Taxation is not Revenue - UPDATE

This has been bugging me for a long time. I think it has gotten to the point now that people just don't think about what they are saying or publishing in major news articles.

The debate about "allowing" the Bush-era tax cuts to expire has been in the news a lot lately. At this time, all the major news outlets, Fox included, keep spouting on about how if the tax cut is allowed to remain in place for the "rich" it will "cost" the government $700 billion in revenue.

There is so much wrong with all of that and it makes my head spin. First of all, taxation does not equal revenue. They are called "tax receipts", and we are not "customers" we are taxpayers. We don't have the ability to shop with our feet, unless we are planning to move to a State in the Union with lower State and and Local taxes. We are stuck with the Federal taxes. The ability to tax is a legal writ to commit violence. They are taking that money from us for their own purposes such as: redistribution, pork, international give-aways, vote-buying, and good old corruption. A small portion of the budget goes towards the common defense and other necessities, but at least 60% of the budget is duplicative, wasteful, and unnecessary. I used the word "violence" because the government can lay hands on you and pitch you in jail if you do not own up to your patriotic duty to pay those taxes. They are not a choice.

So why does the government and media seem to think that we live in a state of perpetual taxation? If "revenue" is going to drop by $700 billion over the next 10 years, then perhaps it is time to control your "expenses"? You know, the nice, simple equation: excess revenue (profit) = revenue from sales (taxation) - expenses. If you were IBM, or GM, losing that kind of money means that you had better come up with a way to either boost sales, or cut expenses. Preferably, you will do both. If you are the government, you tax until the Laffer curve breaks, and then you tax some more (oh, and print until you simply have enough green paper or electrons). This can not go on indefinitely. Eventually, the system will break.

All taxes should be voted on, period. If the bill "expires" the tax cut, then it implies that taxes were only temporarily suspended. I do not want to live in a place where taxation is the perpetual and not the periodical. A natural state of taxation can be said to exist. If anything, the Democrats and RINOs must be made to put their name on record as supporting a tax increase.

We need a flat tax and a flat, and small, taxation on wealth creation. Once the "rich" are no longer as afraid or worried that the government will come up with creative ways to take their hard-earned money they may actually INVEST some of it into the private economy. This is where you create jobs, not in the White House. It is the pursuit of wealth and fame that adds energy to the velocity of money and the expansion of the economy.

So, just to recap: taxation is the removal of money from those who earn it by the government, who then turn around and give more than 60% of that money to the people who have not earned it. Taxation is recorded as a "tax receipt" in the government ledgers. Revenue is something that a company makes on goods and services sold. A profit is when the revenue number is bigger than the expenses number. Simple, right? I wonder if IBM outlined a financial policy where they re-name profit losses as "deficit", and then spend as much as they want how that would be received by stockholders? Maybe if they put a "Mae", or "Mac" after their name it would be more palatable?

There, feeling better on the Stoa....NEXT!

--Zavost

A Rare update from the Stoa:

One of the items that is mouldering on the desks of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid is the continuation of the absence of the Death Tax. This item will likely not be addressed before the end of year and will result in yet another huge tax being imposed upon the American people. Why does it look like we live in a natural state of taxation? Why must Congress have to pass an extension for the absence of taxes? Yes, I know the the bill originating the tax was likely written in perpetuity and that this bill was an exemption with a sunset clause so don't remind me of it. I believe that all bills that tax the people (i.e. spending bills) must have a sunset clause. I think that is only common sense. This will allow various Congresses to eliminate programs and spending bills that no longer serve either a real purpose (as re-voted upon by Congress) or have been duplicated by other spending programs. Sounds like common sense, right?

Anyhow, it seems so wrong to me that the government, which has taxed every penny you have ever made in your life, two or three times over, feels that it has the right to take 55% of all of your assets upon your death. If the Progressives can say, with a straight face, that broadband Internet is a human right, then how about the right of inheritance? If you can't pay it, then you have to liquidate the estate so that you can pay your taxes. This means homes, land, family heirlooms must be converted to cash so that you can give the government its due. This is just plain wrong on the face of it. Not much thinking involved with this one.

Since I just popped onto the Stoa to have my say I'll wrap my bathrobe about myself once more and head back to my domicile.

