So the Representative from Wisconsin has an interesting idea. The idea is not unprecedented by any meaning of the word but it is definitely going to be unpopular. I don’t think it will ever pass but it brings up an interesting point. How should America pay for its overseas conflicts?
Paying for a war has always been a hot topic in any generation. This congressman has offered a solution of there being a war tax. Between 1-5 percent of your income would go to fund the wars unless you or your family members have served in the military since September 11, 2001.
I’m not a fan of tax in general but this one is at least a specific cause and effect relationship. Unless you have paid for the war with your service then you have to pay for it out of your wallet. If the rest of the tax system wasn’t so insane I might even say this tax was a good thing. To get it straight that is not what I’m saying. I’m against any kind of income tax at all. There are money other places where the government could procure funds.
If this tax were implemented, it would impact all Americans directly in a way it hasn’t. One of the largest problem with our attitude towards the war and towards everything in general is apathy. It doesn’t affect out daily lives so why should we care. Yeah people will wave flags on fourth of July and act patriotic when the moment is right, but we do not let the war change our daily behavior. We still go out and buy that big screen tv. We still go out to eat every night. We still go deep into credit card debt. We are more concerned with out own prosperity than our national security.
I think that making the war have a direct impact on everyone would make a positive impact. It would make everyone personally involved. It would give a reason for more people to speak out louder against war. These people speaking out would at least have a more legitimate reason than “Bush sucked”. So I say bring the tax on. It will cause unrest and shake the political landscape up a little.
I just finished having thanksgiving dinner with my family and I was thinking about all the traditions that are observed during the holiday season. President Obama even joined in a long standing tradition of American Presidents. He pardoned a turkey.
The tradition of thanksgiving comes from the roots of early America. It goes all the way to the pilgrims giving thanks to God for surviving the winter. They had a grand feast with friendly Native Americans. So every year we travel to our respective hometowns and have dinner with relatives. We give thanks for all that we have or at least that’s the idea. This is only the first major holiday in a stream of them. We will soon get into Christmas and then New Years.
These have even deeper traditions. So why do we celebrate holidays that are so far removed from the actual event? Why do we celebrate a day that is most likely derived from historical inaccuracies anyway?
I will give one answer to that. Family. It is a time to get together and be with family that you love. It is a time to remember the past loved ones that are no longer with us and celebrate new family members. What does it really matter where the holidays came from? It is nice to take a break from the grind and just relax with family members. Even if you may not like some of them, they won’t always be there. When you look back on it, this time you shared with family will be cherished.
I recently patronized the good people at Southwest Airlines. It is interesting the kind of people you meet on an airplane. When you are packed so tightly together that you feel like you could meld with the other person with just a little more pressure, conversation is always a good way to get around that. I would definitely rather pay less for a flight then be comfortable but it gets intense sometimes.
I sat next to an interesting lady. She was from Salt Lake City, Utah. She used to work for Boeing until she was recently laid off. She was an assembly line worker. She described her old job to me and was pretty worried about going on a job hunt. She was going on vacation for thanksgiving before she had to go back home and deal with that.
She started talking about what a good job would pay. She was worried that she might not be able to get another job at the same level of pay as her old one. When she told me how much she got paid I was amazed. She was literally paid the exact same as I am now. A little less actually if you factor in my bonus.
This lady was probably in her mid 40’s. She had raised at least one child that she had told me about and was making less money than I am with barely a college degree and little experience. Why?
CNN reported that jobless claims fell for the first time in 14 months, but 10% of the working population is still unemployed. Bankruptcies are at their highest since 2005. Is society in general just falling apart? Is Corporate American talking all our money and giving us back nothing in return? Well I don’t think theatrics like that are the answer. I do have an interesting thought though.
The woman I spoke to on the airplane talked about the kinds of jobs she would look for. She talked about looking into working for a coal mine or going into another manufacturing job. These jobs wouldn’t pay any better than her last and would be just as likely to lay her off in bad times. When she starting mentioning jobs like that it kind of dawned on me. She was going to get into another job that paid the same. She would work there for a while and get laid off and then she would find another job that was exactly the same.
It was a horrible cycle.
I’m sure everyone has heard the term “The Cycle of Poverty”. I believe there is another that is much worse. The Cycle of Poverty can be broken by bringing in outside influence and helping bring people out of squalor. But what about when they are not in squalor? What about when they are just in mediocrity? I know that I don’t want to be 40 years old and still making the same level of pay I’m making now. I know that the only way for me to make sure that doesn’t happen is for me to do something about it. I have to innovate. I have to make a difference in the world. Making a faster car or find another way to lose someone’s life savings. But this woman didn’t think that way. She didn’t think she was better than a mediocre job at mediocre pay. She was trapped into a mind set that would see her 60 years old working in a plant until she was too decrepit to handle the parts she was making. This is the Cycle of Mediocrity. It’s why the poor stay poor and the rich get rich. It has to do with ambition. Ambition is the difference between a bad job and a bad career. One is a stepping stone and the other is your life.
We all make our own choices and have to live with them but how much of that is affected by our upbringing. When you are told your entire life that you will be a success does that make it come true? Or are we really masters of our own life?
Ever just not know what to pack when going on vacation? What should I bring? Don’t forget this. Don’t forget that. And then when you finally go on vacation you forgot something super important and it puts a hamper on the whole trip. Well that definitely happens to me. I guess it’s because I wait to pack until the last second. Kind of the price you pay I guess. Since I don’t have the time to have that second wind to remember stuff I just end up forgetting it. Until that new GM makes the amazing teleporting car I guess I will just have to make a list.
So Lem from bunny-comic.com had a very interesting post the other day.
The hidden text on this post is “tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito” which is latin. It’s from the poet Virgil and means “Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.”
He was actually inspired to write this because of a post from XKCD. He basically uses legos as a metaphor for people. When they are taken down to their individual parts they don’t mean anything. So shouldn’t the parts do some good? The XKCD post is kind of a pro-organ donor blip.
Lem got inspired by this. He took from it that we should make every moment of life worth while. Fear nothing and be fantastic. That seems like a very silly motto but I like it. It says so much. Don’t be scared to move forward in your life. Don’t be afraid to do things you haven’t done before. And when you decide to do these things, do them with all the effort you can muster. Be fantastic.
