Bonehead Math

This political math lesson is dedicated to those of you who think with your hearts, to the exclusion of your reason and intellect.

Big Spending = More Problems

If you announce a government plan to end poverty, expect multitudes to claim that they are impoverished, even if they are not. If you defund that and announce a plan to offer free DTV boxes, expect a population of 1,000 to require 200,000 boxes. If you offer tax breaks to women-owned business, expect men to put their wives on the board. The more money you offer to solve a problem, the bigger the problem gets.

Strong Teachers Unions = Poor Education

Home schoolers are cleaning up at spelling bees, college entrance exams, and in business and engineering professions. The evidence speaks for itself. Say all you want about socialization. The facts will silence you. I actually agree that public school kids are better socialized. I cite teen pregnancy rates, drug use, and the spread of foul vocabulary. Compare those between home schoolers, private schoolers, and public schoolers.

Rebates ≠ Tax Cuts

A tax cut is where the guy who earned the money gets to keep it. A rebate is where they take $10,000 from the guy who made the money, filter it through 6 bureaucracies, and give $1000 to a deadbeat, keeping 9,000 for the bureaucrats.

Taxation ≠ Prosperity

If you could tax your way to prosperity, we'd all be rich! Higher taxes only helps government. Higher taxes harms workers, businesses, jobs, savings, investment, the elderly, public safety, productivity.

Bailouts = Inflation

Who wants free money? Congress is handing out free money like drunken sailors on a 4 hour furlough. But there isn't enough tax income in this economy to support these giant handouts. Solution? Easy. If you're the federal government, just crank up the printing presses and churn out trillions of additional dollars. The good news is that you'll end up getting that 12% raise you always wanted. The bad news is that inflation will make it worth 45% less than before! Set the wayback machine for the Carter years! I'm gonna go park my car in the gas lines now.

Bailouts are not the solution to bad business practices. Bankruptcy is. I say let the fools who ran their mega-corporations into the ground go on unemployment for a while. Let the savvy small businesses who ran lean and smart have the business.

High Taxes = Government Control = Socialism

In the cold war, who won? Was it Capitalism or Communism? Capitalism is better for all concerned. In purest capitalism, there is competition, and only the lazy fail. Even an idiot, if diligent, can succeed. A communist is someone who wants everything put into a pot, and all to receive from the pot according to his needs. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Anyone who likes such plan is secretly thinking that he can get by with putting in a lot less that he plans to take out.

We have come to accept that Government can tell businesses who can buy jet planes, who can remodel their offices, bathrooms, or lobbies, who can travel by jet, and who must carpool in hybrids. This is a government clearly in need of a major pinch collar leash correction. "Bad boy!"

Giving the Government the power to tell anyone (yes, anyone) what they can do with their money, is taking away the value of the money. Here's your $1,000 government rebate, but you must spend it on what we tell you to! So if you want a big-screen TV and they think you'd be better off with a Prius you hate, what is your $1,000 worth? Not much, really.

Regulation ≠ Safety

Look at all the regulation that government does on a daily basis. You can't drive and talk on the phone. You MUST buy Government-approved child seats. You must record, track, and report the race information of employees, applicants, and customers (in the name of a color-blind Utopia). You must record and report every single transaction that your business engages in, no matter how small. You must waste hours and days of time filing taxes, employment records, ad nauseum until you have 12 minutes a day to accomplish your work. And who exactly do these regulations protect? The same cast of characters... Unions, Environmental Wackos, Bureaucrats, Looters.

matter.

It's as simple as that.

History is the progression of events starting at the point of the Origin of Man, and ending with the End of the World. Every day, the course of history, like a massive, unwieldy barge with 100 billion Captains and no sailors, is moved along it's course past the milestones of space and time.

So in the end, what will it matter if you (a tiny, meaningless wisp of vapor against the vastness of the canvas of history) were kind or mean, selfish or generous, lazy or industrious? I mean you're only one person! And your life's span is so minuscule! How can you possibly matter at all?

But the truth is that you do matter. You are told this everyday. You have a carbon footprint. You are engaged into the worldwide economy. You are part of the great human marketplace of ideas. You consume, but you also produce. Even if you only consume and fail to produce anything, you are contributing your laziness to the fabric of humanity.

So, rather than think of humanity as a giant drifting barge, you can think of it as a giant complex recipe, some kind of cake (I would go for the "giant computer" analogy but it's been done).

So this giant recipe is made up of all of us. We all add something to the overall flavor and texture of our city, country, planet, space and time. The difference you make is small. You're choices and options are limited by your surroundings, resources, education, intelligence, and the actions of others.

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but

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The choices you make are yours to make. To a small extent you get to make the world more or less bitter, sweet, rich, or enjoyable. Imagine a nice slice of cake with one jalapeño in the frosting. You - to a very small degree - have the ability to effect change in the fabric of space and time!

Why would you want to do that when you don't get to eat the cake?

But you do. You get to be a part of the world you help to make. If you are generous, you get to live in a slightly more generous world. If you are kind, you get to live in a slightly kinder world. If you are bitter, you have to live in a slightly more bitter world. But the choice is yours, and you can choose as you please.

Here's the kicker though. You are a being that exists in time as well as space. Your bitter actions that made yesterday so awful will fade. If you begin for choose a different course, the flavor of your life, your community, the world, and the universe are changed. You can cover the badness of your past with goodness in the present. I'm not talking about sin and redemption here, I mean the flavor of history - that little edge of fear that can be turned to hope.

If you have been sprinkling little pills of bitterness into the recipe, you can stop at any time. Only your habits, and your willingness to bow to the expectations of others will prevent you from changing. You can change the course of the universe. You matter.