--Zavost

New Packaging, same content or Lipstick on a Pig?

I could not decide on a formal title for this entry so I just included them both. I feel either one expresses my thoughts adequately.

The Democrats have changed their logo from that of a kicking donkey to a rather sterile logo (Sauron's Eye?) that seems to have the same circular motif as Obama's personal (thats messed up on the face of it) symbol. We are less than two months away from a critical mid-term election and the Democrat party changes it marketing brand. Certainly not the sign of a confident organization at this time. You would never see a major corporation change its marketing brand if it was doing well; perhaps Pepsi Co., but that is another blog entry.

When their candidates are hungry for campaign funds, why spend money on consultants and focus groups to develop a new symbol? They are running scared and trying to put distance between themselves and the last 2 years. Sorry, folks, we are not buying it. If you take a man or woman, elected to public office who then decides to strip tens of millions of citizens their rights, while trying to give rights to illegals and then try to dodge the consequences of those actions then you are not fit make any decisions on your own or be elected to anything that can be voted upon. No spine, no decisiveness. You must always take responsibility for your actions and your votes.

If they believed in what they were doing when they voted on legislation, voted on bills they never read, voted on actions that they never contemplated, then they must take what is coming to them. The American people are not idiots and they are not, by and large, ideologues. Just ask the RINOs that have gone down to defeat at the hands of their more conservative brethren. I wrote on this last year, but I'll repeat myself to some extent. The Republican party is resetting. The Tea Party movement represents a shift as great as that brought on by the great Ronald Reagan. I think that a lot of the people looking at the Tea Party as anything other than concerned citizens who are looking for a less intrusive government are reading their own desires into this movement. The RINOs are being purged and a resurgent, conservative-leaning Republican party will once again dominate the political arena. Changing your symbol is not going to change your fate come November.

If you change the logo and do a bit of painting on the Walmart brand, while leaving the Walmart sign on the buildings, then you still have a Walmart. If you got a good deal on a CRT TV and your groceries at a white building with a Wal-Mart logo, you will stand a very good chance of getting a good deal on your plasma TV and your groceries at a brown building with a Walmart logo. Populate a party with Marxists and Statists, abandon the traditional ideals of the Democrat Party then don't stand there wondering why your popularity is falling. Repainting the building and changing your logo is not going to change the fact that you have a party packed with Marxists, Transnational Progressives, and Statists.

So, have they repackaged a steaming pile or have they tried to repaint the pig? Can I explain this any more simply?

The Stoa has been swept off and is ready for the next instructor.

-Zavost

Taxation is not Revenue

This has been bugging me for a long time. I think it has gotten to the point now that people just don't think about what they are saying or publishing in major news articles.

The debate about "allowing" the Bush-era tax cuts to expire has been in the news a lot lately. At this time, all the major news outlets, Fox included, keep spouting on about how if the tax cut is allowed to remain in place for the "rich" it will "cost" the government $700 billion in revenue.

There is so much wrong with all of that and it makes my head spin. First of all, taxation does not equal revenue. They are called "tax receipts", and we are not "customers" we are taxpayers. We don't have the ability to shop with our feet, unless we are planning to move to a State in the Union with lower State and and Local taxes. We are stuck with the Federal taxes. The ability to tax is a legal writ to commit violence. They are taking that money from us for their own purposes such as: redistribution, pork, international give-aways, vote-buying, and good old corruption. A small portion of the budget goes towards the common defense and other necessities, but at least 60% of the budget is duplicative, wasteful, and unnecessary. I used the word "violence" because the government can lay hands on you and pitch you in jail if you do not own up to your patriotic duty to pay those taxes. They are not a choice.

So why does the government and media seem to think that we live in a state of perpetual taxation? If "revenue" is going to drop by $700 billion over the next 10 years, then perhaps it is time to control your "expenses"? You know, the nice, simple equation: excess revenue (profit) = revenue from sales (taxation) - expenses. If you were IBM, or GM, losing that kind of money means that you had better come up with a way to either boost sales, or cut expenses. Preferably, you will do both. If you are the government, you tax until the Laffer curve breaks, and then you tax some more (oh, and print until you simply have enough green paper or electrons). This can not go on indefinitely. Eventually, the system will break.

