To Serve and to… Make the City More Money

Note: As a reminder, a tl;dr is at the bottom of the post, to save you the bother of actually having to read the post, if in fact one actually reads these posts anyway.  Also, tl;dr is short for "Your post is too long and boring, and I don't want to have to read it all, but I want to make sure you I get the main points in case you happen to ask me questions about reading your blog in the future".  Sweet Jesus, I have the word 'blog'.  Who named these things 'blogs', anyway?  It sounds like something you throw up.  Now that I think of it, the word seems to be fitting for most blogs now.  Including mine.  Enjoy.

I have a small rant on our Justice system coming, but it was too long to include my insight on a well known social service called the Police Department.

I was recently the proud recipient of two tickets.  I was guilty in both offenses: The first was running a red light, in which one of those fancy intersection cameras took a photo of my license plate and mailed an automated letter from the city telling me to pay them money.  The second was just last night, in which I was pulled over for driving 45 mph in a 35 mph zone.  I thought it was a 45 mph zone like every other non residential street in the city.  Silly me.

I understand that when someone breaks the law, they should be punished.  What I don’t understand, is why this punishment comes with a monetary fine.  First of all – nobody learns their lesson from a traffic violation.  If you get caught speeding, you aren’t going to automatically obey the speed limit the rest of your life.  When I ran that red light, I didn’t know I was doing it – there were no other cars around, and I was looking for the freaking on ramp to the freeway.  What I learned is that I need to look out for cops and cameras more often than pay attention to my surroundings.  I usually always go the speed limit.  If I do speed, it’s no more than 5 miles over the limit.  I constantly see people driving 20 miles or more over the speed limit, driving dangerously close behind other vehicles, cutting everybody off while brushing their teeth, shaving, reading a book and stuffing an egg mcmuffin down their throat.  I never see these people pulled over.  When I got pulled over for speeding last night, I thought to myself, “Self, you should remember that it’s 35 mph on this street and not 45.  Also, a cop might be on this street at 10PM on Monday nights”.  I immediately learned my lesson, that it was a 35 mph zone, and it didn’t take $112 for me to realize that.

Here’s the depressing realization about traffic violations.  It’s no surprise that police departments have quotas for issuing citations.  That they try to meet a certain amount of citations issued each month, or each quarter.  The fact that we are punished for breaking a traffic law by having to pay the city money is quite depressing.  What are they doing with that money?  I doubt it’s going to charities.  The depressing fact is the City needs people to break the law in order to receive full funding for their police department, or any other department for that matter.  We don’t know if the city takes that money and helps to fund the fire department or expenses for senators and representatives.  If everyone were to obey every law for a year, our social services structure might crumble to the ground with the force of a thousand whales.  I have never needed the police or fire departments to actually protect me, but they are pretty good at serving me citations.  They aren’t good enough at taking our taxes and funding our infrastructure, and they haven’t been good at that for, well, probably ever.   They need a society of deviants to make up for their deficits, and that’s just crazy talk.

I consider these citations as an additional tax – not a detriment to breaking the law.  I don’t learn anything from having to pay the city for a small crime against society.  I’ll continue to do it because it’s my way of paying those extra taxes so we can pay police officers overtime to sit at construction sites and watch movies.

tl;dr

Police departments exist as a social service within a city government.  However, they make money from citizens by issuing money.  The fact is they need this extra income to bridge the gap in funding.  If we didn’t break the law, our police force would be disastrously under-funded, and larger more dangerous crimes would occur more often.  So get out there and roll through a stop sign, drive 10 miles over the limit, and pee in public… do your community a service.

*Please don’t actually (get cought) peeing in public, as I hear this often results in being branded a sex offender.

How Octomom is Destroying the Economy

Disclaimer: For your convenience, I place a tl;dr at the bottom of the post.  This stands for "too long; didn't read", meaning you might want the main points, but don't care about my ramblings, which is understandable.  tl;dr is the internet blog version of an executive summary, but I put it at the end like a conclusion.  I'm hip like that.


