Tax talk is taxing

It seems recently the change in presidency has caused an overabundance of unsolicited opinion offerings from all corners.  Round these parts, the predominant opinion is that the people (i.e. mostly upper middle class) are mad because they believe they are going to have to pay more taxes.  This prospect has them lamenting the seating of Obama as president as well as the collection of ‘tax and spend’ democrats in the legislature.

 

I tend to avoid engaging the opinion givers as to why people shouldn’t pay more taxes.  In general if your country has to take loans in record amounts to keep the doors open while the economy is growing, I’d say not enough taxes are being paid.  So then the real discussion should become one of either what aspects of government do you want to decrease/eliminate or who should pay the extra taxes to balance the budget.

 

 Historically, I have engaged some of those who say, “I pay way too much tax.”  The responses have included: if you give people more money (have them pay less taxes) they will invest it and put others to work, the taxes paid and benefits received are so disproportionate it’s not fair to me, taxing higher earners is a disincentive for people to take risks and succeed, and taxing more allows the government to grow and we need a smaller government that doesn’t try to solve everyone’s problems and shortcomings.

 

While there is most definitely some merit in these points of view, I think many of them fly in the face of economic and psychological fundamentals.  I can respect a person who has thought through their stance and investigated the validity of their opinion and could site some objective source who adds to the plausibility of their point of view.  However what I think has happened in many cases is the people lamenting their possible tax burden are almost completely motivated by self-interest.  Everyone is entitled to want to keep more of the money they make but at least be forthright in your motives.  The conservative entertainment business (Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Rielly, etc) is very effective at producing half-baked theories and semi-lies as to why paying fewer taxes is better for everything and there are far too many that use their fodder to mask their own greed.

 

If someone thinks paying more taxes (in normal economic times) will adversely impact the long-term well-being of our country, then I think the person needs to suggest ways of decreasing government expenses.  So I get that people don’t want to pay more taxes, but what is it our government is doing we need to stop?

 

Typically, the people who believe they pay too many taxes will site the amount of money spent on welfare and/or in general on people who are too lazy to work.  I get the impression it really, really bothers some people that they work hard and pay a lot of taxes and some of those taxes are going to people who could work but would rather live a subsistence existence off of government income.

 

I really have no idea of how much total money is being spent on welfare nor do I know how realistic it is that people can survive off of government handouts.  If I decided to stop working what sort of life could I have living off the government?  I have no idea.   As a percentage of the total population, I guess I can’t imagine there are too many people that are conscientiously choosing to live a meager existence off of government handouts.  While there are no doubt millions out there and making these people work would decrease government spending, I can’t imagine you are going to solve trillion dollar deficits by making some people who are ill-equipped and unmotivated either to work or starve.

 

So let’s assume you could solve 10% of the deficit problem by making people work who can work, what do we cut to get the other 90% we need?  I am not sure many in the ‘I’m paying too much in taxes crowd’ get past this point.  Many, I would guess, probably support the Iraq effort and probably wouldn’t start by going after corporate breaks because if the corporations get breaks, they will hire more people.  So here’s a little FYI – if you want to tell me you aren’t paying enough taxes, let me know what you want to specifically cut, how much the cut will save, and what long-term impact the cut will have.  The other option is you can identify who other than you should pay more taxes and what impact that will have.

 

Let’s be clear, I don’t want to give the government any more of my money than I have to. I think they waste for too much of it.  However, I am not afraid to pay more taxes if it will mean the country is a better place for my children.  Leaving them with a huge debt, a huge liability with medical care for the larger older population and an environment destroyed by deregulation (done to increase commerce so as to hire more people and expand the tax base) isn’t just.  I sacrifice all the time for my children and think many would and so maybe we need to think longer term and take some lumps now.

 

I do think there are ways the government should/could decrease spending to improve the long-term prospects for the country.  The Iraq war was not a good idea. I am against throwing money at the Halliburtons and their ilk.  I think corporate friendly policies can tend to consolidate wealth which is bad in the long-term.  I think our legislative process is far too strongly influenced by the self-interest of those who pay campaign contributions and lobbyists and too little by what’s in the best interest of our country in the long run.  I think if you iron out of few of these things and we collectively pay more taxes and sacrifice our current standard of living it should benefit the country our children inherit.

Spending too much time at the bar (space)

Spending too much time at the bar (space).

 

Periodically, I look down at my keyboard to see if my collective use has changed the wear on the keys.  In a way, a used keyboard is probably a little like a seashore.  The people that type their fingers off day after day have the beach with the sand accumulated from millions of waves.  Others who don’t use theirs much and have one that looks a lot like it did when they got it would be like the rocky cliff shoreline.  Mine, it’s in between probably in the rough stone category of shoreline.  Some of the keys are a little shinier than the others but it’s not as if I any of the letters are in danger of disappearing.  

