Mr. Know-It-All

                              

I am starting a brand-new feature for 2018, an occasional question-and-answer column to provide needed answers to pressing questions. Now, since it is just beginning, I  had to find some really good questions, and there was no time pressure on me to come up with the answers.

How did I do it? I listened to people while waiting on line at my local big box store and the little deli a couple of blocks away. I grabbed a question or two from a talk radio station - I won’t say which one - that was asked just before the host called the caller an “idiot” and hung up on her.

And, of course, I made some of them up.

Let us begin. You can provide a fanfare yourself.

Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

My boss sent out a memo saying that, because of the new tax laws, we would all be getting a pay raise. Anyone with stock in the company would be getting a 30% increase in their purchase options.

But while our boss will make about $12,000 on the deal this year. I don’t have any stock options. Neither do the other people I work with every day. The boss says that while he would love to give us some money, it would violate our contract and he could be sued. 

The contract runs for another three years, and my boss says the company will be really generous next time we negotiate because the nation’s economy will be so much better.

My question is, what do I do when they ask me to work overtime now. I am afraid I will lose my second job if I don’t show up.

Dear Overworked:

I feel your problem. I really do. My answer depends on how much overtime you work, how much you make, and whether you can afford to say no and risk losing your job, which I assume is your main source of income.

If you don’t need the overtime pay, have solid job security and don’t want to work overtime, you should tell your boss you will be more than happy to work all the overtime he assigns, anytime after a new contract is signed three years from now.

Meanwhile, I suggest you start looking around for another job that might actually pay a little more than you now make, or pay a little less but give you a big bonus of self-respect.

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Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

I have an uncle who takes Amtrak several times a year, and I am worried because of the recent accident in Washington state, as well as accidents in New Jersey and other places.

Now I know Congress is investigating the cause of the accident, and why there was no smart technology in place to control the speed of that train going around a curve. I know it exists. Congress demanded that it be put in place years ago.

Do you think they will get to the bottom of this tragedy? Will anyone get arrested and punished for those poor people who were killed?

Dear Worrier:

You are right in everything you say. Congress is on the job. The technology is available and could have been installed. Congress did demand the job be done.

The sticking point - at least according to my sources - is that while Congress voted to make Amtrak safer, its members never got around to voting for the money to do the job. And, as far as I know, no contractor would agree to do the work with only the promise that they would get paid when the economy gets a little better.

You will know when the Congressional investigation is getting close to the truth when the appropriate committees buy some mirrors.

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Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

I know that my Republican party has done some bad things in the past few years, and that in the year since Donald Trump has gotten into office, things in Washington are becoming a little, well, tacky.

But, he is saying some things that need to be said and that I agree with. More to the point, I am making money on my investments, and if the tax burden gets too big, I will just move to some state where they don’t have high taxes or big expensive cities. The fly-over country covers a lot more space than the east and west coasts do, and I am sure I can find a happy home someplace where the buffalo used to roam.

Do you see any flaw in my logic?

Dear Flawless:

Let me answer this question in reverse order. I’ll save the biggest problem for last.

First (or last, as the case may be) you may find yourself alone on a great plain someday, in desperate need of a good doctor. Or accountant. Or lawyer. The really good ones - trust me on this - really don’t have a lot of time to waste, and their practices are pretty well filled up.

You could always go to a clinic 80 or 90 miles away if there is no snowstorm or forest fire, and you could always hang around the county courthouse and hope some lawyer trips at your feet. Good luck with that.

Next (it works either forward or backward), our President is calling out a lot of people - the poor, minorities, Democrats), but any good showman knows that you have to vary the act. In a couple of years, all his old favorites may be gone, and he will need new ones to pick on. How is your ethnic heritage, background and experience? And how many times have you played golf at a Trump course? These things will count.

Now, finally, we have the problem with your money. It’s a good problem, of course. Having money always is.