All taxes should be voted on, period. If the bill "expires" the tax cut, then it implies that taxes were only temporarily suspended. I do not want to live in a place where taxation is the perpetual and not the periodical. A natural state of taxation can be said to exist. If anything, the Democrats and RINOs must be made to put their name on record as supporting a tax increase.

We need a flat tax and a flat, and small, taxation on wealth creation. Once the "rich" are no longer as afraid or worried that the government will come up with creative ways to take their hard-earned money they may actually INVEST some of it into the private economy. This is where you create jobs, not in the White House. It is the pursuit of wealth and fame that adds energy to the velocity of money and the expansion of the economy.

So, just to recap: taxation is the removal of money from those who earn it by the government, who then turn around and give more than 60% of that money to the people who have not earned it. Taxation is recorded as a "tax receipt" in the government ledgers. Revenue is something that a company makes on goods and services sold. A profit is when the revenue number is bigger than the expenses number. Simple, right? I wonder if IBM outlined a financial policy where they re-name profit losses as "deficit", and then spend as much as they want how that would be received by stockholders? Maybe if they put a "Mae", or "Mac" after their name it would be more palatable?

There, feeling better on the Stoa....NEXT!

--Zavost

Christine O'Donnell, Conservative

With the same intensity that I felt I could not support Scott Brown, I DO support Christine O'Donnell. One of the gripes that I had with Mr. Brown is that I sensed the conformist in him. He held strong to his beliefs on Health Care, and then caved on virtually every other piece of legislation that came before him. If he had been following conservative ideals, those votes should have taken care of themselves.

Christine O'Donnell believes in something, wholly and completely. That she is Catholic is beside the point. I'm happy that she is Catholic, though I'd have to check up on what she believes about Social Justice. These votes that come to them should not be very difficult if you are confident about who you are and what you believe in. When someone says they have a lot of "soul searching" to do, what they are really saying is that they have not figured out what the majority of their friends (or supporters) think about the subject or vote at hand.

That she can come out with a belief system and then not flinch when the media anal probe comes along speaks volumes about her. I will watch her with interest as the election comes upon us.

The establishment Republicans are in a tizzy going on and on about how they are going to lose the seat and the chance of a majority with her upset win over the RINO Castle. I can not believe that those people in the RNC can be so dense. Let me be very clear and simple here for the RNC leadership: if you have 55 Republicans in the Senate and 45 Democrats in the Senate, do you have a majority? Mathematically, yes. However, if 6 of them are RINOs, then the reality of the situation is a resounding, "NO". Why do you think they have the title, "Republican In Name Only" hung about their necks? Winning is not the end upon itself, remaining true to Conservative ideals is the goal.

What this election in Delaware means for the RNC is that they have a CHANCE of electing a conservative to the post who will actually vote that way. Not another Scott Brown who, "has to live in the reality of a Blue State". Vote your conscience, that is why people voted for you to occupy that office. If Castle had held on to the seat, then the Democrats would simply have another de facto vote that they could count on in a clutch situation. Bipartisan to a Democrat simply means that the RINOs agree with them. Odd how the Democrats are never accused of voting lock-step on issues...

Get on with it, Christine. Fellow Gen-X'er. Lets show the country what a person of principles is capable of doing in office.

--Zavost

Leadership, Character, and Virtue

This past week I had some interesting discussions with some acquaintances and a recurring theme kept coming up about leadership, trust, honesty, integrity, and so on. We were talking about how you can recognize positive traits in people during interviews to minimize the possibility of hiring a smooth-talking, literate loser.

Politics was brought up at times, others it was specific examples of people we knew or had met in the past. For this discussion from the Stoa, I'm just unburdening myself of a few points that I made that I feel bear repeating, if even into my personal journal.

From time to time, I encountered confusion about what some of the words actually meant and how they were supposed to be applied. Some second-level thinking was needed to get behind the facade and get to the meat of what we were supposed to be talking about.

