taxes

I've been reading the debate over on the Big Picture blog in
the comments about tax rates. Should they raise taxes, or just for
the "rich" people. I strongly believe that people will work less at higher tax rates. I know I don't work more for more money at my current tax rate. (Meaning
my real job that I make my salary for I'll work as hard as it takes, if someone offered me money to go to a rig and work I wouldn't even though I have in the past)

But I don't think our problem is a receipts problem that needs new taxes
but a spending problem. You can look at the above table, and see that with the tax cuts revenue decreased $145 billion from 2000 to 2004, spending increased $503 billion. Even with this glut of spending (Iraq, Afganistan, bloat) by 2007 the
deficit was only $160 billion and decreasing by $70B per year. If not
for the crash, we'd be in surplus now. So no new taxes.

Chinese tea party

One thing the tea parties have missed is the analogy with the
original tea party, the throwing off of boats of imported stuff that
provides funding for the government.

The quickest way to cut spending may be to stop importing chinese crap. They'll stop buying treasuries and we'll stop spending. At that point there will have to be an adult conversation
in the usa about how much we have to spend and how much we
we'll have to cut from budgets.

Sort of the Dave Ramsey cut up the credit cards and go on rice & beans,
beans & rice type of moment.

Even if I don't know if I want to bankrupt the government to make spending
stop, it seems like a good idea to stop buying chinese crap just based on this
review of a book "Poorly made in china".

Midler identifies the features of China’s production environment that make a joke of all the free-trade slogans. There is, for example, “quality fade.” You cut a deal with a Chinese manufacturer to import beauty lotions in plastic bottles. You give precise specifications for the product and container. The first shipments are fine. Then customers begin to complain that the plastic of the bottles is too thin. You squeeze a bottle, it collapses. It turns out that your manufacturer has quietly adjusted the molds so that less plastic goes into making each bottle. Neither the importer nor his customers has been told of the change.

Not to mention exporting jobs and manufacturing ability of the country.
There are lots of reasons to board the ships and throw the containers of chinese
crap into the harbor. The chinese government won't let obama say "buy american",
so one of the things the tea party protests should do is buy american.

Rainy taxes

It's that time of year again, after a couple of extensions I finally
have to try and figure out my taxes. Instead of a nice relaxing day
watching football and drinking beer with my faithful dog at my side,
I'm trying to remember what happened last year while hunting for
documents on the web. Most of the paper records are sitting in a
green trash bag at my parents house, or at the picayune city dump.

Note to self: keep better records next year.

My efforts aren't being helped by the steady rain that just increased
to hail, what they call here in spanish "graniso", but's probably closer
to sleet in size. Our study has a sky light with a small air gap that is precisely
designed to allow all the hail that hits the roof to bounce under the skylight
and into the study. My faithful dog is cowering in the corner while the
hail and w-2's bounce around me.
[insert cowardly dog photo here]



















Oh, well, what's the worse that the irs can do to me, i'm sure they're all
bark with no bite.