Building a Bridge to Nowhere

     Jobs are important for an economy. However, the job must be able to self-validate itself. If a job does not fulfill a natural task dictated by need. The job just becomes a burden on the economy. No matter how good the job being performed is, or its value in terms of wages.

     The argument always comes down to if the government don’t build it who will? The answer is private interest. The picture included with the title was taken by Deborah Schaben. It is a bridge in Idaho that spans the Snake River, known as the Perrine Bridge. It was first built in 1927 with private funds. At the time of its building, it was the highest bridge in North America. And it was built to serve a need, not just to create jobs.

     Too often, government base a job’s value on the skill required to perform it or the salary paid to maintain it. And the CUT Tax will have the effect of eliminating higher end jobs in the accounting and tax law fields. However, most of these jobs can only be validated by the draconian tax code leveled by the state and federal government. They are there to fill an artificial need. The need to protect citizens and organization from the punitive tax levels of the governments.

     There will always be a need to protect people from government overreach. Therefore, it would be good to eliminate one axis of governmental control that exist, buried in the enforcement of the tax code. The tax code allows for the government to favor or punish speech, products, and individuals. This power can and is be used to shape elections, suppress ideas, or promote agendas. One only has to look at the scandal that involved slow playing Tea Party and patriot groups’ application for tax free nonprofit status, which affected an election, and created target investigation of private individuals

That brings me to the concept of building a bridge to nowhere. Jobs are really bridges, they take an organization from where they are currently, to where the organization wants to be in the future. If applied right, they also take the job holder from where they are, too where they wish to be in the future. And if the job does not fulfill this role, it becomes known as a dead end job. And dead end jobs become a drain on both the organization and the employee. Yes, they need doing until a new solution comes along, however, they do not contribute to the overall growth of the organization or the individual. 

     Let us say that you were the mayor of a successful city, and on one side of the city you have a bay with a picturesque island sitting in the middle. For years the island has been inhabited by a few small farmers for the most part. It was served by a ferry, however, has remained largely undeveloped.

Then a developer come to you with a proposal to develop this land. You say that this has been tried before. We have increased the ferry schedule, and have spent some money trying to develop it as a tourist destination.  However, it never developed more than a weekend picnic area for the local inhabitants of the city. We believe the best use is just develop a few parks to beatify the area and leave it as a city landmark.

     The developer tell you. “The problem is that you need a bridge. Nobody is going to develop it using ferries, they are to slow and inconvenient.”

     The Mayor said. “We have looked at building a bridge. It is too expensive and the payout does not come until year twenty after completion, and by then the bridge will need resurfacing and repairs that would run it into the red again.”

     “The opponents of this project call it a bridge to nowhere, because it only gains you a small amount of land for the massive cost.” The Mayor concludes. “And there is no real demand to develop the island, it has no resources, would not make a feasible port. It is just a pretty place to visit.

     “Well, that is because you simple people are looking at it from a static number, you are not incorporating the new jobs that will be created.” The developer posits.  “These will be high salary positions and union labor that will pay twice as much as your current industrial base and your population will grow.

     “You need to factor in the increased tax base you will enjoy.” The developer says persuasively. “All that money you borrow will come pouring back into the city’s tax base. Money will rain down on the city like manna from heaven.”

     So the mayor acquiesce, and gathers the political support to take out a large municipal bond to fund the project.

     After the first year of construction, the mayor and the contractor discuss the status so far.

     “So far the project is progressing as promised.” The Mayor states. “Unemployment is dropping, wages are rising, and revenue to the treasury is expanding. The city is growing, however, there is a large percentage of the bridge work force that stay here during the week, but go back to their homes in other cities over for the weekends and holidays.”

     “Yes. There will be a certain percentage of the workforce that will do that, it is not a permanent job, so they travel from place to place.” States the developer.

     The developer continues on with his concerns. “However, after researching, we have found that the island is not part of the city’s charter. You will need to annex the island to make it a part of the city’s tax base.”

