How I Ended Up in a Slaughterhouse: A fictional short-short story

Replace Income Tax with Sales Tax?

A Word With Marty: "POLITICS"

A Word With Marty: "TAXATION"

What If There Were No Government: A thought experiment

What if We Replaced Income Tax With Sales Tax? A thought experiment

Taxed: a short-short story

Expired: A short-short story

Payback: A short-short story

An Audacious Wish List for 2021

 

Dear Santa,

Forgive the graphic term, but 2020 pretty much sucked.

 

I’m not just talking about COVID with its shutdowns, lockdowns, and snotty masks — and that assumes you didn’t have to go on a ventilator.

 

 We also had a presidential campaign that should embarrass anyone—Were those two the best that America had to offer?

 

Then there was the racial roiling: If you are a liberal, you called it “unrest,” “protests” or “activism.”  If you aren’t liberal, you called it, “rioting,” “looting” and “burning down cities.” 

 

Plus, if you lived in the “land of dreams,” California, following years of drought and water restrictions, 2020 treated you to wildfires that turned even a health nut into a chain smoker.

 

Oh for a better 2021. Regression to the mean promises that, but Santa, I want to be much greedier:

 

 I want a vaccine that doesn’t knock people out for a day, which understandably makes them hesitate to come out for Round 2. Better still Santa, give me a one-dose vaccine, like the Johnson & Johnson one that’s in Phase III trials. Oh, and I want my vaccine to have no side effects, and oh, one that confers lifetime immunity.

 

And Santa, the zillions spent on a COVID vaccine should offer lessons for creating a vaccine against other scourges. Could you thus give our COVID nightmare the dreamy side effect of birthing a vaccine for AIDS, even cancer?

 

 And while I’m thinking ginormous:

 

Santa, I want an economy that comes back enough to restore jobs but one that isn't so robust that it encourages the over-materialistic lifestyle that cheapens people’s existence. Too many people focus on the Wise Men’s gift of gold, far fewer people on the frankincense and myrrh.

 

Santa, my next wish is very personal to me. I waste so much time every year keeping tax records and preparing my income tax returns. We need a tax system that replaces all that, not to mention the tax-avoidance shenanigans — Cayman Islands? What we need is a value-added tax. Santa, in case you're not up on taxation systems, a VAT is pretty much like a sales tax paid by consumers and manufacturers so it adds up to the same amount that the income tax yields. No tax return, no cheating, well, less cheating.

 

Santa, we also really need an election system that doesn’t require candidates to double-talk and press tawdry flesh for four years. No surprise, that deters the best people from running. Instead, elections should be just two weeks long, publicly funded, with a true debate — no biased moderators — and if one candidate rudely dominates (a particular presidential candidate rushes to mind), it’s there for all to see. The campaign would also include candidates’ voting record and platforms compiled by, say, Consumer Reports. 

 

And while we’re reinventing systems, education is ripe for that. The EduBlob — district, county, regional, state, and federal bureaucracies — each mandate a Manhattan phonebook of rules and regulations, some of which contradict each other. That means that a fortune in our tax dollars and educator efforts are wrested from where it matters — the classroom.

 

Speaking of the classroom, at the high school level at least, classroom lessons should be presented online by the world’s most transformative instructors, so that all students, from Harlem to Hollywood, can get the best. A live teacher would be in the classroom to answer questions, lead discussions and interactive activities, explain homework, and keep kids from dancing on their desk. I never danced on my desk but I think of how much time I spent chained to my school desk bored or befuddled. Santa, please save the next generation from that!

 

Dear reader, you may make fun of me, calling my wish list no more realistic than is Santa Claus, but seriously, we all need to dream, to aspire, to believe in something more hopeful than what we’ve experienced in 2020. Here’s to a Santa-Claus 2021.

I read this aloud on YouTube.

You Don't Have to Be Paranoid to Think Someone's Out to Get You

Sergeant Phil Esterhaus daily send-off to the cops in the iconic TV series Hill Street Blues was "Hey, let's be careful out there."

