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ThrutchBlog

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  1. As many may know, Firefly is by far my favorite TV show.  In this interview its creator, Joss Whedon, discusses how he manages to be so productive which I found incredibly interesting and motivating.  This passage in particular struck me, in that it shows how much he enjoys what he does, such that even relaxing involves productivity.

    I ask about the melding of social and work that he seems to have mastered with his friends (Much Ado grew out of Shakespeare readings at his house). “For me that’s almost always necessary. I mean, obviously I’ve hung out with the Much Ado crew and they’ve become closer to me than I could have imagined, but the way I see people is by saying, ‘Come over and we’ll read Shakespeare. Come over and we’ll film Shakespeare.’ I need some kind of end. I like there to be a point. I was never a games night guy, but at some point social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there’s a point, it’s easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.

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  2. Here are some anecdotal accounts of how Obama sicced his IRS thugs against a broad swath of ideological opponents.  Gives me shivers.

    I was one of those victims of the IRS scandal. As an outspoken critic of President Obama and his socialist anti-business agenda, the IRS targeted me for intimidation and persecution–not once, but 
    twice.
     The first IRS attack started in January of 2011. After I won a victory in tax court in the summer of 2012, I was audited again 5 days later. FIVE DAYS. Tax experts have never heard of this happening- EVER.

    [...]

    How did I know this was a coordinated attack on conservative critics and donors? Because just in my small inner circle of friends, virtually every businessman that I met was getting hit with IRS audit notices only weeks after writing checks to the GOP and Mitt Romney. Strange coincidence, huh?
     
    In one case, a friend of mine who is a hedge fund CEO attended the first major Wall Street fundraiser for Mitt Romney. Only a select few Wall Street big shots attended. After they went home, almost every one of them in the room that wrote a check to Romney later reported receiving IRS audit notices.
     
    In another case, a friend of mine wrote a big check to Romney. He called me to report his suspicions when only weeks later he received an IRS notice. In another case, my next-door neighbor (who is a big GOP donor) reported being under vicious IRS attack. In another case, my accountant was suddenly audited only months after my first IRS attack. Even my publicist received an IRS audit notice.



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  3. There are some good points herein, most notably:

    In fact, there is serious inequality in Sweden, but the divide is not so much between the rich and the poor as between those with jobs and those without. And frequently this is an ethnic divide. As the author Fredrik Segerfeldt points out in a new study, Sweden has the largest employment gap between natives and foreign-born of all the rich countries where data is available. Only 6.4 per cent of native Swedes are unemployed, but almost 16 per cent of the immigrants are. In Stockholm, as in Paris, this problem is concentrated in the suburbs. In Husby, where the riots started, 38 per cent of those under 26 neither study nor work.

    So what’s to blame? The aspect of the Swedish social model that the government has not dared to touch: strong employment protection. By law, the last person to be hired must be the first person to be sacked. And if you employ someone longer than six months, the contract is automatically made permanent. A system intended to protect the workers has condemned the young to a succession of short-term contracts. Sweden’s high de facto minimum wage — around 70 per cent of the average wage — renders unemployed those whose skills are worth less than that. Sweden has the fewest low-wage, entry-level jobs in Europe. Just 2.5 per cent of Swedish jobs are on this level, compared to a European average of 17 per cent.

    Those with poor education, experience or language skills have found that Sweden is not such a utopia after all. If you never get your first job, you never get the skills and experiences that would give you the second and third job. All that labour ‘protection’ has created a society of insiders and outsiders. Sweden has generously welcomed immigrants into its borders. But there is another border — around its jobs market — and it is heavily fortified.



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  4. You've got to love public <strike>indoctrination</strike> education of <b><a href="http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/benjibacker/15-year-old-wisconsin-conservative-meets-bullying?source=FWFBBenjisBlog">our youth</a></b>.<br /><br />And I must say I find it amazing that so many of the same people who are against the <i>voluntary</i> exercise of free speech by corporations &nbsp;simultaneously&nbsp;endorse the coercive funding of education -- a policy which forces taxpayers to materially advance views they find abhorrent and destructive.

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  5. NPR provides an interesting look at those the government pronounces "disabled". I don't know much about the topic, so I found this quite informative (and not the typical slanted NPR social engineering masquerading as reporting). Here's an excerpt:

    But disability has also become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn't supposed to serve this purpose; it's not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet. Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then, one economist told me.

    People who leave the workforce and go on disability qualify for Medicare, the government health care program that also covers the elderly. They also get disability payments from the government of about $13,000 a year. This isn't great. But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you at most $15,000 a year, and probably does not include health insurance, disability may be a better option.