     In the second year meeting the mayor is feeling the stress of sudden growing pains.

The Mayor starts off the meeting. “Although, tax revenue to the city has risen, it is being ate up trying to expand the cities overtaxed infrastructure now. Not only did we annex the island, we had to annex a small village to the west of us. Resources and employees are stretched thin. Potholes are being left unfilled because of budget short falls. We are left with ignoring the old issues to generate new infrastructure to meet the demands of burgeoning small businesses and growing residential needs.”

     The developer interjects. “You also need to start planning the development on the island, and start adding a little infrastructure, in order for people start thinking about investing in the development on the island.”

     Flabbergasted. The mayor interjects. “We lose employees to the bridge project, and wages have skyrocketed to m municipal employees. And the industrial base is shrinking due to the same wage pressures. We can’t find money for the current infrastructure needs, how do we add a new area logistically isolated, into the already stressed budget?”

     “Well you better find the money, or the island will not develop into a high tax base for your future budgets.” He replies. “And as for the manufacturing base, the bridge jobs pay twice as much, so that will compensate for a few displaced manufacturing jobs. Every bridge job is currently worth 2 jobs in the private sector. Developing the island is more important than protecting the manufacturing base”

In the third year, the bridge is almost complete.

     “In the next couple of weeks, we will have the official grand opening of the bridge.” The developer states. “Although, there is no move in ready structures and businesses yet, due to the city’s reluctance to provide basic infrastructure.”

     “In fact there is a lack of interest among investors, due to the city’s lack of commitment to the island.” The developer concludes.

     Defensively, the Mayor replies. “We were unable to commit resources to the island, until the bridge is complete. The cost overruns would explode the budget. And we are already experiencing a shrinking of revenue as labor is heading off to the next bridge project.”

     “Once the bridge is complete, we can start on roads.” The Mayor replies.

     “Roads are a start, and relatively cheap.” The developer states. “However, serious investment will not occur until there is adequate water, sewer, police protection, with electric and gas services. You still have a long way to go.”

     Year four.

     “The city has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to repeal the annex of the island.” The contractor states. “The city has not fulfilled the basic infrastructure requirements, which were promised in the annex.”

     “The isolated portions of the island have been overrun with homeless people squatting on the land.” The developer stated. “And infrastructure projects are still a long way from completion. And my investor demand action.”

     “It has not been a cakewalk over here.” The Mayor replied. “One in ten property taxes are delinquent, the housing market is flooded with abandoned houses, which have drawn in squatters, and created a plague of Meth Houses.”

     “The manufacturing sector, is a fraction of its five year high.” The Mayor continued. “With small businesses closing almost daily, wages are stagnant, and the workforce is moving to cities with a better unemployment rate.”

      “Now, you threaten to abandon the city, after we spent a huge amount of money to connect it to the mainland.” The Mayor concludes angrily. “You convinced me to build a bridge to nowhere, and now it is connected to a city that is going nowhere.”

How to Hide a Global Wealth Redistribution Scheme

This is not as hard as it seems. All you need is an EPA mandate and the right grade of commodities.

If you look at a diesel fuel pump in any American service station, you will see a sticker that basically says “After 2007, all diesel fuel must contain less than 7 PPM (part per million) Sulfur content.” And this is just the beginning with the next milestone to be 4 PPM and then it will most likely reduce even lower.

These mandates favor light sweet crude which primarily comes from North African regions and parts of Asia, with a few reserves in the gulf coast.  

This in essence elevates the prices on these reserves while degrading the prices on higher Sulfur content crude, since you increase the cost to refine the higher content crude, in order to remove the Sulfur content in the finished product.  And where does this crude come from, North America, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and other places the US has historically bought crude from.

This is the simple way in which it works, The US and other developed countries pay a premium to purchase low sulfur diesel from the under developed countries, and continue to produce their higher sulfur diesel, in which they sell to the underdeveloped countries, and China at a lower price. 

In essence, you increase the market for low content fuel, thus increasing the price. While you flood the market for higher content fuel in the underdeveloped world.

