TJHairball said:
If it's not, what prevents you from switching to non-kosher cheap-ass small-name generic brands?
Brand name products usually taste better. Nothing prevents me. I simply shouldn't
have to.
The makers of generic brands can't reproduce Coca-cola's great taste.
(U) and (K) aren't even words.
Are you
positive?
They don't represent words that you're unfamiliar with, either.
Yeah, because one day, I bothered to downloaded a little video. After watching it, I was left with many unanswered questions. Sure enough, I had little sigils all over the food in my kitchen.
This is the only reason I'm familiar with it. No one mentions the tax in the mainstream media (sans perhaps some obscure business sections). It's not taught about in public schools.
You try to say that any ignorance of the meaning of the symbols is the person's own damn fault for not having good "label-checking" habits, simultaneously proclaiming that most people DO know about the kosher tax on many of the products they purchase.
And - whether you care or not - it costs a very tiny fraction of a cent more to bring kosher products to market, which may or may not even be reflected in the price.
A tiny fraction of which cent? The cent in 98% of the population's own pockets? A fraction of each product purchased?
How could it not be reflected in the price? I wouldn't expect the companies to pay it out of the goodness in their hearts.
If certification companies are non-profit, why don't they ask for donations from Jews, in order to pay for the costs of certification themselves?
Gross Oreo sales. Not any fee, not any cost, gross Oreo sales.
How much of each of those $s goes to non-profit organizations? How often do the rabbis come to reinspect? How many of the ingredients in each Oreo cookie must be certified as being kosher? I've seen probablies and likelyhoods on your part up to this point.
The kosher stamp is on most every product Americans buy, with some obvious exceptions. Seeing as how you've debated the issue until now, you'll probably say:
The stamp is on many brand-name products
Many Americans know of the kosher tax
Therefore, many Americans buying brand-name products are aware and do not care, and neither should you, Chadarnook.
In order for the packaged yogurt or marinade to be certified kosher, all its ingredients must be certified kosher; likewise, in order for the ingredients to be certified kosher, the enzymes that have mediated the creation of said ingredients must also be certified kosher. And in order for an enzyme to be certified kosher, that enzyme must keep kosher. [...]
In order for an enzyme to be certified kosher, the feed media for that enzyme must be "kosherish."
And what about the feed media for the feed media? It is a food chain of microscopic yet divine reticulation, leading back to the mother-of-all proteins, keeping kosherish in an aerated flask.
Frederick Kaufman, The secret ingredient: Keeping the world kosher, Harper's Magazine, January 2005, pp. 75-81, p. 80.
Kaufman refers to the metastasis as a "domino effect" [p. 77], which falls short of recognizing its rate of growth. That is, a domino knocks down a single other domino, which in turn knocks down another single domino, and so on. To mirror kosher certification, however, the first domino would have to knock down 20 other dominoes, and each of those would have to knock down 20 dominoes, and so on, a better description of which is "exponential" growth because as the exponent of 20, say, counts off the stages of kosher certification 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., the number of new ingredients needing to be certified at each stage goes 1, 20, 400, 8000, 160000, ..., as shown below:
20^0 = 1 A single new product needing to be certified
20^1 = 20 may have 20 ingredients, each needing to be certified.
20^2 = 400 Each of the above 20 ingredients may itself have 20 ingredients, making for an additional 400 ingredients needing to be certified,
20^3 = 8,000 and so on to 8,000 more needing to be certified at the next stage,
20^4 = 160,000 and so on exponentially.
This exponential growth can be understood not by imagining that a manufactuter purchases kosher certification in order to sell to kosher-observant Jews who make up one-tenth of one percent of the population, but only by realizing that the manufacturer purchases kosher certification to buy access to a cartel, to buy relaxation of a restraint of trade, and ultimately to acquire permission to sell to the 99.9% of all US-Canadian consumers who are not kosher-observant Jews.
http://www.ukar.org/martin/martin24.html
Dictionary.com defines "tax" with the following noun forms:
1. A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government. Nope, not levied by a government, not required of a group or person.
2. A fee or dues levied on the members of an organization to meet its expenses. Nope, not levied by an organization on its members.
3. A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain. A few thousandths of a cent or so on perhaps 10% of packaged products... not excessive, not burdensome, not a strain.
In legalese:
1 : to assess or determine judicially the amount of (costs of an action in court) Nothing to do with this, either.
Very clearly, it's
not a tax.
Yes it is. Provide a source.
You've been pounding your fist constantly. You work like a propa machine, TJ. "But the cost is so small, why notice it?" "What's wrong with you? Just find something else to eat." "Everyone knows about the tax, anyone who isn't a Judeophobe, who doesn't avoid contact with Jews or something Judaic." "Pay no attention to the opportunistic person behind the curtain."
The problem is, you only come hear to argue, not to discuss. I don't believe jack has lost any argument, or he's trying to save face, or anything like that. He came as a person who was genuinely curious, and didn't dig himself into a ditch, like you.
You're method of aquiring knowledge and forumulating an opinion is all backwards. You don't just have an opinion or dismiss something because it's too out there and
then look for facts to back up your opinion. This is a way of thinking which has helped every evil unknown to the public gain a foothold, somewhere. No one looks and believes the crackpot who points and says the sky is blue, when everyone has been convinced that up is down.
I can't help but display this image:
Who will pay for the Rabbi's trips to China to make sure any imported ingredients are kosher? How many will have to travel? Will they set up camp, or go back and forth?
No, kosher certification is not one of the signs of the apocalypse, TJ. It is most definitely a "lesser evil" when compared to others. However, it's been brought into the limelight in this thread. While you have not attempted to say "but there are worse things to worry about," I'm just preparing for the next volley of bullshit.
Here, have a shovel: keep digging.
