By Daniel B. Kline
Lowering taxes has historically always resulted in bringing in more tax revenue. This has not stopped countless politicians from raising taxes, mostly because increasing taxes for the people who don't vote for you is a great way to get support from the people who do.
Raising taxes removes incentive for people to work harder. If the major result of their hard work is to put more dollars into the endless sinkhole of government then people will simply do just enough. The smaller the government's cut, the more money people try to make and spend and the more money people spend the better it is for the overall economy.
None of this basic and often proven lesson in economics matters to President Barack Obama who has made loud noises about increasing taxes for the so-called rich. If Obama does that, he's going against all economic logic and simply pandering to his base.
President Obama considers people who make more than $250,000 a year rich and has targeted these folks for tax increases. This populist drivel plays well to Obama's Democratic base because if you don't make that much and never hope to make that much, than anyone making $250,000 seems impossibly wealthy.
Obama does not distinguish between the person making $250,000 a year in New York (where you couldn't buy a two bedroom apartment on that income) or Peoria, where it might get you a mansion. Nope, when pandering to the people, it's easier to leave complicated facts out and just use a broad brush to say the rich don't pay their fair share.
In reality, the poor pay almost no taxes and the worst tax burden falls upon the people doing pretty well, who are not exactly rich. It's hard for someone making $25,000 a year to sympathize with someone making $250,000, but the guy making more pays an awful lot more in taxes than his poorer friend.
Painting all people above a certain income level as wealthy and implying they don't pay enough is exactly the same tactic used by the Republicans when they say that welfare and entitlements cause all our problems. Of course, neither argument is exactly true, but that's irrelevant when you're playing the game for the next election, not the good of the country.
Obama and the Democrats only stay in office if they maintain a base of electoral support. The only way to do that is to have an enemy that galvanizes their core constituents (people who don't make that much money and guilt-ridden people with a whole lot of money).
As his enemy, Obama has chosen to target people who own nice homes, small businesses and some luxury items. They are largely the people responsible for employing those a little further down the economic ladder, but they vote Republican, so they must be punished.
The people who are not rich but do pretty well drive a significant portion of the economy. Raising their taxes not only won't increase how much money the government brings in for tax revenue, it will cause a ripple effect of economic woe.
If President Obama is the man he wants us to believe he is, then he should be above politics. Obama needs to fix the system by cutting government spending, lowering taxes and generally taking government out of our lives.
That means no more interfering in business -- whether that means giving them bailouts or firing their CEOs. Obama must reinstate capitalism and allow the system to sort itself out. The time for canvassing for votes has ended so our president should start speaking for the country and not just his party.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Finding time for friends saves sanity
By Daniel B. Kline
As my friend's almost two-year-old son repeatedly cried, "daddy, daddy, daddy" at his father who had gone outside to grill dinner for the group of us, I took some solace in the fact that it was not my child, crying at that moment. Of course, 80 or so miles away, my five-year-old son was likely laughing maniacally at my wife while using rude language and refusing to get ready for bed.
Whereas I once experienced some sort of nightlife and at least attended concerts, went to the movies after 6 p.m. and regularly ate at restaurants that did not serve chicken nuggets or offer crayons, I now considered myself lucky to be having a noisy dinner with friends. Becoming a parent makes time spent with pals not nervously waiting for our kids to come off a ride at Chuck E. Cheese or chasing them around a park especially precious.
As my friend's almost two-year-old son repeatedly cried, "daddy, daddy, daddy" at his father who had gone outside to grill dinner for the group of us, I took some solace in the fact that it was not my child, crying at that moment. Of course, 80 or so miles away, my five-year-old son was likely laughing maniacally at my wife while using rude language and refusing to get ready for bed.
Whereas I once experienced some sort of nightlife and at least attended concerts, went to the movies after 6 p.m. and regularly ate at restaurants that did not serve chicken nuggets or offer crayons, I now considered myself lucky to be having a noisy dinner with friends. Becoming a parent makes time spent with pals not nervously waiting for our kids to come off a ride at Chuck E. Cheese or chasing them around a park especially precious.
Parenting, of course, has its joys, but it can be an isolating experience as even when you manage to find time to spend with other adults, the conversation tends to focus on the little ones. Having kids (or in our case kid) tends to consume your life giving you little else to talk about.
This makes having relationships with people without kids nearly impossible. You can at least commiserate with other parents, but the child-free live in an entirely different universe -- a land where staying up past 10 and watching a whole movie on a weeknight remain possible.
