Being financially responsible undermines the US government!

Yes, you heard me right. US tax revenues suffer greatly when you are financially responsible. Undermining our government's ability to spend their way into favor.

Think about it. When you earn enough money, the government gets a nice slice of it from income taxes to spend. If you put that money into savings or use it to pay off debt, it ends there. But if you quickly turn that money around and spend it again it can generate sales tax and corporate profit tax and the government gets more slices. Then it can be paid out in wages again, provide yet another slice and so forth repeatedly. Even better yet, go into debt! Provide even more money into the spending cycle. Each change of hands generates tax revenues that the government can spend, spend, spend. So the more times money changes hands the bigger the government's pile. Mind-boggling, but if the same dollar changes hands enough, it will provide more than a dollar in tax revenues to the government each year.

The US government depends on it! As shown by recent events. When increases in savings and reductions in debt cause a decrease in spending, incomes drop, profits drop and tax revenues drop very quickly. In part from our being financially responsible and reducing debt while saving like we should.

The problem is the dependency on a "boom" level of money cycling. Can we spend our way back into prosperity again? Or realize that there is a different kind of prosperity that comes with responsible living...?

Consume, Consume, Consume...

When I moved out of my parents house, I moved into a rental house with 3 other guys. I was a senior in college. Two of the guys had 4-year degrees, one of them was pursuing his CPA while the other had just entered law school. The fourth guy was in a junior college. Three of us, including myself, had jobs while the law student was funded by his parents. You can imagine the environment. Four frugal college guys sharing a house. The sort of situation sitcoms are based on.

We had a mantra that went "consume, consume, consume". It was used to recognize any of the many compelling motivations in our society to get more stuff. To live more lavishly. To indulge ourselves. You get the picture.

The scene must have been comical, seeing 2, 3 or all 4 of us chanting "consoooom, consoooom, consooooooom...." Repeatedly.

I remember when the CPA student and his girlfriend took all of the groceries from one of our shopping trips (we shared meal expenses at home) and spread the contents on the table. They figured out how much the food would have cost if we bought it bulk and showed that about a third of what we were spending was for the packaging and convenience factor. None of it was TV dinners or what someone might consider convenience foods ... so, much of it was just paying for wrappers and fancy labels. But without them, we wouldn't have bought it.

We often talked about our capitalist corporate system. To survive, a company has to grow. There seems to be no such thing as a stable company, it is either get bigger or die. That means selling more which means getting people to buy more. Profit is king! As students, we understood it well. Sales and marketing from every side. Packaging and appeal is important, even if it is wasteful.

Then there is the allure to spend more than you have. Credit... Ooooh! How far over the edge is "living beyond your means"? Where is that edge, exactly? Credit is good, until it becomes bad. Deferred self gratification is only good when it is someone else's gratification and not yours. Go ahead, get yours today!

Is it better to indulge ourselves (insert consume mantra here) and live like a king or queen while we can? Or to be responsible? It sure seems those irresponsible kings and queens often get the better deal. Or often that indulgent behavior is rewarded.

The Hotblog Stimulus Plan

The popular and political "best plan" for solving our current economic doldrums is for everyone to use lots of credit and spend lots of money. Led by the government. The same thing that got us into the mess... So I'd like to proudly say while biting my tongue that I'm doing my part. First my hot water heater needed replacing, then a refrigerator. Not exactly cheap or purchases we could put off. Then, something that we have been putting off for a while ... my wife bought a new car. The timing seemed advantageous before California sales taxes goes up by 1% and vehicle registration fees go up a hefty amount next month and while sales are slow and it's a buyers market.

I'd say we did more than our fair share to stimulate the economy. Oh, but maybe not in the way our government wants. We used money we had instead of diving into deep debt. In that regards I'm glad we didn't take after the U.S. government's example.

President Jackson Told You So

Andrew Jackson, 1767-1845, our 7th US President faced down congress to revoke the charter of the central bank of the U.S. in 1836. His quote:

The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.

When he opposed congress and revoked the bank's charter he is quoted as saying:

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.

This sure sounds to me like it applies to the current mess - oops to late. Instead of one central bank we have several large institutions. Our government, using the noble cause of reinvigorating our economy and resolving real hardships, is bailing out the den of vipers and thieves that they are beholden too. These companies should be held to their failings and dismembered so that the more responsible companies can flourish. Otherwise we just have a continuation of the system where, when times are good money flows freely into certain big pockets but when times are bad those pockets are protected and the institutions and public get to make good any losses.

My Daughter's Sex Ed

My teen daughter's school has a program ... I would call it Sex Ed. But they have a more politically correct name for it. Something like Family Life Sciences. So once again I get to face my station in life as a dad making sure his young teen daughter learns what she needs to know about sex. Mom's job, right? I wish... I know I have a role to fill too.

As part of the program, my daughter brings home sets of questions that Mom and I get to answer together and our daughter gets to answer separately. Then she brings both sets of answers (hers and ours) back to school without Mom and I really knowing what will come of it. But it is a good exercise. Not just for her, but for her Mom and I to be thinking about these things.

The questions often get me pondering ... a good thing, no doubt and inspired this blog. One of the more tame questions: What do you think of teens dressing sexy? That had me stalled as to how to answer.

You see, dressing sexy is such a subjective label. Does it mean wearing revealing clothing? Or clothing that accentuates some part of the body? If either of those are the case, then I might consider their school gym clothes as dressing too sexy. How do you make the separation between dressing to be beautiful, dressing to be sexy or just dressing to be comfortable on a hot day? Or are they somehow the same, but different? It's like asking what shade of gray is overly gray. So ... somewhere in that subjective gray mess I have my ideas of what dressing sexy means and it generally involves highlighting and accentuating the sexually attractive features in a big way. A "whoa" inspiring feat.

Also, quite frankly, I'd rather not think of teens as sex magnets. But that is the influence our society seems to promote. Be a girl, be sexy... And my daughter isn't going to wait for me to decide when she is ready to be a woman...

Fortunately right now my daughter takes after Mom and doesn't do sexy. Their style tends towards comfortable, lazy, nothing too showy. In fact, we've been trying to upscale my daughter's appearance. Trying to get her out of the ratty cotton jacket that she likes to wear everywhere. Trying to get her to pay more attention to her ratty hair and personal hygiene. But I know there will come the day when she'll try for "whoa" and I know I may have to be ready to be mean Dad. Backed by mean Mom. I know there may come the day when she'll decide to be one of the sexy girls. "No, you can't go out in that ... not until after you're married."

One of my role models who raised daughters says "Most women will know more about sex by the time they're 18 then most men will their whole lives." While somewhat anecdotal, it reflects on me knowing my role as a dad with daughters.

What is too sexy ... a vision caught somewhere between the reality of active hormones, the ideals of attractiveness and the ever changing decorum of modesty... Um, that shade of gray.