Legislators Acting as Our Secretaries with us like the Borg

American senators, the president and other government authorities are extremely powerful. But this is a topsy-turvy world and power does shift from generation to generation. What if the world of telecommunications and the internet have progressed to such a point where our congressmen could see how all of us really felt on a subject in real time. And as our representatives, they legislated and voted according to our wishes, that is, represented us. They do that already, but only less efficiently than I describe since contact with constituents is extremely limited. Geez, then you would have something like the Borg in Star Trek, everybody's mind being interconnected and acting as one. Today, the word is blog, not borg, but the same idea of interconnecting is taking shape, although no one technology is completely capable of doing this.

In this world, the legislators would represent the people and only the people. Their job would become somewhat more mechanical, since all our views would be perfectly reflected at all times. The perception of congressmen being leaders with agendas would start to be replaced with something closer to a secretary taking dictation from a more participative public.

If we all had a knob to dial-in our tax rate

Give us each a knob that lets us set how much in taxes we will pay, like a big volume control on a stereo. Everybody gets one. We can dial down the amount of tax we pay. We can dial it up and get many more comprehensive services. The government must then adapt to what people want. Wow, what a concept!

The purpose of government is arguably to grow government. If this is true, then the tax knob would be very threatening. The first thing the government would have to scramble to do is (finally) explain what we are paying for. Because if we only dialed up enough taxes to pay for essential services, police, fire, national defense, we'd kill almost the entire government. What else is essential? The burden to answer that would suddenly fall on legislators to explain themselves.

Most would peg the knob at one end or the other to counteract what others are doing. The way to fix this is to make the personal effect stronger than the national effect. Details are left for the interested student.

Another problem is what to do about voters that pay no income taxes? They of course would want to set it at maximum, which would seem a bit unfair to those of us that do pay. Representation without taxation. But the saving grace is that it applies to everything, including corporate taxes and sales tax. In this case, everybody pays, regardless of what goes down on their tax returns.

This thought experiment suggests to me that people would turn it down. Maybe all at once or perhaps little by little over many years. Ultimately, the knob reflects what we really think, that the taxes are high and the services, while often interesting, aren't all worth what they cost.

Tax the Corporations!

Taxes need to go up. It's time the corporations pay a larger share of them! "Get em!" Let's take the biggest, they are making billions after all. Hit them with a dose of "social responsibility".

The only problem with that is the way a corporation works. It makes a product or service, calculates how much it costs, then passes those costs along to their customers. The time lag from a tax increase to a higher priced product is therefore not ten years or ten months, it is immediate.

The consumer represents close to 70% of the economy. That means that 70% of of all the now higher priced products are sold to us. The other 30% are in sales to other corporations. In turn, 70% of their products get sold to us too, along with the price increase they had to pass along. Now we're up to 91%, and we've only considered two levels of sales.

In short, unless corporations export their product, you the consumer, pay almost every penny of tax increase levied on the big corporations. You are paying more taxes than you realize.

Quick Tax Calculation

For the average worker, all your income from January to the middle of May goes to paying all forms of taxes. That's about 37% of annual income. It includes federal, state, local, sales tax and a few others. Let's compare the big ticket items:

Taxes 37%
The average mortgate 30%
The average car less than 15%

For most people, these are necessities. You can substitute apartment rent for a mortgate and in some cities you can use public transportation. However, rent and taxes are higher in big cities while public transportation does cut into the car savings.

The gov has done a nice job of making mortgages more affordable, but this has put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the red, requiring billions of tax dollars. So while mortgage payments are somewhat lower, taxes are somewhat higher.

About 25% of your paycheck covers all remaining living expenses, activities and savings.

So you are sitting in your car, driving home to your mortgage, where you are going to file your tax returns and you turn on the radio. How often do you hear about a new sales tax, a new state tax and new federal spending, larger deficits? And when you hear about a tax cut, is it a temporary measure, a stimulus or a really enduring cut? The answer is always in one direction, toward higher taxes. So the above percentages will quickly get out of date.

Two questions:

• By far, you are paying more for your government than anything else. Are you getting a good deal? And I mean for you to ask that question every year. You might have liked that road or this park, that regulation, or this subsidy for another shopping center. That's just one year. What about the others? We have to stop thinking of each project as permanent.
• How do you feel about the deal you are getting if all your taxes eventually rise by 50% in real dollars? That is, from 37% to 55% of yearly income. You will then be handing over your paychecks from January 1 through July 21. You'll have to compensate by moving to a sharply reduced standard of living. The tax changes are happening now, the effects on your standard of living are slight in any one year, but they are already happening. Is that the deal you were expecting?

Corporate Monopolies

No question, corporate monopolies are bad. They raise their prices, their responsiveness goes down, their products stagnate. They don't have to trim down or become efficient in order to match the competition. Corporate monopolies are against the law, and the legal system has been very effective in stopping them.

