Hollywood Is Not All Leftist. "Hitchcock" Shines With Great Messages

The AMC show Breaking Bad has spawned an entire minor industry of writers great and small commenting on its greatness.  It is a great opportunity for the educated to show their knowledge of the history of Western culture, indirectly putting the show in context.  Breaking Bad does resemble a multi-year running of a Shakespeare tragedy.  Family underlies the entire series.  The not perfect Hank Schrader relies on the love and faithfulness of his family while the evil of Walter White embraces manipulating the love, support, sympathy, and faithfulness of his own.

In the wake of the national attention bestowed on television's golden age, the motion picture industry has taken a lot of heat.  Its creativity and storytelling has declined in relative, if not absolute, terms.

But it does still have the ability to tell a story.

The movie Hitchcock, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, has hit cable television.  This interpretation relies on two important themes, risk and marriage.

The film begins with Alfred Hitchcock finishing up North By Northwest and looking for something to do.  Its storyline hints at some vices, such as his fascination with his blonde stars, and his overindulgence in food and alcohol.    He also has noted the gradual drifting apart of his marriage with wife Alma.

Hitchcock finds his new project very quickly.  As studios seek to pigeonhole him as a spy thriller director (he is offered what could have been the first James Bond picture), the director searches for a project very different from his previous success.

Then the recently published novel Psycho crosses his desk.  Hitchcock immediately jumps on it and ignores the work of a man trying to wriggle into the life of his wife Alma.  The trouble comes when the studios reject funding what they assume will be a flop.  They do agree to distribute the film if Hitchcock can raise the money himself.

Which he does by taking a heavy mortgage on his home.  If Psycho's film version flopped, he faced financial ruin.  And therein lies the heroism of capitalism.  Believing in a product against the advice of others.  Risking security to make it happen.  Pouring hard work into a project to make it work.  The audience gets to see Hitchcock's pain, his fear, his uncertainty as the film runs into typical problems.

They also see a marriage under strain.  Attention given to Alma pays off when she spends more and more time with her friend Whit helping with his book.

In the movie, Psycho is saved when Alma sees what Whit actually is, a cad, and puts more effort into her usual collaboration with her husband.  While the film fell flat with Hitchcock alone, the partners and spouses together make it one of the all time greats.

Rarely do the two great themes of modern conservatism, the value of family and capitalism, get intertwined as they do in this film.

As for Hopkins, he once again shows why he is one of the great actors of his time.  I had to actually click info to prove to my teenage son that he was seeing Hopkins.   As a special treat, on another channel, Silence of the Lambs came on directly after we finished watching Hitchcock.  Seeing one after the other shows the range of this great man.

As for Hitchcock the movie, definitely see it.  No beautiful young people in sexual situations or explosions, but it is an honestly good story that is pretty well told.

Commercializing Welcome Centers, Rest Areas Could Ease WVDOH Financial Burden

Forty some odd years ago NASA realized that a ball point pen would not write in space. They worked on the problem and spent over a million dollars to make a ball point pen that would write in zero gravity.

They were successful and developed a beautiful pen at great taxpayer’s expense, but NASA solved the wrong problem. The problem was not to make a pen write in space, but to just “write” in space. The Russians realized that they only needed to write in space, not use a ball point pen and simply used a five cent pencil instead of wasting a million dollars. The lesson is the first thing you must do to be successful in solving a problem is make sure you have identified the true problem.

At the end of November the amount of expected revenue for the West Virginia highway fund was down $14.6 million, mostly because of the poor economy. Immediately there was talk out of Charleston about raising taxes, but the tax rate is not the real problem. The real problem is the rising cost and reduced revenue. Until these problems are solved, the state’s Department of Highways will continue to have problems even in good economic times. The state must get creative on generating additional revenue and cutting cost.

There are 22 welcome centers and rest areas run by the WVDOH. Each costs approximately $500,000 a year in annual maintenance for a total of $11 million dollars. Two of these on the West Virginia Turnpike have a Federal exemption to allow them to be commercialized, which is pretty common on toll roads. However they also occur in a few other places on non-Toll Road Interstates, such as I-95 north of Baltimore, MD.

Commercialization of West Virginia’s other twenty rest areas and welcome centers could provide a partial solution to the WVDOH funding problems. As these are leased to private companies then a $10 million drain on the WVDOH would disappear as responsibility for the maintenance would shift from the state to the private companies. There would also be a revenue stream generated from the lease agreements. A drain on the state highway fund would be turned into revenue generation, all without putting any additional burden on the taxpayers.

