Tag Archives: media

Taxation Gurus Just Don’t Seem to Get It

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CNN Money ran an article today from Jeanne Sahadi advocating the need to raise taxes “because the looming debt problem is just too big”. Her argument goes on to say that Republicans are misthinking the whole issue because as long as the debt remains large, the country can never go forward.

Well, my response is twofold. First, we need to stop putting taxation into a partisan framework. That never solves anything but makes the issues so tied to other agendas that there’s no way to have a rational conversation about the issue in the first place. By making it partisan, any response of negativity to Sahadi immediately gets lumped into a “he’s a Republican, and therefore he is only limited to Republican talking points.” Whenever the conversation moves to the next level of analysis, the responder can immediately throw it, “oh yeah, but Republicans also believe (fill in the blank, and you realize why no rational debate is then possible).”

Second, and this is really my more important point, at what point did government become so important that it became the elephant we SEE in the room rather than the one hiding in the background? In other words, why is government always the most important factor for the debate? Why isn’t the individual considered more important?

Think about it this way. If we go back to the original foundation theories of government and agree that people came together in a Hobbesian fashion to escape from our evil surroundings, we understand that we then gave up a little bit of our freedom to achieve security. Now, no matter whether you buy Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau, at no point did we ever really give up the original reason for getting together, meaning that we got together because it was mutually beneficial to us, NOT because we were all desiring to create a government. At no point did the foundation of government ever supercede our reason for creating government. In other words, those who create a government are always more important than the government itself, not the other way around. Yet, in every one of these arguments, especially the one put forth by Sahadi, government is the reason we do the things we do, so that we are required to sacrifice at the altar of government, instead of the other way around.

I pay taxes. I’m not rich, but because I am low middle class, I pay money into taxes that really makes an impact on my daily life. The majority of people who pay taxes are like me, lower middle class people who don’t make a lot of money. Any increase in taxes to us hurts big time, yet we’re rarely ever represented in these conversations about taxation and government. Instead, the Republicans represent the interests of the very rich, and the Democrats represent government attempting to fund more money for governmental programs. In a fair world, we’d have another party that actually represented a social class of common people, but we don’t have that in this country. Oh, both sides claim to be that representative, but they never are. They represent their own interests and those interests are never ours.

What it comes down to for the majority of us is a question of how much we value government. I, personally, don’t value government all that much. I see it as a mechanism to keep gangs and drug dealers from killing me on a daily basis. And to be honest, government doesn’t even do that very well. Serious amounts of money are spent on a drug war that fuels this continuous battle between mean streets and the common person, and the common person is rarely seen as the one to which government answers. An example: A few years ago, I was beaten and robbed by gang members who targeted me because of my color. Instead of a serious response to the victim, which you would expect in a case like this, or at least might see on television played by actors who don’t represent real police officers, I ended up in a bizarre situation where two police agencies argued IN FRONT OF ME over which one was responsible for taking the report. Neither one of them wanted the responsibility. Of course, after all was said and done, the culprits were never caught, and I suspect they were never even pursued. Over the next few weeks, before I finally moved across the country to get away from the cesspool that is Hayward, California, I read the blotter reports in the newspapers about how the same individuals were continuing to target citizens in the EXACT SAME AREA EVERY DAY, and even escalating to public buses, convenient stores and train stations. In other words, government didn’t care one bit whatsoever.

Yet, when it comes to taxation, Sahadi believes that if government is starting to fail financially, it is within our requirements to respond immediately and fix it. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Right now, we spend so much money on things that have very little to do with the average American who does pay taxes. Let’s go over a bit of that list.

Wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq: Who benefits from this? Me? I don’t think so. Did I care about freedom in Iraq to begin with? No, not really. I’ve never had contact with anyone from Iraq before. Nor have I had contact with anyone from Afghanistan or Libya. Sure, I buy gas, and some of that comes from some of those places, but if we weren’t fighting a war in these places, we’d still be buying gas from these places regardless. I don’t even suspect it would cost that much more because prices are controlled by OPEC, not tin foil hat dictators.

That pretty much translates to our entire military budget. Yes, it is responsible for protecting America from foreign enemies, but honestly, we’re not actually doing that with our military. We are located in countries that are not ours, fighting for issues that have nothing to do with freedom in the United States. And in order to conduct these wars, we have had presidents (the last two specifically) advocating to suppress our freedoms, which means we’re fighting to lessen our freedoms, which is ironic in its own cynical way. If we were defending America specifically, I’d be happy, but we’re not. We’re pushing agendas of people who are not the lower middle class. And we’re backing up those issues by sending young lower middle class soldiers into wars to support people who rarely serve in the military themselves.

