Tax Receipt Not Going Far Enough

I’ve been seeing a lot of retweets endorsing the idea of a “tax receipt”, a document telling you, the taxpayer, where your tax dollars are going.

I say it’s a good first step.

A better move would be a Tax Vote. You fill out the form declaring whatever and indicate exactly where you want your dollars to go. And list them in order of importance.

THAT would be a government of true democracy.

Just think about it. Left-wing “hippie whackoes” [as folks like Rush love to call us] can vote for education funding, medicine, green energy, etc; while the right-wing “conservative nut jobs” [As us liberals love to call them] can vote for war, refunds for the rich, etc.

And both sides can pretend that all the advantages are coming from their side, whilst all the detriments are coming from the opposite factor.

And if a corporation wants to have a say? Well, they’d better pay their taxes, hadn’t they?

Economies of Scale

So I revealed to hubby my determination to grow our own fruit and veg, yesterday (I write these in advance, so I don’t have to fret about having something to write about) and offered him some input into the process. He said, grow tomatoes, carrots and lettuce.

Lettuces like things so swampy, I was thinking about a hydroponics setup, so I don’t drown the tomatoes and carrots.

If you don’t buy a kit and grow them indoors (Hubby had a firm and definite ‘no’ to that. Our house is already crammed with gadgets) then you have to buy/build/make a greenhouse. You need pumps and pipes and hoses, oh my.

Even if you go the cheapest you possibly can, that’s an outlay of $8000AU.

Eight. THOUSAND. Dollars.

If you even want to think of making that back, you need to grow a shitton of lettuce and be able to sell them at a profit.

Stalls at the farmer’s market cost money, too.

So, my best options are: Grow to sell at the farmer’s market (Once a month and it will probably co$t) or hang up a placard on the fence, advertise on the Internets or otherwise grow to sell to the local community.

OR… take the outlay as a lost cause and grow to suit myself.

In which case, why NOT buy a kit and grow the frelling things on my computer desk?

A Bit More on Gridle$$

The real point of Gridle$$ as a means of protest is this:

We are not giving money to any corporation.

We are no longer buying their bullshit. In any form.

If we’re paid, we’re keeping our pay. We’re giving it to actual people who worked to produce the things we need.

We are not buying petrol/gasoline to run our cars because we have bikes. That we repair ourselves.

We are not buying fashionable brand clothing because we are making it ourselves. We will grow it ourselves, if necessary. Assuming it takes that long.

We are not buying over-processed foods because we’re growing our own.

We are most definitely not watching TV, because we’re busy making our own stuff.

Kill the corporations by removing your need of them.

End the corporations, and you end their influence in politics.

Sure, it’ll take some significant time, but maybe by the third or fourth year of a significant lack of sales, they might just get the hint.

It could plausibly be just as effective as sitting in a park and banging on a drum or holding up a sign.

After all, you can’t say ‘activism’ without saying 'active’.

We can sit and blame and demand, or we can do.

People made the system that is currently breaking down. People can make a new system that lasts.

Why Bipartisan Politics Fails

Put succinctly: they spend too much time fighting and not enough getting shit done.

I don’t follow American Politics very closely. I can’t tell the difference at a glance between Republican and Democrat. All I know is one lot (generally) cheats on their spouses and the other lot (generally) embezzles from public funds.

Back in the days before corporations could buy politicians, the folks you elected were supposed to represent their electorate based on what the majority desired. The ones with integrity stood for their electorate no matter what the party they belonged to said about the whole issue.

Party A pretty much backs industrialisation. They’re great for business. I’m not positive, but I think they’re the Republicans. I’ll just stick with Party A.

Party B sticks up for the little guy. They back health care, education and looking after the interests of real people.

Party A screws over the little guy in favour of business growth.

Party B screws over big business so the people can theoretically flourish.

In an ideal system, both parties are supposed to reach compromises so that both parties are at least satisfied and an equilibrium between both situations is established.

The problem is that Party A has achieved an almost religious hatred of Party B. So, as a direct result, they block absolutely everything Party B offers just because it was put forward by Party B. Even if it makes perfect sense to do so.