I dislike a lot of social traits.  Most of these are driven by a group of people united or forced together by this common trait, or associated by some other complementing trait.  I think most of the time people call these stereotypes.  I don’t like to use stereotypes because it is often associated with race or status.  Some of these social traits are harmless.  For instance, people who wear pants/shorts/short-pants low enough to where the belt is just above or in some cases below the knees.  It’s harmless, and actually kind of funny, but it’s still a blemish.  It serves no positive function and really just looks silly.  Unfortunately this usually goes to a specific group of people in a society, and it really doesn’t help their stereotype – because like I said before, it serves no positive function.  I think if for some reason wearing your pants that low improved flexibility and overall human health somehow I would say “hey, they are concerned with their health, and won’t need to go to the doctor as much by doing that, therefore helping to reduce our collective medical costs, and I think that’s neat”.  This is not the case; well, it has not been proven, at least.  The only positive function I have witnessed to wearing pants really, really low, is I saw this security footage of a guy stealing a case of beer from a convenience store.  In his “attempt” to run away, he fell flat on his face and spilled all of the beer on the ground, which he abandoned and jumped in the getaway car.  His fall was entirely contributed to the fact that his pants waist was so far down his legs, that as he picked up speed, his limited stride due to the motion-restrictive nature of the low pants became too difficult to coordinate the foot-brain motor connection.  Why is this a positive function?  It made me laugh.

I have a feeling that most of my posts will be about these social stigmas, but more importantly the social stigmas that have an impact on society as a whole.  In the case of the low wearing pants thief, there really is no impact in the grand scheme of things.  An old lady in Denver isn’t going to be affected by a fashion challenged booze crook in Tampa.  I read a news article titled “Growth anemic, debt fight poses recession risk” today.  It wasn’t the headline that interested me more so as it was the “Going out of Business” banner on the thumbnail.  As some of you may know, we are in a recession, and many people are out of work, and many businesses are not profiting.  We have had recessions before, but for some reason I find this one more troubling.  In other recessions, we were still in a beginning phase of industrial revolution, and technology advancement was moving at a slower pace than it is now, with most of that technology being kept from the general public.  Technology innovation and growth seems to be a big indicator as to how healthy an economy can be.  In the 90’s we had a very profitable period due to the dot-com industry.  That era has died down now, and we are searching for the next big advancement that will bring a new service or product that the world wants to buy, thus creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs.  What troubles me is that I do not see a new technology on the horizon capable of creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs.  I see new technology that further allows us to do more, with less.  Technology that only increases productivity for things that already exist.  Technology that removes jobs rather than creates them.

I believe that the recession is not a product of a weak economy, but of social adaptation – a climate shift for society and human function.  We no longer need a computer for email, a phone for voice communication, a video recorder for home movies, a camera for vacation pictures, a planner for our schedules or a beeper for texts.  All of these individual technologies that provided unconnected jobs are now in one piece of hardware that incorporates multiple different software.  We have become more efficient as humans in our world of technological advancement and no longer need a multitude of singular technology to manage our lifestyles.  Needing fewer services and products to feed our current and future lifestyle will not create jobs like it used to.  The connection I am trying to make here, is that we have too few jobs to offer for a recovery, and we also have too many people that need jobs for a stable economy.  There’s a short term and long term coefficient to this problem.  The short term is that all of the 60-some workers can’t retire because they can’t afford to, so the younger generation can’t get the jobs they are supposed to have filled in by means of career advancement, thus opening up entry level jobs for new graduates (who are probably working more of the trade/skill jobs that non collegiate folks need).  This may be rectified in the next decade, as the retirement age workers actually retire.  If we don’t fix the long term coefficient to this problem, it will occur again in the future, with much greater impact.

This long term coefficient I am talking about is probably pretty controversial, and I have a very logical point of view towards it, but I feel there is a moral point of view that inhibits the rectification of the problem.  The very name of this coefficient sounds cold and heartless, but it doesn’t have to be if we view it correctly.  This coefficient of stabilizing social adaptation with economic growth is population control.

It’s not rocket surgery – as more people are put on this earth, more jobs will need to become available in order to allow these people to function in society.  It was actually surprising to me to discover that the birth rate is much lower today than it was ten years ago.  The death rate has also declined, but not as rapidly, resulting in an overall reduction in population growth in the last decade.  While the population growth seems to be decreasing, it is still existent.  If we already have too many people and too few jobs, putting even more people on this earth while continually shrinking the availability of jobs will only further dissolve the quality of life for most everyone else on this planet.

