Aspiring to Not Expire with the Expiring Tax-Cuts

Holly tax-rate Tax-man! The Bush-era tax-cuts are going to expire unless Congress does something.

We can conclude from this that even in Congress the laws of physics hold despite their wishes, desires and efforts in hoping that they don’t. There are cause and effect relationships in the actions or the in-actions that Congress takes, and time mores forward in its unrelenting and uni-directional passage into the future. And the expiration of the tax-cuts that expire on January 1^st will happen if Congress doesn’t explicitly act to re-create or restructure them.

But just because the current law expires and the tax-rates will rise doesn’t mean that the consequences are fixed and unalterable. The expiration date is a point in time on which the conditions are set to change the rules, but they are not violating any physical laws. Light will still travel at a constant speed in the universe. The hardships that the tax-rates would impose are only required to happen if Congress does nothing. Yes, Congress usually does nothing, at least nothing useful and nothing that serves the nation; but in this case Congress has to do something if they are correct that increase in taxes will be more harmful to the economy than taking some steps to mitigate that situation.

Now as long as we are going to expect Congress to act to some advantageous purpose for the country, we might as well expect Congress to act intelligently. It is a lot to expect, but with some help Congress might be able to react in a manner that will at least feign intelligence.

If the tax-rates are allowed to rise and go into effect on January 2^nd 2013, the impact to tax-payers is still capable of being adjusted. Congress could pass a tax-rate bill on January 7^th that reduced taxes to levels lower than they had been, to the same level as they were, or somewhere else. Net result is that tax-payers don’t have to be punished because Congress couldn’t get their job done.

So why can’t Congress just avoid the expiration boogey-man issue altogether and pass the same bill before the deadline? Isn’t this the simple solution? Well, no actually it’s not. To pass a bill that will pass before the deadline requires that compromises be made between the parties; and to some this is a dirty word. So before hand the leaders are afraid of their backers being unhappy with Congress acting responsibly. Because their electorate is no more intelligent than Congress itself is.

It’s much easier to wait for the current law to expire, create a ‘now you have the actual problem’ condition and reacting to the problem rather than just to the threat. Now to an intelligent person this is a stupid strategy, but to Congress this is one of the smartest things that they can deal with. What politician would have a problem promoting how they championed the restoration of a new tax-cut policy once the public is actually exposed to the taxes that they so don’t want to have to pay. Additionally, those in Congress who refuse to allow any accommodation to higher rates for any segment of the public do not have any ground to stand on once the higher rates are a fait accompli.

How do you avoid the fiscal cliff? Simple, you turn it into step toward your strategic objective.

Fiscal Cliff for Idiots (Think Congress Here)

The politicians are franticly seeking a path for avoiding the ‘fiscal cliff’ so that they can be the saviors of the nation. Republicans are beginning to explain how they are willing to consider abandoning their pledge against any new taxes in the context of thinking about raising the tax-rates as being their duty and responsibility to the nation and the public. Democrats are making their case for having to address changes to the entitlement programs that are a major factor in America’s spending deficit. The entitlement programs include not only Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; but also the Defense Department budget.

The politicians are ranting and raving about the impending disaster, catastrophe and Armageddon that will surely destroy the economic recovery, plunge the nation into a recession and produce wide-spread misery and suffering across the nation. Yes they are up to their old tricks, preparing the masses for the political brinksmanship that they will tout simultaneously as both a partisan and bi-partisan victory that they managed to accomplish to save us all.

 Now here’s the part that the politicians aren’t promoting. The fiscal cliff was the bi-partisan agreement reached last year in order to prevent the doom and gloom scenario that we were all collectively facing. And by the way the financial world has indicated that the prior cliff that the politicians caused because well their just incompetent cost the country even more in interest charges due to their inability to compromise on a good solution. The politicians aren’t explaining that this is a crisis of their own making and is a direct result of their not finding solutions to the obvious problems because their ‘principles’ and ‘values’ get in the way. In other words, they can’t do their jobs because they have to adhere to some strict code that is at odds with their duty and responsibility to the country and the people.

So let’s examine one of the ‘principles’ that prevents success: no increase in tax rates (even for a small select group of citizens). Many of the Republicans took a pledge to not raise taxes as a central tenet of their political philosophy and commitment. Now some Republicans are explaining that they may have to terminate their commitment to their prior oath to this principle, for the good of the nation. Considerations of some limited increase in tax rates may be necessary to address the problems facing the country. This would all be reasonable if there wasn’t a flaw in the logic. Now perhaps they will claim and argue that there is no flaw, no error or self-denial at work here; but it’s not what they think or claim at this point, it’s what you think.

In 2011, Congress passed the Sequestration bill that committed Congress to reduce the 2013 budget if they don’t come up with a plan to replace the $900 billion in cuts with which they threatened themselves. Now are approaching the deadline that will evoke the Sequestration consequences because Congress is demonstrating their inability to do their jobs. So the ‘Bush era’ tax-cuts will expire and tax rates will rise across the board for everyone in 2013. Let’s get this straight, Congress agreed to allow the tax-cuts to expire for everyone. So the difference between letting the current tax rate cuts expire and raising tax rates actively is that in one case the public will pay more in taxes and in the other the public would pay more in taxes. This distinction is a very important and significant difference indeed.