Most governmental agencies that the common person desires are usually handled by the states. My education is handled by the states. The federal government does nothing but institute standards that no one ever achieves. Our federal government has no idea how to educate the youth of America, yet they feel worthy of forcing their standards on the states regardless. I don’t see the value in this. Sure, I can see the value of making sure we don’t teach creationism in school, but nowadays, federal government isn’t even doing that; it’s doing the exact opposite and then fighting with itself over those specific, political standards. Not necessary and not helpful.

Heath care seems like it’s important, but when you threw it into politics, it starts to get useless. Tylor Cowen, in his excellent article, The Great Stagnation, points out that even though the United States spends more money than most countries on health care, we have some of the lowest levels of life-expectancy and our health success rates are dismal at best in comparison to nations that actually spend less of their GDP of health care. Like most governmental issues, we do horrible with our money because we keep believing in American exceptionalism, when we don’t realize that exceptionalism doesn’t always mean better. Part of our problem is that we have a lot of money already in the mix that should be spent better, not a need for more money to be spent on doing the wrong things more often. That last sentence is probably the most significant of this essay but will echo with no one.

In the end, it will come down to partisan drivel politics again where we have people who have a stake in winning an argument over issues that should never be decided by partisan politics. But we don’t seem to care because we’ve gone way beyond caring about what’s important and care more about winning arguments that don’t benefit us even when we do.

As a taxpayer who pays what he believes to be enough taxes, I don’t subscribe to the theory that more money is necessary to fix the problems of bad spending. Unfortunately, the people we have in government are not the best people when it comes to spending wisely; they never have been. Instead, we have the people who are best at convincing people to vote for them because they’re good at making people feel better about themselves, especially when we live in a country of people who should be a lot more critical of their own shortcomings. We’re educating ourselves horribly, we’re grossly overweight, and we let ourselves be ruled by foolish passions over issues that require serious contemplation. But this will fall on deaf ears because we’re a nation of people who likes to hear that we’re great, and when that person comes along who strokes our ego, we’ll vote for him, and we’ll wonder why no one ever does anything about fixing our country. We certainly won’t get the answers from anyone who is paid to tell us what we already keep hearing, but then we’d stop paying them if they didn’t. We’re pretty good at creating vicious circles in this country. Another thing we’re good at, eh?

The Illustrious iPad 2

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Yesterday, Apple did its big announcement of the Ipad 2. Basically, after all is said and done, it’s the original iPad with a few extra bells and whistles. Or the same bells and whistles, but they made the bells chime longer and the whistles a little louder. What was probably more interesting was the fact that Apple is so paranoid about the people that will be replacing Steve Jobs when he retires/dies that they brought Jobs out of sick leave to make his usual announcement. This does not bode well for the future of Apple if they can’t even let the man rest long enough and let his successors actually try to succeed.

Having said all of that, I thought I would then address the Ipad 2 itself. Without getting into the details of the device, like it has the whole camera thing, supposedly a better screen (that might not be immediately available) and, well, nothing else that makes me want to go out and buy one. What is significant about the Ipad itself is that nothing announced so far has me anxious to want to go out and buy one. Yeah, I’ve been in Best Buy a few times where I’ve played with one to see how cool it is, but after I’m done playing with it, I realize that it doesn’t do anything that I don’t already have covered. And unlike my iPhone, it doesn’t combine enough OTHER things that I might want to add it to my toys to replace stuff that has become too encompassing.

And that is definitely the problem of the Ipad. There’s nothing about it that causes me to think it’s worth buying an actual tablet computer. And that’s the problem that Apple is facing in the long haul. Right now, it owns the tablet market, but it is still trying to build a “need” rather than a curiosity for that market. In olden days, when every house has an oven, there was this new device called the microwave oven. And it took a lot of convincing to “convince” housewives that they needed the gadget because an oven was capable of doing everything the new device could do. However, a media campaign that could have riveled the attack at D-Day managed to convince the average American that it was now a need, not a curiosity, or something for the rich only.

