I wanted to say a word about growing old, while also laying claim to what I believe may became a common phrase in America going forward. I just want to have left something useful behind when I exit this dirt clod and I don't want someone else trying to steal my glory. As I was rolling along I-35 the other day headed somewhere important to do something important, my mind began pondering the effects of accumulating birthdays. I have accumulated 55 of them so far and it seems like the more I get the less I have. I'm probably more forgetful than I remember and leave a minimum of 2 rooms a day never arriving at the reason I ventured into them. A bad day is often of my own making, though I thoughtfully blame others so as not to hurt my own feelings. I leave the house 2 or 3 times every morning but still get to work without something I intended to take. I leave the house, drive around the block and pull back up in front of the house to fetch my phone only to find "someone" has locked the door. While stewing on the way to work about why my family is so paranoid that they have to lock the door when I am barely out of it, a vague memory, seemingly from the high school era of my life, haunts me for a couple of miles until I am forced to face the reality that I locked the door on my way out. Once I went out of my way to go by and take pictures of a house we were having built over a several month period of time, only to find out there was no film in the camera. It was little relief to find, also, that I was taking pictures of the wrong lot, though I could at least spread the embarrassment out over more of the story. It seems like the very embarrassing fact takes a bit of the edge off of the extremely embarrassing fact that follows it. At least I like to think so. Well, back to my drive and the usual meaningless ponderings that accompany it. A term popped into my head that I believe, more than any previous known term, defines the adverse effects of collecting birthdays. I am moving toward "Mental Insolvency"Remember, you heard it here first.
I really don't get it. Warren Buffet is one of some 300,000,000 people in this country and he is so often quoted by people who want to make our country's policy agree with his ideas. Let's listen to him, by all means, but if he wants to pay more in taxes then let him do so without reaching into my pocket at the same time. Why should he take money out of my pocket to give to the government if he already has so much? I'm not a frequent participant in risk-taking for monetary gain but have done a bit of it in the past. My wife and I bought some property for a couple thousand once and sold it three years later for near ten thousand. The capital gains tax, at the time, was 30% so we were visited by the emotional roller coaster of feeling rich one minute, to feeling sick to our stomachs the next. We took the risk while the government waited for the check to be cut and then asked for a large part of it. Just because Mr. Buffett thinks only rich people benefit from capitol gains doesn't mean it's so. It just means he is near-sighted. The capital gains tax is one of the most influential bits of our tax code. Keeping it low can be a significant factor in brining us out of this serious recession we are in right now. Raising it will further impede our ability to grow our way back to solvency as a country. Maybe if every super-rich person, who presumes to speak for all of us, would just pay their "fair share" without having to be forced to do so by the government, then everything would be fine. But no, they wait for the government to put the gun to their head before they exercise their right to be "compassionate" to the rest of our country. And another thing, everyone wants to know what Mr. Buffett is investing in so they can be rich too. While I haven't studied his life in any detail, I don't presume he became rich investing only in Gillette or Coca-Cola. Once you have a fortune, it's easier to make conservative investment decisions, and make ludicrous statements of how raising taxes will only affect him and his super-rich buddies.
It would seem to me that our over-reaching government may be about to reach critical mass. As the government grows, its influence on people's voting decisions grows as well. If the government's enterprise is one of protecting us from foreign enemies, protecting our borders and enhancing interstate relations as in providing roads and other infrastructure for transportation of goods and such, then when we go into a voting booth, the scope of our interest is limited to those activities which the federal government is about. Our personal fortunes are not directly tied to such a vote but rather our collective fortunes, if you will. However, if the government is in the business of taking money from one citizen and giving it to another as it sees fit, then those who are receiving the money will likely vote for the person who promises to take more from others and give it to them. Once the government is controlling the banking system, automobile production, college loans, health care, and the majority of the commerce in the country by way of the EPA and its alleged concern for the well-being of the citizen, then we are locked into a socialist form of government which will eventually collapse under its own weight. Votes will flow to keep the money coming which will forever empower our bloated and mis-directed government. If the voting booth is a way to get someone else's money into our pocket then it has become what so many in history have warned about. Our country will continue sliding down the road to fewer and fewer personal freedoms and more and more government involvement in our lives. Kind of like the new owners of a well-respected company exploiting the reputation of the company. You simply start building less quality into your products while continuing to put the well known and well respected brand name on them. Though eventually people figure out that the name has become meaningless you have in the meantime, made a handsome profit based on the deception. We can call ourselves free while giving up more and more of our freedoms to the government, but at some point "freedom" will look a lot like slavery and we will be giving incentive to people to follow the path of least resistance and just let the government take care of them. Of course the brevity of a blog would allow you to see me as a cold-hearted person lacking in compassion. However, I am not. I simply believe compassion can only be applied by individuals giving of their time or treasure and acting under the influence of their conscience. If your conscience moves you to take resources from someone else to give to one you would like to help, then you need to find a word other than compassion. We've already had enough words stolen from our rather fragile language.