Sense diesel is primarily used for transportation and agriculture, this higher price is passed on to consumers in the developed world. Meanwhile, the underdeveloped world sees a decrease in their cost of living due to the same conditions.  Thus you see a transfer of wealth to these countries, even if their inhabitants will probably not benefit. And at the end of the day you are still releasing the same amount of sulfur dioxide globally, you have just redistributed it to the third world. 

Equitable

I come to you, in order to ask for your help in promoting a concept that needs to be addressed in the current climate of political discourse. And the vehicle I am using to discuss and advance this is in the form of a book I am in the process of rewriting called The CUT Tax, on a free to read internet forum called Jukepop. http://www.jukepop.com/. I have included this link. http://www.jukepop.com/home/read/7409. To The CUT Tax.

I am rewriting this book in an effort to get feedback and critiques, in order to hopefully lay out an infrastructure that is easy to understand by anyone.

Today, we stand on the precipice of discussing the future, in the way in which government acquires the revenue to fund the infrastructure of our government.

Nearly every representative, political and financial pundit is aware that the current tax code is in serious need of reform. They only disagree on how.

The Fair Tax, Flat Tax, and tax reformers all have their champions, and critiques. Unfortunately, there is no visible champions for a new style of taxation that has the ability to make taxation equitable. And that tax form is a transactional tax.

This new form of transactional tax has the ability to be equitable, but not fair. I say this because fairness is an emotion, and truly cannot be equitable. Fairness requires the confiscation of what you view as excess from someone, and bestow it upon another you deem worthy. And that is the entire problem of the tax code to date. Indeed, all of the proposed tax codes that are set forth.

Every proposal that has been put forth, makes rules and exceptions to exclude certain individuals, and organizations, in an attempt to pursue the slippery concept of fairness. And this only leads to a higher rate that must be extracted from those that are not covered in their exclusions.

Ultimately, there is no true end user to any tax. All taxes cascade into the final cost of the goods and services that individuals use and consume. Therefore, my theory on taxation is to set a low fee that is collected on everyone, with no exclusions on the way in which we convert our time and resources into a medium of barter which we label as currency.

That is not to say that there will be no exclusions, only exclusion that could be counted as preexisting currency. This transactional tax is focused only on the generation of new revenue.

Due to technological advancements, and the new way people conduct business, we no longer need a cumbersome set of protocols for the government to generate revenue. And revenue is needed for the purposes of maintaining the infrastructure of government.

The free market system has already developed and is using this form of taxation on electronic transaction globally. I just believe it is time to study and adopt this fee structure into an inclusive tax form.

Millennial s

Everyone thinks that the millennials are cheap, lazy and expect something for nothing.

I see them as the first generation that has been brought up exposed to snake oil salesmen their entire life. They have been over promised everything since they were toddlers. From the toys they played with to the education they have received. Everything was advertised to deliver more than they actually received.

Therefore, if an app is shown to perform certain operations, they expect these operations to perform out of the box, with no tweaking, hoops to jump through or waiting for the third update before it works. So, yes they will complain about a 99 cent app that does not perform, and tend to wait for it to be free or workable before they commit to the product.

For now they do not blame the left for their troubles. After all the left has already received their money from the banks. That leaves the holders of the debt to complain about. And the left don’t care if the bankers ever get their money.

However, this is the short term. Soon they will give the left the blame they deserve, especially if they keep pushing programs that the millennials will ultimately have to pay for.

Not only will the millennials be left with the bill for the entitlements of the baby boomers, they will also be saddled with the debt incurred by deficit spending and declining health care and education, as the left continue to push to make these things free. Add to that the expansion of immigrants that are driving down wages, which the baby boomers need to reduce expenses and maintain their quality of life in there golden years.

So, yes the American dream has been dying. Because, the American dream dies, when you ask the government to guarantee it.