When a corporation, small business, or even voter is seeking to hire or elect a good person for a position, they are usually looking for similar traits in people. They want to know that they are first competent, then trustworthy, then a good member of the team. We can quibble on the order, but the gist of this is all the same. If you are hiring someone to look after and to grow a multi-million (or billion) dollar company, you want to ensure that they know how to grow money and reduce expenses. You also want to make sure that they will follow the rules and the law in the way they go about their work (ethics). Of course, you also what to know that you can trust what they are saying, since you have your own job to perform.

This a refrain that I once heard the great Rush Limbaugh utter back in the 90's when he was talking about then-President Bill Clinton. I was too distracted at the time to think about it, but he spoke a truth that at hung with me since. He said that, "Leadership descends from character". In general I think that this is an accurate statement. Though over the years since then, as I grew older and studied Stoicism I had to reject that statement only because I felt it used the wrong word. Leadership descends from Virtue.

For years I struggled with how someone like a Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or Barak Obama can so willingly inflict policies on the country that force us into a declining cultural condition. Then, at some point, it came to me that a person's character can be either good or bad, depending on the subjective point of view. To all the frothing lunatics that willing follow a Nancy Pelosi or a Barak Obama, the character of these individuals in impeccable. From my point of view they are wasting good, breathable air. Those that agree with Pelosi simply have different values and beliefs then I. Good and bad are rather subjective...until you look at method, mode, and motive. Things get clearer there and begin to cross deeply into my thoughts on Virtue.

A good, quick definition of virtue looks like this: "Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή "arete") is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being." The Greeks were brilliant and their language reflected their desire to get things not just right, but exactly right. Morality by its definition is "good". Amorality is "bad". We are seeking someone who will make money for us, not embezzle it. If a person's character allows them to use taxpayer money to hire fifty body guards and drive a fleet of Cadillac Escalades around is not practicing a moral virtue, Mr. Former Detroit Mayor. A Speaker that purchases her a private jet to fly back and forth from San Francisco every week, even though there have been Speakers in the past from the west coast who got by on less, is not practicing fiduciary restraint. This person, though wealthy enough on their own to operate this craft every week still permits the taxpayer to pay for this jet and its operation. Not a virtuous act. Virtue is not subjective to the observer. It is an absolute truth. Killing someone for fun is amoral. Killing someone in self-defense is not. War is amoral by nature, but serving humanity by keeping liberty alive is a moral act.

Seeking someone of good character is simply not good enough. They must be able to demonstrate Virtue. Leadership descends from Virtue. Honesty is a Virtue. Purchasing real estate in a desert and then having it rezoned under your board for a profitable re-sale is not virtuous, Mr. Reid. Owning a multi-million dollar compound while making a very low six-figure income and not explaining how you happened to come by the compound is not virtuous, Mr. Biden. Likewise, hiring a person to run a business who simply drives the share price up for a year-end bonus is not the right CEO either.

Since I brought up the CEO, I'll talk about them in a little more detail. In this new(er) climate of paying an executive a multiple of their lowest payed employee (does not work well in Japan, so lets bring it here) would drive out the good CEOs and send them to over-seas competition. All that Socialist crap plays well in the media but not outside the land of "make believe". For years CEOs have had compensation tied to stock performance as a bonus on top of their base salary, which may actually be a 20:1 multiple of their entry level folks. A CEO that wants to earn $20,000,000 per year on a $250,000 salary will be focused on getting their stocks to perform. A virtuous CEO will make the company stronger and more competitive; more effective. One without virtue will manipulate the books, play with the market, drop hints in speeches (insider trading) and suck up to the politicians in power: yes, I'm talking to you Mr. Immelt. Simply "playing by the rules" is not good enough. You have to do the right thing, regardless of whether anyone is watching or even if your pay will suffer. You are either working for the good of a company, its shareholders, its employees, and its customers, or you are simply trying to get rich. Getting rich is a noble pursuit, as long as it is done virtuously: no, I AM NOT talking to you Mr. Soros. If you are manipulating stock for your own enrichment, you are not working at my company.