So Republican Congressmen/women voted on a bill that would not raise tax rates it would only allow tax-cuts to expire. How exactly do you think they can show the financial difference, or the difference in costs to the tax payer, or the difference in its impacts on the economy? Wasn’t Sequestration a vote for raising taxes? I am not saying it wasn’t for a good reason or that it’s not something that they shouldn’t have done; but how is it not doing the very thing that supposedly they would not do? I suppose that they perhaps made a mistake and in the spur of the moment they thought first about the needs of the country before they thought about their party’s political rhetoric.

So now we have tax rates about to rise, and Congress is desperately looking for a solution that doesn’t make them have to accept the consequences of the unthinkable agreement that they made.

Tomorrow, a simple view of how easy it is to deal with this particular problem.

Moderator-In-Chief

The criticisms that the moderators in the presidential debates are not doing their jobs in an appropriate manner are absolutely correct; however the criticisms are also absolutely wrong. Now don’t be confused; this is not a logic problem, a final exam question on a philosophy final or some thorny conundrum intended to challenge your intellect. It is a critique of those who have the presumption to speak on behalf of the public’s interests. This is an assay on the quality and grade of those who are without any basis for representing the public and without any measureable insight into what would benefit the public. Their views are that the moderator is there to be uninvolved and merely ask the questions, monitor the equality of time between the candidates and provide some limited supervision that the candidates follow the rules. This may be what the candidates and the parties view as the role that they want for the moderator, but it isn’t what is good for the public. This limited, lame and lackluster perspective doesn’t even attempt to see the value, the potential and the opportunity that a moderator who served the public interests could provide.

What the public needs, what the public deserves and what the public should demand of “their” moderator is far more than these seekers who want to be the “servant of the people” will like or find comfortable. However, how comfortable do you think I care they are with the questions or the demands to which “my moderator” will hold them accountable?

The moderator should be prepared to not just ask the questions, but to assess and determine during the candidates response if they are even coming close to answering the question which more often than not they rarely do. In these circumstances the moderator should stop the candidates’s rambling and direct them to answering the question asked. If the answer is not forthcoming the moderator should terminate the candidate’s response period and move on the next item or candidate if they haven’t had a chance to not answer the question also.

If the moderator determines that the answer was non-substantive, they would be expected to follow-up with a restatement of the question along the lines of “Could you perhaps provide something of substance that would inform the public as you prior answer did not? A simple no would be adequate if you can’t.” The mode of moderating provides the means for the public to receive information related to what they are interested in relative to the questions, rather than what the candidates are interested in telling the public.

So rather than constraining and limiting the role of the moderator, their role should be strengthened and broadened to allow them to make the debates more focused on increasing the information that the public would benefit from obtaining. We have allowed the debates to become just another reality show, a scripted show and tell, and an exercise in evasion and confusion. You would think that candidates for the presidency would themselves demand a higher standard, an opportunity to lead, and a venue for enlightening their path to the future; but oddly the contenders for the ‘leader of the free world’ position are willing to follow their uninspired advisors, their handlers and consultants on how not to be a leader.

Such debates might be more difficult to get the candidates to agree to, but then the moderator has been given an excellent solution to that problem by Clint Eastwood.

Debasing the Debates: Lowering the Bar

A plethora of stories have permeated the media over the last week about how both Democratic and Republican parties, pundits, and partisans have been lowering the ‘expectations’ for their favorite son. This political tactic is based on the premise that if the candidate doesn’t do well that their side will be able to point to the proffered expectation that no one expected them to do well. A second factor contributing to this ‘claim the low ground’ mentality is that if will create the impression that the candidate rose to the challenge and outdid themselves in whipping their opponent.

Now I don’t object to the implication the parties are presenting, that they think the American public are complete idiots and that this positioning is inherently consistent with the very notion of someone being a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. In part this acceptance of both parties’ attitudes is to some degree confirmed by the fact that about an equal proportion of the voters are registered Republicans and as Democrats; thus prone to believe idiotic things. But is it really something that a candidate’s supporters should be proclaiming and championing this level of competency about their standard bearer?

Shouldn’t the standard be that the candidate is a competent, capable and a candid communicator who can present their views and plans to the public in a compelling and informative manner? Shouldn’t the expectation that the candidate is someone who provides the public with a reason to decide that the candidate’s positions are well thought out, demonstrate an insight and understanding of the nation’s issues and problems, and who would inspire the public to support the efforts and sacrifices that will be required to achieve the vision and goals set before the voters? If the candidate cannot do this then perhaps it’s not the case that the candidate is not a good debater, but rather that this candidate is not a viable candidate for the presidency.

I suppose the politicians that the country has today are a reflection of the parties’ lower values and standards, of their focus on ideology over substance and intelligence, and of their conversion to a monetary theology of campaign funders over a belief in American values. If you were to ask yourself, “Would I want a President only equal to the level of politicians that we have in Congress or the states that we have today?”, would your answer be yes?

So when I hear the ‘voices of the parties’ touting how enfeebled and inept their man’s going to be, I think I don’t want them to be president. I start off with my radar tuned into looking for confirmation that they are not viable contenders, for mistakes that add more bricks on the moron side of the balance, and to determine why they are so wrong for this job. If they do something that appears to be good, I assume I must have missed something in their answer that negates that interpretation. Yes, we remain in the land of ‘choosing the least of the worst’.

If you can’t raise the bar, then you are just letting your opponent appear to be in the contest rather than showing that they should have just remained a spectator who should have been watching someone else more qualified.

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.