Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Read an article titled "How your Income Stacks Up" written by Kevin McCormally on Yahoo News. It's full of bunk. The IRS statistics are given out by Kiplinger in a highly misinterpretable way. That is, they are bunky; full of the bunk. Mr. McCormally digested that bunk and put it into a highly respected news outlet. I wouldn't expect much more out of any news outlet, much less one called "Yahoo News", of which I am a constant reader (part of the Yahoos that make their news worth printing I guess). Here's my argument. If 23% of the taxes are paid by the 1% of people who make over 410k per year, a number which I calculate to be approximately 42,000 people for each state in the union, (but then we know the weight is on the states where real estate and cost of living is sky-high, so we're probably talking about less than 10k of the super upper class per state), why should you need to show the rest of the funky numbers? Stick with that number. 1% of people are paying 23% of all taxes. Here's why they don't stick with just that number, they can't. The IRS data was designed to reflect how much of all the taxes were paid by groups of higher than 1% at a time. The IRS data was designed to show the broad spectrums of salaries, not just the waypoints and soundbites. And the article fails to note that it just so happens that if you make over 110k you're much more likely to make over 400k because, there's a happy little understanding there which allows companies to nod and give you a fat salary and allow you to live in expensive areas. If you're valuable enough to demand over 110k, you're in the sweet spot where you're allowed a big jump in salary to pay for your yacht, real estate, other real estate, golden parachute, etc. If the chart were in anyway capable of speaking laymans terms with regards to the IRS data, it would show that we have most of the taxes being paid by you and me who make a measly 34k per year. We and the next bracket above us 60k, pay our taxes in leaps of 20%, where-as the super upper classes pay out in leaps of 10% per bracket. The bulk of taxes is paid by you and me because there just aren't enough richy richertons to pay it all. What it means is that richy richerton then swings a deal with the fed to make the stock market pay them just a little more so they can say they're fixing "unemployment", and when the stock market isn't doing so well, richy richerton has to dump more money into us poor saps down here on main street so we can get back to work, because paying us is then worth more to them. And then the pendulum swings the other way. If we were paid more, our leap to the next tax bracket would widen even more and the IRS would have to restore this careful balance and tax them richies again. They walk a fine line in paying us what they bare minimum have to, so that they don't get taxed any more, and so that the market pays them fine returns. Hey, don't anybody worry, we're just cattle right? We don't cause a stir, do we. And we're too dumb to be able to read your handy chart right Kiplinger?

Thursday, December 17, 2009


Found an interesting website. This Payscale.com is the chief architect of what you might get paid for the rest of your life. Here is their website. Know your enemy: http://www.payscale.com/about.asp?pg=about&sub=overview

They are well intentioned, I can see that in the Bios of the people that make all the money in this company, but this is a monopoly in every sense of the word. It's actually a worldwide monopoly and no one will ever do anything about it. The ability to access and process data to control business labor pools, worldwide, is so far above the monopoly law it's not even on the radar, but it is the new paradigm in business, stock markets, heck the FED even has a monopoly for controlling data, and when compared to how a traditional monopoly was discovered and dealt with this isn't the same game. You'll never have another company screaming "price fixing". This new thing can only be controlled by other software. Their Computer chips have already won the fight. The humans will serve them well, at designer, customized wages.

Friday, December 4, 2009


Viva La Vida! Just got here. My neighbor, a veterinarian who now holds a purchasing job, had a portion of an apple fritter waiting for me at my desk. Third week in a row. Not sure where she is getting them. Nice of her to share. I like the fritter. The Viva La Vida album was in my head on the way to work on the bus this AM so I played it right away during this my ten minutes before clock-in. The song Lost! is playing now. Great tune. The line "castle was built on pillars of sand" is great. It fits the theme of the rest of this blog which is aimed at strengthening that base. The front page of USA today says Obama is most concerned about Jobs. This isn't news necessarily but the refreshing of the data, and having it on the front page makes it hit home a little more, and the news folk must know that that is the purpose of the front page. It makes me realize, (as I sip my $4.20 sugarfree hazelnut breve from Seattle's Best that I got downtown between bus rides), is being paid for by a careful planning of stock holders and no one else. They create the numbers on the stock market by buying and selling people and I'm one, and that's where my pay comes from. All the equipment in the picture makes it seem like they run businesses and build things and sell things, but in the end the only items in the picture that change the value of their stock are the people, because of our brains and opposable thumbs. These are bought and sold, hired and laid off, in a carefully orchestrated symphony which reaches our ears by the front page of the USA today in a tune that we call "hiring is up" aka good times, and "unemployment is up" aka stocks are down. The rich buy and sell us and we are indentured servants to this grind. There's only the destiny of "some day maybe this will change". I seem Lost! in all this because I can't seem to write a blog without touching on these issues. That's today's theme I guess. Hope I don't take the wrong bus later and self-fulfill this in a physical way. Time for an uprising. Storm the USA Today office and demand that they respect something other than Stock Market strategies. Every news outlet is pushing stock market news as "what happened in your world today that you need to know"... this blog is what you need to know today.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Dollars and Sense

Can't seem to find time or urgency to log in and post to this bloggy, unless it involves a crisis in a financial market, or a quantum boon. We have both recently. The LHC smashed a couple of protons at the same energy level as Fermilab, so welcome to the card table LHC, hope you're holding the cards when you get up to max power. So far my dreams aren't registering anything different because of their work. Changes in magnetism probably register in every brain on the planet in some small way, but we'll see what it does at full power next year. Would be great of the magnetism in the LHC actually changed our brain patterns enough to somehow focus more on the way we manage world economies. Which brings me to the point of discussion regarding Dubai and the money management blip going on there. Like any market they are fighting to earn respect from other labor pools. The thing that will iron out all of these markets and bring them in line is a respect for "fairness" between a dollar here and a dollar there, between a work day here and a work day there. If we institute a worldwide computer system that does nothing except manage valuation of monies, to create a fairness in all labor pools, by assessing then increasing or decreasing the value of money in real time, we would all be speaking the same language with regard to supply and demand. Make the money fair. There' s no way forward without this step in place. The scale of fairness needs to extend from Stock Market on down to "how many grains of sand in the hour glass is my dollar worth, as opposed to your dinari". If there isn't a "fair making system", we're all just swimming around in an unfair system and no one wants to swim in that dirty pool.