“a tax system can be defined as progressive if after-tax income is more equally distributed than before-tax income.”

Uhh... what's the point of working for a better-paying job then? If I can work less, and get paid equal after-tax income, what is the motivation to work harder? What happened to the American Dream? Do we all want to be socialists?

Freedom of Speech

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. And it doesn't even come from an actual speech. It's from the movie "American President".

America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

Office View

Office View
Originally uploaded by Clark Kent - Superman

This is the view from my office which I may not have much longer. I'll
definitely miss it when I'm away.

What Gender?

Today, the Oregon Duck asked me, "If we had a kid, would you want a boy or a girl?", a question which has been asked and answered many times throughout our relationship. Given that the answer is already known, I thought up of a great response. I said, "A hermaphrodite, so we can have both a boy and a girl." To which the Oregon Duck responded, "That's sick, that's obscene. What's wrong with you?"

Who else thinks it's sick and obscene? I think it's pretty funny. Ha ha ha.

Stupid Sensationalism

I read a lot of stupid articles. Sometimes I wonder why I bother reading, but occasionally there will be one or two articles that I'll read and then think to myself, "That was worth all the stupid articles that I had to endure". Well, occasionally, I'll also read a completely worthless article, one that is written simply to deceive people for the purpose of political gain. These types of articles typically have sensational headlines that are simply untrue or a stretch of the truth.

Take today's article on MSNBC.com titled Report: Wars cost average U.S. family $20,000. Reading this, you may think, "Oh my gosh, you mean $20,000 of my tax dollars is going to fund the war?!?! That's ridiculous! I hate the Republicans for pushing this stupid war!" And that's exactly what the article headline wants you to think. It's simple and pure sensationalism. Looking into the details of the article and what is actually happening tells a completely different story.

So how did they arrive on this $20,000 figure? Well, the U.S. has approximately 300+ million people. Divide this by the average household of 4, and you get 75,000,000 households. You divide the $1.5 billion by the 75 million households, and you come out to the $20,000 per family number that's stated. Looks like sound math, right? Wrong...

1. Income tax is only part of the total amount of tax dollars available to the public. Corporations, for example, also pay taxes.
2. Last time I checked, the poor did not pay the same amount of taxes as the rich. According to the Wikipedia article on taxation the bottom 50% of individual taxpayers pay just 3.3% of the total individual income tax, while the top 5% pay 57.1% of the total individual income tax. Assuming you count only individual income tax as the government's only tax, you come up with the actual tax burden of the bottom 50% ($1.5 billion * 3.3% / (75 million households / 2)). The actual tax burden of the bottom 50% comes out to approx $1260. The "average" family would be probably be a little higher than that (didn't find actual income numbers for the "average" family), but you get the point.

But wait.. read the article more carefully and it's not even talking about the tax burden PER YEAR. It's talking about the total amount of used and requested money and other related costs for the life of the war. This means that the current figures are over 7 years!!! So divide that number by 7, and you get a number that's under $200 per year.

So let's make another sensational headline "Report: War costs average family an iPod nano per year". I think that's a little more accurate, though it's still stupid sensationalism.

Ridiculous Child Support Amount

Ok, I don't know about you, but I know that people can raise their kids on minimum wage and the median household income in the U.S. is around $48k a year. This is for the ENTIRE household, including the parents and kids. So when I read in today's CNN.com article about how much Britney Spears needs to pay Kevin Federline for child support, I couldn't believe it. From the article, "She has to pay her ex-husband $15,000 per month in child support and $20,000 in spousal support. Spousal support will end November 15."

Umm... ok. So her kids get $180k a year, and they probably just started walking and talking (being 1 and 2) I cannot comprehend why ANY kid needs that much money... Talk about a ridiculous legal system. I think Britney needs to hire some better lawyers.

Stamps

It's probably not a good idea for me (being Superman and all) to admit that I like Marvel. I especially like the Spiderman franchise that has come to the theater over the last few years. In fact, I like Marvel so much and I believe in what they're doing that I recently even bought stock in Marvel.

So imagine my excitement today when I walk into the Post Office, something I don't do very often, and I see that they are selling Marvel stamps! Excited, I bought a sheet, which turns out to be the very LAST sheet they had. Awesome!

The sheet is great. It has lots of superheroes on the front and a little blurb about each one on the back of the sheet. I'm a little torn as to whether I want to actually USE these stamps or not. This would also make for some great Christmas card postage, I would imagine. Namely to certain individuals who enjoy superheroes as much as or more than I do (ahem, Mr. Freeze)