And there’s an interesting cultural fillip in which Party B and all its proponents are lead to believe that what the real majority wants is the stuff Party A wants, and screw off, you lousy hippie.

Party A are a vocal minority. If you actually talk to real people signed up to vote for Party A, you’ll discover that a lot of them are closet hippies, too. At least according to the heavy-industry Party A.

Party B just hasn’t been willing to shout as loud or be as ignorant and loutish as Party A. It’s like trying to tell an opinionated bigot that (insert minority here) are really nice folks by whispering about it as they rev their ghetto-destroying behemoth-mobile.

Therefore, even when Party B is in power, it has no power. They’re constantly trying to appeal to Party A, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Environmental Rapists Inc.

Then, to add insult to injury, Party A screams blue murder about how Party B isn’t fulfilling any of their electoral promises and threatens impeachment or whatever.

Party A repeatedly misses the point that if they completely win, they will lose.

No health care == sick workers.

Deregulated everything == more pollution, less pay for the workers.

Why should they care about the workers? Well… they’re the ones with the money to buy all the products they make.

People can’t buy it if they can’t afford it, Party A. And they won’t buy it if they’re sick or dying.

You’d think it would be in Party A’s best interests to make sure folks live longer to buy more. Or have jobs so they can afford more.

But no.

That’s bad for business.

Apparently.

Everybody Needs to Read One Book

And it ain’t the Bible.

Yeah, I’m probably going to get pwn’d for saying that, but in these days, in this situation, and with the Occupy movement going everywhere like ice cream on a toddler, this book is essential.

The book is called How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter D. Schiff

It explains the economy problems currently causing people to be out on the streets banging on drums and shouting at the corporate fat cats, etc.

It tells us exactly why our money is a complete fiction and how making more of it is only going to dig us deeper. Sure, it blames the governments a little too much, and doesn’t look too hard at the really big lie - i.e. corporations are legally people - but it does explain economics in terms even an idiot like me can understand.

Everyone should have a copy. Read it in the streets to anyone who’s interested. Give a copy to a friend.

Hell, send a copy to the White House.

I won’t advise thwacking an ignorant corporate executive with it, ‘cause those guys won’t take a clue until the Revolution comes ;)

Especially make anyone who’s hardcore Government Deregulation Now read the damn thing and understand how deregulating corporations put us all in the shithole in the first place.

Understanding the problem is halfway towards creating a solution.

The Debt Dollar - or, How the Banks Don’t Have Any Money

Once upon a time, money was made out of gold or other precious metals. It was a finite resource and everyone could agree on how much it was worth.

But precious metals are heavy and hard to carry around all the time. Especially on long journeys.

People started trading coins for promissory notes that they could trade back for coins when they got to where they were going. A fairly honest system started by the Knights Templar.

Other folks quickly got into the idea.

Pretty soon, people were trading with the promissory notes and not the precious metals.

Then a banker got a brilliant idea. Since hardly anybody actually used their coins, any more, he could lend WAY more than he actually had. As long as the growth rate stayed the same, nobody would be any wiser.

Until a disaster occurred and there was a run on the bank.

Some centuries later, another banker got a brilliant idea: Why base money on precious metals at all?

The debt dollar was born.

We all know it as “fiat currency” if we know it at all. Basically, banks base their loans on the capital they possess. But that capital also includes how much debt they are owed. Banks can trade debt. They buy, sell and break up debt into shares and sub-loans until the whole tangle is incomprehensible to an outside observer.

When someone pays off a debt (a feat in and of itself, these days) the money that was fictionalised for it vanishes. The system becomes poorer.

So, in its own best interests, the system scrambles after itself to generate more and more ways for the plebes to get into deeper and deeper debt.

Take the “no-interest” credit card. This is a scam worthy of some kind of award. They hand out fliers with a big, bold 0% on the cover, and incomprehensible, teeny-tiny fine print on the page that nobody looks at.