That is what the tablet still has to do, and it’s not succeeding. Sure, Apple is selling a lot, but Apple sells a lot of a lot of things that don’t become household givens. Until tablet companies do something that convinces the average person, like me, that we should want and need one of these gadgets, most of us are going to be sitting on the sidelines laughing at the people who bought one but still have no major need for one.

That is the press conference that Apple needs to succeed at. So far, they haven’t done it. As a matter of fact, Apple has recently done everything possible to destroy its own little niche market by trying to own that market completely through draconian rules and charges that benefit Apple only, cutting out other companies from investing in the Apple dynasty. As long as that keeps happening, you’re going to have a lot of people thinking, well maybe I don’t need the Apple one, so they’ll look at the other companies and then suddenly realize they don’t need a tablet at all. So far, the tablet hasn’t been the success that spin doctors really want you to think it is. The majority of Americans haven’t bought into it. A lot of people have, but a lot of people doesn’t translate to market saturation or even market itemization. It’s a gimmick right now, and as long as it remains in that category, it’s going to stay a gimmick.

Now, I know there are people reading this who are thinking, “hey, I bought one and I love it.” That’s fine, but you’re the outliers right now who Apple and tablet companies want to use to convince everyone else that their product is relevant. So, you need to start doing that and earning your pay you’re not receiving from a company that wants to get as much money out of you as possible by limiting your options in getting the best bang from your product. So do their dirty work for them. That’s kind of how the game works. For them. Be the tool they need you to be.

Stewart/Colbert hold a real rally, but no one will probably take them seriously

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Jon Stewart of the Daily Show is planning to hold a major rally in Washington, D.C. that is a direct response to some of the stupidity that has been happening by pundits and/or politicians like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. The theme of the rally, being held on October 30, is “Rally to Restore Sanity”. Stephen Colbert, not one to miss out on the fun, is holding a counter rally at the same time, in the same location, titled: “March to Keep Fear Alive.”

The significance of this event (these events) is that politics and media have gotten stupid lately. So, what better way to hold them in check but to call them out on it.

The problem that I perceive is that the news media doesn’t even realize that it’s being ridiculed for how bad they’ve gotten. What is most likely going to happen is some pretty face is going to announce the success of this “event” and treat is as if they’re somehow “in” on the joke. I think that’s what pissed me off the most about whenever the news covers Stewart and Colbert. They so often are NOT “in” on the joke, but the actual butt of it, and I’m sorry but laughing about it doesn’t make it any different when they go back to doing exactly what they were doing that caused the ridicule in the first place.

Unfortunately, this is a one time event. Which means that the media will get right back to being stupid again.

Even though they’ll probably kill me, I still love eggs

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The whole egg recall thing has me worried. But not because I’m scared of eggs, or think that I’m going to die. What worries me is that there’s so much information about the whole egg thing roaming around the airwaves that I haven’t a clue about what’s really going on. Either the industry leaders are only interested in profit and don’t care if I die, or they’re great down home farmers that have my best interests at heart and this is all just some kind of overreaction. Or it’s something in between. Or none of these things. To be honest, I don’t know the details because the media has managed to ramp up the scare tactics so that I’m afraid of drinking potable water these days so that anything they say about eggs really seems somewhat irrelevant.

And that’s the problem. There is so much information that is clashing with more information that no one really knows what is real and what is made up. Everyone claims to have our best interests at heart, but after you unpack that, you start to realize that people are telling you things to maintain profits, or because they’re just nuts and want to be heard. In fact, no one really knows anything, and there’s a lot of disinformation available. There’s just no way of knowing what to trust and what not to trust.

But the simple fact still comes to light: I like eggs. I like eating eggs. I only eat them on the weekends, but it’s my one guilty pleasure. Well, aside from that other one, but I can’t talk about that one because the government is listening, and the tinfoil hat I usually wear is in the shop, so I have to be careful about what I say in public.

But I like eggs. And I want to keep eating them. I don’t know if it’s safe. I know that I need to cook them, but I wasn’t planning to eat them raw in the first place, so that’s not a problem. But even now, people tell me that it’s dangerous to eat eggs because of disease. Well, it’s dangerous to breathe as well, but for some reason I keep doing it.

What it comes down to is that at some point you have to turn out the overbearing messages and just do what you’re going to do. We can be scared of everything, like taking an airplane because of crazy terrorists armed with pen knives and box cutters, or we can just live our lives and hope that things work out. I think I’m going to try the latter, even though it might kill me.

