What is it all about?

     Do you know someone on unemployment who may not be deserving of it?  Maybe they are using it as a paid vacation and not even hunting for work?  They might even be doing side jobs and not declaring their income!  I think we all know people like that and it is sure irritating!  It seems as if they are our working in their garden while we work hard at our jobs to support them!  It seems as though we have designed a system to encourage us to be lazy.
    There is no unemployment fund.  It is long gone.  We spent that money years ago and today every dollar
paid to the unemployed is borrowed money.  It was never really designed to do what it is doing now, supporting millions of people.  When I was an employer and had fifteen people working for me this tax was negligible, probably the smallest tax I paid and certainly a lot less than to the local public transit.  Unemployment was designed to help people in transition, between jobs while hunting for work, for short periods of time.  Now it is a lifestyle.  One can collect unemployment payments for two years!  The money is borrowed, the employee never paid into this fund and as an employer I don't think I paid more than $15 a week into this insurance!  It was only designed to be used for one in 25 employees and for a very short time.
    It is not a good thing to put on your resume.  What have you been doing for the last two years?  "Collecting unemployment and working in my garden," would not impress any company.  Two years out of the workforce is forever, so much changes.
    I wonder what "unemployment" is really all about?  There are more Americans unemployed now than during The Great Depression.  I think it is somewhere near 25,000,000 people.  The official rate is almost 10% and these are the ones collecting unemployment!  This has all become a "part of the system" now, necessary to prop up a failed State.  It is not done out of kindness and certainly as no one has really paid into it, it has nothing to do with "deserving".  Remember, it is all borrowed money.  So there has to be another reason for it, huh?
    It is all part of the Monopoly Game to this whole thing, like "passing GO and collecting $200".  It is used to continue this game.  If you stop these payments the game is over.  What this country requires is a quick infusion of cash and unemployed people spend their money the fastest.  It doesn't sit around in a bank.
Unemployment and some kind of food assistance, maybe housing help, have become the workforce of America!  Think about it.  It would be disastrous to stop it.  It is how the rent is paid and groceries are bought, gasoline purchased.  It is a huge driving force in this economy.  In my heart I know it is abused but in my mind I know it has become so very necessary.  It is not done out of any kindness, the "system" requires it.
    It is difficult to stop this process.  The problem with Government "make work" projects is that historically when the government controls manufacturing and industry and employment that leads to fascism.  Giving it away with borrowed money leads to laziness and debt. 
   Encouraging American Industry is not so much a legislative thing as it is an educational matter.  If you removed all of your clothes that were not made in America (or the country where you are reading this),
would you be naked?  If you removed the items from your house that weren't made in America (or home country), would your house be empty?  My point is we have met the enemy and it is us!  We want good jobs that pay well and buy foreign import crap made from slave labor and we wonder what the problem is?
    I have offered this challenge before and I will offer it again.  Can you go one week without buying anything imported?  Consider this a game and it is not as easy as you might imagine.  You have to read the labels.
What would happen if your very favorite store, whatever it might be, removed all imported products from their shelves?  We have the power to do this.  It might be the only power we have left.
    So, are you frustrated or do you like it the way it is?
This is what I do.

A Simple Solution

It is pretty incredible.  We are becoming cannibals in a fish bowl.  Little fish eating each other with no thought to the big fish about to eat us all.  We do this because we can only strike out at what we know.  We can only see a little distance, those just ahead of us on this ladder we are on.  It all becomes irrational.  We strike out at unions because they have benefits that we do not.  Unions which gave us the forty hour week.  Unions which gave us lunch breaks and paid rest periods.  Unions which encouraged benefits for those injured on the job, offered us sick pay and health benefits.  Unions which created our middle class and raised the bar for everyone.  We want to pull them down now, attempting to find some comfort in reducing them to our level.
The big fish will be happy, more food for them!  Here is a joke!
    Three guys are sitting at a table with a plate of cookies before them.  The rich guy leans forward and grabs almost all of them for himself, all but one in fact.  "Be careful," he says to the other guy, "that Union guy next to you will take most of this last cookie!"  That is what is happening.
   Greed itself has become a cancer! (You thought I couldn't get back on subject, huh?).  It is only because we allow it.  We reward it.  We admire it.  We would rather destroy our middle class than infringe on the rights of the wealthy!  I am talking the "ubber rich", wealth beyond counting, people you don't even know.
Their numbers are dwindling too.  The "rich" used to be the top 10% and now they are the top 2%, but they control even more money, almost 40% of the money available.
   This might be a fun game if we could all play it. That is not what is happening. Based on a percentage of income, these super wealthy pay far less taxes than the average fish in this bowl, and their wealth is taken out of circulation, invested, sent overseas.  It does not trickle down any more but floats away leaving us to feed on each other.
     It is not necessary to "balance the budget" through subtraction and to remove this money also from circulation makes for horrible math.  It would be so very simple.  Everyone pays the same taxes on everything.  Period.  Just that and we would have a surplus.  Why this is such a radical idea is beyond me.
My Other Blog is Here.