People make money on bad things all the time. Otherwise no one could buy alcohol or crack, or rent prostitutes. We erase the moral distinction between people who own stock in an electric utility that uses coal plants or a food company that pushes corn syrup and sugar, and the people who own stock in a bank that sells mortgages to people who will never repay it and then forecloses on the house and sells it again.

You are not bad because you own stock in an arms manufacturer, you are - maybe - just no worse than someone who speeds through a red light or takes 12 items to the line that says “10 or less.” We live in a flexible moral world.

But the point is that, while you are making money now, you are probably making it because the people under you on the economic ladder are losing money. And the national debt is getting bigger every year (It’s how the tax code works).

If we keep shoveling money up the economic ladder, pretty soon you will find out that the line that divides you from the poor people on the lower rungs has quietly slipped from beneath your feet and is now above your head.

And you won’t be able to use bonds to cover the debt any more and pass it on to your kids,  because there are just too many people under 35 in the voting pool and they now outvote you. Just don’t depend on the kindness of strangers, especially the ones you meet in the health clinic 100 miles from your house.

Address your questions to Mr. Know-It-All at Where’s Walter C? at blogspot.com. Who knows what answers we will find together.

Hey, I'm Not Average

To set the record straight, I am no fan of the GOP’s proposed tax bill. But, while I am happy to say “shame on them,” I also have to say “shame on the media” for doing a terrible job in reporting on it.

Now, there are degrees of shame, from Fox News near-total lying about the tax bill to MSNBC’s dancing around the edges and trying to report what the bill - which still doesn’t exist as I write this, despite all the coverage - would likely contain.

Now, the members of Congress get more blame than the media, because they know more about it than the media does. After all, reporters just talk to their congressional sources to get their information. And those sources often just parrot their party line.

No, my beef with the coverage is that, no matter who is doing the story, the reporters seem to talk only about what this bill could do to the average American. And, I am not average. Nor are you.

Presumably, there are some people in the United States who have our nation’s exact average income and pay our exact average tax bill, have precisely our national average medical expenses and contribute the absolutely average amount to the charity of their choice. Good luck finding them.

I live in New York State. I live in suburban Long Island, where we have county taxes and town taxes and school taxes and library taxes, and special lines on our tax bill to pay for police and farmland preservation and a batch of other things. Some people live in villages, which have their own taxes as well.

Now I haven’t filed a short form tax since my wife and I had our first child. In fact, we didn’t file a short form even before that, because we had lots of deductions. Now people who are single, or who don’t make as much as I do, will save some money under the new tax bill. I will lose, big time. A couple of years ago, our medical expenses were really high - well north of $20,000 - and if that happened to us again, none of the expense would be deductible. 

I also live in a state with several big cities, cities which get a lot of state aid to pay for public transportation, and sewers and road repairs and a lot of other things you don’t have in rural areas. It’s not that our state lawmakers are spendthrifts (which they are) or that they waste a lot of money (which they do) or that they all find ways to pay for parks and choral groups or parades in their districts (yep, that too). It’s that you can’t move a half million people into a city to go to work each day and back again each night without having a pretty expensive transit system.

And, if we actually charged people what it costs to ride the train or the bus, we would choke in our own congestion overnight. Just imagine how many people making $30,000 a year could suddenly afford to pay $10 or $15 a day for their trip to work and back.

So, a lot of them would find a better place to live and work. Then, when lunchtime comes, you would have thousands of bankers and lawyers lining up at the local deli. A lot of the delivery people would be gone. 

Want to get up at 4 a.m. to be at work at 9 a.m., then get home at 10 p.m. because twice or three times the number of cars are trying to get over a bridge? Enough of those kinds of problems and our cities will start dying. Soon after that, the people from our vast rural areas who don’t want to pay higher taxes to support those free-spending city people will see their rural economy start dying as well.

Why? Well, instead of filling a freight car or two with hot dogs for the supermarkets, you would have to fill 10,000 or 20,000 trucks to get the same hot dogs to all those new spread-out customers. Same thing with peanut butter, local bank offices and movie theaters.

