Discussing the Right Things

There’s a lot of valueless rhetoric in current politics. Hardly any talk of importance but if we really listen… we’ll hear occasional whispers of things like… there’s a difference between venture investments and investment vultures – about profit in the name of capitalism regardless of honesty/ethics isn’t capitalism – allowing the letter of the law to trump the spirit of the law is a detriment to society. These and other similar nuances draw the line between capitalism and cronyism… between a free competitive marketplace and a corrupted system that replaces honest individual gain earned through talent and effort with unimaginable contrasts in wealth created through non-market advantages. It’s in these details where we have failed ourselves and it has to be corrected if we’re to survive.

Unfortunately, all we we read/hear are people senselessly bashing each other over being Democrat or Republican/Liberal or Conservative when the basic ideologies have long lived merit. For whatever reasons, our behavior displays hateful expression that serves only to both polarize and paralyze us. It keeps our focus on the nonsense instead of where it needs to be – ** it puts the lambs exactly where the wolves want them to be.

It would be far better to recognize we have abandoned the constitutional practices that made us the envy of the world than be willing to trade what we were (what we could be again) for the mediocrity that stagnates the rest of the planet. Our notion of economic equality must pertain to opportunities but not results and only mandate that personal gain be tempered with what’s possible via honesty, ethics, morality and uncorrupted law/legislators. When we held to these things (or at least tried to) we led the world by every imaginable measure. As we stray further from them, we become the world’s equal. ** It’s happening right in front of our eyes.

Written in Sand

Today’s workers are re-living failed corporate views. One in particular – that job descriptions should be written in sand with the wind blowing, stands out as particularly offensive. Taken in the right context of course, a little cross training and the widening of one’s horizons aren’t bad things at all. Plus, business environments change much more quickly than they used to – companies need to be able to react in an appropriate manner. What’s been unleashed by this attitude however is a different matter entirely.

With a weak economy placing a little fear in the belly, the daily routine for many is convoluted into a pathetic situation. Forget being appropriately compensated for your efforts – many times people aren’t even treated with a little common respect. I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed members of management laughing behind an employee’s back – as he heads off with a new “to do” list based on a whim or just to see if he’s scared/stupid enough to actually do it.

Some of today’s management see taking advantage of their employees as their normal function while others (we’ve all met a few) actually enjoy it. The short result of such activity is usually a temporary improvement to the bottom line. The long story is that what’s really written in sand is loyalty and eventually the success of the company.

Near the top of the corporate ladder, executives must react to daily changes in the market… one of the reasons executives make the big bucks. The wind direction however has little to do with the daily activity of the rank and file… the notion that these jobs change to whatever the boss can dream up on a daily/hourly basis, is just bad management and partly how labor unions get started.

In the Land of Equal Opportunity

SOME STATISTICS

The federal government has plunged the nation into 15 Trillion Dollars of debt and because of it, economists say that the game is over – that at this point no matter what happens in the future, there is no way to keep our heads above water reaching a debt load of such magnitude.

I think it’s interesting to point out that there are almost 9 million Millionaires and 400 Billionaires in the US according to available information all over the Internet. Our population is approx. 320 million so less than 3% of us are millionaires. If the average wealth of all the US millionaires was just 2 million dollars, then 3% of the population is worth almost 18 Trillion dollars….meaning a mere 3% of us have enough net worth to pay off the entire 15 Trillion dollar debt load with 3 Trillion dollars to spare. (if their average worth was just 2 million).

FACTS FROM FICTION

Is anyone really naive enough to believe that playing by the same rules so few people have accumulated such fantastic wealth (by comparison) simply by outworking or out-thinking the rest of us? With any temperance of truth, honesty, ethics or morality, would it really be possible for just 3% of the population to amass a net worth greater than America’s (the greatest wealth creation machine the world has ever known) GDP ? Common sense surely dictates that something has gone very wrong for so few people to have tipped the financial scales so drastically in their direction.

Our politicians buy election votes with subsidies to clothe, feed, house, doctor the poor and at the same time, participate in a corrupt manipulation of the economy. Year after year – decade after decade, people of the middle class lose ground to the rich and pay more for the social programs. The baby boomers largely make up the middle class. As they retire/drop out of the rat race and die off, America faces revolution. The rich will have no-one left worth stealing from (taking advantage of) and the poor will become untenable.

Similarities Between the Tea Party and OWS

Except for demonstrating their frustration with government, similarities between OWS and Tea Party movements end quickly. What’s interesting to me is that though some of the words & acronyms are different, the basic attitudes have not changed for 50 years. One group wants government to provide equal opportunity for individuals to personally pursue their desires/happiness and the other wants government to administrate happiness and equally spread it around. With such polar forces beating down the doors every day, government hasn’t and can’t satisfactorily do either.

While the fray continues, a small part of society recognizes an overwhelmed government and goes about reaching their dreams in spite of it. The irony is that by consuming all the attention, the lambs have made it easy for the wolves to take advantage of them in every dishonest, perverse, unethical, immoral method possible.

Crony capitalism has been the American Way for so long that even the worst cases of corruption can’t today be easily reversed. Criminal intent has been built directly into our economic structure/regulations/tax code through payoffs to crooked legislators at every government level. The resulting staggering contrast in wealth between so very few compared to so very many has the latter incensed but the scope/depth of the corruption is advanced beyond law enforcement to meaningfully work against it. Yet still, the lambs can only argue with one another over political philosophy/social issues. We are so easily fooled into focusing on the nonsense – we will never be able to right ourselves.