Defining Society

I get accused of being a "liberal", as if that were a cuss word but the truth is I am pretty conservative. I am pretty consistent and tend to keep things I am familiar with.  I have lived in the same house for over 40 years. the very same wife for almost 45 years, the same telephone number, yes I have a land-line! for over 45 years!  I don't make changes easily.  I have been self employed and in business for over 35 years, sometimes having more than 15 employees.
     It seems to me that when it comes to voting there are only two choices.  I vote to draw the circle closer, keep what I have and maybe get more, vote for benefits for me, tax advantages for me, me, me, me.
Or I vote to enlarge my circle, vote because I have a concept of what a society should be.  I love great wealth and rich people.  Although not one myself, I make my living from people with excess money, wealth for the nicer things in life. I do not believe that wealthy people work harder than I do nor harder than most people do.  They "do it differently" and that is one of the best things about our society.  We are allowed to and given opportunities to do it differently.  Somehow our society allows for people like Michael Jordan to endorse shoes, and although he may only get 50 cents for each shoe sold, it totals millions of dollars. It is a wonderful society in a lot of aspects but it is "the system" which allows for this kind of wealth, not really hard work on Michael Jordan's part.  He is skilled and clever and maybe should be rewarded, but I think he should pay his taxes just like we do, the same rate we do.  Why this makes me a "flaming liberal" I have no idea?
    I am in favor of things that cost money.  I am in favor of things that make a society and a culture.  I like a good road system, bridges and trains to cross this wonderful country.  I am in favor of a good educational system and willing to define this.  A good educational system would expand our concept of Democracy, encourage debate and discussion and our willingness to vote.  A good educational system would, if not make us better human beings, at least more literate humans, better read with an understanding on how we got to where we are and a sense of where this will lead us.  Yes, it might even get us jobs and help compete in this new world economy.
   I believe that a society will be judged, if not by God then by other's, by how it treats its elderly, infirm and children, the weakest amongst us.  These things cost money.  There are 40,000,000 Americans without health insurance and another 40,000,000 with less than adequate insurance.  We are the only industrialized country in the world without some kind of national health care.  I have good insurance, the best even.  My fun little bout with cancer cost over $130,000 and my insurance paid for all of it except the first $1,000.  I am not in this battle for me.  I don't need it.  I am in favor of National Coverage for everyone because I am conservative.  Yes, you read that right.  I am a businessman and this makes for good business.  It is fair, it is less expensive.  That simple.  It has good math.  Instead of fighting and keeping to myself what I have, I want to enlarge this circle and bring others into it.  Everyone.
    There is more money available now than there ever has been on the history of the Earth.  It is just being distributed differently.  There were more "middle class" people in the United States in the 1950's than there are now.  We are dwindling.  As a percentage there are fewer wealthy people too. They just have more money.  When the middle class was biggest and controlled more wealth and paid their taxes, life was more optimistic.  Now this wealth has shifted to the top 2% who control over 40% of this wealth.  Frankly this is so much money we can't even imagine it.  We couldn't count it in a lifetime and we couldn't begin to spend it.
They don't spend it either.  There is no "trickle down" anymore.  This is wealth that has been invested and taken out of circulation.  No one is paying taxes on it.  It is like playing the game, "Monopoly" and taking the money off the board.
     To me, equal taxes for everyone makes me a conservative.  Wanting to take care of children, the elderly,
the weak amongst us and the sick makes me a reasonable, decent human being.  To do this because ultimately it would save money and give better service makes me a good businessman.
My Other Blog is HERE.

I Want to Talk About Voting...