Ever wonder why the Post Office is always running out of money? It’s because Congress won’t let it shut down all those underused rural post offices. But, that’s another story.

But I digress. Here’s the point. The impact of the tax cut on me is not the same as it is for people living in Utah or Alaska. Just as the impact on someone with five million dollars in the bank (or in stock or bonds or strange financial investments involving Ireland or China) is different than on someone who just works and makes a lot of overtime. 

And, yet, all I keep hearing from the media is the impact of the tax bill on the average family or the average worker. As if there was such a thing.

Here’s an idea. Let Sean Hannity (who reportedly made $29 million in 2015) or Rachel  Maddow (who reportedly made $6 million in 2015) explain how the tax bill would affect them, and then compare it with the tax impact on a typical worker. The math would be easy - if one worker makes $50,000 a year, 20 workers bring in $1 million. We could easily calculate how much 120 of those workers pay in taxes and compare it to Rachel’s tax bill, or 580 of those workers pay in taxes and compare it to Sean’s tax bill. Both of them are smart enough to take advantage of the new bill’s tax provisions, whatever they may be.

It still wouldn’t tell us how the deductibility of state taxes or medical benefits would hit each of those workers, or how their local church or hospital would react to the loss of no-longer-deductible donations, but it would give us all some kind of numbers to look at.

Just don’t call them an average.

A Strange Dream

(If Pete Seeger were still writing music, he might have done something like this)

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before.

I dreamed that Trump, our President,

Just couldn’t find a war.

Oh, first he pardoned Hillary,

Although she did no crime.

And then he said Joe Biden was

A hero for our times.

On John McCain he wavered most

First yes, then no, and then

A final yes, and said he hoped

they could be friends again.

He smiled and waved at dreamers,

Called Chuck and Nancy proud

And finally said he hoped his talk

Had not enraged the crowd.

Now wondrous as all this was

For you and me to see

It caused some consternation

Within the GOP.

“We have to hate, so we can thrive,”

The cry came from the House.

Oh, President, our Chosen One,

Can’t you find just one louse?

He searched and scanned,

both near and far, and would be searching yet.

But then he saw the enemy

who voted for our debt.

“Your tax reforms just made things worse,”

Said Trump, and with a nod

He flew away, while saying loud:

"I knew it wasn’t hard.”

May Old Acquaintance Be Forgot.....

It always seems that the last few things go faster. The last potato chips in a bowl, the last tickets to a popular concert and - for all of us - the last few days on the calendar. So, before I rip off the December page and put up a brand new January, let me say good-bye to a few things that deserve to go away.

I’m too smart to expect they will go away. of course. I know they will hang around like the ghost of Christmas past, who vanishes each year after visiting Scrooge, only to come back again next December 24.

But, they should go. Forever. So, in no particular order, here are the things that I hope will be consigned to the dust bin of history, or the nearest toxic waste site. Certainly not to a recycling bin.

1 - The Republican double-barreled argument that we have to cut corporate tax rates and that their tax bill is really designed to help the middle class.

If you want to cut corporate tax rates because ours are, they say, among the highest in the world, then do it. But, at the same time, eliminate all those special tax exemptions that let scores of really big businesses pay no tax at all. That would simplify the tax code by getting rid of half the pages.

You say it’s too complicated to do? Well, I agree. Cut the tax rate to 22 percent if you want, and leave all those exemptions. But, add a small provision. Every company, no matter what else the tax code says, must pay an alternate minimum tax of 15 per-cent.

If you just defer income, or just stash it off-shore, you will have to pay 10 per-cent a year in interest on that money, every year it is deferred. After three years, the government gets to take legal action to recover that deferred cash, or any other asset your business may hold.

2 - The tax cuts are for the middle class. Well, I know the tax code is really complicated - I just said that - so here’s how I would do it. Leave our tax code alone, and just send a rebate back to everyone. You pay your taxes, and the feds say they are taking in too much money, so give every man, woman and child a check for $500 or $1,000.  That way, everyone gets the same tax break. It may look like big families get a bonus, but just try raising a kid on $1,000 a year. Good luck with that.

