Stoked on Jack’s new album! The lyrics are a bit depressing, but they are desirably depressing (if that’s possible) in the way they make you rethink your priorities. If the album does the same for you as it has done for us, it will really make you appreciate the simpler things in life and the friends you have around you. Highly recommended!

As I said earlier, the one area I don’t agree with Obama (or any democrats for that matter) is on their economic policies regarding taxes. I came across this example of how taxes work years ago and haven’t been able to shake it since. I’m sure you’ve all seen it before.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

I interpret the above example as the following:

If we raise taxes for the rich and they continue to invest exactly as they have in the past, wonderful. The rich pay more (but they are still rich), the poor get off easy (but they’re still poor), but the country is still in great shape. However, if we raise taxes for the rich and a decent number of them move their investments off shore (or worse, decide to move to a country move favorable for investors), the country is in for a disaster. The poor will now be burdened with the costs of the state and federal necessities they can’t possibly afford, and the rich no longer offer a shoulder to cry on after being shunned the way they were (because they aren’t there anymore). Sounds to me like playing with fire.

Keeping the investing environment favorable compared to other developed countries and controlling spending instead of raising taxes = Prosperous country. Right?

Encouraging investors to remain in and invest in our economy appears to be the clearest path to a wealthy and prosperous country (the wealthier they are and the more favorable the investing environment, the more they will invest in the country, leading to new companies and new jobs for the poor). Can anyone come up with an example to prove otherwise? I’d really like to hear it if you have one because this one seems so simple to me I don’t understand the democrats argument for higher taxes for the wealthy.

Normally I’m not a fan of dirty politics. I like it when the focus is on the positives — tell me what you can do not what your opponent won’t do. But these videos humored me and idealistic views are overrated, so I thought I’d share them with you:

To end on a positive, I came across a great video where the guy who created the original “Yes we can” humbly explains the inspiration behind the video (unfortunately it’s on MSN so I can’t embed it):

Will.i.am on ‘Yes We Can’

I’ve also split our blog into two categories: Adventures and Curiosities. If you just want to see what we’ve been up to, you can use the Adventures category to filter out all the other stuff.

On Tuesday night, Heather and I joined the masses and voted at the democratic caucus. We arrived 20 minutes before the doors opened and still had to stand in a line thousands of people long that ended up taking over 2.5 hours to get through.

The typical turnout is 5,000 voters, but the state thought they’d plan ahead for a huge turnout and printed 17,000 ballots. By the end of the night, over 37,000 voters had shown up to have their say in the election. We had to cast our votes on a torn sheet of scrap paper (and we were there early!).

The wait alone (forgetting the absolute chaos that was the polling area once the ballots and voter registration forms had run out) is reason alone to move to electronic voting — I have no idea how the older / disabled voters were able to stand in line the whole time. Even our legs were dying…

But at least we were well fed! Turns out Obama (or at least his supporters) has a sweet tooth. There were plenty of “Obama” donuts and “Obama” cookies to go around. All the other side had were crappy shirts and banners (and none of them looked nearly as happy as the ones devouring the sweets!). Disgruntled as they should be, Obama swept Hawaii despite their opposing votes, taking Hillary behind the woodshed with 76% of the vote to her 24% (that’ll teach her to send Chelsea over early to do her grunt work — nobody wants to see that in a bathing suit). Ten wins in a row… go Obama!

This is one crazy market!

Dobber and I gave the market madness mustache a month and decided to call it quits. The VIX has only closed below 20 three days in the past four months. Who knows when the next time it closes below 20 will be. I had actually grown quite used to it, but Heather’s distaste for it only continued to grow as the days piled on top of each other. Dobber said his was just getting damn itchy. So, here’s the final stache (Dobber’s will be up as soon as I get the photo from him) and the newly shaven faces…

Back to the beach!!!

Playing tough guy with the ’stache and aviators..

Heather showing off… (is there anyone else that can’t curl or do anything cool with their tongue like me?)

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Who knew setting up a sewing machine could be so difficult?!? Funny thing is, it’s really not that hard — it’s the directions that are a bitch. Five pages of written instructions could have been replaced by a single page of clear illustrations and it would have been a cakewalk.

Once the machine was ready to go we thought we were on easy street…


Turns out Heather needs a little bit of practice with the ‘ole sewing machine before Hippie Sacks finds its legs…