 

The spot where my thumb hits the space bar is by far the most worn spot.  I see there is even some wear on the space bar where my left thumb touches it.  I don’t recall ever hitting the space bar with my left thumb but I let it hang out there (it doesn’t do much else but hang out when it comes to typing).  

 

I wonder how many times you would have to hit the space bar to wear through the plastic.  I am sure someone has use the space bar enough times to wear through it.  Some data entry person in a third world country that has to work six days a week, twelve hours a day and never gets a replacement keyboard.  That’s probably the sort that would wear clean through.

 

One other fine pearl of wisdom I will leave with your today – your typing speed and accuracy decreases by at least half when you think about typing while you are typing.  Maybe there is a lesson there than can be extended to other facets of my existence.  Don’t over think things; just let them flow from your brain unconsciously and you will be more productive.

 

Belt tightening

Contributions at the parish have nose-dived.  Many expected there would be an eventual decline but the severity and suddenness of the drop caught us a little off guard.  The situation does force a rethinking of what is essential to a parish and what isn’t.  It also forces a discussion on what the needs of parish are at this point in time.

 

So we have been asked to put our ministry activity on a grid.  On one axis of the grid is the need of the ministry for the parish and on the other is the quality of that ministry.  A final element to the evaluation is to assign how much each ministry costs.  The goal is to fund or provide resources to the activities with the highest need and eliminate those that are costly and are needed as much.

 

It seems easy enough but the process largely depends on perceptions and there is an element of turf protection as well.  Ideally, we will have a constructive dialogue and assess how we can become an even more efficient parish.

 

In addition to this exercise, we are also doing what most other companies are doing, freezing pay, looking at potential staff reductions, decreasing benefits, and freezing expenses as much as possible.  The problem we may face is that we will come to realize that what we are providing is needed more now than it has been for a few years, and by cutting, we won’t be able to help those who need it.

 

There has been some discussion on how we might approach both assessing and maximizing our potential income but realize in doing to we may come across as being oblivious or unsympathetic to the difficult financial realities confronting our donors.  

 

Of dire concern to me is what is down the road.  If our giving decreases by 8% this year from last year, will it take four years to get back to where we were last year?  Typically income has increased by a little less than 2% per year and so assuming economic things get righted, will people start giving dramatically more (back to their ’07 amounts) or will they start the 2%?

 

In the end I think we are going to have to fundamentally rethink the way we do business around here.  I’ll keep you updated if I’m still employed.

Dollar God

It’s all the more apparent to me that our true religion is money.  What we are selling here at the church isn’t being bought as much because more and more people worship money.

I guess I thought maybe there would be a realization after the investment crash that worshipping money isn’t ‘all that.’  I guess I would think that when people started to see there investment house of cards start to fall that maybe it would get them to consider investing on a more lasting and even eternal basis.  I think we are going the opposite direction quickly.  We are all spending more time worshipping money to rebuild the house.

In the midst of all this, I start thinking about the priests and prophets of our money religion and can’t help but conclude they are decidedly ineffective.
 
If these money priests and prophets are honest, they would say they really have no idea where the markets are going.  I’m not talking about saying whether a stock or the market will be up or down tomorrow or next month, they should just use all those fancy computers with six or seven flat screen monitors to figure out whether the market is over valued or under valued on six or twelve month basis. 

They take people’s money and tell them they have the knowledge and information to outperform the market (they don’t tell people to buy a risk appropriate collection of index funds do they?).  The real irritating thing about these priests and profits of the real religion in America is that there’s at least five different layers and none of them is adding any value as far as I can tell. 

You got your local investment advisor guy who gets his investment recommendations from some local/regional/section manager who gets his advise from some national guy who recommends products who are management by investment strategists overseen by corporate investment managers and they are all getting a little slice of the pie under the premise they are going to do better than the index funds. 

Is your collection of known and unknown advisors treating you well?  With all those layers of people making their livelihoods off the premise that they know where, when and how to invest you sure would have to believe that someone along the line would maybe have a sense for when the market might be overvalued.  What value do they add if they can’t predict on 12 month basis the probability that the market is under or over valued?  Anyone get the advice to move money to cash?  “Buy and hold quality investments, invest in the long-term, you’ll lose if you try to time the market, blah, blah, blah.”

The good news for all you, my many readers, is that you will probably get to enjoy this blog until 2038 when I can finally afford to retire although given the growth of money worship, I bet if I set up shop as money priest, maybe it would be sooner.