Compare corporations that have competition. One common mantra is "you are either growing the company or you are dying." It is difficult to stay the same size in turbulent times. And shrinking is a big challenge too. How do you turn it around? Or at least stop it and arrive at a new, stable smaller size? Most companies have done all of these things.

Even shrunk when they had to. So why hasn't the government shrunk? Because it is the ultimate monopoly, they have no competition. As a result, it does exactly what it prevents corporations from doing: It grows, it stagnates, it becomes less responsive and raises prices (taxes). You have no choice in the matter unless you (and society) change it. And it costs you more per year than anything else you will every pay for, including your car or your house.

Illinois Governor Quinn Trying to Raise Taxes 50%

How about cutting spending? No, because no democracy is able to do so. That is the virus, the fatal flaw in our system. We have perhaps 200 years left in our grand experiment unless we find a vaccine for this problem. The good news is that gives us a very long time to figure it out, and we are quite clever. The bad news is we may wait a very long time to do anything about it, making the burden that much greater.

At this writing, Greece is on the edge of bankruptcy and they seem unable to do anything about it, such as (let me think) by cutting spending. Their crisis was triggered by the global downturn, but the fact that they had hidden problems waiting for such a downturn is a bigger concern. Had this not happened today, they would have overextended themselves more, such that only a much smaller downturn would have knocked them down later.

The concern is that Greece is not alone. If the mentality about overspending is, "If Greece is extending their finances this far, why can Portugal, Ireland, Italy or Spain?" (collectively referred to by the unfortunate name PIIGS) and stateside, "If California is doing it, why can't Illinois and other states?" As we've seen with the recent downturn, such clever financing can backfire for everybody at the same time, when there's no strength in the system left to hold on to.

Several years ago, riverboat gambling and state lotteries were supposed to solve the tax problem in Illinois. Before this, gambling was illegal and viewed by many as immoral and harmful, benefitting casinos that were only doing it for the money. Whether you agree or not, consider this: The fact that governments now engage in the very same activity they themselves outlawed, and in the view of many of their constituents, still immoral and just a way to make money for the government, is even a worse form of moral degradation and hypocracy. The fact that this is a substitute for financial responsibility is another moral failure.

So don't worry about financial responsibility of your government, there is a lot of time to worry about it in the future. You got through this downturn and there may not be another one for who knows how long.

Al Gore Slowly Creeping Back in Limelight

People love to criticize Al Gore, the self-appointed poster boy of Global Warming. It's as if they feel the scandal cannot be settled until Gore acknowledges it was all a big lie.

Only recently, he fell silent since Climategate and the failed Copenhaven climate summit. And now he's coming back with an op-ed piece in the New York Times, here, "We Can't Wish Away Climate Change."

"I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion."

And then he goes on to argue that it isn't. It's painful reading and if you can get to the bottom of page one, you find a little about the author,

Al Gore, the vice president from 1993 to 2001, is the founder of the Alliance for Climate Protection and the author of “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” As a businessman, he is an investor in alternative energy companies.

In other words, he's a salesman. Now we all expect a salesman to promote their product, to push for their sale. No balance here. He's not going to weigh the competing solutions (or lack of need for solutions), it's your job to get that from a salesman on the other side of the argument.

Get Gore to admit this was a big mistake? Or a hoax? I've said to friends this is not going to happen. But even I was astonished that he comes back as if nothing has changed. His life is now a symbol of the global warning cause. There's nothing for him to change into. Remember the elusive green job he was talking about? That was his job. But even as the evidence against global warming mounts, he may never recant, nor does he need to. If you shoot down Warming, you marginalize Gore as an irrelevent voice. You know the issue is "settled", to use his favorite term, when people stop talking about him.

Top Ten Reasons MSNBC won't Report ClimateGate and One Reason I'm Glad

One can only wonder why MSNBC does not capitalize on the biggest story in Science. And wonder I will! With the damning evidence against them, you might wonder why this makes me happy.

Why MSNBC won't report Climategate:

1. MSNBC is made up of all evil scientists
2. MSNBC is made up of people that know nothing about science and don't understand the issue.
3. MSNBC who is owned by GE stands to gain from Cap and Trade (investing arm), Warming Initiatives (Wind Generators and high efficiency equipment) and green consumer products (diswashers, blenders, etc). The incremental value gained by a climategate story is pennies compared to the potential loss of these other divisions.
4. They are promoting a left wing agenda for big government, against the other corporations, whose only hope to be sustained is by artificial means (i.e., propaganda).
5. MSNBC consists of idealists who think this direction is better for humankind than introducing a lot of inconvenience debate that would stymy the movement. Lenin was an idealist too.
6. It's embarrassing to them. MSNBC has gone too far down the road, criticizing opponents and distorting facts. It will take a long time to come to grips with the fact that they were wrong.
7. They can't take the backlash of vicious environmental groups that attack them whenever they wander from the true faith.
8. They are self-destructive and suicidal. Hey, they are in decline anyway. The idea of living up to some journalistic standard seems distant and unimportant.
9. They are secretly writing a huge expose' under cover of the liberal banner. The Guardian in the UK did this (although now are somewhat reverting back).
10. They were in on a secret plant to maintain the U.S. in world domination. By capping all the developing countries, they hoped to keep us in the lead. Not by innovation but by suppression.
11. (extra credit) They accidentally deleted all records.

