows that there are several incredibly wealthy people in the United States, few know just how rich these individuals are. The wealthiest single percentage of the population pays around 38.5% (Data taken from 2017) of the total taxes in the United States, totalling to $616 billion. In contrast, the bottom 90% of U.S. taxpayers paid only $479 Billion. If that is too many numbers for you, this basically means that the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the United States paid more taxes than all of the lower 90% of American taxpayers combined. If we expand that number a little to the top 10%, you’ll realize that the upper quartiles are so rich that they have enough tax money to pay 70% of the federal tax needs. With this information in mind, you may draw one of two conclusions. First, “if the government wants to generate more profit, they should tax the rich?” Second, “how is it fair that 10% of the population has to pay 70% of all the taxes, isn’t it unfair for rich people?”This is where most disputes occur in terms of the flaws within the distribution of U.S. taxes.
[cont p4]
Nov 26th, 2020
Vol. 7
Here is another summary of information that is often overlooked. Annual Median Minimum Wage of the US during President Trump’s reign: $15,080 Annual Gross Income of the Median American as of 2018: $33,706 Calculated Annual Living Wage of the US as of 2019: $68,808 ($34,404, per individual) *The “Median American” means the 58% of total Americans for whom Table 1’s second Single Filer Tax Bracket System applies. *Living Wage is calculated by family (of 4). Assuming two adults work per family, the number has been halved to benefit reader comprehension, but it should be noted that the resulting information gathered from it will be diverse from actual family income and taxes. *The definition of “individual” in this context means one tax filer. Therefore, a single family filer is also by definition an “individual”. The taxation of one person will instead be indicated with the word “single filer”.
From what you can see here, the average American doesn’t make the expected federal living wage. After an income tax deduction for the median household, an individual is about $5,000 under the living wage, and this gap expands when you add more members into our definition of a family. This means that families are unable to fulfill their debts, and often must choose between possessing a sufficient amount of food, their right to shelter, or healthcare. On the other hand, individuals within the top 1% make an average of 1.32 million each year, with a few certain individuals making billions annually. For reference, 1 billion is equivalent to one thousand million. If we correctly understand this information, it should be obvious that the top 1% of wealthy taxpayers will be far less affected by an increase in taxation. As of September 2020, it is reported that 10.5% of our country’s households live under the poverty line. It should be noted that due to the pandemic, this number is unreliable, and nearly a third of American families may be under the poverty line in the coming months. Regardless of your previous political standpoint on taxation, I hope you can acknowledge the imbalance within the current federal tax system. While it may seem as though there is little we can do to help with this crucial issue, possessing the correct information is a fundamental responsibility of being a current or future citizen of the United States. To understand the community around us is to acknowledge those that aren’t as fortunate as we may be. I want to thank you all for reading through this article, and hope you can read on understanding more than you did before. There is also absolutely no need to thank me for bringing more math into your holiday break :)
SPORTS UPDATE: STAB TENNIS by Hannah Laufer – With the world having shifted so quickly due to the current global pandemic, the STAB women’s tennis team has had to change the flow of practices and the setup of matches completely. Guiding these changes are the team’s amazing coaches, Mr. Reeves and Ms. Hadland. As team member Lisa Ng states, “They have kept us motivated and excited about the season!” The players have had to adapt to an entirely new way of practicing their sport, no longer being allowed to touch the same tennis balls as one another or even play doubles matches. These changes have led to an expansion of singles matches, which historically have only been available to the best six players on the team. With seven players now being allowed to play singles matches, the STAB women’s tennis team has won games against schools such as Veritas, Trinity Episcopal School, and Saint Gertrude High School. Our team has won each of these games 7-0, making this season a great success for the St. Anne’s-Belfield School Athletic Department due in part to the fantastic versatility of our women’s tennis team.
EDITOR’S NOTE: JACK DOZIER
– Hello St. Anne’s-Belfield School Community! We, the staff of The Belfield Banter, would like to wish you and your loved ones a very happy Thanksgiving. Though this year has been filled with challenges, disruptions, and uncertainty at every corner, it has also been a time of incredible resilience, dedication, and innovation. We know that every student shares our thanks and appreciation for the administrators, faculty, and staff members who have kept school open and helped our community thrive in spite of these difficult times. We are so fortunate to be learning together. If you have time, please consider sharing your gratitude with our faculty, administrators, and staff. This November is a perfect time to recognize those for whom we are thankful, so in closing, we are grateful to all of you. Thank you all for reading and contributing to The Banter.
Nov 26th, 2020
Vol. 7