From the viewpoints of a Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid, and a President Obama, they feel that they are doing the right thing, perhaps, by trying to turn the United States into a Socialist Utopia. My wife feels they are in it only for money and power. She is usually right about these things...but I digress from my esoteric points. They can not get the electorate to go along with them normally, so they call them "stupid, religious, and overly patriotic". This is done to demean their opposition so that they can feel better about bending, braking, or otherwise ignoring the Constitution, Federal case law, and cultural customs in order to make their vision of the United States the only vision of the United States. This is NOT virtuous at all. They may tip the newspaper boy (what are these "newspapers" of which you speak) for Christmas (oops, I mean MLK day), be good fathers and mothers at home, but they are amoral and demonstrating vice when they are entrusted with the vital responsibilities of government.

I'm sure your feet and buttock are hurting at the base of the Stoa from such an esoteric discussion, but I do feel better. Over the years it bugged me how we could keep electing people who are so OBVIOUSLY deficient in both character and virtues to office, election after election. People simply do not recognize the semantic differences between character and virtue. They think that just because Obama is black (well, half black) that he is owed the position. That his election will somehow expunge our national guilt over slavery, or that he will be a moderate are simply not using their critical thinking skills. Look back at my posting on the educational system and this will be clearer to all of you about why people can not think empirically any longer.

Leadership does descend from Character, however, the character must be measured against virtue.

The Stoa is free for the next teacher. Use it well

Cogito ergo sum

I am often times exasperated with what the schools are tying to push onto our kids. The secondary schools are nothing more than indoctrination camps, pure and simple.

When my parents were in the public school system, they had rigorous standards to meet and were more advanced in every subject then I was at a similar age and level of development. They were educated by the aging Missionary Generation and the GI generation folks. I was educated by the very last of the GI generation and the youngish Boomers. My children are being educated by aging Boomers and compliant Gen-Xer's with a smattering of hippy Millenials. With the new school season upon us, I am not looking forward to spending my nights making sure that historical gaps are filled, historical context is added, explanations of why it rains, why is the sky blue, and that all sentences must be ended with a period (that one is for my 11 year old son who is still working on this).

The other day, my son complained to me that most of what I make him learn at night (yes, even in the summer time) has no relevance with what they are learning in school. What he is really doing is blaming the school rather than his work ethic. However, he correct to an extent. Here is what is on my chest today and this is what will come from the Stoa as well.

In my parent's time, students were taught, mostly, by rote memorization. They knew their math tables backwards and forwards. They knew and understood sentence structure, syntax and grammar. They could name all 48 States (and then the two new ones in 1959) plus their capitals. Sometimes, they would have to list the states and their capitals by alphabetical order, sometimes even in reverse order. Tedious, you bet, but they KNEW them. Knew them cold and can still recite them all these years later. My education was haphazard to say the least. I had a mixture of the Old Guard and the "new" everything. I was not taught phonics because it was thought to stifle creativity. I was not taught syntax and grammar. I was taught "new math" whereby in the last week of school I was still answering questions from chapter one and they "built" on new topics each week/month. All this did was slow down my rate of learning, and what I did learn was not deep enough to get anything better than a general grasp of what it was about, no time for mastery or deeper contemplation. Those Old Guard teachers I remember were beaten down by the new system and were just marking time for retirement. My loss. Most of my education is "self-taught". I have a vast number of books that go back more than 100 years, sometimes before the Progressive movement of the early 20th century. I have school books from the 1880's with subjects such as grammar, rhetoric (you may have to look that word up), and religion. Oh, yes, religion was a big part of our public education in the 19th century. I must thank my Grandmother for allowing me to take a share of the family library when she moved into a smaller home after the death of my grandfather back in 1979. That was the seed that helped me to compare what is in books today vs the 19th and early 20th centuries. Context. I had to teach myself nearly everything because I was so woefully unprepared when I graduated from High School. Don't even get me started about my first year of college.

My children are getting the full effects of this liberal progressive mind-wipe that is called public education. They are taught about the biosphere, the food web (it is not even a chain anymore, I guess), environmentalism, a skewed history, and social activism. Their grasp of history is embarrassing. Reading through their textbooks is like skipping through a book and re-writing history in such a way that you feel that that the United States is responsible for every evil in the world. Picking and sorting through actual history to attempt to prove their points. Shoving it at children who are not capable of critical thinking and simply store the data away for a test. My children are learning two versions of history and political science. There is the school lessons and then the real history. I untwist the context that school offers and explain how things let up to certain events and what happened afterwards (the unintended consequences).

