bloxy-moron

Can't beleive I am doing this.....

bloxy-moron is not a journal!!!!! But this is a journal entry (ugghhhhh). School, work and college basketball has prevented me from adding many posts on movie, concert, and book reviews as well as political observations. I have come home from school very late several times and started typing a post and find no coherency out of my random keys strokes so I give up and go to bed. I hope that I can catch up on all of my missing posts.

This post goes out to Alone in the Wilderness. Every time I check my "hit list", I find that I get on average 20 hits a day from Alone in the Wilderness googles. If I only had way to sell the video, I could probably retire to my own cabin in the wilderness.

If you are a non "Alone in the Wilderness" visitor, don't give up on me. If you are an "Alone in the Wilderness" visitor, leave a comment. Tell me about other similar stories. Tell me about the book. Tell me about your wilderness dreams.......

Oscar Chase I: Sideways

On a little spree to watch movies up for Oscars.  First candidate: Sideways.  This is a great movie.  It's a slice of life (no plot) type of movie that I always enjoy.  You literally go on a little journey through wine country.  For me, it was reminiscent of a wedding trip in Napa valley this summer.  There were at least a half-a-dozen very memorable scenes that made me laugh out loud. In three words or less, this a "guys chick flick".  I.E. a guys romantic comedy.  I highly recommend this to anyone who doesn't need plot and action to keep their attention. 

Social Security II: Privatize it?

Privatizing Social Security (SS) is a major waffle issue for me.  On the one hand, I believe in the market and think that it would be an efficient way to bolster retirement returns.

On the other hand, I find it extremely scary giving the government   power in investing capital in the free market system.  There are countless ethical questions that could be raised of how stocks/funds are invested.  Could the feds go after Enron knowing that retirement funds that they are responsible for could come crashing down?  There are many other well documented and valid points against privatization but that is not my point here.

I have two ideas of how to privatize SS.  My first idea is very simple.  Have the government give a dollar for dollar refund for the first $1000 given to an IRA.  This would privatize a part of SS but it would take away the government control of the investments.  If a person can not afford to put in a $1000 into an IRA and wait for their income tax return,  then they could set up the IRA and the feds could send the check directly to the bank or broker.  There could also be a %100 tax penalty for early withdraw.

Basically this system would give free money to everyone to invest however they like and there would be very little overhead and new bureaucracy at the Fed level.  This would force people to set up IRAs and then they may be more likely to contribute to them with their own funds.

Second idea was borrowed from an editorial I read in Business Week.  It said we should privatize part of SS, but instead of funding it by borrowing from SS.  We should fund it by raising the top income bracket back up to where it was prior to Bush's cuts.  At first thought, I am naturally against raising taxes to fund programs.  But since this money would go directly back into the economy through private investment, I don't see this tax hike hurting the economy. 

I see the combination of taking the investing out of the government's hands, funding from outside of SS, and need based payments could potentially secure SS and also take care of our retirement needs better.  In the 30 years with the privatized IRAs, retirees would not need as big a SS payment and therefore it would have less chance of bankruptcy.

My Plan for Social Security Reform

This is a post of why the libertarian in my believes we should fix the Social Security(SS) problem by not giving benefits to everyone.  Privatized SS will be a post for another day.

After reading Tax Shift, I firmly believe SS is the worst form of tax.  First it taxes income or productivity and secondly and it is regressive. If you make over a certain dollar amount, you don't have to pay SS.  This means it is a tax on the poor and middle class only. 

Let me take a step back though.  Yes SS is a tax!  It is not a retirement plan.  There is no guarantee that a person will get back what the put into it.  Therefore it is a tax!

I don't think that the premise of SS is all bad.  It is not realistic to think that all people will retire and still have an income that will support them.  Or if a breadwinner dies or is injured, then will be able to support a family.  So some type of social security net is necessary.  SS is what we have now and I am proposing how it might work better.  There are surely better systems to solve this problem, but that is not the point of this post.

There are two parts of the SS system.  One is collecting funds and second is distributing the funds.  It is a simple system and it will fail when funds distributed are greater than funds collected.  My first proposal is that all workers pay into SS.  This way the tax is no longer regressive. 

Secondly after lots of thought, I think payouts should become need based.  I think everyone who pays in should be guaranteed a fixed amount of monthly income, say $2000.  If a person has another retirement plan, then they may not receive all or any SS benefit.  If you have plan that pays you $1500 a month then maybe you will only collect $1200 in SS.  Or if your plan pays you over $4000 a month then you don't collect any benefit.