There would also be employment benefits for the state. Each rest area at a minimum would end up with a fast food restaurant and a convenience store/gas station. The average fast food chain restaurant employs about 60 persons and the convenience store 10 persons. This would generate approximately 1,400 private sector jobs across the state from entry level fry cooks to well paid manager positions. As an example; if the two rest areas in Braxton County were commercialized in this way, the Braxton County unemployment rate could drop from 8.3% to 5.3% making it the lowest in the state.

The benefits do not stop at increased employment and reduced operating cost to the state. The free market approach also creates new tax revenue streams into the states coffers. The 1,400 new employees and the new businesses created will pay income taxes to the state. There will now be property taxes paid to the counties at the rest areas on the equipment installed where before there was none. Most important to WVDOH is the gasoline sold at the new filling stations will pay new taxes directly to the highway fund without raising taxes on struggling WV families.

In these hard economic times West Virginia must work to solve the correct problems and reduce the burden of taxes on all the people of the state in the process. We must look for new solutions to old problems and stop thinking the only solution is increasing taxes.

The Great Myth of the Capitalist Rape of West Virginia

The Democratic Party has gotten a great deal of mileage out of a myth.

West Virginians have a predisposition, due to their brand of Democratic thinking dating back to Andrew Jackson, to mistrust both Big Government and Big Business. They generally vote for whichever ideology seems least threatening to their liberties at the time. Republican opposition to Big Government makes sense nationally while Democratic opposition to Big Business helps Democrats locally.

Democrats in West Virginia look back to history to build their case against those that support capitalism. They cite corporate manipulations of law and culture to purchase millions of acres of land for timber, railroads, and coal, leaving the people with a pittance as a result. THIS, they say, proves the evil of capitalism!

Not so fast. All capitalists are businessmen, but not all businessmen are capitalists. Ronald Lewis, former West Virginia University professor and dean of regional economic historians, wrote in Transforming the Appalachian Countryside that many businessmen involved in industrial and extractive industries sought out the prestide of state sanction for their operations. In the 1870s and 80s Democratic party leaders such as Henry Gassaway Davis and Johnson Camden dominated the business and political affairs of the state.

A famous economist wrote harshly about the business monopolies assisted by the state, talking about "the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind." Was this Karl Marx? No. Frederick Engels? No. Some other vile Communist? No. This was Adam Smith, the first articulator of capitalism, who warned against the alliance of business and government.

Once again we have met the enemy and it is government. All West Virginians have to do is look back in their history, read Wealth of Nations and understand that the problems that occured had nothing to do with the capitalism that Democrats and Michael Moore attack. It has to do with lurking mercantilism, the alliance of some businessmen with the power of government. Build the same kind of wall between capital and business that the ACLU wants between church and state. That would have prevented so many of the economic ills faced now and a hundred years ago.

Make Mine Freedom (1948)

Environmental Protection Agency Study Shows Mankind Does Not Change Global Temperatures, But Don't Tell Anyone!

Michelle Malkin has spent a lot of time on her net publication discussing the increasing pressure on Environmental Protection Agency senior analyst Dr. Alan Carlin.

Apparently Dr. Carlin produced a study that shows that fluctuations in the ocean, not man produced carbon dioxide, affect global warming and cooling cycles. Add this to the very strong scientific evidence that the Earth's temperatures (as well as Mars) rise and fall in conjunction with solar activity.

Dr. Carlin heads the National Center for Environmental Economics under the EPA and is a career government civil servant. Of course his little neck of the federal government woods is about to be eliminated by executive action. In other words, Dr. Carlin contradicts the innumerable and scientifically useless correlation based studies and fake computer models that bolster legal attempts to raise our electric bills and destroy the coal industry. Therefore he must go.

Again, I am not saying that we should not try to reduce pollution. Capitalist nations have shown themselves to be most effective at reducing pollutants as opposed to Communist countries and other dictatorships. The free market punishes industrial polluters through publication of facts and figures. Gradually we have cut pollution in this country tremendously since the 1970s. We still have work to do, but we have come a long way. On the other hand, we must not sacrifice our standard of living for radical changes.

Radical changes, such as the president's goal to drive electric bills into the stratosphere, will be counterproductive. Part of the drop in pollution overall comes from decreased use of wood and coal burning stoves over the past century. If electric bills go up, people will return to wood and coal in large numbers. After all, many West Virginians can get that fuel from the very land they own by themselves.

