Let the American youth never forget,
that they possess a noble inheritance,
bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors;
and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded,
of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life,
the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.
Justice Joseph Story
Tax Policies, Compensation and Unintended Consequences
I often write little anecdotes about work or other experiences. I was working for a San Jose suburb consulting company which went belly-up after the Nasdaq meltdown. I worked an eclectic schedule; the sales guys weren't landing big projects. Some companies (e.g., KRON-TV) didn't need to book a DBA 40 hours a week; I sometimes worked at 4 different clients a week. The company hoped by keeping our foot in the door of the smaller clients, we would win bigger billing down the line (say, upgrade projects).
One of the longer gigs was a San Jose computer display manufacturer. where we were doing an Oracle EBS installation. Unfortunately, the client gave an inexperienced internal resource certain tech supervision responsibility. At one point this guy caught me staging installation CD's to the database server file system. . He told me, "We are not paying you guys to copy CD's. We have people who can do that. You need to go off the clock right now, and come back this afternoon." I called my boss; he said, "Okay, if they're going to do that, just go to Metalink and download the latest patches; you know we have to do that sooner or later." "I know that, but he's demanding I leave the building now." Our account people had not set expectations; it's not like I had another client down the street to book 2 hours in the interim..
The point is later in the project I had to work late in the evening; I think it was a Friday. Many companies would have something brought in for Friday breakfast--like when I worked at the Japanese chip tester, we usually had some sort of gooey treat like a huge blueberry cobbler. My client probably brought in hundreds of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and even we lowly contractors were invited to share in the bounty. I was stuck on site late that afternoon working the install; if I left for dinner, I had no way back in the building. Luckily (?) there were still a few dozen doughnuts left before the janitors disposed of them. (No, I didn't eat them all--but I probably never ate more doughnuts in my life. Granted, they were no longer fresh.)
I was working a different client site in Sunnyvale when I found myself invited to their weekly Friday after-work beer keg social. I once worked for a well-known insurance company which had a compressed 4-day workweek, a fitness center and jogging trails on campus and 3 different subsidized cafeterias, including one offering freshly carved meats--but not these Silicon Valley perks of free gourmet meals, car washes and routine maintenance, concierge services (e.g., find a babysitter), housekeeping, take-home or delivered dinners, spending money for new parents, etc. Some perks make a lot of sense, of course; I've worked a lot of maintenance and upgrades where free pizza (including at least one veggie for ubiquitous Indian colleagues) is all but a universal staple (we don't have to spend time in traffic, waiting for food; we can grab a bite while a patch is running, etc.)
Here's the point: the company can shift dollars to the largely untaxed benefit side of compensation. We otherwise would have to pay them out of after-tax dollars
Haven't we seen this game before? Of course. Recall the economically-illiterate FDR Administration imposed wage-price controls. With millions serving in WWII, we had very low unemployment numbers; we should have seen wages strengthening: health insurance became a way to work around wage controls. That's how we ended up with unions trying to protect gold-plated policies of over $20K a year.
We need to stop the madness of trying to work around dysfunctional marginal tax policies. If a household doesn't needed twice monthly housecleaning, let them take it in cash taxed at a lower rate to be used as they prefer. This blog prefers tax policy that minimizes the bite on economic productivity (wages, savings, investment)--the flatter and broader the better. Goodman has a progressive version here. (I'm still convinced everyone, including lower-income people, needs to be vested in efficient, effective government spending).
The REAL Gun Nuts
It seems over the past month Drudge has carried a few items about government agencies (even the social security administration) acquiring weapons and/or ammunition for "training", with some 7000 assault riffles and up to 2 billion rounds for DHS alone. For what purpose? Not on foreign land--fellow American citizens?
In the past I've mentioned raids on stores selling or farms supplying raw milk products. Ron Paul, early in his Congressional retirement, points out force has been used for a promoter of barter currency. For the record, I've never heard of snipers in health food stores, farms or coin dealerships.
An Older Story: Scapegoating Scientists: Thumbs DOWN!
Due to blog formatting issues the segment video is embedded at the end of the post (below).
"To predict a large quake on the basis of a relatively commonplace sequence of small earthquakes and to advise the local population to flee" would constitute "both bad science and bad public policy," said David Oglesby, an associate professor in the Earth sciences faculty of the University of California, Riverside.Also from last October :
Two scientists resigned their posts with the government's disaster preparedness agency Tuesday after a court in L'Aquila sentenced six scientists and a government official to six years in prison. The court ruled Monday that the scientists failed to accurately communicate the risk of the 2009 quake, which killed more than 300 people
Prosecutors in the case had requested 4-year prison sentences. In going beyond that term, Billi says that "the guilt of the defendants is certainly severe" and adds that their guilt is accentuated by what he describes as the "conscious and uncritical adherence to the will of the head of the civil protection department."The judge claims not to be anti-science but the judge is clearly incompetent on scientific issues. To scapegoat scientists and engineers for circumstances beyond their knowledge or control, beyond the bounds of professional training and ethics is unconscionable. As I have commented elsewhere;
A lot of [people's reactions to the verdicts] deals with scientific illiteracy among the populace; they have no concept of the limitations of modeling. Since they can't indict God, they go after the scientists. Morally outrageous--governments throwing scientists under the bus..Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Aerosmith, "Come Together". Remember the Sgt Pepper tribute project in the late 70's, with the BeeGees, Frampton, et al. Here are two charting remakes from the project.
Italian-Verdict Clip
