The 6 Pack Economist

I know that it makes people feel so much better when they can go after the rich corporate fat cats.  Of course it all turns to tears when they realize the rich fat cat was the one who was paying their salaries.  Even microsoft is threatening to move jobs overseas.

When are people going to learn that if you eat the golden goose it won’t lay any more eggs.  But it makes a bunch of short-sighted people feel better.  Everyone who works for corporations please raise your hand.  Ok that is just about everyone who still has a job.  And everyone who works at a school raise your hands too.  The corporations give educational institutions a lot of money.  So in a way you too work for the corporations.

I believe that corporate income taxes are simply counter productive.  The reason being is simple, when you have corporation the corporation has to employ people.  When people are employed by a private company then the state does not need to pay them to not come after the government with pitchforks. 

Employment for the average person has a lot of advantages both for the person but also for the government.  When a person is working they are less likely commit crime, protest in the street, and in general are just so much less annoying for the government.  After all if someone is home all day watching TV, surfing the internet, or just hanging around they so much more likely to start causing trouble.  This just requires more police, fireman, and morgue employees.

Employment is not just good for the government either it is also good for the person doing the work.  Let us assume the person doing the work at least believes that what they are doing is meaningful to someone (which is one the failures of communism more on this in a later post).  So the person has a job that they believe is doing some type of good, they don’t have wake up in the morning thinking they have the greatest job in the world for this to work either.  Said person has a purpose to their life.  They feel that they have some form of control.  In addition they have a strong separation between free time and work time.  This is very important as someone who either works all the time is burden to themselves, and a person who plays all the time is burden to everyone else.

Now that we have established that employment of people is a good thing we can also establish that we need something to employ them.  Well that is where corporations come into play.  Unlike small businesses (which are just smaller corporations), corporations have to employ a lot of low skilled specialists, in addition the usual skilled specialists.  These types of low skilled specialists must be drawn from the local population.  These are positions like mail room clerks,  janitors, the random copy and printer lady, computer helpdesk people (these are little more skilled), and we can’t forget the random hottie that always ends up at the front desk to greet people.  We all know that she is not going to be climbing the corporate ladder, maybe the corporate pole, but not the ladder.

See all these positions must be filled by the local population of the corporate office.  And when the government makes it very hard to do business and make a profit the corporation will move its offices.  There are plenty of countries in the world who would be more than happy to have these corporations put their shell headquarters in their country. 

Given all the bonuses I have outlined about the employment opportunities of keeping corporations happy why piss them off with higher taxes?  Because some left wing nut bags who can’t see the end result of their own jealously leads them to?

“So you think you can dance?”  no.  I can I turn this crap off.  Unfortunately for me the answer is all no, as my wife loves these damn shows.  The show tonight is the final 20 show.  Basically this is the show they pick the 20 contestants that will be on the regular show.

Tonight’s episode follows the same pattern for each of the contestants who have just spent the last 4 days in Las Vegas being thrown around the stage as 6 self righteous judges play with their emotions.  Here is the pattern each contestant goes through as they come on stage.  If the judges compliment the dancers at first then they are letting them go home.  But if they judges start off with “we think you need to grow some”, pause as the dancer starts to cry, the judges say “and we think we watch you grow over the show, you made the top 20!”  Want an emotional mind fuck for these poor dancers. 

Do these judges go home and hold a piece of steak in front of their dog to watch the poor thing squirm and cry.  Just tell these poor bastards you made it or you did not. Just pull the damn band-aid off and get on with it.

I hate these fucking reality shows. 

The blatant racism in political satire and comedy is just infuriating.  How dare they treat the countries first African American President like they are.  Does he not disserve the same treatment as all of our past presidents?

The disgusting treatment of our president by late-night TV or Stand-up comedians is dark spot on our republic.  Do we need another civil rights movement?

I have a dream that we as a nation will deride, poke fun at, and generally make fun of a president not based on the color of his skin, but on the “uhs, ums” and general missteps of his non-teleprompted speeches.

I have a dream that we will laugh at the fact our president has the same ability as the local news anchor at reading words on a screen.