    But going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work. Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for.

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  6. Detroit's <b><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/us/for-detroit-a-financial-crisis-was-long-coming.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=2&amp;">pension debacle</a></b> - a storyline we'll see at every level of government for the next 25 years or more. <br /><br />One point that's rarely made in these pieces is that deferring costs, i.e. levying them on those who aren't even receiving the benefits, leads to migration and thus even fewer people to tax. &nbsp;So for instance the tax revenue that Detroit collected in the 70's, 80's and 90's went to services, schools, roads, etc., while the funding shortfall -- the deficit -- accrued as unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities (which would have to be paid in the future). &nbsp;As time went on and the pensions started becoming due, current citizens not only faced higher tax rates, they also lived with diminished services since now the tax collection wasn't enough to pay for current needs. &nbsp;Since current taxpayers want benefits from their taxes, e.g. safe, well-lit&nbsp;neighbourhoods,&nbsp; they begin to migrate to places where taxes are still used for current expenses. &nbsp;Once this process starts, it's almost impossible to stop, since fewer and fewer people are left have to shoulder the burden accrued by previous generations. &nbsp;I predict that some time in the next decade, people will explicitly be looking at unfunded liabilities of both their own region and prospective regions to which to move. &nbsp;That's when the reality that the only way out of this mess will be massive government bankruptcies and a&nbsp;concomitant&nbsp;repudiation of a lot of the unfunded promises &nbsp;will finally strike home.

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  7. This is a very worthwhile tribute from Mark Steyn. Among other important observations:

    As most of you know, Lars was charged, acquitted, re-charged, convicted, fined 5,000 kroner and forced to appeal to the Supreme Court – for the crime of expressing his opinion about Islam. He won, but he lost. He lost three years of his life. The point of these new heresy trials is that the verdict is ultimately irrelevant – the process is the punishment. After I saw off the Islamic enforcers in my own country, their frontman crowed to The Canadian Arab News that, even though the Canadian Islamic Congress had struck out in three separate jurisdictions in their attempt to criminalize my writing, the lawsuits had cost my magazine (he boasted) two million dollars, and thereby "attained our strategic objective—to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material."

    I should perhaps mention too, as with most things I post, I don't agree with the opinions carte-blanche. For example I don't think that Europeans cater to Muslims in order to get their vote, the cause is much deeper and worse, it's the lack of self-esteem (or even actual self-loathing) that many Europeans feel which makes them incapable of standing up for any Western principles. Muslims just happen to be the barbarians at the gates, if it's not them it will be a self-grown dictator of Hitler/Stalin stripes who will collect their souls.

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  8. I often think that living under the rule of law, even when the laws aren't perfect, is vastly under-appreciated. My biggest example is the Roman Empire, where historically 100 million people lived the best lives ever until the 1700's or so. This story of some Mexican towns "going vigilante" reminds me again how difficult it is to secure the rule of law (i.e. of how many ways decent people could go wrong in trying to establish an objective system of law) and thus makes me appreciate it from that perspective too.

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  9. This WSJ makes a very good point, despite all our current problems life today is pretty darn good.  Here are the final two paragraphs, but I think the whole <b><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323468604578249723138161566.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h">piece</a></b> is worth reading:<br /><br /><blockquote>Even though the inflation-adjusted hourly wage hasn't changed much in 50 years, it is unlikely that an average American would trade his wages and benefits in 2013—along with access to the most affordable food, appliances, clothing and cars in history, plus today's cornucopia of modern electronic goods—for the same real wages but with much lower fringe benefits in the 1950s or 1970s, along with those era's higher prices, more limited selection, and inferior products.</blockquote><blockquote>Despite assertions by progressives who complain about stagnant wages, inequality and the (always) disappearing middle class, middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before. They live longer lives and have much greater access to the services and consumer products bought by billionaires.</blockquote>

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  10. Several stories are out recently revealing how many high earners move to avoid onerous state taxes. It makes me happy that in the process they help starve the blood sucking parasites that make up the electorate and governments of our most socialist states (e.g. CA and NY).

    This story for example, reveals that Tiger Woods saved about $100 million in CA taxes over a 16 year career. While this story highlights a potential developing trend of hedge funds and private equity firms leaving NYC to relocate to Palm Beach, Florida.

    Another beneficial result is that several states are discussing reducing their income and corporate taxes to become more competitive. Not only will this make the movement of high income earners more pronounced -- it might also eventually allow activists in high tax states to successfully promote freedom over tax, spend and regulate. (I know, the latter is probably wishful thinking, the leaders in these states seem to be willing to completely bankrupt their states rather than even consider changing their ways.)

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