Ten Commandments of government

How does your state rank

What State Has the Lowest Tax Percentage to GDP

I was curious about what states collected the lowest taxes per state GDP (Gross Domestic Product). This was done to see what level that a Currency Use Tax (CUT Tax) would be needed to replace all of the state level taxes.

This snapshot does not included local taxes, federal funds, or property taxes. Only Indiana collects a property tax at a state level, and I removed this tax from computation from Indiana to track with other states. The only tax revenues I include come from state level taxes collected. These taxes include personal Income, Corporate, Sales, Gambling, and other revenues from user fees and licensing. That led to the discovery, that Alaska that does not have Income, or sales taxes. It is an anomaly that I will expand on later.

This data does not include federal funds that were sent to the states, this could include fuel taxes. I plan on adding this data later, and include state spending in the mix.

The method is simple, I collected state budgetary data from a data clearing house called Ballotpedia.org (http://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page) to find individual state revenues. Then I gathered the State GDP data from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a data collection cite from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?utm_source=research&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=data-tools). Then I would divide the GDP into the total revenues to achieve a percentage rate. This is the method I used to calculate the federal rate of 3.77 based on 2012 data. All of this data in this table is collected on 2013 data.

This is the initial table I have generated from lowest to highest percentage. Numbers in Millions. To view as Goggle spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m1xAbhtdlrAgXMtw-tmeqtzzMIWN7QL3BlsK6j8tYKs/edit?usp=sharing

	State	GDP	Tax revenue	percentage
1	MI	432,573	9,189	2.12%
2	WY	45,432	1,048	2.31%
3	NV	132,024	3,087	2.34%
4	CO	294,443	8,592	2.92%
5	SD	46,732	1,364	2.92%
6	MO	276,345	8,083	2.92%
7	AZ	279,024	8,583	3.08%
8	OK	182,086	5,604	3.08%
9	TX	1,532,623	47,281	3.08%
10	FL	800,492	25,021	3.13%
11	LA	253,576	8,103	3.20%
12	OR	219,590	7,296	3.32%
13	SC	183,561	6,251	3.41%
14	NH	64,118	2,283	3.56%
15	UT	141,240	5,093	3.61%
16	VA	452,585	16,421	3.63%
17	NE	109,614	4,052	3.70%
18	WA	408,049	15,772	3.87%
19	GA	454,532	17,980	3.96%
20	TN	287,633	11,403	3.96%
21	IA	165,767	6,637	4.00%
22	AL	180,727	7,314	4.05%
23	NC	471,365	20,559	4.36%
24	VT	29,509	1,289	4.37%
25	MD	342,382	14,958	4.37%
26	KS	144,062	6,341	4.40%
27	PA	644,915	28,822	4.47%
28	ID	62,247	2,799	4.50%
29	MS	105,163	4,738	4.51%
30	ND	56,329	2,547	4.52%
31	IN*	317,102	14,462	4.56%
32	MT	44,040	2,078	4.72%
33	CA	2,050,693	98,195	4.79%
34	NY	1,226,619	60,191	4.91%
35	WI	282,486	14,086	4.99%
36	AR	124,218	6,214	5.00%
37	IL	720,692	36,290	5.04%
38	KY	183,373	9,348	5.10%
39	OH	565,272	29,559	5.23%
40	ME	54,755	3,051	5.57%
41	MN	312,081	17,456	5.59%
42	DE	62,703	3,730	5.95%
43	WV	68,541	4,150	6.05%
44	NJ	509,067	30,922	6.07%
45	MA	446,323	27,169	6.09%
46	NM	92,245	5,655	6.13%
47	RI	53,184	3,324	6.25%
48	CT	249,251	19,366	7.77%
49	HI	75,235	6,234	8.29%
50	AK	59,355	7,476	12.60%

All number are in millions of dollars.

The results did surprise me with the lowest being Michigan and the highest being Alaska.