At first thought, this may seem unfair.  "I payed money into SS my whole working life so I deserve to receive a benefit!"  Well, the libertarian in me says wait "Do I want to depend on the government for retirement income?"  Hell no!  So, I would rather not receive benefits (unless something tragic happens to me of course).  So given the choice, I would prefer paying a smaller SS tax and not receiving benefits then paying a bigger tax and receiving them.  Because, this is the option.  It is a simple system either collect more or payout less.  I opt for payout less and I will attempt to save for my own retirement.

Propaganda Channel

This is a reactionary rant on a news snip-it about the new Pentagon Channel.  I have not watched a minute of this channel yet but I saw snippets of Rumsfeld being interviewed talking about the positive things going on in Iraq.  This infuriates me.  My tax dollars are being spent on a t.v. channel that tells me how great a job the military is doing.  To borrow an abused phrase "This is un-American." 

The premise of the station is to support the troops.  Now the troops everywhere in the US can get up to the minute military news. But does anyone think there will be realistic footage of what battle really looks like.  Will we see any funerals or shows on the fallen troops?  Oh, this negative information might hurt the troops?  I doubt it.  Our troops are extremely tough and brave.  They are also not stupid.  They know the realities of war much better than us civilians so I don't see the value in hiding the realities from the rest of us. 

By definition this is biased news.  Do you think if Microsoft created a channel to help developers that they would be promoting the values of Lynx?

This propaganda is going to be spewed to support warfare that I believe hurts my country's security and I am paying for it.  Can anyone say 1984?

Another Film another hero: Alone in the Wilderness

Alone in the Wilderness is an hour long film that is played frequently on PBS.  After watching five minutes of it, I went ahead and bought it (not from PBS shame on me).  This film was created by taking pieces of home movies taken by Richard Proenneke (my hero) while living alone in Alaska.

Richard decided at age 51 that he wanted to live in isolation in the beauty of nature.  So one summer he fell several trees with a hand saw near a lake in Alaska.  The next spring he went up and built a log cabin.  He filmed himself as he first built his hand tools and then built the cabin by himself.  He shows how he made boards by hand and a wooden lock by hand. He showed how he made the notches in the logs by hand and he had completed the cabin structure in 11 days!  I couldn't build a cabin with help and unlimited credit at Home Depot in that time.

Richard ended staying there for 30 years and would record these films and send them to his brother so he could see what he was up to.  The scenery in the movie is breath taking. 

For me, watching this movie would be like an artist getting to watch a self documentary of Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa.

New Hero: Napoleon D

This is a review of what I would call a generational love/hate film.  I haven't talked to anyone who just thought it was OK you either hate it or love it.  Most that I have talked to younger then 35 love it and those older hate it. 

It is a low budget comedy about high school.  Unlike others of the genre (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Pie), there is no sex, alcohol, or swearing.  For me, this is a non-issue but it is shocking that the movie can so accurately bring back feelings of high school without these elements. 

The movie is about the day in the life of Napoleon.  Even though the movie is all about him, the other char actors make the movie great. Napoleon is the key to liking the movie.  I find him heroic.  People that don't like the movie find him, annoying and or feel sorry for him. 

I wish I had the guts to pull of the stunts he did.  He obviously didn't care what other people thought about him.  Wish I could have drawn a cartoon caricature of someone I wanted to bring to a dance as an invitation.  Wish I could have walked into a thrift store and fell in love with an ugly brown suit.  Wish I could have danced in front of the whole student body.  He was the cool that most of us only dream about being. 

Bottom line this movie made me laugh out loud many times.  Truly a keeper and favorite film this year so far.

Libertarians Lost

My first blog of the New Year will be about the event that started my blogging career: Bush's surprising win in 2004.  I was shocked and angered by the election because I believe Bush's first 4 years have gone against my libertarian principles.  I took the World's Smallest Political Quiz on my understandings of Bush's policies so far.  Low and behold he is a STATISTS which is opposite of a libertarian!

In the future, I may blog on each of the political questions but for now I will only talk briefly why he is wrong on both economic and social issues.  I will conclude with another political axis that he is also on the wrong side of.

The social argument is easy.  He is against too many individual freedoms:

• patriot act - "giving up freedom for safety will leave you with neither" Ben Franklin

• gay marriage - government taking away one of our most basic rights

• abortion - again he is on the wrong side

• drugs - he also fully supported the "war on drugs"

The last three appeal to his religious right.  Appealing to religious influences is a bad thing for politicians! Just look at the Middle East. Bush fails big time on social issues.