For people without kids, listening to someone talk about their children is about as interesting as listening to a long story about someone's cat. My single friends maybe want to see a picture and a hear a quick update. They do not want to sit through my story about how Joshua spent three hours refusing to go to sleep while taking every item out of every storage area in his room and calling me "a fresh face."
Being a parent overwhelms your life in a way that makes it hard to remember that you are anything else. I'm theoretically a guy who runs one of the largest toy and hobby stores in the country who also writes a widely read newspaper column. I have a wife with an interesting job. I read a lot, watch all sorts of television and should have something to say that does not involve my child.
Unfortunately, that generally proves not to be true as sitting there with my one of my oldest friends and her husband -- people I share interests with -- we mostly traded war stories about parenting. While we never got around to talking about the Battlestar Galactica finale, we did discuss that Billy Ray Cyrus puts on a fake mustache when he plays Hannah Montana's dad but takes it off when he plays Miley Cyrus' dad.
I genuinely wish I did not know what any of the words in that last sentence, but I do, as well as a few facts about Spongebob that no grown man should have in his brain. At some point though, the younger child bounced happily on my knee and the older (shockingly well-behaved) boy began getting ready for bed.
We did spend a few minutes talking about grownup stuff (work and real estate) and it was one of the better times I've had in recent memory. Three people, too tired to sit up straight, talking like grownups. It may not be much, but when you're life usually revolves around bedtimes and tantrums, it was enough.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Sometimes gain may not be worth the pain
By Daniel B. Kline
Generally, when I put my foot on the ground it stays there, working fairly well with the rest of my leg to keep me standing upright. That basic physical truth, however, has not been quite so true recently as my knee has started randomly buckling, occasionally ending with me on the ground.
The frustrating part of my newly unreliable knee, not to mention my often achy shoulder, comes from the fact that these ills derive from my efforts to improve my physical condition. As I get stronger and more into shape (or at least a shape other than oval) I find that I am slowly amassing a collection of random aches and pains.
Generally, when I put my foot on the ground it stays there, working fairly well with the rest of my leg to keep me standing upright. That basic physical truth, however, has not been quite so true recently as my knee has started randomly buckling, occasionally ending with me on the ground.
The frustrating part of my newly unreliable knee, not to mention my often achy shoulder, comes from the fact that these ills derive from my efforts to improve my physical condition. As I get stronger and more into shape (or at least a shape other than oval) I find that I am slowly amassing a collection of random aches and pains.
As a lazy fat guy I may have looked bad and had trouble buttoning my pants, but nothing ever hurt. Now that I'm heading towards looking fairly decent and have dramatically increased my strength, I'm having trouble standing up.
My problems began when after six months of not taking very good care of myself and working pretty much obsessively at my then new job I decided it was time to hit the gym. Once I made that decision, as I do with all things, I charged in head first beginning a five day a week weightlifting routine with a much fitter coworker.
My workout pal pushes me beyond where I would go on my own, but nothing in our routine stretches our limits dramatically. We're working towards slow improvement not attempting to out macho each other or to see how far we can push ourselves.
On the positive side, the improvement has been steady. My pants actually require a belt now and I'm about twice as strong as I was in December. While I might not exactly be in walk around without a shirt shape, I'm also not in paramedics start warming up the heart paddles when I walk by shape anymore either.
My reward for dragging myself to the gym in the early morning has unfortunately been that as my appearance improves, my actual condition seems to worsen. Lifting weights, even when done correctly, puts a lot of stress on your body and aches and pains seem to go hand in hand with making gains.
My doctor looked at my knee and told me to rest it for a few days and then work on strengthening the muscles around it. Never mind that the problem started because of my attempt to get stronger, just keep getting stronger and perhaps eventually I'll have enough muscle that my failing joins won't be needed.
If this continues I will eventually become one of those guys you see at they gym with enormous strength but a complete inability to function in the real world. I will need help putting on a shirt, but I'll be able to bench press a Toyota.
Realistically, I'd like to find a way to be in better shape and also be able to get by in day-to-day life. I'm not looking to become the incredible Hulk, but I'd also prefer if I looked a little better and could still tie my shoes without help.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Maybe some things don't need to be shared
By Daniel B. Kline
Having just mastered Facebook, I'm a little perplexed that Facebook has become irrelevant and I should instead be using Twitter. Of course, by the time I figure out how Twitter works, the hipper folks will have moved on to something else and I'll be left "tweeting" to myself.
Technology now moves so quickly that if you're over 25 and know how to do something, it has already become irrelevant. As best as I can figure it, we're moving towards a society where technological trends have the staying power of one hit wonder bands. And in that world, the kids are downloading Flo Rida ring tones while I'm still listening to a tape of "Rock Me Amadeus."