Indeed, there's plenty to be vigilant about. I offer a list in my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

My Ten Worries About America and How I'd Address Each

Here is the latest iteration of my plan to reinvigorate America. It addresses job creation, health care,k-16 education, U.S. involvement in the Middle East, our electoral system, the national debt, taxation, ethnocentrism, ethics, political correctness, even an ethical approach to improving the gene pool.

Regular readers of this blog will find most of the ideas familiar. Indeed, it is a revision of an earlier post but hopefully it's better thought-through and presented. And this is video; the previous version was audio.

The video below is 12 minutes long. To read the transcript, click HERE.

How I'd Reinvent Taxation

Jeffrie, a commenter on my previous post, asked me to propose a reinvention of our tax system.

Here's my shot at it. Your comments for its improvement are welcome:

I am putting aside the question of whether taxes should be increased or decreased. Here, I merely propose what I believe would be a fairer, less time-consuming, and more societally benefiting system for collecting whatever level of taxes is deemed appropriate.

I believe that both the individual and corporate income tax should be abolished. Any form of taxation requiring voluntary reporting of information and a panoply of deductions and credits is too time-consuming and gameable.

I'd eliminate most payroll taxes: especially Workers Compensation and Unemployment Insurance. They are job killers and yield negative unintended consequences. Workers Compensation is truly rife with fraud. And Unemployment Insurance encourages sloth. Most of my clients who are unemployment say they won't look for a job until the payments run out. Then, such inertia takes hold that even then, they find it hard to do the aggressive job search that's usually necessary these days.

Fines in excess of the asymptotic amount needed for deterrence are forms of taxation. I would reduce fines so they fit the crime. For example, a stop sign violation, currently $300 where I live, would be $40. A San Francisco parking ticket, which currently is $85 would be $20. A DUI would be reduced from $3,000 to $500.

I'd heavily tax consumption. Government should promote a less materialistic lifestyle, most importantly because it promotes people having more important goals, but also because the American empire is in its decline, fewer people will ever afford afford a consumptive lifestyle, even with zero taxation. Also, less materialism will yield environmental benefits.

So to ensure a progressive tax system, I'd exempt from taxation all basic goods, for example, basic food, clothing, shelter, used cars under $2,000, etc. All other items would be subject to taxing at one of three rates: standard, luxury, and alcohol/tobacco. Only clearly luxury items would pay the luxury rate: hotels over $200 a night, cars over $40,000, jewelry over $1,000, etc. I would legalize prostitution and it would be taxed at the luxury rate. The highest rate would be imposed on alcohol and tobacco because I want to deter their use and because those items impose tremendous costs on family members and on health care. I'm imagining that revenue neutrality could be achieved with a sales tax rate of 25%, 35% for luxury items, and 50% for tobacco and alcohol. That consumption tax, like all sales taxes, would be collected at the time of sale so it is minimally gameable.

I would heavily tax estates, Passing wealth to heirs discourages productivity. My intuition tells me that the appropriate rate would be 0% up to $100,000 rising to 90% at $1,000,000 or more.

I'd lightly but progressively tax investment income. I want to encourage investment, because it makes capital available for lending to businesses, which in turn, creates jobs and better or cheaper products and services. But it seems fair that people who earn money without doing anything for it should have that income taxed. I conceive of a rate that would start at zero for a year's investment income of under $5,000 to a maximum of 20% for an annual investment income of $40,000 or more.

Corporations can move headquarters overseas if too heavily taxed. That would lose too many U.S. jobs and too much tax revenue. So I'd reduce the corporate income tax rate to nearer the world average, perhaps to 15%, but with loopholes closed to avoid such injustices as Exxon-Mobil and GE paying zero tax.

For all taxes, a 25-cents-on-the-dollar tax credit would be awarded for money given to charity. I believe that charities, on average, provide services more cost-effectively than does the government and so I want to give people the option of giving their money to charity rather than to the government.

Your thoughts?