3 - It’s all Hillary’s fault. Well, this is a gift to the Republicans. Our president just has to stop blaming the Clintons for every problem in the country (people may start noticing that there was a Bush or two in office while some of those problems were getting bigger). What’s the gift? The Democratic party will have to recognize that Hillary was their own creation, and take the responsibility for all the things that went wrong in her campaign.

4 - Korea. We threaten. They threaten. We threaten louder. They threaten louder. They started it. We started it. Here’s my advice. You want to get serious and get tough? Just ask Congress to reinstate the draft. No deferrals, please. You want to show the whole country is willing to share in the sacrifice, bone spurs or not.

4A - Just how serious would a war be? Since we have no memory of that 1950 conflict, here are some facts.

• The war started when 75,000 North Korean troops surged across the border to bring Communism to South Korea by force.

* In the three years that police action lasted (no war was ever declared) the U.S. dropped more bombs and napalm that we used in the entire Pacific theater in World War II.

*There were more than 52,000 American casualties during that police action. Numerous estimates were that more than five million people (mostly civilians) died as well.

• Our South Korean allies provided prostitutes to the men in its army. There is no official record of whether that benefit was extended to our soldiers.

• About five million men and women served in the armed forces during the Korean police action, although most of them were not directly involved in the fighting, or even in the country. We currently have about 1.5 million men and women on active duty, and another half million or so in reserve forces. 

5 - We are the party of fiscal responsibility. Just stop passing tax cuts that expire in 10 years just so you can make the bills fit under the laws that were passed to limit our ever-mounting debt. That’s what Republicans call tax gimmicks when they are not in office.

6 - We shouldn’t have to pay our taxes for those free-spending liberal states. There are actually lots of different ways to figure out how much a state pays in federal taxes and how much money they get back, but on a per-capita basis (and we each pay only our own income tax) New Jersey gets only about 50 cents back from the federal government for each dollar their residents pay in taxes, and Delaware gets back only about 30 cents. Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas residents also get back about 50 cents for each dollar they pay.

On the other side, New Mexico residents get back more than $2 for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. So do residents of Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama. Montana residents only get back $1.25 or so for every dollar they pay in federal taxes.

Since they all want tax fairness. maybe everyone who pays taxes in Mississippi or Alabama could look at what they pay, then make out a check for the very same amount and send it to New Jersey or Delaware, or even New York. After all, fair is fair.

Happy New Year!

Some New Year's Resolutions For Our Binary World

With mistletoe definitely out at office Christmas parties this year (especially the media group grogfests) and the war on Christmas officially won by Mike Pence, it’s time to salvage at least one end-of-the-year holiday tradition. The New Year’s Predictions.

I’m going to give you a couple. Or maybe not. After all, there is a new sheriff in town, a new world view that sees things - all things - in simple black and white. Or not.

See how simple it is. A lot of people already live in this binary world, and more seem to be getting into it every day. Things are yes or no, on or off, good or bad. Republicans or Democrats. Conservatives or Liberals. And, never shall they ever meet.

Naturally, I disagree. By career choice and personal attitude, I tend to avoid simplistic distinctions. I see life as being more complex and subtle, interrelated and ever-changing. Which, I admit, is great for poetry and art, but lousy for running a bill through Congress or blocking the appointment of a Supreme Court justice until your own guy in the White House gets in and nominates someone else.

Now my friends and family will say that I just naturally like to argue. I say they are wrong. (See how easy it is to fall into the binary trap). But, for the sake of argument (I know. It proves their point, barely) let’s say they are right. That gives us just two choices on most things. But, it doesn’t make predictions easy.

Still, December 31 is rapidly approaching, so I will bravely wade deep into the binary world that controls our political system and offer by binary predictions. Here we go.

First, Trump will either be impeached and forced out of office in disgrace or he won’t. Now, I predict that no matter what happens, life will get a lot worse before it gets better. Let me show you.