The only common denominator of these emerging methods of communication seems to be that each new development uses less words and becomes more public. We started with letters and phone calls. We then moved to email and text messages. We followed that with Facebook posts of a few sentences and are now publicly Twittering no more than 140 characters.
We're only a few years away from simply standing naked in the street with a few words written on our bodies. No emotion will be private and no action too mundane to tell everyone about.
Privacy and verbosity have become passé. Instead of sharing in detail with our closest friends, we now tell everybody everything as long as it fits into one, badly written, poorly abbreviated sentence. Everyone has become the author of his or her own personal Prince song and, well, U Can C What That Leads 2.
The younger users of this technology, specifically the high school kids, seem unaware that putting your private emotions on the Internet is kind of like hanging your butt out the car window and driving down the street. Whereas my high school romances, friendships and other intrigues were at least semi-private, now everyone has chosen to go through their awkward years under a spotlight.
Instead of filling up a notebook kept under the bed or making bad mix tapes that at most two people would hear, today's teenagers post their proverbial notebooks and mix tapes where everyone can see them. My own personal stash of notebooks produces cringes when I think of the overblown emotion contained within -- emotion that can only be appropriately accompanied by a Depeche Mode/REM mix tape -- but at least it's a private shame.
Of course, posting about your personal life can only embarrass you, whereas some of the stuff being posted might actually make your life harder. Employers, even the really staid ones with HR people, now routinely check Facebook, MySpace and Twitter as background on potential hires.
If Googling someone produces drunken videos, shots of you with a bong in your hand or not enough clothes on, well, you might not be getting that position in corporate America. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to keep the pictures of me doing embarrassing and/or illegal things away from any potential future bosses.
Facebook, Twitter and whatever comes next, have their place, but there's a major difference between letting everyone you have ever met know the basic facts of your life and exposing yourself in front of the world. I try quite hard to be entertaining on Facebook and am happy to share, but some things simply should not be put in a status update.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Having just mastered Facebook, I'm a little perplexed that Facebook has become irrelevant and I should instead be using Twitter. Of course, by the time I figure out how Twitter works, the hipper folks will have moved on to something else and I'll be left "tweeting" to myself.
Technology now moves so quickly that if you're over 25 and know how to do something, it has already become irrelevant. As best as I can figure it, we're moving towards a society where technological trends have the staying power of one hit wonder bands. And in that world, the kids are downloading Flo Rida ring tones while I'm still listening to a tape of "Rock Me Amadeus."
The only common denominator of these emerging methods of communication seems to be that each new development uses less words and becomes more public. We started with letters and phone calls. We then moved to email and text messages. We followed that with Facebook posts of a few sentences and are now publicly Twittering no more than 140 characters.
We're only a few years away from simply standing naked in the street with a few words written on our bodies. No emotion will be private and no action too mundane to tell everyone about.
Privacy and verbosity have become passé. Instead of sharing in detail with our closest friends, we now tell everybody everything as long as it fits into one, badly written, poorly abbreviated sentence. Everyone has become the author of his or her own personal Prince song and, well, U Can C What That Leads 2.
The younger users of this technology, specifically the high school kids, seem unaware that putting your private emotions on the Internet is kind of like hanging your butt out the car window and driving down the street. Whereas my high school romances, friendships and other intrigues were at least semi-private, now everyone has chosen to go through their awkward years under a spotlight.
Instead of filling up a notebook kept under the bed or making bad mix tapes that at most two people would hear, today's teenagers post their proverbial notebooks and mix tapes where everyone can see them. My own personal stash of notebooks produces cringes when I think of the overblown emotion contained within -- emotion that can only be appropriately accompanied by a Depeche Mode/REM mix tape -- but at least it's a private shame.
Of course, posting about your personal life can only embarrass you, whereas some of the stuff being posted might actually make your life harder. Employers, even the really staid ones with HR people, now routinely check Facebook, MySpace and Twitter as background on potential hires.
If Googling someone produces drunken videos, shots of you with a bong in your hand or not enough clothes on, well, you might not be getting that position in corporate America. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to keep the pictures of me doing embarrassing and/or illegal things away from any potential future bosses.
Facebook, Twitter and whatever comes next, have their place, but there's a major difference between letting everyone you have ever met know the basic facts of your life and exposing yourself in front of the world. I try quite hard to be entertaining on Facebook and am happy to share, but some things simply should not be put in a status update.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
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