In the mean time, people are still having babies.  There’s nothing wrong with this, and it’s important to mitigate both population decrease as it is to minimize population increase.  It’s also our right and purpose as humans to reproduce.  However, I find it selfish of families to reproduce in the masses.  Some families keep reproducing without regard to the consequences.  Maybe it’s their personal beliefs, or their religious rights, but some think it is their purpose to reproduce as much as possible.  These people lack the mindfulness that as their children grow older, they will have to compete with one another in a shrinking job market.  They neglect to consider about the impact having more children has on all of the existing children; All the while bringing more children into the world while there are thousands of kids without families.  Altruism exists in all creatures, and we should be no different.

If we want to be prosperous in our society, and more importantly provide a prosperous society for the children we bring into the world, we need to start taking steps in the right direction.  Overpopulation deteriorates our planet quicker than it can replenish itself, and our greed is a direct result of this.

tl;dr

The amount of available jobs are decreasing, and the decline in population growth isn’t enough to reverse the impact job decline has on the economy.  Our society only increases in productivity, which is proof of the job availability decrease.  The economy only recovers when there are actually jobs available for people that are already out of work.  We can’t just create redundant or meaningless jobs just so people have a paycheck.

It’s not that we need more jobs – it’s that we need fewer people.  This sounds cruel and sadistic, but I’m not talking about thinning out the population in a morbid way.  We as human beings should remember that we don’t have natural predators to help manage our ecosystem, and it is up to us to control our population.

Disparity of Wealth in America

There are a lot of problems in the world.  It is my belief that the solutions to the problems of the world revolve around the same principles as a major automobile manufacturer’s mantra.  Or around any major manufacturer that survives off repeat business.  It is not profitable to produce a product that lasts forever.  If this were the case, you might as well market a stick of chewing gum to cost a million dollars.  In the poetic words of Chris Rock “They got metal on the space shuttle that can go around the moon and withstand temperatures of up to a million degrees.  You mean to tell me you don’t think they can make an Eldorado where the fuckin bumper don’t fall off?”  His point here is that there is no money in the cure.  If you solve a problem, there is no way for people to profit.

Take wars for example.  There are hundreds of companies that employ thousands of people to make Kevlar vests, rifles, claymore mines, reinforced Humvees and Blackhawk helicopters.  You can’t market that in Rural Alabama.  Detroit maybe, but not every city is a Detroit.  Do you think the NATO would get involved if someone took over Greenland?  Not unless there is a shortage of ice cubes.  Now, I do think this is warranted to an extent.  We need the oil.  Right now, oil is the blood that pumps rapidly through industry and civilization running a marathon.  The only solution is to slow down so we don’t pump the blood so fast, or find a new type of carrier to wean us off our addiction.  However, the people who make blood would be kind of pissed off.

Dangerous Thinking

The radical thought here is this - What if the economy works in the same way?  Money is what ties cultures together.  We trade with each other, and this trade may be in goods, but you don’t always produce the goods someone else wants.  Someone decided it would be a good idea to create a good that would be useful to all people.  This good is money.  Every society may have a different type of money, but money is good everywhere, except for maybe the isolated tribes in South America.

Consider this: all of the money in the world is gathered up and counted.  Then the money is distributed to each and every person in existence equally.  All is balanced out, and each person is as wealthy as the next, in terms of their ability to spend money.  Imagine next that one person creates an amazing new technology that, I don’t know, let’s you levitate, but it requires you to give half of your money to them.  You buy this incredible item, but you are now half as wealthy as the person who sold it to you.  The amount of money in the world is the same, but there is now imbalance in the system of wealth.  More importantly, wealth is created.  Wealth was non-existent before, because there was only one level of wealth.  There was no need to define it.

Extrapolate this scenario to our current system of wealth.  Bill Gates makes an obscene amount of money.  His wealth started because people were exchanging money for the goods he was producing.  The consumer now has less money, but the wealth isn’t diminished because they now have an asset – a different type of currency that may not be able to sell as easy as money, but it still has value.  On a separate level, banks make an obscene amount of money too.  This is confusing to me.  If I take my money to the bank, and I give them $100, in one year I may withdraw my account and the bank gives me $101.  Where did this extra dollar come from?  Easily, the answer is interest.  The bank took my money, invested it into someone, or something else with the promise that in one year, they will get $102 back, thus making a profit of $2.  This goes on through chains of investments, geometrically earning stronger profits each time.  