Poor people, desperate people (the best kind of victim in this scam) sign up for a card and promptly use it to eliminate some of their existing debt. Bad mistake. The fine print that nobody reads boils down to “If you use this card for ANYTHING, we will raise the interest rate”. There’s also nice clauses like, “if you look at buying a high-ticket item, we will raise the interest rate,” and, “if anyone checks your credit, we will raise the interest rate.” Basically, even owning the card is an excuse to raise the interest rates.

Pretty soon, the poor sod who signed up for the card is thousands in debt and there’s a whole bunch of laws preventing the poor from declaring bankruptcy.

Yes. The poor can not declare bankruptcy.

Businesses can. Banks can. The rich can. You can’t.

Why? Because the businesses make money out of your debts. They have comoditised your impoverishment for their benefit.

It is, in essence, legalised slavery. The only thing you can do once you’re in the hole is work until you can’t work any more. And all the time, the industry that has enslaved you is piling interest on top of the interest you already owe.

Another scam is Direct Debit. Companies love you to sign up with direct debit. Why? Because the money is taken from your account automatically. And it’s done by a different company, so that even when you cancel the service/membership/whatever, the debt continues. They can say, “oh, that company hasn’t been notified. We’ll get right to that,” and then turn around and laugh all the way to the bank.

If the money for the transfer isn’t there, you get saddled with overdraw fees from your bank.

I have known them to attempt to take money away from someone who had died. Yes. The corporations were stealing money from a dead person.

They’re stealing from the living, too. All in the name of having the most numbers of pretend money.

The system is rigged, folks. The best thing you can do for yourself is try not to fall for the scams. If they only take direct debit or cash - pay cash. Don’t sign for any credit cards unless you understand ALL the terms and conditions. Save for the big ticket items and make do until you can afford it.

Remember, it’s people who drive the market. Drive it towards good, not evil.

Making Do

Once, when I was a kid, the people running the one electricity company in Queensland at the time had a huge workers’ dispute. So huge that the electricity was shut off for a large amount of time.

Such worker’s action did highlight how necessary the employees were, but it also inconvenienced the people who had no voice: the public.

The politicians and the higher-ups could afford their own generators and weren’t effected by the blackouts. It may be one reason why they lasted for months. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make, here.

The point is, my poor, blue-collar household managed just fine without power. Because my mother was old enough to remember what it had been like in the bad old days.

We boiled water in an improvised copper, made out of a forty-four gallon drum. We did our washing in big buckets with broomsticks and plungers, and got most of the water out with an old mangle we still owned.

In this day and age, the above paragraph needs some translation. A copper is a sort of cauldron [they used to be made of copper, I guess] in which hot water was manufactured by boiling it over a fire. A mangle is a couple of cylinders hooked up to a crank. You carefully insert wet fabric, turn the crank, and it squeezes a majority of the water out. Beats the living crap out of wringing things dry by hand.

We still had kerosine lanterns. The stuff you’re lucky to find in antique shops or kitch decorators. And you’re even luckier if they still function. We had a primus, a camp stove, and candles. We had a battery-run radio so my mother could keep up with her news addiction.

It was sort of fun, in it’s way. Sure, it was hard work, and we got a bit sick of baked beans and other one-pot wonders. And my parents, to their detriment, taught me to be a rotten little capitalist at Monopoly. If I was older, I have no doubt they’d have also taught me to be a card shark as well.

The fun part was listening to the mundanes moan about how tough they had it without power. They couldn’t get their clothes clean. There was no way to stop the kids driving you mad in the dark. Everyone was moaning because there was no ice-cream.

I was possibly the only kid in my school who was a little disappointed when the power went back on. I still looked forward to summer thunderstorms and the inevitable power failures that came with them. I could fleece my parents in Monopoly and we’d swap stories in the light of the kero lamps.

Thirty-so years later, I own a primus camping stove, and make certain I have a stock of candles and a Monopoly set. I have a wind-up radio, so I don’t have to depend on batteries that rot. I want to share the fun of making do in the dark. The slightly unholy glee of knowing a bit more than the other guy.

