At Last, A Solution: Fewer Millionaires

Millionaire

Whoa, something must have happened while we were on a small island and missed the paper. All of a sudden we're at war again...against those heinous foes...Millionaires!

The President, in particular, is out to get Millionaires. We can tell, because he calls them "people" and not "folks." Folks are "ordinary Americans," who are a lot of things (overweight, poor students, credit-liars, tax-evaders), but they are simple folks, who are constantly screwed by the kind of people we call...people. Especially Millionaires.

Around election time, which begins the day after any election, there are suddenly a lot more folks than people out there in election land for Democrats to praise. Republicans can't seem to find anyone to praise, who isn't currently living in some asylum or will soon be in one.

Golly, maybe some of the Millionaire parents in O's daughters' exclusive private school did something particularly bad, like make gauche donations to the scholarship fund?

The real answer seems to lie with Warren Buffet, who is not even a Millionaire; he is a Billionaire and, apparently, that is an okay thing to be, particularly if you happen to be a Democratic Billionaire. Why, everyone knows that Uncle Warren is "just folks." He is beloved because he found a way to make money blackmailing banks like Goldman Sachs and Salomon Bros. Who wouldn't love that? We even love that little gecko, who works for Geico, one of Warren's many companies.

A few weeks ago, after Buffet got finished blackmailing Bank of America into giving him a sweetheart deal, he must have felt remorse. He woke one day complaining how absurd it was that he was paying an effective tax rate that was lower than the one most of his employees pay. Rather than give them all a whopping raise, he proposed ways to make him pay higher than 17%.

Could it be that Warren Buffet, The Sage Of Omaha, does not know that he could pick up the phone on his NetJets' jet (he owns this company which allows Millionaires who can't afford their own jet to share, plus he is cheap as all get out) and call his lawyer and accountant and simply instruct them to not take certain deductions, so that he could pay higher taxes? One would think that most folks know this can be done.

Apparently he doesn't know this. The President does not seem prepared to tell him this. The Times and MSNBC, desperate to prop up President O and always eager to annihilate unsuspecting Millionaires, who do not live in Tribeca,  have jumped on this band wagon. Is it too early or too outrageous to think that we might soon be erecting Millionaire Internment Camps as the best solution to the nation's many problems?

Camp Millionaire, Nebraska

This must be very confusing to recent immigrants to this country from China, Mexico, Hungary, Bulgaria, or Ecuador. These folks have a dream of becoming Millionaires, and this dream is partially what drives them to come here, work two jobs, educate their children, eventually become citizens and, yes, even pay some taxes.

What Mr. Buffet and the President and their cohorts seem to be missing is that what they have to say about Millionaires paying more taxes and the way they say it, is a very, very good argument for something they consider to be abhorrent...a flat tax of...17%*.

You see, Uncle Warren, that if you paid a flat 17% income/capital gains tax on everything you made,  with only one deduction of $8-10,000 per dependent, you would effectively pay a whole lot more money in taxes, as would every despicable Millionaire in the country. Plus, your company, Berkshire Hathaway, would also pay a flat 17% on earnings.

You see, Uncle Warren, unlike your friends in Washington, real people pay their bills with money, not ideas.

They like the possibility of doing their taxes on a postal card and knowing that Millionaires and Billionaires are paying a lot more money, even though they are paying the same rate. Real people like simple, practical things like EZ Pass, itunes, etc.

Is that too hard for some folks to understand? Yes, because they are caught up in their feelings, rather than in finding a rational solution to our problems.

Grow up.

* Here is a list of grown up countries, run by adults, with adult electorates, who use a simple flat tax:
http://flattaxes.blogspot.com/2010/09/flat-tax-countries-and-jurisdictions.html

This Little Piggy...

Piggy Bank

1) For many of us, the little piggy shown here was our first bank. We all learned the fundamentals of saving by putting our spare coins into the slot. Later, when certain adults made a point of trying to impress us by giving us a dollar, or, in the rarest of rare cases five dollars, we learned to pull little piggy apart, or remove the cork from underneath and insert the paper bill.

This latter move, of course, also taught us about something called borrowing; once we had the knack for breaking into piggy, we had a little taste of credit.