Too many experts and studies contradict the anti-capitalist mantra of global warming. Obama's heavy handed ploy to drive out the architect of the latest study that points out his mistakes reveals how little confidence they have in their own science.

Blast from the Past: Mother Necessity

Blast from the Past: Dollars and Sense

Blast from the Past: This for that

Blast from the Past: Walkin on Wall Street

Socialism Made No Sense to Aristotle Either

This excerpt is from Aristotle's work The Politics written about 340 B.C. It describes that a system is much more fair when everyone pursues his self-interest. Aristotle also makes the correct point that a system without private property tends to have a dampening effect on benevolence and charity.

Should the citizens of the perfect state have their possessions in common or not? Three cases are possible: (1) the soil may be appropriated, but the produce may be thrown for consumption into the common stock; this is the practice of some nations. Or (2), the soil may be common, and may be cultivated in common, but the produce divided among individuals for their private use; this is a form of common property which is said to exist among certain barbarians. Or the soil and the produce may be alike common. When the farmers are not the owners, the case will be different and easier to deal with; but when they till the ground for themselves the question of ownership will give a world of trouble. If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. These are only some of the disadvantages which attend the community of property; the present arrangement, if improved as it might be by good customs and laws, would be far better.

Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business. And yet by reason of goodness, and in respect of use, 'Friends,' as the proverb says, "will have all things common." Even now there are traces. For, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use with them. Again, how immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own; for surely the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain, although selfishness is rightly censured. No one, when men have all things in common, will any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality consists in the use which is made of property. Such legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause---the wickedness of human nature.

In confusion there is profit

In the movie Operation Petticoat there is a great line that holds true in today’s troubled economy. When Lt. Com. Sherman (played by Cary Grant) asks where his supply officer, Lt. JG Holden (played by Tony Curtis), is during an air raid the commander is told, “When the air raid started they took off. All he said was, ‘in confusion there is profit.’” It is play on Rudyard Kipling who once reasoned that it was a good thing to keep one's head while all around were losing theirs. Right now across the country the Federal Government and State Governments are loosing their heads over the economy but if West Virginia’s government keeps its head, then we as a state can profit from it.

The way for West Virginia to take initiative is simple. The same bad economic policies out of Charleston that hurt us in good times hurt us in bad times as well and we must change those.

Two periods of strong economic growth stand out in recent American history the one started by John F. Kennedy in the 1960’s and the one started by Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s. Both have a common thread, both Presidents cut the tax rates which put more money in the hands of the people and businesses. This allowed people to spend more money on good and services spurring economic growth and the businesses used the additional money to expand operations providing those goods and services. In other words growth breeds additional growth.

The additional growth comes because people naturally want to be rewarded for their work and when they work harder they receive additional reward. It is the American Way, it is Capitalism. The problem in West Virginia is when compared to other states our businesses and people receive less of a reward for their hard work because of our tax rates and structure. When the state takes a bigger chunk than other states it simply reduces the incentive to work hard in West Virginia or encourages people to move to another state. The state has created a ‘tax wedge’ against prosperity. The removal of this wedge will lead to people willing to take the risk of starting a business and creating new jobs in the state and in bad economy that is more important than in times of prosperity.

Besides the high income tax rates there are two other primary ‘tax wedges’ hurting West Virginia businesses, the Business Franchise tax and the Inventory tax. The Business Franchise tax is based on companies net worth, it’s not a tax on Franchises as many believe and is paid by all businesses in the state. The tax remains whether or not the company is making a profit. This is a tax that companies in most other states do not have to deal with. So in bad economic times this tax has a greater impact on with West Virginia companies that are struggling to make a profit. If a corporation is looking at closing one of two plants, then it will make more economic sense for them to close the West Virginia plant because of the Business Franchise tax.

The same holds true for the inventory tax. Sales drop as the economy slides downward, inventories of unsold goods naturally raise. In West Virginia our inventory tax punishes companies more and more as their sales slide downward. In many cases, especially with small businesses, this can be the straw the breaks the camels back. In order to pay the additional taxes imposed by the state with falling revenues these companies must find the funding. For most this will result in employee layoffs and some bankruptcy.