The problem I have is that this profit must come from somewhere.  It was easy with Bill Gates.  We know that our money went to Bill Gates, in trade for a computer.  When you invest, there is no telling where the money came from.  I can tell you this: The money was not invented, nor did it appear from a puff of smoke.  With a global economy, this money could come from anywhere.  I know that when I give money to Bill Gates, I get a computer, he gets money to repay the materials it took to make the computer, to pay someone build it, some to run the business, and a little extra to grow and innovate.  The problem with large scale distribution and acquisition of wealth is that the wealthy get wealthier, while the consumer has little to show for it.  Even if both parties make a profit, the money is still coming from somewhere.  Simply put, the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer.  This isn’t anything new, but it surprises me, and may surprise others, at just how quickly this distribution of wealth becomes more and more unstable.

Disparity of Wealth

At this point, someone might hear “distribution” and “wealth” and think I’m a Djembe-playing hippie that has no job and expects to live a lifestyle of a hard working American.  I do play a Djembe, but I also work for what I earn.  Also, if you were wondering, a Djembe is a hippie hand drum played mostly in hippie drum circles at hippie festivals or in the back yard of a frat house.

I took a look at some statistics from the sociology department at UCSC.  Here is the website:

Sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The statistics revolve around the distribution of wealth in the United States.  When I mention the word “wealth” I am referring to cash, and investments and assets of positive value.  In 1998, it was measured that 10% of the population owned 68.8% of the United States wealth.  Almost a decade later, in 2007, 10% of the population owned 70.9% of the wealth.  Not a very big increase at first glance, but when you consider there are over 300 million Americans and Trillions of dollars of wealth, it makes a difference.  More disturbing is that in 2007 less than 40% of the population, collectively, owned 0.2% of wealth.  Furthermore, in 2007 the top 1% owned 34.6% of wealth, up from 31.9% in 1986.  This means the rest of the population owned 65.4% of the wealth in 2007, down from 68.1% in 1986.  This translates to a 8.46% growth for the top 1%, with a 3.95% decline in the bottom 99%.

These are a lot of statistics, and it took some thinking to figure out what the top 1% and bottom 99% actually represents.  What it comes down to is that in 20 years, the rich got richer by 8.46% while the poor got poorer by 3.95%.   

We would have to increase the distribution of earners of bottom earners, and subsequently decrease the distribution of top earners in order to keep the % of wealth owned at an equivalent.  This clearly shows the disparity between social class – the poor, middle, and rich.  The poor give the rich their wealth.  If you don’t believe that, then I have one final section you should read.

Historical CEO pay

Chief Executive Officers are the leaders of a company.  A company’s goal is to make money.  It is the CEO’s job to ensure the company makes money.  With all of the cutbacks in labor, investments and innovation in the last decade or two, it is clear that companies are not making money.  However, CEO’s are given more and more pay each year.  Consumers, which is easily largely held by the poor and middle class, are directly affected by this.  If the company pays the CEO more, they have to pay someone else at the company much less, or not at all. 

The following data comes from this source:

www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceopay.cfm

In 1980, a CEO earned an average of 42 times the average laborer salary.  That’s already a lot.  I’m sure it hasn’t changed since the economy isn’t any better right?  Right??  It will come to no surprise to you that I am, in fact, wrong with that thesis.  In 2010, CEO’s averaged 343 times the average salary of a laborer.  This means, if you were the average CEO in1980, and still held the position today, congratulations, you have earned a total 816.7% increase in salary during your career.  It’s no surprise that CEO’s don’t hold a position for more than a few months or years.  With that kind of dough, I would be sitting on a small island I purchased with my sons’ allowance that I kept for that one time he glued Mrs. Klein’s butt to her chair in Home Economics.  I know it’s funny, but you have to be a good parent every now and then.  Small disclaimer: I don’t have kids, nor am I a gazillionaire.

When you think about it, we have been paying the top earners in this country more money to make us poorer.  They control more than just a goods and service market.  They have great influence with politicians, which I think everyone can agree screws us over in some way or another.  In turn, we are paying them to screw us.  Hard.  I guess that makes them the highest paid prostitutes in the galaxy.

Many people argue that taxing corporations that make huge sums of our money more than others in lower earning brackets is not ethical.  We can’t tax them more.  The solution isn’t taxing them more.  The solution is actually taxing them.

The following data comes from here:

smbiz.com/sbrl001.html

This will be quick, because this is a really long entry.  The following table outlines corporate income tax rates for the last 5 years:

               

Income (in Thousands)	Tax Rate (%)
0-50	15
50-75	25
75-100	34
100-335	39
335-10,000	34
10,000-15,000	35
15,000-18,300	38
18,300 and up	35

Why in Grimace’s good name do we start dropping the tax rate?  This is only one measure to help corporations earn more and more money.  This aligns with the trickle-down theory that if we increase the revenue of top earners, it will somehow magically funnel towards the poorest class of our society.  I think this theory was created by someone who never had to wipe his or her own ass.