But I'm glad about it. It's gone so far that they can no longer discredit climategate, only themselves and their viewers. How embarrassing in a social situation to know nothing of such an important story after following MSNBC news faithfully! It damages the credibility of the entire news service.

Triple the Minimum Wage and Cut Welfare to a Third

Every time the government gets involved in a program, they skim a little off the top, like a bookie placing your bets. You think Cash for Clunkers cost the taxpayers $3,500 to $4,500 per car? Think again. You think all welfare money goes to welfare recipients? Ha! On and on the list goes. The House always wins.

I once had a great idea and started a high technology company based on that idea. We worked like you wouldn't believe - I was on fire! I did the job of a whole department. This went on for a few years as my savings dwindled and I tried to reach a breakeven point (i.e., making a profit). My end-game was to keep going, even when the money ran out: I charged up my credit cards and considered part-time jobs.

I actually got a few jobs, a couple in consulting and once or twice shoveling sidewalks. I considered flipping hamburgers but minimum wage was so low, I calculated the time worked would not pay for even a fraction of my living costs. That was out, but it got me thinking about the plight of workers holding these jobs. You can't make a living and you're better off in some kind of netherworld of crime, of welfare or going back to school. Based on statistics, school-netherworld is not the winner in all of this.

So I am in favor of a little government incentive for workers (which by the way, reduces same said government): Increase the minimum wage in real dollars over time (say 20 years) and decrease welfare by the same amount.

I know a big increase in the wage will hurt business, but many of them can automate and reduce the number of workers. Fewer workers, you say, then nothing is gained! Not true, say I. It is too narrow a view that a government bureaucrat feeding a welfare recipient is generating more wealth than workers in the workplace. That worker at employer that automates is richer and stimulates economic growth more. The automated equipment itself creates new jobs. And so do those.

I also know a lot of people on welfare. Mostly mothers that have responsibilites for a child but that have ways to work part-time. They are employable and therefore can contribute something to the economy rather than to government bloat.

The desparation of poverty can be reduced without welfare.

Oh and one last thing, my company failed. It wasn't such a great idea after all. Well it didn't harm anybody except my own savings.

The Optimum (largest) Size of Government

Is there a "virus" in the democratic system that will, over the course of centuries, bring about its collapse? People worry that government unchecked will grow larger and larger. It is human nature:

• Legislators can only add Programs. They find much less public resistance to adding a small new government program than removing one. Removing one brings out all the opposition that would be affected by the loss.
• Administrators at all levels try to grow their empire. After all, their day is full, if they want to do more, they have to add people. If they want to become powerful, they need to add people.
• Inefficiency creeps in, requiring further growth to overcome the loss in productivity. There is no competitor.
• Federal governments find new ways of cleverly financing its growth. The financial insolvency of Greece is just one example that until recently was hidden from view.
• The recent downturn shows that state governments are virtually incapable of downsizing even in fiscal crisis. Their answer? Borrow more and tax more.

But they can't grow and tax indefinitely. Today, the average taxpayer pays all the income from January to some date in May to the government. The rest they keep. But the date in May keeps moving out as the gov gobbles up a little more. If government spending were to suddently double, we would have to pay from January through October in taxes. That would not be possible, because we'd no longer be able to buy food or housing. The motivation to work would disappear for many as we'd be better off with odd-jobs or welfare. The tax base would disappear.

No, they couldn't tax us through any date close to December. It might be June-ish that society would start to collapse. So that June-ish date sets the maximum size (or in engineering terms, the optimum operating point) for government.

There is a way to increase the maximum size even more: A government bent on growing itself and hitting the limits of what society can bear can privatize an industry. That's right, it can take it over, set prices and absorb profits. As time goes on, it can privatize other industries to feed its appetite. But then the efficiency problem appears again and the industries don't peform as well as when there was competition. They atrophy and start to shrink.

Eventually, we get back to the question, can government consciously downsize for the betterment of everybody? If not, it will either collapse under its own weight or hover on the brink of bankruptcy indefinitely, unable to shrink and solve its problems. Of course, that would be a very unpleasant for the life of its citizens and it would be that way for a very long time.

So it becomes a very important question: Are we able to shrink government before it is necessary? The rewards are great, since every person that moves from a government job to a private one produces something useful which benefits themself and someone in that society. Their lack of being a burden on government payrolls benefits all of society.