West Virginia must now make the hard choices to profit in this confused economy. The worse the economy gets the more our business are punished by the state tax structure. The opposite of the way it should be. Consider that eliminating the Business Franchise and Inventory taxes will reduce revenue to the states tax coffers in the short term, but if we don’t eliminate them and those businesses leave or declare bankruptcy they will pay no taxes at all in West Virginia. The cutting of the tax rates will put more money in the pockets of West Virginians and West Virginia businesses rewarding them for their hard work by making it easier for them to weather the economic storm. Making these changes will allow more West Virginia companies to survive and attract those that want to expand with an atmosphere that rewards hard work.

Removing the tax wedges put in place by bad Charleston policies will allow West Virginia to keep its head while other states loose theirs.

So West Virginia University Faculty Like Capitalism After All

West Virginia University's administration blasted the PEIA premium structure in a November 28th front page article in the Charleston Daily Mail. They complained that the fee structure madde it difficult to attract and retain quality faculty. PEIA officials blasted back that the fee structure is in place because higher salary earners subsidize the health care of lower earners. Perry Bryant, head of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care claims "it's not clear what (WVU's) position is. Would they support their faculty paying less while their classified staff pay more and more?"

In other words, Bryant is calling WVU faculty a pack of greedy running dog capitalists only looking out for their own interests. They do sound an awful lot like capitalists when they complain that they do not get to keep enough of the income that they earned because the state takes an unfair share (liberals would call it a "progressive" share.)

Okay, here's what ought to be done. Take the seven or eight people in the WVU system that voted for John McCain, assess them what their real payment should be, and let them go on their merry way. The Obama and Nader voters, well, sorry about your luck. You all are keeping too much as it is. We are going to assess you more because this is the change that you believed in.

That's right. The PEIA fee structure is a small taste of what socialized health care would bring to the entire country. The harder you work, the less you deserve to keep. That's the Obamunism that you all voted in for the entire country and now you have the gall to complain about those same standards being applied to your personal situation. Well if you have changed your mind about Obamacare, you'd better get to Georgia and campaign for Saxby Chambliss so the GOP can save your hard earned dollars.

The article is somewhat misleading. It says that high salary earners have seen their raises over the past two years negated by PEIA increases. That is not by accident, but by result of careful calibration. The misleading comes in when the writer says "high salary earners." Those that make $30-35,000 per year have seen the same problem. Only in the poorest counties in West Virginia could they be considered "high wage earners."

Capitalism happens. WVU faculty take off for states with more faculty friendly policies just like jobs will go to China and India if the liberals get their way and strangle out of existence the rest of American industrialism. Those that deny its effects and pretend like they do not exist will lose out every time.

I Feel Better About Helping Automakers Than Banks

Call me crazy on this, but I do not feel the same anxiety about helping the Big Three that I did about the banks.

I supported the bank bailout because, well, we kind of had to. Banks are the engine of the economy and we all have a vested interest in seeing them survive. Without solid banking in the US, the world hits depression quickly. I believed it had to be done, but I did not have to like it.

The automakers are kind of a different story. Basically they followed the rules. The market wanted larger vehicles and that's what the Big Three gave them. The unions wanted strong salary and benefit deals and for the most part harmony has been maintained with them. You have to give credit to an industry that keeps good labor relations, satisfies the market, and turns a slim profit every once in awhile. Sure they do make some bad decisions, but they work on a much more slim profit margin than almost anyone else.

Fact is that this is a national security issue as well as an economic one. We need to remember that during wartime, we will need these factories to churn out tanks rather than automobiles. Of course we have seen jobs being sent to Mexico over the past decade, but perhaps we can reverse that.

Instead of a bailout, let us increase the number and call it something else. Call it a reinvestment. Instead of giving them enough to help them get by, let's set them up for the future. To stay in the United States, auto plants must completely modernize in the same fashion as the coal industry. How much will it take to get these operations into the twenty-first century while giving the UAW enough to make sure that these workers have a soft place to land, or can retrain? This would not only help automakers, but also invigorate our technology sector.

In return, for the next ten years, each American who can prove they paid taxes in 2009 should get a $200 rebate when they purchase a new vehicle from the Big Three. This would be a one time rebate. The federal government should also be able to count on very good deals from automakers providing vehicles in that same time span.

I just don't think that we can allow automakers to just go down the tubes. It doesn't make sense on a number of levels.

I don't like Ike, I like Walmart even less

While most of us knew that Ike would have an impact on the price of fuel at the pump, I believe most of us know there is a delay in that correlation. A delay of about 7 hours is a little short, but that is the time it took.

Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast at 2:10 AM local time on Saturday the 13th. Ike hit the Keyser Walmart 7 hours later. I pulled in to fuel up my truck and when I tried to turn on the pump it would not come on. There were a fair amount of people standing at the pumps and none would come on. As us customers began to talk with each other, and the information was the power was off and they were resetting it.

When the pumps came back on it was apparent that Hurricane Ike had struck Walmart, because when the pumps came back on fuel was $0.30 higher that when I had pulled in the station. No delivery truck had delivered any knew fuel. Even if the fuel had been piped from the Gulf Coast it takes about 4 days to arrive to eastcoast terminals (yes there is a gasoline pipleline that runs from the Gulf Coast to New Jeresy).

That Walmart gas station probably has 8000 gallon tanks in the ground and 3 grades of gasoline. Assuming they were half full at the time that means they raised the price on 12,000 gallons of fuel by $0.30. That makes an extra $3,600 profit for Walmart off a Hurricane that never hit the Keyser Walmart. That is wrong it is price gouging.

Some people would blame unchecked capitalism, but they would be wrong. We are Walmart customers and I doubt any of us like what they did. We are fully aware they were taking advantage of the situation and their customers. Capitalism has the answer, we simply take our business elsewhere. There are plenty of other service stations in the area and we should reward those that have the lowest price on fuel.

If you use the gas price checker on this page you will find by not shopping for fuel at Walmart you will usually save money. Dale's Pit Stop north of McCoole is usually the low cost leader and that is how you use capitalism to your fuel advantage.

The New Yellow Peril? Probably not.

Western alarmists have made a cottage industry for over a century in warning Americans and Europeans of "the Yellow Peril." In most variations, some Asian country uses underhanded dealings to gain an advantage over the West. Soon the world will be dominated by China/Japan/India, etc.

Twenty years ago we feared Japan. Japanese work ethic and aggressive investments were going to take over the world and make the US a second rate power. Paul Kennedy in 1988 ended his well received Decline and Fall of the Great Powers with this prediction. Guess what? It never happened. The Japanese overextended themselves, suffered the debilitating effects of a real estate bubble the size of Mount Everest, and have not really seen tremendous economic expansion since the early 1990s. Japan's closed economic system prevented them from growing past a certain point because it prevented truly fair trade. Plus, US industry got its act together and competed more strongly than Japan expected.

Now the new "peril" lies in China. It has over one billion souls, boundless resources, and a will to regain a position of respect not held by them since the 1700s. We risk being fooled again by their tremendous growth numbers and predictions by some experts. Chinese growth does occur at 10% compared to 3% in good years for the US. However in simple numbers, our 3% growth is 3% of a very massive GDP. China's GDP is nothing near ours, so their 10% is actually quite puny. The main problem for China lies in its corrupt and worn out brand of Communism. Like Poland in the 1970s, everyone knows Communism is finished as a system. No one believes in it anymore. However the social betterment promised by Communism has been the historical justification for secret police establishments, torture, and lack of freedom.

The good news is that China has nurtured a growing middle class. Historically, middle classes seek material gains and political freedoms. Chinese middle class members have seen material gains, but political freedom has not occurred yet. Additionally economic opportunities are not fairly open to all. Much of this is reminiscent of France in 1788.

That leads us to the bad news. The rickety and corrupt China that currently confronts us is stable and seeks little more than a chance to expand its economy and be a leader in East Asia. A revolution on one hand would be good because it would free the people. Hopefully it would not lead to a redux of France in the 1790s, a bloodthirsty revisionist state that confronted the entire world violently. China has a historical hatred of Japan and seeks territory from Russia and India. Revolutionaries could potentially seize on these nationalist issues. Luckily it also has little history of seeking to expand beyond its current frontiers. However we must not forget that they have nuclear missiles.

A revolution would be appropriate given Chinese political philosophy. Their mandate of heaven, loosely like our Declaration of Independence, claims that divine Providence will help the people sweep away a government when it is no longer beneficial. Our government must be in a position to anticipate these kinds of events when they occur and channel them in positive directions.

China has a lot of developing and growing pains to experience before they become a true world leader. Structural problems in their economy and social system will prevent them in their current incarnation from becoming a more powerful nation than the United States. The biggest threat they pose comes not from what they are now, but what they could become.

