Taxes 2008

According to the Seattle Times, people shouldn’t protest their taxes since the vast majority of people are paying less taxes now than in the last 30 years. The paper claims that the vast majority of people pay an average of 9% of their income in federal taxes. I claim BS.

Looking at my figures for the year, working part time while attending school full time earned me $10,577 from all income sources. Of that $10.6K I paid $876 in federal withholdings, $631 in socialist security, $251 in fuel taxes, $147 in Medicare taxes, $126 L&I taxes, $94 in sales tax, and $81 in vehicle registration taxes. Add all of those up and I paid 20.86% of my 2008 income in taxes. This is my second largest expense, the largest being school.

I misplaced many of my receipts from the first part of the year, so I know that the sales tax figure I'm using is actually lower than it should be. The federal government claims that only the wealthy will be getting their taxes increased. I plan to be one of those wealthy people in a few years and I don’t see why I should be penalized for being more productive to society than I am today.

The government is penalizing the most productive part of our economy in order to subsidize the least productive part. The wealthiest individuals and the most profitable businesses pay trillions in taxes, while the government is giving that money away to people who make very little money and to businesses that have been run into the ground as a result of poor management. And some people truly wonder why tens of thousands of people are out protesting today?

Wise Politician?

Tax Deduction

As many people start thinking about starting their income taxes, here's a little story I found:

Here's the kind of accountant you've got to admire. Last year he deducted eighty cartons of cigarettes from my income tax. Called it loss by fire!

Quote from Jacob Braude's Complete Speaker's & Toastmaster's Library: Business and Professional Pointmakers. Published in 1965.

Please consult a tax attorney before attempting such a write-off. Also, consuming cigarettes in any quantity is unhealthy, both physically and financially.

Perspective

Image from XKCD.

How to live comfortably on $1,000 per month

The secret? Find roommates, people have been doing this for generations. It isn’t limited merely to those moving out for the first time or in college either. The pure economics of sharing rent and other major expenses allows living costs to be cut significantly. If you can manage to share food as well you can save more money by buying more bulk items from random wholesale places instead of normal grocery stores.
Read the full article on cheaper living here.

Affordable Healthcare in Rhode Island

A group of Rhode Island doctors have decided to combat the rising costs of primary healthcare with their HealthAccessRI plan. HealthAccessRI is a monthly subscription service to a primary care physician for “‘less than the cost of a cell phone, less than the cost of cable TV, less than the cost of high-speed Internet,’” according to founding doctor Michael Fine. Fine and a group of likeminded doctors have setup a system that allows for affordable doctor visits without insurance or government involvement.

HealthAccessRI solely covers access to primary care physicians and does not cover other things such as hospital stays, x-rays, or other more serious procedures. Arguing that these are the things that should be covered by the insurance companies Dr. James M. Schwartz contends:

Today’s health-care financing perverts the original concept of insurance, which was supposed to pay for catastrophes, he says. “No auto insurance sells you a plan that covers oil changes and tune-ups,” he says. The current system has also harmed primary care, Schwartz argues, by paying doctors per visit, making it financially difficult to give patients the attention they need. HealthAccessRI gives doctors a steady, predictable income to cover predictable costs.

I think that HealthAccessRI is an interesting experiment that requires further investigation. I would love to have the option to pay for such a service while holding a significantly cheaper health insurance policy which would be reserved primarily for catastrophes and things other than primary care.
You can read the full article here.
Also posted on Ethereal Madness.
& Marketing College: Essential Marketing Knowledge

Americans Can’t Pick Fruit?

Or at least that’s what this article claims. Farmers in southern California might be forced to let their crops rot rather than have them picked. Why? Because tighter border security is shrinking the pool of sub-minimum wage laborers. And since there aren’t as many laborers from Mexico coming to pick fruit the fruit won’t get picked. It may be time to invest some serious time and money into research for mechanical or robotic fruit pickers.

I still don’t understand the problem the farmers are having. Is there truly no one in southern California who is willing to pick fruit? Or is no one there willing to pick fruit for a few dollars per hour? I’d have no problem picking fruit all day, but I’d expect at least $12 an hour to do it. Really I think the farmers are just whining about nothing right now. It's probably not the difference of paying someone $50 to pick a few a thousand dollars worth of fruit a day or having it rot; the difference is paying someone $50 or $150 to pick the fruit. If that is truly not the case, I’m willing to fly down Thursday nights and fly home Sunday nights to anyone hiring and willing to buy plane tickets. If there really is such a crisis, then paying for
people like me to work for you is still more profitable than letting your crops rot.