Random Ideas, Comments & Thoughts, Sometimes Political, Sometimes Adult… Hope you don't choke.
A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them
Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.
Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
Lately, there have been ton
s of politicians and Über Liberals doing a lot of talking about the Wealthy.
I really don’t get it on a number of levels.
1) Why is it wrong to single out certain Other groups for special treatment or discussion but not the wealthy?
2) Why do politicians or the general populace think it’s OK to levy higher taxes on this small group? (Sounds like discrimination to me. You’d never get away with it if instead of wealthy you said Muslims, or Mexicans. )
3) What happened to that concept of “Equally distributing the burden“? Why is it apparently OK to force the wealthy to pay more?
Don’t get me wrong, the wealthy have done nothing to warrant my love or concern. Like most Americans I’ve suffered, and continue to suffer at their hands.
Here are some examples the Politicians and Occupy Whatever cite. You’ll get no argument from me about the abuses. Although most politicians avoid the H1B1 issue. Democratic politicians usually won’t comment on Offshoring but some Republicans and the Teaparty will.
Offshoring / Downsizing / H1B1 Abuses (It’s bullshit to import someone from India or offshore when you’ve got unemployed American workers with the same training and who speak, read, write the language well & who understand the culture. The ONLY difference between the H1B1 Visa worker / Offshore workers, and the American worker is that the H1B1 worker will work like a slave, kiss ass, suck cock, and generally do ANYTHING to bolster his bosses ego to stay in this country or keep their jobs. Including but not limited to implementing “Solutions” that are wrong on their face, just because they’re too scared of deportation or being fired to point out that the proposed “Solution” isn’t going to work. I can’t count how many millions I’ve personally seen wasted this way)
Oil prices (Lets be real here… The wind blowing from the West doesn’t justify a speculative panic that drives up crude prices.)
Banking abuses / Bad Mortgages / Housing implosion
Pension / 401k devaluation
However, as abusive of the system and people as the wealthy are, (THIS INCLUDES HOLLYWOOD ACTORS AND The KARDASHIANS), it’s still no reason to single them out for special taxation.
Let’s look at the pure math of the situation.
If I make $95,000 and I pay 20% in taxes then I pay $19,000
If a wealthy person makes $250,000 and pays 20% in taxes they pay $50,000
SO obviously the wealthy are already paying more into the system.
Isn’t it unfair to say the wealthy have to pay 40%? Isn’t that just pure greed on the part of the politicians?
I know that the poor would pitch a bitch fit if THEY were called upon to pay higher taxes. This would be especially true if someone constructed a case that went something like this.
The poor are more of a burden on the society. They require more government services, offices, and assistance. The poor also require a disproportionate level of emergency medical care per capita. Therefore the tax on all people below the poverty line will be 25% in an effort to cover their disproportionate burden on the society at large.
Of course you could make the same case for the elderly paying higher taxes too.
Can you even imagine? There’d be riots in the streets. The elderly from the old folks homes would be tossing molotov cocktails from their motorized chairs and golf carts.
“Harold… Harold… stop the cart! I just tossed my catheter bag at that Bentley! We’ve got to go back those things are $15 a piece.”
“Aww screw it Betty just hang the hose at the side of the cart, you can piss on Beverly Hills as we head back to the home! Now throw the burning bottle at the Kardashian house!”
We see the obvious wrongness of disproportionately taxing the poor or the elderly.
Why is it that we choose not to see that same unfairness in disproportionately taxing the wealthy? (I could however get behind a “SPECIAL” tax on the big mouths in the entertainment industry.)
There are those that would rightly point out, the wealthy often use all kinds of tricks to avoid paying their full measure of taxes.
While this is entirely true, I have to ask how many of us look for those same exact loopholes and deductions? The difference is the wealthy simply have better accountants and lawyers.
I’ve long wanted a simple flat tax. I think that would stop the wealthy, politicians, industry, & everyone else from playing games.
Here’s my wish list for tax reform.
15% flat tax across the board right off the top for everyone! No exceptions!
No more IRS filing, No more April 15th, No more IRS at all.
I’ve thought that if we eliminated the IRS and stopped changing tax laws yearly the country could save a fortune in office supplies alone. We’d also save money because Congress wouldn’t be debating new tax codes and would get on with other business.
There would of course be corporations who might require additional assistance calculating their tax burden but I suspect that the Government Accounting Office could handle those audits.
