May this be your best one yet.
One of these years that bon mot will be true…
Who’s Watching What
I was just watching Once Upon a Time in the West , a very good Sergio Leone Western. Henry Fonda, as Frank, plays an excellent psychopath. But as I was watching the commentary, some film historian said it was an oddity why Leone showed Frank meeting the widow at the ranch, then jumps to Mesa Verde where Frank meets the railroad baron then jumps to the ranch where the other characters are and then jumps to a love scene with Frank and the widow, back at the ranch. Why the film historian thought the love scene was back at the ranch, I don’t know. I thought it was rather obvious that the love scene was taking place in Frank’s Mesa Verde camp and not back in the ranch’s bedroom, which had already been reviewed in detail.
The Irish have the gift of language
Fair is Fair
I heard someone ask the other ” What was fair?”. They were referring to the ‘tax cuts’ and the idea of letting the high income folks move back to the pre-Bush rates while the lower income folks stayed at the Bush rates. Was this ‘Fair’?
In my view, letting higher income earners pay taxes at a higher rate commensurate with the higher income is more than fair. One of the primary reasons these people have such a high income is because the government has built an infrastructure that provides for them. We have regulatory agencies that provide a a safe and stable commercial environment. We have troops stationed around the world, fighting in foreign countries, trying to maintain a safe and stable political environment. Our government manages to maintain a safe and stable personal environment for most of its citizens, allowing them to direct their energies to personal growth and achievement rather than to day-to-day survival (I said most.) This all requires an infrastructure paid for by our taxes.
Over the past few years, the national infrastructure has become suspect. Debts and deficits have risen because no one seems to think they should pay for all this infrastructure, and so, the infrastructure is weakening.
What is fair is that the folks whom benefit the most from this infrastructure pay the most for it. And it isn’t like anyone who makes more than another should take home less than someone who makes less. Additional taxes are applied to the the monies earned over and above the threshold level. Someone making $1,000,001 pretax is still taking home more after tax than someone making $1,000,000 pretax. Until the infrastructure is repaired, those that have reaped the benefits of the past should continue to make it right for the future.
The ones trampled by the infrastructure shouldn’t be expected to pay for it. Effectively, they can’t pay for it. The infrastructure should provide the all of society the opportunity to grow and prosper and it doesn’t always catch everyone equally. I am sure that most people would rather make $1,000,000 a year and pay some taxes than make $10,000 a year and not have to pay taxes.
So let the ones who profit from our society pay for it. Not only is this fair; it is equitable.
Synchronicity
I was just watching the Colbert Report where Julie Taymor was his guest, talking about the new movie she just directed – The Tempest. Once the Report was over I put on a “Behind the Scenes” DVD – a TV series the Penn and Teller did on creativity in 1992. This episode was about Theater and Penn introduced the episode featuring Julie Taymor directing a play – The Tempest.
The Equation of Time
I was looking at my calendar and noticed that the Winter Solstice is coming up Dec 21. Then I noticed that the time of sunset on the solstice is not the earliest amongst the days nearby. And the time of sunrise is not the latest. Indeed, looking over the various sunrise and sunset times, it turns out that the earliest sunset was in the period of December 3-10 – 16:37 in Colorado Springs – and the latest sunrise occurs from December 31 – January 10 – 7:18. But the Solstice is still the shortest day, longest night of the year. (9:26, 14:34 hrs). Most peculiar, one would intuitively think that the shortest day would have the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset. Something was wrong and I needed to find out. So I went to Google.
It turns out that others have noticed this phenomenon before and have an explanation of it. I like this explanation – he said analemma. The US Naval Observatory was not quite as detailed but did summarize it nicely- Declination and The Equation of Time.
I still have a hard time visualizing the spacial relationships. What I need is a picture – no… no… doesn’t help…
Inside Job
I saw Inside Job a few weeks ago and Krugman is right, you will boil.
The financiers raped the world economy and walked away with it. We’ve put the wolves in charge of the hen house and opened the doors.
Why the Irish political establishment isn’t in the dock right now charged with criminal malfeasance would be beyond understanding if politics wasn’t involved. (Ireland didn’t get into the movie, but it followed the same pattern. )
The sheer scale of the numbers continue to boggle the mind. And all we have seen is the tip of the iceberg.
Moody
Why is Moody’s still in business? Or Fitch ? Or Standard and Poor’s? Any Credit Rating Agency that rated those mortgage CDO’s as AAA? Why is anyone subscribing or paying for their services? Why are they even listened to?
At the very least, any investment plans that require investment in high quality securities should specifically exclude ratings from those firms, and any others involved with that debacle.
VAT
I have seen some talk about implementing a Value Added Tax in the US. The VAT taxes at each stage of the production process. The manufacturer pays a VAT, the wholesaler pays a VAT, the retailer pays a VAT and the consumer pays a VAT. The final price of a product includes the VAT. I have seen the VAT in other countries and sometimes I even remember to send in the forms to get my tourist refund. The major issue with a national VAT in the US is that it will require a constitutional amendment to implement and I don’t see that happening.
On general principle I don’t want the VAT to cover Food, Health, Shelter or Education (once the item is identified as such- we don’t know the lumber is part of a shelter until it actually goes into a shelter. Food is interesting – is it going to a food prep service (reseller) or to a final consumer? Everything else, services and goods, can be covered by the VAT, although I suppose an argument can be made that Newspapers should also be exempt, but they will be extinct soon enough.
But if that unlikely event does happen, how does that work with the state taxes? If the national VAT is 20%, would goods in NH sell with a 20% premium and goods in NJ sell at + 27% and Chicago at +31%? I favor the idea of making a flat national VAT and splitting 50% of the take with the local jurisdictions. The States, Cities, Counties and RTAs can figure out how to split it up. And what about all those excise taxes and surtaxes? Those hotel users have to pay more than their share.
One of the side benefits of a VAT is the option to get rid of the penny. If posted prices include VAT, the retailers can set their prices to nice round numbers and we won’t need pennies anymore. Hooray!
Deficit Shmeficit
I have solved the Deficit! (Courtesy of the New York Times. ) And I even started paying down the debt! Piece of cake.
Of course, they only offered options that have already been discussed and weren’t throwing out new options.
I would like to simplify the income system to provide a single deduction for everyone, like the top of the 2nd quintile of income – currently about $35K – and then everyone pays 20% of their income greater than that, incrementing by 1% for each step of the median household income – currently about $50K -up to a total of 55%.
I would also not allow any corporation to deduct any annual compensation in excess of the President’s annual salary as an expense. The corporation will need to treat such excessive compensation as profit and pay corporate taxes on it.
Basically, we the people dug a very big fiscal hole for ourselves over the past two generations and we need to start paying it back. If we want to add new services like universal health care, we the people need to be prepared to pay for it.
I saw somewhere that the US Personal Income is $14T and annual Employee Compensation is about $8T. Using these as ballpark figures, since everyone seems to have their own numbers, with our annual national health care costs running to $2.5T, we can impose a 30% payroll tax that goes exclusively to health care. None of putting these monies into the general funds. They are intended for health care and they stay in health care. (We ought to do the same with the Social Security monies as well.) Then we implement a single payer system; everyone is covered by health care and the employers, who are contributing 50% of the payroll tax, can get out of the health care insurance business. And when the medical costs plummet to more reasonable rates in a few years, the payroll tax can be reduced as well. The tax is meant to cover the annual medical costs, not run as a trust fund accumulating cash for future needs.