What Do We Expect

Remember the first GOP debate? Bachman accused Perry of mandating an inoculation program in Texas for female teens as a payback for contributions from his friends at Merck. Perry’s response was to brag that he had raised millions and was insulted that anyone would accuse him of being bought for the poultry sum of $5,000 like what Merck gave to his campaign. My question is; why wasn’t he insulted that anyone would accuse him capable of being bought on any topic at any price? Then after Perry made this arrogant remark, why wasn’t there a single guffaw from anyone else on stage? Why wasn’t there a single guffaw from anyone in the audience? Why hasn’t anyone in the media talked about this?

We are in trouble far beyond current newsworthy economics. We have become so indoctrinated to crony capitalism that we’ve accepted it as the American Way. It’s not been what you know but who you know for so long that we don’t even recognize it as a failing in our society. How can we possibly right ourselves? What can be expected of our elected political leaders but to be mirror images of ourselves, mirrors of a society of people able to deny themselves nothing regardless of our ability to pay for it, motivated only by money, sex, power and unable to accept personal responsibility for anything? We are pathetic.

What A Surprise

USA Today reports that 57 members of Congress are included in the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans. In fact the report says that in all, Congress holds 249 millionaires. Interesting that both Republicans and Democrats pretty evenly make up the list and what a surprise to find out that many of them amassed their wealth after taking office. Now we know these guys are all just astute investors/businessmen because they’ve told us so. There’s no taking advantage of non-public market information going on in Washington. This is America – remember…. the land of equal opportunity for all who are willing to work. These top 57 are just so much smarter than you and simply work so much harder than you that they’re worth anywhere from 9 million to 450 million. Each and every one of them responsible for the opportunity tens of millions of Americans have to make their eight to twelve bucks an hour.  Nope…… No stealing here – no corruption – no market manipulation – no wrongly taking advantage of people – they’re all just brilliant, hard working servants of the public to whom we should be grateful.

Tax Reform

All day long we hear from the right-wing media that class warfare is being waged on the wealthy and they throw figures at us showing that the wealthy do in fact currently pay all the income tax…. it goes something like this:

1) The top 3% of the wage earners pay 75% of the total taxes as it stands.
2) If we taxed these top wage earners at 100% of their income, it wouldn’t pay for a third of the federal budget.
3) If we taxed corporate profits at 100% and added it to a 100% tax on the top wage earners, it wouldn’t pay for half the federal budget.
4) If we taxed the top wage earners at 100% and taxed corporate profits at 100% and took away the entire net worth of all the billionaires, it still wouldn’t pay 3/4 of the federal budget.
5) We don’t have a tax problem… we have a government spending problem.

At face value, every statement above is fairly accurate. In fact statement 5 is the absolute truth but there is more story to tell about the economic realities we’re faced with:

1) No serious person suggests that we tax the rich at 100%.
2) No serious person suggests we simply steal the rich mans net worth to pay down the national debt.
3) One small sector of society paying 75% of the taxes collected by the IRS has nothing to do what the government needs to collect (given the current debt crisis) or should be collecting under normal circumstances.

Many people are proponents of tax reform. They like the Fair Tax but since they believe most Americans can’t understand it, they lean toward a flat tax as having the only real chance of reform at all. Take a look at Herman Cain’s 999 plan. The simple 9% federal income tax would break out as follows;

You make 50,000…….. you pay 4,500 in income tax.
I make 1,000,000…….. I pay 90,000 in income tax.

Total taxes collected….94,500 of which you pay (in round figures) 5% and I pay 95%.

Oops! Looks like the top wage earners still pay all the taxes. Outside of maybe a little transparency, what changes here that really means anything? Government desperately needs to start paying down our dangerously large debt but tax reform won’t suddenly put the moocher class to work. If the wealthy won’t pay a lot more taxes than they do now and the moochers never pay any taxes at all… guess which class of Americans take it in the shorts with a flat tax?

Now begins the rant about how much longer and harder I work than you do, how much smarter I am than you….about how I’m the entrepreneur.. a risk taker that has provided you with the job and the life you have and how I deserve so much more than you. In fact to hear some of them talk, you’d think that between the two of us, I am the only one that counts as a human being. What gets lost in the shuffle is that the risk I take creates a lavish life for me only if I can hire a lot of you for comparatively nothing…. like your 50 grand. Now put this in perspective with the tens of millions who work full-time for 12 bucks an hour or less.

The truth is that the efforts of the risk taker AND the efforts of the employed work hand in hand to create wealth. Both are critical components to the process and both deserve proper reward. I’ll gladly create as many jobs as I can for the so-called middle class as long as I can get away with paying such ridiculous wages compared to what I’m going to take out of the process. Of course you have opportunity to get ahead…. you can work harder. In fact without sleep, you could work 24/7 (three full-time jobs) for a whole year and triple your 12 bucks an hour. Go get ‘em Sparky… though one  wonders (if your reward is to forever only grovel at my feet in today’s economic realities) why you would participate. Why are you willing to join in an activity that will make me wealthy if all you’ll ever get out of it is a comparative kick in the teeth?

Changing the tax code might make it simpler but simpler doesn’t address the problems we desperately need to fix.