February 17, 2007

• Rumor has it that it's time for me to update.  It's been a long dry spell, hasn't it?  Fortunately I don't feel any sort of  obligation to update every day.  In fact, I think it's counterproductive, as most readers don't go back and read previous entries.  So I leave each entry up there for a while.

  Well, we had our blizzard, as did many of you.  Still digging out four days after the big storm, which was supplemented by about three more inches of snow last night. 

  Such an event brings out, if only momentarily, the best in human nature.  I met all sorts of neighbors I didn't know I had, receiving help and then offering it.  But yesterday I got a brusque call from the guy who had given my truck  temporary refuge in his parking lot, ordering me to remove it.  And I could find no one to help me shovel out a parking space.  So I soldiered through it, gasping for breath after about every fifth shovelful, feeling faint like I was going to pass out or have a heart attack.  But alas, no heart attack this time.  Just a very tired John, with an old truck that is now ensconced in a parking space on the street and isn't going anywhere for a while.  I REALLY don't know how my father shovelled snow when he was 79 years old.

  Most days recently I wake up hyperventilating.  When I'm lying in bed I feel like my lungs aren't expanding at all, and I can't get enough air.  I don't know if it's fear, sleep apnea (which I've been told I have) or merely emphysema from years of smoking, firefighting, and breathing radon-saturated air in my current basement apartment.  Probably all of the above.

  The other day I dreamed about Xcholo4u .  The details are fuzzy now, but the dream had something to do with God.  He was asking me if I was ready to meet God, something like that.  I didn't have the answer.  All I could do was hyperventilate.

  Tax season is upon us.  And Xcholo4u was complaining the other day about taxes.  I feel his pain, of course; no one likes taxes (and I pay 'em too even on my minuscule disability pension).  Especially since our perception is that most of our taxes go for things that don't directly benefit us, like war and corruption.  But I had to remind him to be grateful that he earns sufficient money that taxes constitute a significant chunk of change for him.  Not all are so fortunate.

  More importantly, people who complain about taxes utterly miss the point.  It ABSOLUTELY DOESN'T MATTER how much or what percentage of our income we pay in taxes.  What matters instead is two things: (1) whether or not we can buy the necessities of life, and perhaps a few of the luxuries, with the money left over after we've paid our taxes; and (2) what we get in exchange for our taxes.

  People in most of Europe pay WAY more in taxes than we do.  In the Scandinavian countries the income tax is somewhere around 70%.  Yet most of them live a solidly middle class life.  They buy homes and cars, and somehow pay the $6.00/gallon for gas.  They have jobs with shorter work weeks, 8 weeks of vacation a year, and well-paid early retirements.  Their taxes buy them such things as fully-paid national health insurance.  Their countries are NOT trying to dominate the world militarily; even the Germans seem to have finally learned THAT lesson.  Europeans exceed Americans in the vast majority of quality-of-life measures.  There is relatively little homelessness and poverty in Europe, and the disparity between rich and poor isn't nearly as great as it is here in America.

  This brings me to a fork in the road involving two different discussions: (1) my economic theory that, if I were an economist and a college
  professor someplace, would earn me the Nobel Prize in Economics; and  (2) the role played in our lives by what a friend and I have termed, in our conversations, our national "core cultural values".

  The economic theory is relatively easily disposed of.  It is this:  A family's purchasing power expands and contracts according to the average discretionary income in the society.  That is poorly stated and could be refined, but let me illustrate with the simple example that gave rise to my theory in the first place.  In America in the 1950's and 1960's the top marginal tax bracket was 70%, and few women worked outside the home.  Yet the average middle class family, with only one wage earner, could afford to buy a house.  Then in the 1970's women began to work outside the home in far greater numbers, and the top tax bracket was gradually reduced.  Therefore a lot more discretionary income, right?  Not for long.  Immediately the price of homes began to rise, until it consumed the gains made in discretionary income.  Today most Americans are NOT better off than they were in the 1950's, and an ordinary family needs two incomes in order to be able to buy a house.

  The reverse would also be true.  If taxes were once again raised in order to fund, say, national health insurance, the price of homes would fall in direct ratio.  It's a manifestation of the good old capitalist supply-and-demand principle.  Which brings me back to what I said above.  Asking how much we pay in taxes is asking the wrong question.

  Let me save my discussion of America's core cultural values for another day.  Meanwhile have a good weekend, y'all.  Keep yer whistles wet and yer powder dry.

  P.S.: My daughter e-mailed me yesterday, wanting a copy of my 2005 W-2 form (in my case it's a form 1099-R) because she's applying for financial aid for graduate school, and apparently parental income and assets are still a factor for her.  Her request provided me with the opportunity to coin one of my little aphorisms.  You may quote me if you like.  Here it is:

  "That's the great thing about kids....they're always there for you when they need something!" 

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