If he is impeached, two things can happen. Normalcy will return to our government or it won’t. Mike Pence will be truly independent of the most radical of the GOP donors and the most fundamentalist in the GOP Christian conservative wing or he won’t. I think he will make government in Washington even worse, and the Republicans will spend a good part of next year selling whole chunks of the interstate highway system to private investors, leasing out big hunks of our national park system, and taking a really sharp knife to Social Security to balance out the revenue losses caused by their indecent tax cuts for the rich.

One other thing (those darn binary choices again) is that he won’t be impeached, That scenario is a lot darker. A war somewhere. A total betrayal of Israel because he wants to build hotels in Arab countries. (The talk about moving our embassy to Jerusalem is just another shiny bauble, and doesn’t really mean much to anyone under 35).

Then the Republicans controlling our government will pack the federal courts with so many hard-line judges that we will never get  normalcy back. After all, to them the Constitution is not so much a living document as it is something set in stone. The Constitution never said anything about the internet, so the federal government can’t pass any net neutrality laws.

And, of course, great chunks of America will be going broke.

I call that one trickle down pain. Remember the local Republicans who got elected to town and county and state offices? Well, how will they respond to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid? Raise local taxes that are no longer deductible?

I don’t think so. But, in our binary world, they might just surprise us. They could raise taxes on...well, just who do you think will see their taxes go up?

I see Pennsylvania getting a block grant to maintain its interstate highway system, a big road net that takes almost a whole day to drive from the New Jersey border to Pittsburgh. An unimaginable amount of freight from the west and the midwest goes along that road each day, heading for New England and down to Georgia and Florida.

Now if the block grant doesn’t cover the cost of maintaining the road, plowing snow and making needed improvements, how much do you think Pennsylvania will raise its own taxes to fill that financial hole? No, the tolls will go up. A silent nickel or dime on every parcel going from New York to Ohio or Colorado to Atlanta. Or a silent 50 cents or a dollar on every UPS package headed across the country. Guess who pays.

What else will happen if Trump stays in office? (The binary route is a sticky one to travel.) The counter-puncher will have no one to attack. Certainly, he can’t spend four long years in office attacking Hillary Clinton. His ratings will go down. And his attacks on the minority Democrats in Congress aren’t going too well. Maybe he could just wait until some U.S. possession is hit by a hurricane, or some state is devastated by floods or fires and then blame local officials for ingratitude.

No, I think his first target will have to be the  Republican Party, and then the nation’s businesses for not creating new jobs and raising worker’s salaries. Shame on them. He may even put out an angry tweet, which the compensation committee that is reviewing the CEO’s next compensation package will dutifully take into account.

Now, here’s my final prediction. And, it’s where the choices stop being binary. Things aren’t going to work as promised by the President and the Republican leadership. The tax code we still haven’t read - it’s not yet adopted, you realize - is going to build up the deficit and is not going to put money in the pockets of the working poor or the middle class or the folks on Social Security.

(And if it doesn’t pass, there are still ways to tweak things through regulations and administrative changes that will do the GOP donors bidding).

The economy will start tanking before most of us notice. Businesses aren’t going out and hiring people because (a) jobs are being automated at an ever-increasing pace and (b) a lot of companies just do not see a sharp increase in the demand for their products over the next year or two. And (c) we are pretty close to full employment in a lot of fields, and there are no new workers with the skills to step in and fill those new jobs except for the undocumented folks already living here.

So, our new president will rant and rave and look for people to blame for our nation’s new problems.And we voters will say it is a shame, and that this wasn’t what we wanted when we gave the nation over to the worst of the Republican party, and that there is nothing we can do about it.

That attitude will probably last until it really is too late to turn things around - at least turn a lot of things around - for a long time. If we just keep denying things for long enough, our anger will not be unleashed for a year or two.

Maybe not until after next year’s vote for Congress.

I predict it will. Or it won’t. That’s called the binary out.