I have a dream that youtube will have collections videos of every misstep, dumb remark, and otherwise embarrassing moments of our president all combined together for hours of fun.

I have a dream that the stress of watching people make fun of him on every late night show and stand -up comedy will turn his hair grey.

Does our first African American president not disserve to be treated equally?  We cannot rest till our presidents actions are scrutinized, taken out of context, and edited to make him look like any combination of the following; a buffoon, womanizer, liar, clumsy, naive and just generally stupid.  John Stewart’s Career depends on it.

I personally don’t care.  On my list of candidate positions it is just above if we agree on our choice of cereal.  Both sides on this issue really take it too far in the ramifications of either having gay marriage or not having gay marriage.  The pro-gay marriage side would have you believe that it is on the same level as forcing blacks to use certain water fountains or blocking the right to vote.  The anti-gay marriage side would have you believe that the nuclear family will instantly break apart and die because Tim and Tom or Jane and Joan got married.  For the pro-gay side lets be serious, you can do everything an actual married couple could do except have some of the legal protections from the state.  For the anti-gay side the no-fault divorce and Hollywood has already made a mockery of marriage.

Now that I have given my opinion, let us go into some little tidbits of things I thought about pertaining to this issue.  I like to look at things to find out the hidden consequences or things that most people did not think to include in their equations.

Why did government get involved with marriage to begin with?
The government or at least the United States Federal government did not really care who was married till the 1930s.  For those that took a history course the reason they started caring in the 1930s who was married to who was that social security benefits were started then.  Once the government started  paying people they begin to want to have a say in what is going on (this is a hint to anyone taking government money).  In the 1930s gay still meant that the person was just happy.  It was not really even considered that marriage was anything but a man and a woman (or women).

Why did government give benefits to being married?
There are a few reasons for this but the biggest is that hetero sexual marriage has a tendency to produce little future tax payers.  In addition the best way to ensure that the little taxpayers truly grow up to be taxpayers and not little criminals is to try and keep the parents in the same house.  Please don’t comment that there is no proof that kids grow up better in a house with mother and father I don’t care about your lies.

Is there any downside for gays and gay marriage?
Why yes there certainly is.  Although it is would not be noticeable for about three generations.  Let us assume that being gay is genetic (or at the very least people genetic predisposed to be gay).  In addition once gay marriage is legally recognized it will become social acceptable to be openly gay.  I would say it is acceptable now, but I guess it not true everywhere.  Here comes the downside.  When people stop hiding that they are gay and stop marrying heterosexuals the primary mechanism for the transfer of the “gay-gene” will be halted.  Remember that so many of us are unplanned pregnancy, and in a gay relationship there just is not an unplanned pregnancy.

I think we should all think about what the state of home decorating will be in 60 years.  Do we really want that?

I really don’t know what to do about drugs, mainly because I think us as a species desire a way to alter our perception of the world.  I definitely don’t think giving drugs out like candy is the answer though.

I wonder how many people are going to continue their self-destructive behavior because the risk of the behavior has been reduced.  Some of the risks of heroin are of course disease from dirty needles, improper use of the needles, poor quality drugs, robbery, rape, etc. the list goes on.  It is not that I don’t care about these people; it’s that I believe this “make a bad behavior safer” only encourages more of the behavior.  Reduce the cost of something and you will increase the demand of it.  You can’t get away from it.

I tend to be a libertarian for most things.  If it is between consenting adults have fun, don’t ask me to subsidize it unless it benefits me (like a married couple having kids).  But if said action requires you to get public assistance then I care about it. Go beat each other with rotten salami all you want, but your insurance pays for it, not mine.  Want to go home and smoke pot, fine just make sure you get up and go to work the next day. 

If you start taking money from me though, that’s when I get all “angry dad” on your ass.  The above mentioned program will eventually lead to the local government taking a similar approach.  This in turn leads to my money being spent on this type of crap.  What is needed is for these people to stop doing bad behavior, not making the behavior safer.  It just destroys the risk to reward ratio and that is what blew-up our banking system. Who knows maybe in a moment of clarity one of these addicts will realize that the risks of doing heroin does not equal the reward, and then they go and get help.