What I'm working towards here is trying to give my children some depth and the tools to think for themselves. My daughter is a bright one. She is "self-teaching" herself without me. Makes a father proud. She regularly researches items and topics that she feels are connected to the back story of a historical event and then discusses those items with me. She is drawing conclusions and then forming a position that can be defended logically. There have been times where she has reminded me of a fact that I had forgotten that forced me to alter my positions. Yes, very proud of her.

Then this leads me to my discussion with my son the other day. Again, he was complaining that I am holding him to a standard beyond that of the school. He gets mostly A's with a few B's (a C in music) and is wondering why his mother and I stay on him (her school system is still like that of my parents' system and she frequently rubs my nose in this point). I attempted to explain to him that getting an A in the subjects they are teaching is relatively meaningless. They are supposed to be grading his comprehension and mastery of progressively more difficult subjects of knowledge. The fact that he has the penmanship of a dying chicken, the spelling of a six year old, and the attention span of a newt means that the school is failing him. He is a very bright boy and I will not let a good mind go to waste. The schools have gone through a long decline of "catering to the lowest denominator" and that if he is getting an "A", then that simply means that he is in the upper third of the class (grade inflation and all that). I had to describe to him what the term "denominator" meant when he was several weeks into studying fractions since the teacher did not feel it an important term to know.

Think back to what Universities used to be. In the late 18th century, they were only for the rich and influential. In the 19th century, they were still for the privileged, though more and more individuals were able to get into them with the rising wealth of the middle class. They were places of rigorous, and I mean rigorous study. If you read the biographies of people from that time you will note the dates of their accomplishments. Climbed such and such place, swam this or that channel, worked in the family business and invented this or that. When you see their university years, it is simply a four year chunk of time that is blank, other than what they did in and for the university (some notable exceptions like Theodore Roosevelt). The point is, they did nothing else but study their butts off, for four straight years, night and day. In secondary school, it was a given that you had mastered the elements of learning. You had learned your math tables, your grammar, your history, your Latin, all the facts dates and figures that give depth to an educated person. Remember, often times people were too busy farming or working to support large families and were unable to complete their secondary schooling. The University was where one learned how to think. Learned how to problem solve. Learned how to LEARN. Most importantly, they learned how to think for themselves and to question everything around them.

The Boomers resented the way they were oppressed in school and sought to lighten thing up a bit and aim for "happy and self-actualized individuals". Too much pressure, too many rules, and too much emphasis on results. The Progressive movement made a resounding comeback with this generation. They knocked God out of the classroom, pushed the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance out as well. God and country have to be eradicated if the Progressive movement is to gain ultimate victory. If one believes in God, then one believes in an absolute right and wrong. If one believes that something is wrong, then it is to be avoided. This ultimately leads to groups of people telling others how to think and be held to a higher standard. Patriotism brings about a belief that your nation or country is somehow singled out for greatness. The concept of Trans-Nationalism is anathema to our Constitutional Republic. So we must eliminate the support of the Flag by burning and defacing the principles upon which we were founded. Self inflicted generational amnesia. The young Americans of today must think in terms of global participation and not the simple nation-state. The Pledge of Allegiance is dangerous and even offensive (not) to the vast number of immigrants in our country. So children, my daughter included, are not permitted to pray during the 9/11 remembrances, there is no flag in their classroom to pledge their patriotism, and there are no pictures of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln to stare at when they are bored.

Hitler knew that you had to grab the children and teach them. Their take over of the nation's collective philosophy would be cemented with them, not the extermination of their parents. Stalin (Lenin) and Mao worked the same angles. The Progressives have done the same things here by dumbing down the educational standards so that our children will simply accept the drivel that is being shoveled at them. They think there is nothing wrong with swapping out light bulbs or forcing people to carry health insurance. They think that forced redistribution of wealth is FAIR and that to complain about it is to place you under suspicion. All of this has happened in my lifetime. I am now old enough to have seen what things were like just before me and now to see what they are doing today.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Just because you are aware of yourself does not make you an individual thinker. Think on that and the consequences of failing to teach our young how to think for themselves.

The Stoa is now empty, please teach responsibly.

--Zavost