Financially Illiterate

Auto loaning just reached a new milestone recently. Some credit outfits now offer nine year loans to purchase new automobiles. While this helps consumers to negotiate much lower payments, it also benefits the credit firms who will bring in much more on interest. Unfortunately the value in a car at a certain point declines so quickly that many will find themselves owing more than the car is worth or paying on a car that died. This comes from a credit industry currently reeling because they greedily encouraged marginal buyers to make poor decisions on home loans.

The answer does not lie in more regulation. People got what they paid for and reaped the rewards of their judgment. To help consumers make good decisions, education is needed.

West Virginia currently requires four years of math to obtain a high school diploma. This contains an element of absurdity currently because most students never need higher math, not to mention the fact that advanced math subjects must have lower standards to ensure a decent rate of passage. What West Virginia and every state needs to do is to offer an alternative real life mathematics course for seniors. Few students ever need trigonometry or calculus in their chosen fields (although you should never stop offering these subjects.) Every student needs to know how to balance a checkbook, create a household budget, figure up a tip, do their income taxes, negotiate loans on a limited budget, and other real world skills.

Is it not amazing that schools have thoroughly embraced the idea that fifth graders need to know every last detail about sex, but they have not given the same attention to finances? Poor decisions about sex can ruin a life, so can uninformed financial decisions. Our economy is experiencing problems because entire generations have gone uninformed about how serious credit decisions can affect their lives. It is time that every high school in our state offer a math course on how to deal with the real world.

Capitalism and the Age of the Individual

As I wrap up my Christmas preparations I begin one of my favorite traditions, watching Christmas movies. Whether contrived or based on the way it used to be, it is clear that the song “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” won’t ring all that true with our kids. I doubt that more than 10% of the people in our neighborhood decorate outside for Christmas. It also appears that few, if any, stores decorate for Christmas as they once did. Maybe a wreath or two, possibly some ornaments, but usually just a “seasonal” theme to the marketing displays. I don’t mean to be overly critical. I am just as guilty as we all are of forcing retailers to compete with mega stores like Target and Wal-Mart. Forced to cut costs, store owners save where they can in order to provide what the customer wants, lower prices. Even in my agency, we no longer give out calendars in an effort to lower costs and be more responsive to the changing environment.

As I began wondering what this means, I realized that it is ideal for a Christmas zealot like myself. Lower prices allow the individual to customize their Christmas experience. If I want decorations, special meals, and Christmas Eve candlelight, I can afford to do that. If I simply want to take advantage of discounted prices on toys, clothes, and electronics, I can do that as well. If I want to give away money to the needy or save a Christmas bonus for another day, I can choose that as well.

Unfortunately, you can’t get both the lowest cost and best experience from store owners and pillars of the community. It is up to me and you to customize our own Christmas experience. Those choosing not to participate do not have to participate. Those who want to go over the top, get to do that as well. It is simply individual accountability. I hope that everyone enjoys a safe and happy holiday season. I pray that we will be free from adversity and able to simply enjoy the freedom that we have in this country to not just live, but to change the way we live based on our decisions.

This trend is easily illustrated with Christmas, but is becoming evident in all areas of our lives. Retirement and financial planning are two such areas. More and more we are seeing that the only plan that you can count on is the one that you build and maintain. Employers (small business owners in particular) have to cut costs in order to compete with lowered costs. Taxes are everywhere and can’t be cut, cost of goods may have a little room, but not much, real estate and rents are on the rise, insurance costs are increasing and one of the only places left is to reduce services/ staffing. By becoming more streamlined, an employer is able to compete and stay in business. So the employees and even the employer have to separate individual financial planning and well being from the businesses financial planning and well being. Good employers still work with employees to find third party partners and bring those partners in to speak with the employees, to help build an individual plan, and provide guidance. The employers just can’t afford to carry the burden of being accountable for the financial lives of their employees.

If your employer can’t or won’t provide, the next logical place seems to be to ask the government for help. However, the government is not only incapable of solving this problem; it also has a huge conflict of interest. How can we hold a free election if a significant portion of the population is receiving government aid? Can people vote against their paycheck? Can they endorse a candidate that shares their beliefs if they rely on the competitor for their monthly check?

If we embrace the age of the individual, we need to be honest with ourselves. Social Security is broken. There are a lot of really intelligent government officials, if they haven’t solved the problem, there may not be a solution. Either recognize that there are too many people on the rolls and adjust the eligibility age to accurately reflect the fact that people are living longer than when the program started, or do away with it completely.

