The Mislead Majority (or Why Everyone Misses the Issue)

Now that the primitive, reactionary, lizard-brain response to the latest Romney ‘place foot in mouth’ self-inflicted disclosure of his thought processes has revealed yet again that neither party knows what they are talking about, the media is possibly more clueless (as impossible as that would be given the significant nonexistence of intelligence in party die-hards), and the public is complacent and uninvolved in even attempting to think about the salient issue at the core of Romney’s “47%” faux pas. So yet again we have the bulk of the public attention span misdirected to nonsense, nuance, and nothing of import. All this off-point commotion directed at an important issue that is not being discussed meaningfully, because not one person has understood the right question or the enlightening answer that goes to the heart of Romney’s sentiment.

Now I have come to expect to be disappointed by Congress and politicians of any other stripe, and I have become immune to the debilitating insight shown by news entities, and I am confident in the public’s attention to the magician’s misdirecting movements while missing his picking of their pockets. So in an anti-Borgian attempt to fight for a futile endeavor to provide a view that has not surfaced from this gaff or from many preceding ‘sound-bites’ from all sides and in every conceivable context where America’s tax system and policies are supposedly discussed. The words you hear in these discussions would lead the casual observer to actually believe that someone is talking intelligently about taxes despite the fact that they are so far away from intelligent that we are dealing with the knowledge level found amongst rocks.

In opposition to that trend, I am presenting a puzzle for you to solve. It’s not a difficult problem, and it’s not going to require any complex knowledge or in fact any information that anyone who went through an American high-school would not have had explained to them.

Puzzle: Imagine two Americans, one “L” who earns $25,000 per year and the other “M” who earns $1,000,000 per year. Both, oddly enough, have equivalent deductions. As a result of these deductions, “L” owes $0 in taxes by the federal tax table. Now consider “M”, after working about 6.5 days “M” will have earned the same $25,000 as “L” did for the entire year. How much tax does “M” owe the IRS for that same $25,000?

Once you have figured out the answer you are ready to answer the puzzle. The puzzle is: Who was treated unfairly?

Do not read any further unless you have your answer, when you’re ready did you arrive at: Neither?

They were treated identically. The American tax system does not tax anyone at a higher or lower rate given comparable applicable tax situations. For the first $25,000 earned each party owes exactly the same tax liability. Each was given the same government “hand-outs” and “entitlements”. Why then are both Republican and Democratic leaders unable to understand this? If they are going to take a position on an issue, you would think that they would at least try to be informed about the issue.

American Intelligence Test #15: How To Create Jobs?

What with it being Presidential campaign season and with both parties issuing loud and frequent assertions that they will create jobs while their opponents will eliminate or cause jobs to decline, now is an appropriate time to put another American Intelligence test to the test. You don’t have to be afraid to take the test for fear of failing, since you can easily deceive yourself and no one will know. Besides the usual dissembling about what you have thought through is no more detrimental here than in other areas of life. On the upside taking the test does provide an opportunity for self-discovery and broadening the scope of your thinking. Not that that is necessarily a good thing if you’re an eager partisan of either party.

Just to irritate you the correct answers are provided below, but don’t cheat getting the answer right is of no value whatsoever if you haven’t gotten then based on your own cranial processing power.

Engage the grey-matter and begin the trial by a jury of your own imagination.

Question 1: Which of the following would the most capable of creating more jobs?

                A. Obama   B. Romney   C. Both   D. Neither

Question 2: Which of the following are essential to creating jobs?

                A. Low taxes   B. Minimal regulation   C. Infrastructure Investment
                D. Government spending   E. None of these

Question 3: Which of the following are essential to creating jobs?

                A. Customers   B. Employees   C. Resources   D. Profits   E. None of these

Question 4: Which of the following creates the most wealth?

                A. A wealthy upper-income group that provides investment capital
                B. Large private sector job base and small public sector job base
                C. Broad and affluent middle class income levels
                D. Unregulated free-market economy
                E. None of these

Question 5: Which of the following suppress the creation of jobs?

                A. Government spending
                B. High cost of healthcare
                C. High national debt
                D. Welfare programs
                E. None of these

Now that was painless, right? Of course that was painless; it didn’t require you to confront any conflict between your view of the world and reality. That part comes when you don’t like the answers. The answers are:

Q 1 = D;  Q 2 = E;  Q 3 = A, B, C, D;  Q 4 = C;  Q 5 = E

Given you are unsatisfied with these answers, you should take comfort with your own view as long as you can explain what the physics is that links your answer to the creation of jobs. If you can’t you are in the realm of well – “I believe that this works, but I don’t know that it works or how it works.” On the bright side, you might be qualified to be a politician.

Are You Better Off Now? How To Answer A Simple Question

I was surprised when I heard the question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? I was surprised that the Republicans asked it. I was surprised that the Democrats had such a hard time answering it. I was surprised at how inept the media was at comprehending the potential of the question. I was surprised at how the public didn’t sense the importance of the question; particularly with regard to how powerful it could be if even remotely understood correctly.

I wasn’t really surprised; surprise would be if even one of these groups did something that wasn’t inept. So with the question out there and being bantered about in the media, and used by both parties as a bludgeon trying to hammer out a meaning that suits their purpose: one offensively and one defensively.

What then is the answer to this question?

The answer is – Noooo, I can’t tell you that. How could you learn if someone just gave you the answer? It’s not the American way to be given things. You’re supposed to earn them for yourself. Besides the value comes from what it takes to attain something. So here are hints to the obvious that lead any thinking person to the right answer.

First, think of the question in the context of a scientific or engineering problem, or if that’s not your bailiwick then perhaps as a business-person, a financier, a manager or a production worker with regards to how you figure out what is going to happen next? That should be pretty simple, we do it all the time. We plan our day, our week, our year, our career, our lifetime. Planning is just part of being alive. Humans are just more active and engaged in planning in more areas of their life than your run of the mill lab rat. Thus one dimension required for properly answering the question is to set the question as a planning exercise and not answering it with just an emotional response to your fears and anxieties.

Second, the question contains within itself a comparison that not the one that everyone see immediately. So you have to see deeper into the question and ask what you are comparing, what ruler you are using to gauge your measurement, and against what situation and conditions applies to the assessment.

And the third hint is to define whether you get the same answer for yourself, your friends and associates, other people in your state and region, and the people across the country as a whole.

Given the hints you should now be ready to see the hazard in asking the question. The Republicans should have considered these facts prior to using this as a political theme, if they think they did and the assessed the intellect of the public correctly then it may be a winning move; if they did not it could be the card played that loses the hand. The Democrats should be assessing the question and responding with an assessment that either supports or guides their strategy; haven’t seen an evidence of that yet. And the media should be using the question to put political contenders and supporters of either stripe under the bright light of being capable of dealing with much better phrased questions then they are to date.

The public needs to engage in their individual assessments to determine what it informs them about the qualifications of each side.

The last thing you should know is that the answer is neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’ but requires much more than that to answer it. If you think it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no’ then you must be a registered party member.