Sadly, we outgrew our piggy banks and graduated to small savings accounts in big bank buildings, many made of brick or granite, supported by huge columns. The bulk was to make us all feel secure about putting our money inside a place too big for a thief to carry around. These banks had names like First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, or even Chemical Corn Exchange and each one had its own armed guard inside.

Who would have thought that, after all these years, little piggy would once again prove to be a very sound alternative to those same big bulky stone banks...

Bank Piggy/DSK

2) The French banker, Christine Lagarde, is the head of the IMF, a kind of bank of banks. She recently replaced another French banker who is so famous he is known only by his initials, DSK, who resigned after having an unseemly, at best, liaison with a maid in his New York hotel (naturally, he blames the maid, puritanical Americans, and a conspiracy for his troubles).

Ms. Lagarde has been chiding her Euro partners to get going on baling out Greece and other countries, which cannot pay their debts and are in danger of default. Collectively, these countries are rather conveniently known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Not making it up.

In case you have not been paying attention, Greece sold many $billions of bonds to banks in France, Germany and other countries, so that Greeks could continue to provide a swell vacation spot for other euros without having to pay taxes. Then the banks bought insurance in case these bonds went bust, which they assuredly will if the same banks don't lend Greece more money.

If this sounds familiar to an American audience, especially if you are unemployed, have had your home foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford health insurance, it should. Greece is playing the role of home buyers who got mortgages they could not possibly repay from banks like Countrywide, who then sold a piece of the mortgage to other suckers, who then insured the worthless stuff with the same insurer, AIG. You know the rest.

Questions: why are there so many French bankers? Why don't they teach bankers that it is not a good idea to buy bonds from Greece, instead of sound investments like ouzo or feta cheese? Why don't we let children run the banks and the IMF: even they know not to buy from Greeks bearing bonds!

3) For some years we have had an account at a certain Swiss bank. In 2008, while said bank was losing about $38Billion, we actually made more money than they did. Considering that we were unemployed at the time, this was quite a feat and made us wonder why the bank did not hire us to manage them.

This week, the banking world was shocked...truly shocked ...again to find out that a lone trader at the same bank had run up losses of $2.3Billion (so far) without the loss being detected. These kinds of traders are always called "rogues," which is a way of banks saying that all is okey-dokey because there was only one. They think this makes clients feel a lot safer.

The bank has said,"The true magnitude of the risk exposure was distorted because the positions had been offset in our system with fictitious ...positions..." In other words, we can't be blamed or fired for not knowing since the guy made up stories to cover the bad stuff and our system can only find the bad stuff, not made up stuff.

Well, okay, we feel much better about our account now; and, this also explains why there is no minus sign on the Swiss flag; always accentuate the positive.


4) At least that "rogue" trader will go to prison; we can be assured of that. But, what about all of these other jamokes, who pompously, arrogantly, deceitfully, dishonestly, stupidly and, yes, piggishly baled out their pals at our expense?  The Taliban would be too good for them.

It turns out that the little piggy bank was a very good idea after all. Oink.

Bon Courage

51 Stars

The current 50-Star US flag was designed by a seventeen year old high school student Robert Heft as part of a class project in 1958. He got a B-, until the design was accepted by the nation to be its new flag; then, his teacher gave him an A. Talk about tough markers!

Heft was a young man who thought ahead, a kind of Steve Jobs of flags, and so he also designed a 51-Star flag, shown above, at the same time, and didn't stop until he hit a 60-Star model.

In October 2001, I tried to contact Mr. Heft to ask his permission to use the 51-Star flag for a project. At the time, I thought of the extra star as a potential healing and unifying symbol, a point of reference for a wounded city and nation.

For a number of reasons that project never took flight, and I did not have the opportunity to connect with Mr. Heft, who died in 2009.

But, today, I am thinking again about that 51st-Star, and thinking that now, perhaps more than ever, the country might benefit from having a new reference point, a unifying light, a visible and symbolic source of energy, imagination and courage.

I am also thinking about all those 17-year-old young men and women out there today, and their futures. I would say to them: now is the time to be bold, to seize the moment, rise above our profound sense of grief and loss; rise too above the current national malaise and all the jibber-jabber.

Now might be an even better time to take inspiration from the Star and the imagination and confidence of that 

17-year-old boy back in 1958, to begin to re-design...everything around us that requires re-designing... which is quite a lot; 

and to not look back or listen to those who say you cannot do it. Bon Courage.

This One's For You