Now back to the Alaska anomaly. Most of their revenue is derived from drilling and mining royalties, so that the average citizen does not pay any taxes, but get an annual dividend, which makes them the lowest percentage based on the individual taxes. It would be negative for the average citizen. However, it shows a large degree of efficiency. They are able to capture a large percentage of their total GDP without taxation. A feat I am sure many governors would want to achieve. Although they need a lot of state owned property with valuable commodities. Therefore, I will leave Alaska as a one off anomaly, barring any political change in the future for the lower 48 states.

Then I was surprised by Michigan being the lowest state based on this criteria. However, I have not expanded this data, and have assumed that all states are operating on a balanced budget basis, for this initial data set, I will include bonds and deficits in the future.

The Four Hour School Day

     I read an article that my math teacher brother posted on Facebook, about Finland having four hour school days. And how this has improved their educational results among their European neighbors. This started a text discussion and piqued my interest. I have include a link to the article if you wish to read it.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-schools-reform-012012.html

     In my view the problem with education has been: We have turned it into free daycare for a large percentage of the population. It is more about keeping the children fed in a safe environment. Then about ingraining the fundamental concepts that everyone needs to start down the road of a productive and hopefully prosperous new life.

      I understand the need for a well-rounded education with exposure to the arts, sports, and other personal development classes.  But each child is unique, with varying levels of interest in these extra-curricular activities. The problem is that we are creating a one size fit all education system. A one that is built on exposure to x number of hours of required hours in each field. Children are not any different than adults. If something interests us we pay attention, if not we tune out. And our interest are always changing as we age. So why spend time and resources teaching a subject that may be forgotten the minute the student walks out.

     This is how I envisioning the dynamics of the system.

     The public system would have 2- 4 hour class blocks, depending on the size and logistics of the school district. These class block would consist of three fifty minute classes, and an hour lunch and recess. You would hire specialized teacher to fill these position. This would entail a larger pay raise to meet the level of teacher you are trying to acquire. This allows the district to maximize the number of students each teacher can teach to everyday. So although you are paying more to individual teachers you are eliminating extra staff needed to teach non-core classes, and in the long run reduce the size of the facilities you need to teach in.  The students in the elementary level would stay in their classroom for all three classes, with the teachers being brought in for their class time. Each teacher would have six hours of teaching time, and two hours for grading and other planning activities. This may entail the extra position of classroom coordinator to watch and help with the students during the class. But these roles could be filled by interns, or other qualified individuals. Since, an advanced degree would not be required for coordinator positions, the pay would be lower.

     You would drop all of the additional classes, such as art, music, P.E., and any other non-core class.  These classes can be offered in the before and after structure. The goal is focus on the core classes without watering down class time with extraneous activities.

     Next this encourages more parental involvement as they search for before or after school programs that can be tailored to the individual student’s aptitudes and interest.  These before and after program can either be public or private, depending on the wishes of the local population. A voucher system may be ideal, to bring in both private and public sector funding.

      And these before and after school programs would be more flexible on hours, therefore, could offer 2, 4, or 6 hour sessions. With the ability to help students with core classes they may be falling behind in, or more advanced classes students may wish to participate in. This also allows for programs to be vocationally or academically focused.

     We have fallen into thinking that all students deserve a college education, without considering if it is in the best interest of the student. Now we have rising tuition cost with the overall quality of degrees trending down to maintain the student body. And many students that leave indebted to the government with the equivalent of a mortgage payment, with or without a degree. And by the way, this guaranteed debt cannot be easily forgiven in bankruptcy. So they have it till they die, or have paid it off.  A kind of permanent indentured servitude. For a degree to have any competitive relevance, you have to pursue an even higher degree.

      So is our education system serving the needs of the student body, or the coffers of academia?

And don’t give me this every child deserves a college degree. To what end? The make a bachelor’s degree as relevant as a high school diploma? A required, you must have or a bare minimum?

     Education is a lifelong pursuit, whether we recognize this formally or grudgingly accept it. However, which has more relevance, something learned in a classroom, something we took personal time to pursue, or something learned through daily occupation? In the real world we generally use all three ways of learning. Why not create a system to maximize learning in all three levels?