It’s a pity the skills of the past are the fading hobbies of today. We need to keep them up.

Because sooner or later, the infrastructure we depend on may just fall over.

I tell my kids, jokingly, to be “prepared for the zombie apocalypse”. It’s not all knowing how to shoot them in the head. It’s knowing how to live without infrastructure. These are, not exactly essential skills, but necessary ones.

Even if you don’t want to do it the old-fashioned way, everyone should know how to do so. Just in case.

Dollar Shop Economic Theory

I’ve had this one baking on the back burner for quite some time. And since I have nothing else in my head but brewing brony tales, I figured I’d best get this out of my head to make some room.

The Dollar Shop is a phenomenon out my way, where you can walk into a shop and get an item [or a number of items] for a dollar a piece. Some cost more than a dollar. Many cost up to five. You can get a rare few for more than that, but not normally. Dollar shops sell cheap gimcrackery, gadgets and gewgaws. Some, but definitely not all, are useful. Some only catch dust. Almost every last item in a dollar shop is made to last less than a week. A month if you treat it carefully.

They also sell gadgets and gizmos amazingly like the ones you see on TV for five easy instalments of $99.95… for a hell of a load less than damn near $500.

It is so very, very easy to walk into a dollar shop and blow $100. Even if you go in with the intent to purchase just one item, you are guaranteed to find five more that are both tempting and affordable.

And since the cleverer ones stock food and house maintenance necessities, they make money hand over fist.

That’s not the theory. That’s the exposition.

You know these shops. You probably have one or two in your area. Unless you’re in a super-rich gated community, in which anything that’s not worth at least twenty is not worth handing over Daddy’s credit card for.

The theory is this: You can instantly read the state of a community’s economy by counting the dollar shops in a particular area.

At the depths of our own economic pit, four or five years ago, there were seven in my immediate shopping zone. There’s still four surviving, but they’re comfortably apart. It’s when they *cluster* that you know things have gone far up that famous creek. In a barbed-wire boat. Minus the paddle.

When you have competing dollar shops clustering in a shopping zone, you know the folks who live there are populous poor. Or at the very least, populous impoverished. They barely have enough to make ends meet, so they go to the dollar shops to skimp a few cents here and there. The populous comes from the fact that three or more dollar shops can exist in the same zone without driving one another out of business.

When too many people can’t make ends meet, the dollar shops thrive. People can no longer afford to go to the advertised and branded big box mart, and only go there when they can’t find what they need in the dollar shops.

Worse news for box marts, Dollar shops train shoppers to only look for what they need. Seriously, if you want to save your money in a dollar shop, go in with one objective and a definite allowance: “I will only buy X and if I am tempted, I will only spend Y”. That way, shoppers walk out of there without a shitton of useless crap. Or quasi-useful crap.

Dollar shops train shoppers to avoid the trolley-snagging “hot spots” of crap you just can’t sell, Boxmart. It’s in your personal best interest to make sure your shoppers can afford your overpriced crap and not go to somewhere cheaper.

“How?” I hear you cry. “The economy’s about to crash! We have to hang on to our money!”

Well… you have to spend money to make money. No, not on executive bonuses. No, not on clever marketing campaigns. On jobs. Spend money on wages for people who live in the area. Generous wages. Give them a small employee discount. It will generate loyalty and most of their wages will come straight back to you.

Yes, you lose a little on the deal, but it’s got to be better than the money going straight to Mexico (or wherever) by hiring illegal immigrants for less.

The thing is, people who have more money spend it on more expensive things. People with less, take what little they have and use it for their own “selfish” advantage. Which means that Boxmart winds up with nothing.

And that’s the Dollar Shop Theory. See if you can use it in your area.

Here, I tried to encapsulate what’s wrong with the economy as well as why folks who buy from corporations are protesting corporations. (Like there’s a viable alternative to buying from corporations…)

I think I nearly sprained my hand drawing this. I have teh fail. [Again, click the pic for the HUGE version]

Less words typed == more time to rest my poor wrists.

I think the scribble here pretty much says it all :) [Click for the HUGE version]