DISQUS

I'll try to address all the comments in general. I agree that the article was all over the map, but the simple fact is this: if I'm an individual in America, and I make $100, then spend $100, I owe tax on the $100. If I'm a corporation and do the same, I pay taxes on the net $0 - i.e., nothing. To DGI's and Bill's points, though, I have always been mystified by the complaints about double taxation. I'm not sure it's so much double taxation as the rate of taxation. I don't think there's any problem with taking taxes from several different revenue streams, for precisely the reason Bill mentions - we don't want one revenue stream to be totally "tax free" and therefore wildly preferable to the others. Think of a national sales tax: I am a law-abiding citizen but if I had a 30% tax on my consumption, it would be a lot easier to avoid that than our current income tax is to avoid. And even if the milk was taxed at 2%, the company shipping that milk to the store would be paying 30% more for the truck, for the materials to make milk boxes, etc. - those costs would end up with the consumer.

I personally don't think any taxation system can be "fair." I think in the US more tweaking could make the system "fairer" - but too much tweaking has been done already.

I'm a morning guy - since the day I was born I've found it SO easy to sleep within minutes (literally) at night, but I'm usually up at 6 am or earlier every day, even on weekends. Yesterday I was up at 4:30 am. I am VERY much a morning guy!

@plonkee: you'd think that would be the obvious solution, wouldn't you?

@Heidi: You're definitely right about being easier to say than do. After getting to work this morning, the first thing I did was read an op-ed piece on potential vice-presidential candidates. Talk about wasting my time. Oh well, the first step is admitting you have a problem, I suppose...

@James: I've voted for third party candidates for president twice, but I was living in a non-swing state. My theory is that if you live in a state that's safe for one major party or the other you can safely vote for a third party candidate. If you live in Alabama or New York, there is a very high probability that your state is not in play in any way, shape or form. Since I vote in New Jersey, there is a high likelihood that it won't be in play this time around, so I might vote third party again.

@Retired Syd: I definitely managed to quit reading political blogs and watching talking head shows. At least I'm restricting my viewing to "news" news for the most part. And it's a sad thought that this is what it's come to - like you, I'll be excited to have an English-speaking president for the first time in 8 years.

@TWC: I remember thinking how great it was when Fox News came out. I thought everyone would be so appalled at their "fair and balanced reporting" that it would discredit that type of journalism. Guess that tells you how well I can predict trends.

@Curmudgeon: I do think that at some point the trend of consumption will reverse itself in almost every aspect of our lives - oil usage will go down, obesity rates will decline, deficit spending will be reduced and eventually eliminated and so on. The question mark will be whether we get a leader who comes up with proactive solutions, or reacts to it from a position of weakness.

@Curmudgeon: I am sure they are taking massive action to ensure that their resources are allocated in a responsible and effective manner to maximize customer satisfaction....

@Curmudgeon: Well, I didn't want to mention the company by name since it's all working OK by now. Let's just call them Pherizon. :)

@Guinness416: You're absolutely right - I'm more likely to be stunned by DECENT customer service than anything. Good customer service is downright shocking. And the company I'm talking about knew that they had so few competitors that there was almost no chance we'd leave them - and their competitors are famous for horrible service (and prices) too.

@Bill: I think the word "capitalism" is overused in America. As you said, so many services are monopolistic: energy, telecommunications, water. In less populated areas it can be even worse. I don't know what the answer is. The telecommunications industry was famously deregulated from the monopolistic AT&T (not the same company that's called AT&T today, of course). The industry fragmented, competed savagely, then reconsolidated into regional monopolies. How do you force competition? I assume that if a local phone company was awful enough, a competitor might come in - think Vonage vs. the phone company, for example, or cell phones versus land lines. But those changes take a long time and we end up with highly inefficient systems in the meantime.

@deepali: I'm sure you know that I wasn't really trying to pick on India. It could just as easily have been the Philippines or China, of course. Here's my biggest problem with globalized customer service - I have yet to see any outsourced customer service do anything more than refer me to another number that can only be called from 9 to 5 weekdays. If they could actually fix something I could see the point - but it seems to be largely a delay-and-frustrate tactic. I do feel bad for the people in the call centers - it must be tough to deal with so much fury on a daily basis.

@Hunter: Yeah, it is broken - see Pinyo's explanation. I'll correct it once it's up on Moolanomy again.

@Danielle: Thanks! Actually that's a good point, and to elaborate a bit - milk has lactose, and cheese generally doesn't. Lactose is exceptionally hard to digest for humans. So it isn't dairy so much as specifically the drink, milk. Dairy is generally OK (butter, cheese, etc.).

@Momma: Amen, amen.
@Curmudgeon: The next President will actually cure all what done ails us, of that I am sure. And count me firmly in the camp that believes that either man in the running will spectacularly fail to address the most pressing needs of our nation within the next four years. Sigh.
@Ron: Well, yes, true, I am just using the convenient shorthand that you hear on the news and in the papers so frequently. We're a democracy at least in the sense that we've hijacked the word democracy, no?
@Geography: I was making a joke. I know Canada's a parliamentary democracy, so it was just a feeble attempt at humor on my part to say that there was one democracy in the North American continent.