All of which reveals that there is indeed another optimum: A government so small that taxes are much less, yet solvency is assured, wealth of citizens is much greater, yet the gov is large enough to do the tasks that are essential to its people; police, fire, military, enforcement of regulations, etc. The rewards are great if we can do it - an almost unimaginable amount of money. Perhaps the Internet Age will empower us.

Big Oil versus the Bigger Thing

Big Oil. That's what's behind discrediting climate science! No. I think it's something even bigger. There is an unbelievable force at work here and it is known as Big American Taxpayer. The taxpayer is ever so slightly resisting these outrageous initiatives to save the world by lining the pockets of someone more worthy than me and the global warming community is feeling a shockwave within the blast zone. And yet, at the time of this writing, virtually nothing has been said in the American mainstream media. Wait till they become aware.

Big oil is puny by comparison. In fact, the only thing it's good for is putting in my Big Car and dabbing on the axles of my Big Wheels and turning the Big Gears of Progress. When we put a halt to US exploration, the pollution that is avoided is an illusion because the same work moves offshore. Less exploration raises gas prices and the price we pay goes offshore. A billion dollars a year going offshore is about ten thousand jobs of every level going away with it. Oh, did you say you were worried about your job or somebody's on the other side of the planet?

That said, I don't favor pollution. I am glad that, through the years, many improvements have been made to reduce the pollutants in fuel. The sign that it's gone far enough is when it goes too far by reaching the point of diminishing returns. Or in this case, negative returns: The summer formulation of gasoline is supposed to pollute the air less, but it seeps into the groundwater and pollutes that.

Okay, here's a little secret. I started this blog today because of an article responding to the suspicion that every anti-warming writer is funded by Big Oil. The article is at
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/02/independent-bloggers-vs-corporate.html. And there it was: A free way to create a blog without having Big Oil fund the whole affair. And here I am. Now where was I?

We do pollute!

I went on a four-day hike in King's Canyon, California. Although we encountered few people on the way, the authorities warned us the water may contain harmful bacteria caused by people and animals defecating too close to the rivers.

I also went on a four day trip canoing in the boundary waters of Canada/Minnesota. There were even fewer people there. The area was pristine except for the rare shred of candy wrapper. And when we portaged (carried our canoe from one body of water to the next), we could see the footpaths were worn down to the dirt by our predecessors. It was clear that just by walking there, we were altering the environment. A tennis shoe pattern here, a broken blade of grass there. Multiply it by the billions of people on Earth and you have the unavoidable realization that we are going to alter the environment merely by existing. None of it is natural because we humans are the definition of what is not natural.

Returning home, my need for products and services that consumed energy and resources increased from those brief trips. Fact is, you can beat yourself up trying not to break blades of grass or leaving shoe imprints or bacteria in your wake, but you can't avoid it. I like to conserve resources (and I know how to do it) but I don't like to be militant about it. There is no way to reach the ideal, so I am not going to be an environmentalist. But I do wish young people would stop throwing fast food wrappers, cups and beer cans out of their cars. I live on a highway and I have to pick them up every week in the summer.

What is Climategate?

Climategate refers to the systematic one-sided research and reporting of global warming as well as the extreme measures of what to do about it.

I am an engineer. Engineers like to design things with the knowledge they gain. Engineers may not make the best scientists because science is about the pure gathering of knowledge without applying it. But I can say scientists do not make the best engineers. The most brilliant chemist might not be able to bake decent cupcakes. So don't count on a scientist to find the solution to a global problem. This is not their area. I'd like to see a lot of small-scale experiments before drawing any conclusions about what to do. If you tell me there isn't time, I'm afraid I don't buy into that pressure tactic, you're just going to have to sweat it out while I (and others) look at the situation. This will take a century or so.

Let's move beyond the engineering and talk about climate science. We've seen CO2 levels go up and we've seen temperature records rising but we don't know if the two are connected. It's a little like the athlete that has to wear the same underwear at every game because that's what he wore every time he won in his early days. Today, the science of global warming has not risen above the level of superstition, but we're making progress! Give it another century or two.

What is Global Warming?

Okay, I'm a relative tightwad. I'm also the guy that doesn't bite when the pushy salesman says I have to act now or lose the deal. Yes, sometimes you know a good deal well enough to jump at it, but that's only after you've looked at a lot of alternatives. What I've found is if I haven't looked around, I can be sure other deals are just around the corner and it's really enjoyable to get such a perspective. Knowledge is power and that beats spending in ignorance and into oblivion.

Global warming is like that: A lot of pushy people trying to take my money and the alternatives haven't been fully explored. You don't have to be technically astute to know something is wrong with their argument. But I am and there is.

First Light

Many fine words will appear here, some even in interesting sequences. Stay tuned!