"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

tax commercials
July 31, 2005 - 12:29 pm

he.. is greatly annoying. i've no idea what goes on up there.. but when he's home, there's nearly always something that's dropped quite loudly on the floor -- as for for weeks he's moving in one bit of furniture at a time. from time to time he seems to run across the floor -- though it occured to me today that his unit has a loft room..so the running is probably up or down the stairs.

the floor creeks a great deal when he's home. this.. semi-bothers me. i wonder if the floor creeks for the perso below me.. i try not to walk heavy.. or run or whatever.

yesterday, i re-upped my writing.com site. this made me very happy. i've some.. 10 stories posted. i'm thinking of creating a folder for the multitude of half-started stories. perhaps one will catch someone's fancy and they will write me.. and i'll be inspired to come up with an ending for it.

though.. my intention is to focus on one story and try to get as much of it written as possible. i've got part three in my head.. and need to nurse it along a bit more before writing it down.

i don't know if in your area.. they have these commercials where attornies talk about settling IRS debet for pennies on the dollar. this one plays here all the fucking time.

$20,000 settled for just $20 or some crap like that.

at first i was uncaring about it.. then it occured to me that while the IRS is greatly hated for the fact that it's the 'thing' that takes a good bit of our money.. these people were basically being rewarded for not paying what they should have.

i'm sure some of them were fuck-ups and shouldn't have owed what the IRS said they did. however, i'm positive a great many more were just people who tried to cheat the system (intentionally or not) and got caught. to them i say.. too fucking bad. you took a deduction that you couldn't substantiate and got caught -- pay up. you should have had someone go over your forms.. and didn't -- too fucking bad, pay up. you stretched a bit here or there and got caught trying to save a few bucks -- too fucking bad, pay up.

the cause of my annoyance.. is this trend i see in our culture.. the notion that we are "innocent until proven guilty." i love the notion, the state must prove i fucked up, not just throw me in jail. however, we abuse the hell out of it.

tons of laws exist that we break every day. one of them is tax crap. we feel taxes are unfair or too complicated. our solution? don't pay and then whine and bitch when caught! brillant!

what else is to be done?

well.. as bizarre as it seems, people do have an impact on our law makers. granted not many people in this country vote.. as disinfranchised as we are.. but we do control who gets elected.

if the people of this country really wanted the IRS "fixed" it would be. we'd vote in whoever promised to do it.. and vote in someone else next time if the reforms weren't done.

the trouble is.. people get glassy-eyed when tax talk comes up. it's economics and mindboggling.

this.. is probably the real root of my annoyance. we don't teach people what they need to know in school. we don't teach them about taxes and how the world works. economics is presented as this mindnumbing science of the intellectual elite.. and it's not. it really and truly isn't. economics is fucking simple.

at least in it's root form -- supply and demand determine the value of something.

this is how our money is vauled! and people don't understand it.

there's nothing that backs our money. not a damn thing but some words congress (i think) wrote down years ago that said our money is good for all debts public and private.

not too long ago, the dollar was at all time lows against many other currencies.. why? the dollar's value is relative..

shouldn't everyone know this? shouldn't everyong understand how credit cards work? shouldn't everyone understand a mortgage?

we are a consumer society... one that's largely ignorant of how our consumer society works.

we revel in the sound-byte. we revel in the simplistic notion.. and loath to actually think about what something might mean.

all those attorny commercials i see for settling your IRS debt mean you cheated -- on purpose or not. you got caught. you don't or can't pay up.

too fucking bad. our tax code, for the average person, isn't too complicated. if you aren't sure how something works, there's tons of places you go for info.

yes, yes, a few people (the small minority) get bad advice.. and for those people the tax attorny provides a well needed service. i'm not advocating abolishing the industry. i'm saying.. the notion that it's cool to hedge or cheat.. is unamerican.

at least, it damn well should be.

the notion that i shouldn't pay any taxes is stupid - in the most negitive sense of the word. i'd love to talk to anyone who feels they shouldn't pay any taxes. i beg you -- contact me.

your thoughts.. are simplistic, foolish, and well-worth being debunked.

wow. that was a lot to come spewing out eh?