If we choose the former then set the eligibility age just past a person’s average life expectancy. Work until you die? What about retirement? Well, who ever promised you a retirement? Not to mention, who said you actually want to retire? When people stop having a reason to get up each day, their health fades, their bodies diminish, and they die. We have an entire segment of the population that are living examples of this fact. Don’t believe me? Hang out at the post office at the first of the month.

If the latter is accepted, any excess money will need to be spent on re-educating people on developing a good financial plan for their lives. A good plan addresses the three possibilities that you can encounter, you can live too long, die too early, or become disabled. That means life insurance, a planned stream of income (or a really big pot of money), and disability insurance. That’s where it starts. The more you want, the more you will want to plan. This individual accountability can be a scary notion at times. But the American Dream is based on being free, and one can’t be truly free if one is reliant on another person for the basic needs of life.

What’s my plan? As callous as it may sound to say everyone is responsible for themselves, that is not really what I am trying to implement in my own life. I don’t wan the government responsible for fixing this problem, at least not the federal government. I like to see local people and local organizations helping the poor in their own community. That involves more than a monthly check. My wife and I maintain the view that we are responsible for our own lives and for the impact that we have on our community. Therefore, we over plan for the Holidays and for our future and use our excess to help make our community a little better. We enjoy helping others and sharing the reason that we are helping, as Christians we believe that it is our responsibility to help others and to share the love of Christ with them. So when we pay for an elderly persons groceries, or give a gift card to a stranger, we take advantage of the opportunity to quickly share our message. It is what we have chosen to do with the savings we see from price competitive businesses. We don’t expect everyone to make the same choices that we make, nor share our beliefs, but we also don’t get the opportunity to help/ share our message if the government beats us to it.

Capitalism Creating Environmental Solutions

A Toronto firm is working hard to try and make the internal combustion engine obsolete. Two years ago it purchased the rights to a new form of battery that could be plugged into an outlet for five minutes and efficiently power a car for 500 miles. EEStor of Austin, Texas previously held the rights to the promising technology.

Critics call it the modern version of alchemy, but this once again demonstrates how market needs combined with vision can lead to potential breakthroughs. People believe enough to invest time and/or effort into creations that could revolutionize the world. That is certainly noble.

However these revolutions would take place less often without the profit motive. People need to see the possibility of reward for the risks they take in money, time, and effort. Then they will invest the endless hours, sleepless nights, and life savings to make the dream real.

One can predict what will happen when the technology is finally created. Some academic will demand that rights to the invention be released and shared for the general good of the human race. It almost sounds like a joke, but you can bet it will happen. Or perhaps some environmental group will oppose it because the creating of some component threatens some obscure species,just like with the wind farms.

Regardless of these obstacles, it should be much better publicized that capitalists work the hardest to create practical solutions to environmental issues.

The Great Bailout and Taxes

The Great Bailout and Taxes

In a recent conversation with my dad he said that he never thought that tax revolts would occur in his lifetime, but for the first time, he is beginning to anticipate that a tax revolt is not too far away. I was a bit taken aback, but then began thinking about the possibility, and he may have a valid point. Consider two extremes – 0% taxation is total freedom, 100% taxation is essentially slavery. At what point are we all simply indentured servants to Uncle Sam? Right now, if you are actively working for a paycheck, it is likely that about half of the money that is paid by your employer to you is going to Uncle Sam. For some it is a little less, for some it is a little more.

Don’t believe it…? Are you taking into account your employers 7% of matching taxes that are paid and not even shown on your pay stub? How about gasoline tax? Who nets more money from your gallon of gas, the oil company or the government? Did you think about normal sales taxes? How about the approximately 22% of business taxes that has been found to be passed to consumers in the ordinary cost of goods?

This leads to a big question, are we all really working until lunch everyday just to raise enough money to pay taxes for the privilege of…working?

How is this possible? It's easy, no one knows what he or she pays in taxes. So, at what point does that amount become so exorbitant that people start to seek the information that is out there and figure out what they are paying? Can we always blame businesses for gouging consumers without looking at what the government is taking in? Thus far most Americans seem OK with taxes and small tax increases because the government is supporting our troops, building roads, funding schools, and helping less fortunate people. So we do our duty, complain a little, but cough up because at the end of the day it isn’t worth going to jail over taxes (which is what happens if you don’t pay, is it not?)

