All Over The Place

All Over The Place was Originally Posted on February 2, 2012 by lavarock

I am afraid that many people don’t understand the way things work. Some people do
but are extremists. Let’s look at an example. You want to buy an item and the
company selling it wants you to have it cheaper and you want it cheaper. Let’s use
10% as an example. There are two ways they can easily do that.

The first way is to drop the price by 10%. There is little overhead for anyone if
this is his or her chosen solution. They change a sign or two or change the price in the
shopping cart. They sell more items and each person gets 10% off. Seems simple
enough.

Then there is the solution that has you pay full price but offers a rebate. The
company gets the full price; you get the product and a receipt. You might have to
rip off a bit of the box and copy the receipt and send in the items via mail. If it
is this solution, you have to prove that you are due the rebate and often times are
forced to apply a second time because, well, the company lost your documentation or
whatever.

In the second example, the rebate, there are hoops and rules and manpower and
man-hours being wasted. There are procedures and hurdles and oftentimes the company
hopes that people just won’t bother.

This seems to me to be the exact same thing as our government. We are forced to pay
extra money, which they use and abuse as they see fit, then make us go trough hoops
to get some back. There are massive inequalities and inefficiencies in filtering
money through a government. Yet that is how we do it.

So when people talk about how to fix the economy, my first thought is NOT to throw
more money at it, rather look to make it more efficient. There are those who say
that will take time and in the meantime we need to cough up more money. HUH?

Recently, Honolulu came up with a smart phone app that allows people to report
potholes and streetlight problems from their phone. It uses GPS and the camera
capability to document things and any citizen who wishes can use it. Computers, who
would have thought? According to the news report I saw, a phone call to the
telephone number to report these things costs $6 each to have a human involved. It
is pennies for the entry to be made via smart phone.

I support a flat tax or a sales tax or some other type of tax that begins to get
lawyers and a massive government involvement out of the collection. I personally feel
that if all men are “created” equal, why do we treat them unequally at tax time? We
used to tax the people who made lots of money at what, 95%? We then complained that
those millionaires and billionaires hid their money and invested off shores to try
to not pay their fair share of taxes. Fair share? Huh?

Imagine if we could find an easy way that everyone was taxed fairly (and I mean
evenly) without having to have a massive tax structure behind it. Imagine how much
money is wasted on all those tax lawyers and tax consultants and tax rules and
lawyers figuring out loopholes and politicians creating exclusions so their
constituents get a better deal. Imagine just saving money by not having to file
taxes every year. I’m not saying that we don’t pay taxes, but there has to be a more
efficient way to collect them that the complete idiotic way we do it now. Only a
government could come up with the convolution we have. We must find a better way.

So we try to fund this mess by one of two ways. We try to cut the inefficiency or
raise money by taxing the people who have lots of money. The idea is to go after
people who have money and don’t need it I guess. Let’s create a class of people we
call rich and ding them. I remember a few lines from I think one of the “Oh God”
movies starring George Burns. It went along these lines. Why is there evil and the
reply was, without evil we would not have good. Without night we would not have day.

So unless we have “the rich” we can’t have “the poor”. We would have people in
the long line of “how much money they have”. With a God and a Devil we can pit them
against each other. Without those extremes we just quietly go about our business.

Isn’t that what our politicians are doing to us? We have pitted the rich against the
poor. The haves against the have-nots?

I question that we have a right to have guarantees in life. I agree that our country
was founded on the idea that we have a right to Life, Liberty and a PURSUIT of
happiness. It did not guarantee happiness by itself.

Why should everyone be afforded healthcare? Why should everyone be guaranteed a rate
of pay for a job. These ideas border on socialism don’t they?

Although there are many forms of socialism, let’s look to Wikipedia for a somewhat
balanced view of one version of socialism:

Socialists generally argue that capitalism concentrates power and wealth within a
small segment of society that controls the means of production and derives its
wealth through a system of exploitation. This creates a stratified society based on
unequal social relations that fails to provide equal opportunities for every
individual to maximize their potential, and does not utilize available technology
and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public, and focuses
on satisfying market-induced wants as opposed to human needs.[citation needed]
Socialists argue that socialism would allow for wealth to be distributed based on
how much one contributes to society, as opposed to how much capital one holds.

Doesn’t this point toward those evil companies and owners who make huge profits
while smaller companies and employees are discarded like old trash. The rich get
richer and the poor get poorer? I’m not saying that some large companies are not
evil, but come on, not every company is like that. Yes, some companies sent jobs
offshore, but wasn’t that to maximize profits? Those profits being eroded by taxes
that would not have to be paid if their workers were overseas?

If we can find a way to reduce costs and spread equality across the board, I think
we can make it better for all. If someone wants to support Public Radio or TV fine,
but what about those who don’t listen. Do they need to support it? In the 1970’s and
1980’s, the majority of NPR funding came from the Federal Government. That means YOU and I paid! Nobody asked me, they just took my money and funded it. Then steps were taken to shift the financial funding to private organizations. Seems they are still
in business and if I want to listen, I am encouraged to help fund it. I may also
tend to support corporate sponsors like McDonalds, whose Roy Kroc donated $225
million in 2003.

Don’t get me wrong, as I DO listen to NPR and in past years have donated and
supported it. I also helped at a local Public TV station for over 12 years with
fundraising and so on. I just hate having my politicians decide on every item of my
life.

I am charged as being a Republican by my Democratic friends, yet I am more centrist in my
views. We need some laws and some decisions made for us. We do not need everything
we do decided for us. We need government, but not a giant one. We can make it
smaller and more efficient without tearing down the country. We don’t need to keep
throwing money at a problem to try to solve it or have it continue until we can fix
it. There are fixes we can put in place right away.

If we have to have Medicare, then find ways to keep it from being abused as it is.
If we have unemployment compensation, then make sure we are not throwing money down a hole. It is very enticing to get money for doing nothing and wanting that check to
continue.

I am not going to get into heated debates about government and whether I am right or
wrong. I just decided that I wanted to put my feelings out there so that people see
where I stand and why. I don’t have many of the answers but I do try to find
solutions instead of just saying that changing things won’t work. People are very
fast to shoot down an idea because they can’t see how it would work. When I told
people I was moving to Hawaii I got 4 common responses. 1) You can’t own land in
Hawaii. I saw it on TV. 2) You won’t like it there. 3) It is too expensive. My
friends took a vacation there. 4) You will go island happy.

All four of those were completely wrong. People had no clue and were not willing to
look to see what the real truth was. They just knew that THEY could not imagine
moving 1/4 way around the world and thus, if they didn’t think the idea had merit,
it must be wrong.

My coffee organization buys ads in the local newspaper telling people that if they
buy a blend of our coffee it is not pure, may not have the taste the buyer is
looking for and that they most often will be disappointed. I agree with the idea of
telling the consumers but here is my problem. Who are they telling? The local paper
is read by, well, locals. Those locals may have their very own coffee trees and know
the difference. They are not fooled by a blend. It is the visitors who need to be
told, and how many visitors are reading the local paper? It makes sense that if we
are to buy ads, we have a way to see if they are effective and track readership vs.
sales. We do not. We throw money at a problem without determining if we are getting
our moneys worth. If we want to make a change in how we do things, decide upon a few
ways to do the item and track which works better. Then evaluate and enhance the one
that is working. It may not be a giant money maker, but at least we know we are
heading in the right direction.

I try to find novel solutions to problems. Perhaps I over think some solutions but
at least I try to find solutions that have not been proposed.

Anyway, this is my philosophy and who I am.