But I like eggs much more than I like living in fear about my next meal. And sometimes you just have to compromise, like any woman who might ever agree to date me. But that’s a whole other issue.

The media still doesn’t understand “nice guys”

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One of my pet peeves is how the media still has no grasp on the concept of “nice guys”. A few weeks back, I read a reprint of an article on CNN, which was all about how some girl was upset that she can’t seem to find a nice guy. Then it went on to ridicule every guy in the world because SHE keeps picking “bad boys” when she really wants a “nice guy”. I wrote a response that got a lot of “likes” on CNN, where I essentially stated that the reason she is never going to find a nice guy is because she looks for bad guys and then blames nice guys for not being easier to find. You don’t find what you’re not looking for.

The interesting thing was a CNN writer contacted me and wanted to interview me about my thoughts on this for an article she was going to write. She never got back to me, but interestingly enough, her “article” that she was going to write appeared on CNN today. Here it is, by Stephanie Chen. As I never got to comment before she wrote her story, I definitely have a few things to say about this particular issue and the very concept of nice guys in general, so here goes:

This article pretty much proves to me that mass media is never going to understand the concept of nice guys because it’s a lot like sending a French chef to write an article about Arabic pottery. They don’t know anything about the topic, so trying to be the archaeologist on a nature dig is never going to get the real story. It’s just going to get more and more people confused.

This article shows the problem immediately in that it goes to sources that are not nice guys to explain why nice guys need to be more like them in order to succeed. One of the interviewees wrote a book on how to “score babes”. Yeah, that’s going to really indicate to the diminishing numbers of “nice guys” how they should interact with women in order to do whatever it is they think nice guys are really intending to want to be doing with women. Just because Captain Kirk slept with a bunch of green alien girls in Star Trek doesn’t mean that every member of the Federation can only succeed by taking a “Be like James T. Kirk” seminar on interspecies dating. Okay, I’ll try to keep away from the geek references….

Part of the problem with these essays on why nice guys fail is this belief that we’re all failing because they don’t see us in clubs trying to pick up women like the rest of the bad boys who seem to get a lot of action. Maybe we’re nice guys because that’s something we don’t normally do. If our purpose was to do anything to get a little action, then I’m going to go out on a limb, but that’s probably going to remove the very nature of what makes us part of being nice guys in the first place.

If women are really interested in finding nice guys, I’m sorry but it’s really up to them to go looking for them. They’re not going to find them at clubs. Sorry, but that’s now where they hang out. Most nice guys wouldn’t last a half hour at a club because we’re the ones who feel really awkward because we’re alone, and our usual nature isn’t to become the life of the party at a party where we’re not normally invited. The sad thing is: I’ve had this conversation with a lot of women who are constantly looking for “nice guys”, and they never get it. Oh, they say they get it, and they nod appreciatively, but they always go back to their ways and end up with the guys they can’t understand how they always end up with. I’d pull out my hair in frustration, but there’s not a lot of it left these days, so I have to be careful about that.

Yet, the media keeps reporting that in order for “nice guys” to do well, they have to stop being nice guys, or do things the “other guys” do in order to not be seen by women as “nice guys”. In other words, women looking for nice guys will not go after a nice guy, so you have to pretend to be a bad guy in order for a woman to see you as the nice guy you are. Does any of this sound a bit dysfunctional?

So, what’s the solution? Well, if you’re a woman, the solution is so freaking simple but you’ll NEVER go there. I’ll go out on a limb here but MOST women have guy friends they confide in and consider really nice guys. Well, instead of asking those “nice guys” where to find a nice guy, look right at them right now. There they are. They’re right in front of you. Probably liking you but to afraid to say anything because they figure you’ll stop being their friend. But there they are. And they’ll be there until you either notice them or someone smarter than you notices them and then you start to wonder why you could never find someone like them.

For guys, well, if you’re a nice guy, do what I did. Give up. It’s not worth the hassle. It’s a lot less of a headache when you don’t put yourself out there trying to pretend to be something you’re not. I’m a nice guy, and I’m happy with what I am. I don’t really need to “score” or find anyone to achieve personal happiness. Sure, if the right person came along, or I was friends with the right person and she noticed me, that would be great. And we’d live happily ever after.

But if that doesn’t happen, I’m not going to worry about it. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I’m not going to be worrying about you either. If you can’t figure out where to find a nice guy, you probably don’t deserve one in the first place.