:)

Thanks all - Guinness416, Lazy Man of Lazy Man and Money is clearly the Tom Brady of the Interspheres. And yes, DGI, $0.03 was pretty close to accurate. The first 6 months of brip blap were essentially income-less...

I'll chime in here and say nobody HAS to pay college tuition for their kids. It's nice if they can, but if they can't, the kids will have to attend a cheaper school, work their way through college, etc. You can always sell your house and rent to avoid paying a huge mortgage. Etc. You can go out of this life having lived on your knees or standing up. Me, personally, I couldn't take getting dumped on like that. There are almost always options, as long as you have your health.

Well, maybe not immortality - but at least a slight chance to improve the odds of living a bit longer :)

@telly: I'm sure Canuckistan is no worse than NYC - but I'm longing after Florida. I think I'd be happy living in the Caribbean, frankly! But yeah, being bored at work is tough. I often worry that boredom is the great sin - and by that I mean that even when I was working in a horrible job for a big consulting firm in Moscow I was never, ever, ever bored for a minute because I was so horribly engaged in everything going on. Now, I can do my job with one hemisphere of my brain shut down, and it's not good. Growth, at the end of the day, makes people happy. Stagnation makes people unhappy. Ugh. Time to rest up for more consulting tomorrow.

@Four Pillars(Mike): Heh, I know all about the one-arm-baby-typing. Prost! :)

@bouncing betty: Thank you, thank you, for getting the main point - if something like The Secret makes you and me feel a little better about our lives, it's a good thing. End of story. People get wrapped up trying to determine whether there is some specific, demonstrable benefit and the main point is that it simply needs to make US feel a little bit better on our daily lives!

I will just throw in an aside that I have (as FFB mentioned and Guinness416 and Telly touched on a bit) been obsessing on work and lifestyle a lot for a fairly simple reason: while I am happy with my family and a lot of the things in my life, I have been feeling like something's missing, particularly work-wise.

I think like FFB said that I'm happiest with my family, but I'll add something that Bubelah and I have talked about, and that my parents certainly showed me, too: you cannot have your life center on one thing, even if it is your wife/kids/job/dog/favorite TV show. It's not healthy. Balance is key. An obsession with money or material goods is just as bad as a obsession with frugality or debt aversion, I think.

It is tough in NYC, though. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be happier in Canuckistan, if it wasn't for the damn winters. :)

@LODPI: Sure, I'll be a PTBlogger or something like that.

The investment bank would be a control position related to real-estate write downs: retroactively figuring out where lending agents goofed. Fun stuff, annoying everyone. What I ended up doing in the contract position is a revision of the financial close process: mucj closer to my previous experience.

Thanks, Mrs. Micah: I will endeavor to exceed expectations (see, my corporate days aren't entirely behind me!).

@jabster: I like half-pro-blogger, but I'm not even that. If I'm making $500 per day consulting and $10 blogging, I'm no problogger in any sense of the word. But at the same time, that $10 is much more fun (if not easier) to generate, so what's the better use of my time... had to say.

@Hunter: Don't worry - I have a plan to be back at full-time blogging by 2017!

@David Carter: I am banking 100% of my blogging income and approximately 1/3rd of my consulting income. We are frugal folks... we always think that living within our means is a smart way to live but making more is even better...

@Four Pillars: Mike, you're completely right. If my job paid pennies I'd go for it. I'm in velvet chains, and that was exactly my point: my work is easy enough and pays enough that I feel like an idiot for refusing to go after it. Staying at home is tough. Bubelah is a trooper. One kid is a handful, two are a logistical nightmare. Our second is fairly well-natured but even the best-natured kids, when you take two, will overlap... one is calm and the other is fussy. The second calms down and the first fusses. Repeat until cuckoo...

@Emiliy: You loved "That's nice." ? Just kidding, I know want you meant. It's yours, steal it, I release it. :)

Yeah, your story describes it. I can't get work done with my kids around because I find it hard to put work in front of them. And you have to - work pays the bills, provides for the family and maybe (for other people) provides and adult sense of satisfaction. But I can't do it, so like your friend I probably need to keep staying out and about. It's tough, though.

@Writer's Coin: Yeah, actually, being at work gives me more career-related stuff to write about. I don't write a parenting blog, so a lot of the parenting-type observations that might have made good blog posts over the last month weren't relevant to brip blap. I do find that inspiration is the trickiest thing about writing. I can write for a long, long time after I get some inspiration.

@Chad: Well, I hope it's not disheartening. I like to think I'm jumping in from a position of strength. I make enough money doing my work that I'm financially free in the short term (1 year or so) to work or not work for months and months at a time. That's a luxury 90% of Americans don't have.

I'm also doing contract work - I'm in for a few months, out for a couple. Keep at it - consulting is a great path for people like me who like to natter on and make money nattering, so if you find yourself in that category keep at it.