Who are the rich and do they need tax breaks?

In today's america, 1% of the population owns 42% of the wealth. What does that really mean? Well, lets look at some numbers.

There are 311,167,353 Americans today. So 1% of that is 3,111,673 Americans.

At the end of 2010, Americans owned $56.8 trillion in wealth. A trillion is one million million, 42% of that is 23.4 trillion. So if 3 million Americans owned 23.4 trillion dollars of wealth, thats an average of about 8 million a piece. Not bad huh?

So what does that leave for the rest of us? About 33 trillion. For about 308 million Americans. That averages out to about 0.1 million, or 100 thousand dollars.

8 million v. 100 thousand.

Who do YOU think we should tax?? I'll give you a hint... letting those with the most money, those who are getting the most benefit from our society NOT pay taxes is a *great* way to "go broke."

Government through Anarchy

I remember a time back when all the right wingers were shouting "No negotiating with terrorists."

Well, today they want us to negotiate with terrorists.. and they *are* the terrorists.

The republican party has apparently decided that politics through brinkmanship is the way to their ends. First they held the country hostage to a governmental shutdown, and now they are doing it again with a vote they have never opposed in the past but, if not taken now, will cause the immediate financial collapse of the government.

"These increases to the limit are a yearly occurrence. In fact, many of the Republicans who railed against this bill voted to raise the debt limit by more than $6.4 trillion under President Bush. "

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/1499-Senate-Votes-To-Raise-Federal-Debt-Limit

Is it really good politics to try to appease someone just because he is sitting in a room full of gasoline and playing with matches?

Or maybe they aren't actually in the room with us at all. The *true* constituency of the republican party has a lot less to lose by a US financial meltdown then you might think. The richest Americans have been quietly taking their money *out* of our system and investing it in others:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/your-money/20wealth.html

Supposedly-American multi-national corporations keep most of their wealth outside the US to avoid US taxes. (See my previous blog on GE paying no taxes. of $14B in revenue last year, $9B of that never saw US shores.)

SO, maybe its not so crazy for them to threaten financial anarchy when all it will really harm are you and me.

But last time I read the document they like to wave in the air more then actually read (the constitution) this wasn't how we were supposed to be governed-- by threat of anarchy.

I'm Changing my name to General Electric

Back in the 80s, after Chrysler got a huge government hand out to help it stay in business, Tom Paxton wrote the song "I'm changing my name to Chrysler..."

Well, think you are taxxed too much? Then change your name to General Electric.

The marching myth of the neo-right right now is "we need to reduce taxes to encourage employment."

That would be a good trick, since GE who had a $14B year in 2010 paid NO corporate income tax.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/16/news/companies/ge_7000_tax_returns/

Exactly how much lower the $0 is necessary to work this miracle?

Maybe if we actually started taxing our richest individuals and corporations, we wouldn't be so "broke" after all...

Debunking American Myths

I love it when someone shows that a point of common wisdom is total nonsense. In this case, its a bit of common wisdom I've had my own doubts about for a long time... that low taxes and correspondingly low social services are somehow good for small business.

Thats utter bollocks, as INCs recent study of entrepreneurialism in Norway clearly shows.

Norway has some of the highest taxes in the world AND the highest % of entrepreneurs in its population. Why? Because, with all their human needs taken care of by a strongly socialist government, people with an idea have the freedom to explore it without fear of them or their dependents ending up penniless on the street.

Doesn't that make simple, obvious sense, now that you think about it? Not only that but those who are paying the most in taxes are by and large happy to pay them because they see what they are paying for on a daily basis.

More information on the study can be found here...

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html

High in the clouds

So... is the world really as stupid as marketers think it is?

I don't believe so. I hope thats not a fatal error. \

An associate recently showed me a press release from a company that was totally devoid of content and asked me what I thought. I asked him "what is it?" He answered "Cloud service for Unity." At which point I simply told him he hadn't answered the question. What does it do? Why do i care? He wasnt able to answer those questions.

And then there is onlive. You can join gamefly or gametap for $8.00 a month OR you can join OnLive and get access to less content thats delivered in poorer quality for $10.00 a month. But Onlive is "in the cloud"! Lets all go "oooooh" together shall we?

Honestly, this cloud nonsense reminds me nothing more then an episode I saw of MSTK3000 where Crow is into EXTREME philately (stamp collecting) because, as he put it, "everything is better when its EXTREEEEEMEEE!"

Apparently todays marketers think you will think everything is better if its "in the cloud."

The question is... do you?

So.... I liked Kagi more then they liked me. Apparently my ambitions aren't big enough for them as they declined to take me on as a customer.

Ergo, its back to Digital River.

With some more poking around I found out that oen of Digital River's other services also does digital distribution-- RegNow. Its more expensive then the service I was looking at (SWREG), costing me about $1.70 per sale BUT for the convenience of not having to worry about setting up my own distribution server, I can live with that.

Unlike Kagi, they take all comers so being rejected isn't an issue. The only problem I've run into is that RegNow seems to be built solely with software downloads in mind. This wouldn't be a problem except that there is no way to tell their system your product does not fit into a "software category." I've sent them an email asking for more information about that. I'll report back what I find out.

Selling Stuff Cheap 2: Digital Stuff

I decided I wanted to offer just the DVD for "These Cards Don't Count" as a digitial download for DIY types. There are a lot of advantages to that for me. I dont need to spend money on either a DVD+R blank or building the props myself. I don't have to deal with shipping. And it takes me no time to prepare. All that is worth money, so I figured I could sell the digital version for half off the hard version's price.

Both Google and Pay Pal claim to be able to handle digital merchandise, but when you dig into it all they are really able to handle is selling a code and pointing someone at a URL. All the code creation/verification and download you have to build.

Now, its not that hard to build if you know some PHP BUT that requires a server that allows server-side scripting. Google sites doesn't. Furthermore, it means development time on my part, which is a cost. So i went searching for a no upfront fee digital download service I could use. I found two, Digital River and Kagi. Neither is cheap on fees. For my product its about $1.25 - $1.50 per sale, but with my other costs reduced so far I could afford that. The decider for me was that Digital river still does not host your content for download, while Kagi says they will (for free.)

I am currently awaiting approval of my Kagi merchant account. Then I'll report on how that went....