TL;DR

I don’t know how to fix the economy.  I would say, spend more moderately, live within one’s own means, reduce waste, increase efficiency, and fix taxation.  I just sound like another politician without the actual means to an end to support my dreams.  We have to take each of these goals and focus on how to accomplish them, using simple logic.  If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.  If you make money, you have to give some to your government, or I swear to Cupid if your house burns down the firefighters better not be there to put out the fire.  Stop funding ridiculous programs like how to safely dye a lizard pink.  Finally, my motto: there must be an easier way.  If there is a way to do something, there is a more efficient way to do it out there; we just have to use a little thought and logic.

Finally, the lowest earners have to spend the same or more to keep our economy running, but they are earning less than they did 10 years ago.  The rich are getting richer, and they have the power to move the economy in a growing direction.  This would, however most likely make them poorer.  So the question in their mind might be: Why would we want a cure?

Agenda of Amazing Realization

I am currently typing this on a laptop, in a bar, and I used most of the battery looking up facts on disparity of wealth, so I am using the last of it to capture the topics I wish to unleash on whatever audience I may have in my short existence of a social sellout.

I had a dream last night, that I accidentally worked some sort of job that entitled me to $5,800.  Yes, that is a precide figure that I saw in my dream.  I don't know what it means, but I know that in my dream, I used about $500 to by a coat at J. Crew that was located in a hospital.  Also, there was a certain girl in my life that mentioned she loved me for my promptness of attendance, but only mentioned this when I was late to drop her off at the bank to get money for something.

That story has nothing to do with anything, but I may document my dreams for scientific purposes from time to time.

I plan on discussing the following topics, which are just things that are stuck in my head and causing me increasing emotional distress because I do not have an outlet for them:

-Disparity of wealth in America, and maybe the world?
-Music, and why most music sucks smelly man-balls
-Race, and maybe Sexism, if I can't say enough about Race
-Sexism, provided I haven't covered this topic earlier
-Population Control - yes, CONTROL.  This will be an extremely biased, and taboo discussion: of myself to my many (2) followers.  The summary of this topic is - Stop having dozens of kids, you estrogenated crazy super moms - we have no jobs as it is.

Anyway, these are the most encumbering clouds of craziness that inhabit what would be an otherwise brilliant mind.

Introduction

I never felt the urge to create an open invitation to my thoughts, but the current state of civilation has given me a different perspective on public displays of opinions.  If 40 year old slack jawwed, ethnocentric, racist douchebags are free to say whatever they want behind the near impenetrable identity concealing curtain of the internet, then I should attempt to balance out the universe with educated, common sense and scientific driven evidence of current events.  And I swear to whatever god may be, if you try to point out any grammatical mistakes, however far and few between they may be, I will not give even one shit.

For the most part, this is just a place for me to vent.  I am so confused and vexed about the state of the world, that my brain often forgets simple tasks such as communication and breathing, because I am so dumbfounded by the actions of some of the most important people in power of vast populations, as well as those who apparently vote these black-holes-of-common-sense-and-compassion into power.  I think the tipping point is when a mass majority of people started blatently ignorign sensibility and proof for whatever theory they thought mattered at the moment, and whatever action was popular to "fix" such matter.  I mean, if I had enough money, I'm sure I could convince about 10% of the population that only a stegosaurus singing opera could cure cancer.

Abraham Lincoln used to write letters to people when he was pissed off, but he would never mail them.  H thought that if he wrote his initial feelings down, he would be able to clearly communicate his sensible thoughts without coming off as brash and insensitive.  I guess this is what these are - they are not addressed to anyone in particular, but maybe someone will read one of these posts and think "hey, that makes sense, I don't know why I thought that Satan was the one who was trying to make Barack Obama ruin the world economy and inject locust eggs into everyones earlobes".  Anywho, I don't really care if you agree with me, and I don't really care if you read this or not.  I really only expect maybe 2 people to read this at all.  All I care is that these thoughts are out of my head, and into the vast emptiness of the internets.  I guess if I give myself the illusion that others may be inflicted with my taboo philosophies, it may somehow give me a little bit of relief.