     This is totally off the topic of Cancer but I will probably bring National Health into this discussion. The town next to mine, a little bit bigger, in considering an issue to establish a sales tax to raise money for publicly funded education.  Personally I think it is pretty stupid; I think Education mismanages the money they already receive, and I know it would just drive people to shop in my town.  We are only spitting distance apart. Part of the proposal would be to exempt "people who make under $50,000" and the others are whining that this is an unfair tax burden on those who make over $50,000.  This is not really an issue of ganging up on the rich, but I would like to make a couple points.
    The first is, all the time we vote on issues that don't affect us. The cigarette tax is one example. Most people don't smoke now (and that is a good thing, no argument there) but they vote for more tax for those who do.  We vote on Indian Casinos and we may not be Indians and we may not gamble.  We voted for
a huge Arts Center where it might cost $100 to see Elton John, something most of us could never afford. Without the voted to subsidize this art center the ticket would cost over $200.  We vote for stuff all the time that will never apply to us. Actually for me, almost every single issue is irrelevant. I almost never leave my island.  Except to vote.
     I vote on issues that appeal to me as a Citizen, a member of this Society.  I like the Idea of an educated society.  I like the idea of a society interested in the Arts. I think ultimately a society will be judged (I am not sure by whom) by how well it takes care of its elders, the lame, the sick, the downtrodden and its children.
I think public education and support for the arts is essential for a healthy society.
   Now the issue has come up that they need more money!  I admit that in the middle of this recession when most of us are cutting costs every way we can, I don't understand this.  It always seems their first choice is to punish us by laying off teachers and making the class sizes bigger.  Even I know that is stupid!  How can you ever believe that they even value education when their first move is to punish the children?  I am not sure whose interests they have at heart?
      Back to my point, let's take a huge leap of faith here and assume they really do need more money!
Or assume any government agency needs more money for whatever cause.  What is a fair way to get it?
Or another thought since we are talking about the government, What is a nonfair way to get it?  I think if you have to have more money then you have to go to where the money is. It is really that simple and I will try to explain why I think this is fair.
     I should be a Republican but I am not.  I have not worked for someone else in over 35 years. I own the company.  I am it; I am the man.  On a real small scale I am Corporate America. Over these years I had between 5 and 15 people working for me.  Most of my money went to taxes, far more than I ever made.
My most important employee was always the clean-up man.  You can build the best house in the world and if it is not a clean job site no one appreciates it.  My clean up man (sometimes a woman) was paid less than my lead carpenter but worked much harder.  Rich people do not work harder than poor people.
     Some people have jobs that pay a lot, have great retirement programs and all kinds of health benefits and other perks.  They do not work harder than my clean up man. I think it is only that my clean up man is easier to replace that he gets paid less.  It is our system of supply and demand.  In this recession people are losing their jobs, their retirements, their benefits and our "middle class" is dwindling enlarging the class below us.
We are becoming "them".  Those of us who can find work are working for less.
     2% of Americans control over 60% of the wealth.  Think about that.  In the 1960's it was normal for a CEO to make six times the wages of his average employee. Today that figure is thousands of times. It is not unusual to see bonus checks in the millions of dollars.  More power to them if they can get this but they need to know it is us who is giving it to them.  It is our society that fosters this kind of entrepreneurship. And they need to return the favor, be thankful for our system and pay more taxes.  Republicans especially have this fantasy of returning to the glory days of the 1950's without ever admitting we had a graduated income tax in those days and far less deductibles and methods to avoid taxes.
     I am not sure what a good system would be.  A good start would be to require less money, spend what you have a little wiser.  Do what we do, cut back.  And I think, although it sounds fair to me, that if we said the "first $50,000" is not taxable at all, maybe that would work?  Certainly "the rich" would not be paying on their first $50,000 also!!!  Most of us never dream of that much money, can you imagine seeing that second $50,000 or the hundredth for the really rich?
     What makes this unreasonable to me is that we all live in this society and we should all contribute to it.
I would like to see some kind of "Service to America", yes a draft, two years for your country!  It wouldn't have to be in the Military although that could count.  It could be in educations, music, parks, there are a million choices, and if you made a million a year you still have to do it!!!  The military used to be the great equalizer in our country when we had the draft.  You could be the bad ass n the streets with no skills and no talent and the military would shape you up and you would come out different.  They have pretty high standards now and won't take just everyone.  But everyone should contribute to our society.
     It seems we lost some pride in our country a long time ago and now not even those who are able want to contribute.  It is just like the school system, get rid of the teachers and punish the students.  Nothing is free, we will pay for this one way or another, I promise you that.
My Art Blog is Here