Economic issues are also easy if you look at his actions and not at his rhetoric.  Bush is a RECORD spender (link takes you to an article by the CATO institute.)  Bush also governed over a terrible economy.  Bush supporters blame Clinton while opponents blamed Bush.  I am not an economist and do not understand how a president can directly effect the economy, but I do know that all of his economic promises leading up to the election were blatantly wrong.  Numerous times he told us how many jobs he was creating and he was terribly wrong every time.

Now it is Bush's intangibles that make me the most sick after the election.  "At least you know where I stand" is not something I need from a leader.  I would prefer having a leader who admitted to mistakes, changed her/his mind when necessary, and considered all sides of an issues before making a decision.  None of these describe Bush.  I also disdain the international animosity that he has brought the US.  This rant could go on a long time so I will just say "Arrogant ignorant cowboys can stay in Texas!"

Libertarians definitely lost this election. I can only hope that the next four years wake up the electorate on the evils of the neo-cons instead of strengthening their power.

Tax Shift book review

I have finally finished reading Tax Shift and my First Blogging Success turned out to be everything I expected.  This book was very insightful with tons of research. I am convinced that most of the ideas in the book should implemented ASAP. Tax Shift is one of those extremely hard books to review because it is quite short (90 pages of text with an appendix and 15 pages of notes and references) and very dense.  So if I were to hit on all of the interesting points, I would end up rewriting the book.

Here is a quote from the book that wraps it up nicely:

"Tax shifts pursue liberal ends, such as ecological restoration and a living wage, by conservative means, such as relying on free markets and rewarding enterprise"

Tax Shift was written / sponsored by the Northwest Environment Watch so it concentrates on the economies of Wash, Or, BC, and Idaho with a smidgen of Cal and Alaska.  But, it's ideas could be used globally. 

The basic idea of the book is that income and business taxes hurt the economy by taxing production, but the use of natural resources is not taxed heavily.  So by shifting taxes away from production and towards resources, both the economy and the environment would be helped.  Companies like Microsoft or Boeing would not have to pay taxes but companies like Weyerhaeuser would have to pay more taxes.  This would attract companies that produce intellectual products.  As consumers, some products would become cheaper and some would become more expensive. Everyone would benefit from an improved economy and environment.

The book starts by rating the different types of taxes based on the following criteria: economy (hurt or help), equity, environment, and ease of administration. Basically all of our current taxes got bad grades and should be replaced. 

Next the book looks at the history of the different types of taxes.  I found this very interesting as most of our taxes where pushed onto us under extreme circumstances and it is very difficult to make tax changes.

Finally most of the book looks at what should be taxed.  These things include farms ( seems risky but is well explained), cars, construction, urban sprawl, energy, and natural resources.  There is substantial research on the revenue that would be collected and the consequences of these taxes.  An interesting point that was made is that companies that are charged with the new taxes may not be opposed and may benefit from them.  If a resource depleting company currently makes efforts to be environmentally friendly, then they will have an advantage over other companies that aren't as friendly.

I recommend anyone who is interested in taxes or the environment to read this book. It is short and is free to download!   In the future, I look forward to debate on some of the specifics that are written about in Tax shift.

Liberal Professor discussion

Was thinking about Peter's comment  about professors as I was falling asleep last night (blogging is taking over!)  Peter says:

"My brother has tons of stories dealing with profs in class and I've got a few more from UCSB to prove this point..."

Here is an observation that professors tend to be on one side of the "political fence". Is this a liberal conspiracy? Or is there a more clear reason?  Is this a sign that many professors are just incompetent (don't research or study all sides of their academic interests?)

My own experiences taking engineering classes have been that professors tend to be behind in terms of technology and lots of times teach technologies that are out of date. This doesn't pose a terrible problem since engineering is more about fixing problems and new technologies can easily be learned when they are needed.

One insight could be a literal definition of liberal is to embrace new ideas and discoveries.  This is the role a professor should play and a good one will pass this on to students.  So therefore by this particular definition a professor should be liberal.

Let’s also look at the current political environment. The people in power don’t seem academic or intellectual (this is a post unto itself.)  So, politically speaking professors are most likely “liberal”.

To wrap up, good professors should have experience and knowledge of all angles of their study.  They should also be open minded to academic and thoughtful discussions of ideas that they don’t agree with.  I don’t think that there is a problem of “liberal professors” but more of a problem of incompetence (all professions have incompetence) and problems with the overuse of the word “liberal”. 

Even if one disagrees with the previous paragraph and believes that there is a problem because most professors are too liberal, how does this harm capitalism?  As Peter pointed out, free market economist used to be “liberal”.  Both Edwards and Kerry unsuccessfully tried to appeal to the conservative south by appealing to issues like immigration and jobs with non-capitilist (word?) ideas.