But then a program is proposed that just doesn't make sense and people like me get extremely irritated, such as, the mortgage bailout. In case you are not aware? Some people, mostly in Southern Florida similar areas bought property they couldn’t afford in fast appreciating markets, sat on it too long, and now they can’t unload it for the windfall profits that they were hoping to obtain. They now face foreclosure because they simply cannot afford the payments. President Bush announced an effort to allow the government to guarantee the loans of these people while they ride out this dip in the market, or continue to sell their property for a smaller amount of profit. Make no mistake, this isn’t mom and pop at the end of a thirty-year mortgage getting ready to be thrown out, these are people that bought way too much home thinking they would get to re-fi before the bigger payments hit, or re-financed at the appreciated value of their home, i.e. took out a bunch of cash and bought other stuff without understanding what they were getting into. After all, there was no end to how high their home values would go, right? Wrong, now their investment (a home is usually referred to as a person’s largest investment) is crashing and they can’t get away from it.

Real Estate is not a liquid asset, never has been, never will be. It's one of the reasons for the buyer beware motto when one is purchasing property. Now after subsidizing the cost rebuilding Southern Florida and coastal areas in post-hurricane season every year (if you don't think we are doing this just look at the price of lumber and construction materials in your area), we are going to bail the homeowners out of their bad investments? Or at least hold the fort down long enough to let them ride out the downturn.

Are we going to bail out business owners whose business fail in low-income parts of the country? Or investors who buy hot stocks and lose their shirts? Nope, just the people who guessed wrong on the housing market in over-valued areas. It is easy to get caught up in thinking that we are "helping" people, and as I have said most Americans believe in helping their fellow man or woman. We seem OK with taxes going to help people, so why is this any different? The difference here…these people are living BETTER than we are!!! That’s right, they are living in nicer houses, with fancier cars, toys, furnishings, etc in parts of the country that most of us only get to visit for a week on an overpriced vacation. Will the average American be OK with losing half of their income each day only to subsidize a person in a million dollar home in Southern Florida, driving a Hummer and/or Mercedes while he/she is driving two used cars and living in a modest home in this area because the cost of living was more manageable? Should those of us who didn’t over-buy, didn’t make a mistake, and didn’t wait too long to get out be footing the bill for those that did? Should those of us who moved to more rural, more consistent areas continue to subsidize big city and coastal living? I hope not.

The Fine Art of Persuasion

Persuasion is less a science and more of an art form. However this art, like many, has maxims that hold truth. For instance, say you generate a message. This year it sounds preposterous, right on the edge of believability. However get some money, celebrities, and experts to sign on and you have a fringe movement. Repeat the message often enough and it creeps onto the edge of respectability. From there it becomes accepted. Left wingers specialize in manipulations like this and we have seen it. Mountaintop removal will destroy every mountain in West Virginia. Global warming exists and it will destroy mankind.

Why does the Left not advance arguments that they can more firmly ground in fact? For example, every global warming story relies on correlations. You can draw correlations between the drop in popularity of baseball and the dubious climate change numbers they offer. These messages rely on their very extremism, not facts. They assume that people may not swallow the whole idea at once, but act on the principle of "where there's smoke, there's fire."

The more extreme the message, the more you can shift people's attitudes in the long run, potentially anyway. We can argue that mountaintop removal mining has benefits and drawbacks and that coal companies ought to respect as much as possible the environment they affect. Also we can argue that reducing pollution through technology and other means is a commendable goal. However since those ideas are not that far from people's mainstream points of view, they do not cause major shifts in popular belief. It's easier for liberal leftists to say that all the mountains will be gone someday or that the world will end up uninhabitable. Some may balk at what I am saying, but think of the pro-abortion and animal rights movements over history. Look at how messages currently undermine the idea that a person has the right to eat what he or she wants and the responsibility to deal with the consequences.

What is the point in the Left's messages? It is anti-capitalism and anti-freedom plain and simple. Some of the messages show some coordination, others are merely inspired. An element in the United States wants to fundamentally change how people in general view economics and society. They want to move the country farther away from individual rights and responsibilities towards a collective mentality where government acts as parent. Or perhaps as Big Brother.

They cannot do it directly through revolution so they attack on the fringes using proxy issues. The base messages are always the same. Capitalism is evil. People are not smart enough to take care of themselves or their environment. Authority needs to do it for them. Perhaps if more people become aware of how the messages try to manipulate them, they will know to resist them. They are counting on you to not think about what they say, but to accept it even just partially. Don't do them the favor of unconditionally accepting it.