If you’re unemployed, you get to raid your 401k or pension with NO penalties and tax free. Raiding your retirement is NEVER a good idea, but if it keeps you from becoming a burden or loosing your house you shouldn’t be penalized for doing it.
We should make sure that our Government felt the pinch of a poor economy just as keenly as the people.
Since the politicians salaries are funded from tax dollars, their salaries should be indexed to the GDP, Government Debt, and Stock Market.
As it is now, they get paid either way. Why not change their pay structure to give them some incentive?
Make it something like As the GDP and stock markets fall, and Debt increases the salaries for our politicians decline proportionately. Hopefully something like that would focus our politicians attention on actually tending to the country instead of grandstanding and not working together.
If you wrote the equation as simply as possible you could have the politicians seeing their salaries increase and decrease directly coupled to the financial heartbeat of the country.
It’s possible that the politicians could even see negative cash-flow, meaning that in addition to the FLAT tax they and everyone else pay, politicians could conceivably have to write a check and pay for the privilege of really crappy governance.
I bet, we’d see fewer dishonest politicians and more that were genuinely interested in the country doing well under this kind of pay schedule.
I know that my wish list will never be fulfilled. I also realize that some of my ideas aren’t possible and are too simplistic.
I do think that every single one of us, rich, poor, or middle class realizes it’s time for some serious changes to the way our government collects and uses money.
I don’t think that setting a special tax rate for a specific group of people is the right or fair way to go.
First of all I have to say that Christianity in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.
Jesus had some important lessons and ideas that he taught beautifully.
So beautifully in fact that he became a threat to the powerful people of the time. By the way it wasn’t the Romans. Christianity’s threat to Rome came later.
The powerful people of the time were other practitioners of religion who simply hadn’t gotten around to wheedling the Romans into killing off all the rest of their enemies.
This is not to say that the Romans weren’t about killing, but the Romans knew if you keep the internal factions of a subjected people fighting amongst themselves… well those factions aren’t going to unite and fight you.
The Romans were many things, Chiefly they were excellent administrators.
The wealth and power of Rome was built on their imports, Trade, and tax collection. If you keep the locals squabbling and occasionally take out one of the more powerful leaders, It’s a lot easier to collect taxes, look like you’re actually helping to keep the peace and keep the goods flowing.
This kind of duplicity is a wonderful tool when you’re managing a far flung empire. I personally think that the Christians learned all too well the lessons of Romans. Even today, it seems that duplicity and hypocrisy are the norm of many Christian organizations.
Recently, I became aware of a situation that is so classically typical I couldn’t help but write about it.
A Christian camp who shall remain nameless has a staff of young people.
For many of these young people this is their first job. For others it’s a Summer job in a foreign country. These foreign staff members hail from England, Australia, Scotland and Brazil.
Some of the staff are so-called “locals” meaning that they have homes 5 to 20 minutes from the camp.
The rules were supposed to be;
All Staff stays at the camp while they’re on duty
All Staff rotates through the various activities so that they’re cross trained and don’t’ get bored.
All Staff would have a work schedule that was predictable and planned.
But in typical fashion
Poor management reigned supreme and then “We’re Christians” was used as an excuse for mistreating some members of the staff and treating others preferentially.
For example, several of the “Local” staff were never given two consecutive days off. They were expected to make do with a day here, a half day there and they never had a schedule defining even those times off, which meant that they might as well have been working 400 miles from home since they never saw their families during the summer.
I know of at least one member of the staff that was never rotated to other activities, and who was arbitrarily stuck with 1/2 days off repeatedly.
The practical upshot of all this is that the kid never got to go see his mom who lives at some distance from the camp. Never was able to participate in any family activities because there was no way to plan since there was no schedule. Last but not least wasn’t able to do things like laundry or banking because the 2-4 hours they had off was on a Sunday night after 8 PM.
This kind of stuff is just plain bad management. It’s not about whether someone is Christian or not.
It’s made all the worse because the folks running the camp, knowing that they were technically abusing a couple of their employees decided to hide behind the “We’re a Christian camp” excuse. as if that would make it all go away.
What is the rationale there?
We’re Christian and we’re going to abuse the fuck out of you now but your reward in heaven will be proportionately greater?
What about “Family Values” aren’t Christians supposed to be about family? Or is it that they’re only about Their family?
This is one of the reasons that I and many people I know avoid Christians like the plague.