Thursday, August 31, 2017

My Tax Plan

INTRODUCING THE GRADUATED FLAT TAX

50% on all income beyond the first $15,000 per year. 

(NO separate rate for "Capital Gains." There is no justification for that.)

Someone making $15K would pay zero.

$20K - $15K = $5000 divided by 2 = $2500 = 12.5%.

$25K - $15K = $10K / 2 = $5000 = 20%.

$65K - $15K = $50K / 2 = $25K = 38%.

$115K - $15K = $100K / 2 = $50K = 43%.

$915K - $15K = $900K / 2 = $450K = 49%.

$1 Million & 15K - $15 = $1M / 2 = $500K = 49.9%.

Now, some will say this is "punishing success." No, it's punishing greed, while being easy on the poor and fair to the middle class. Justice!

CHILD TAX CREDIT

$4K per year for the first child, $3K / year for the 2nd kid, $2K / year for the 3rd, and $1K for the 4th.

If you can afford more kids, go for it. If you can't .. don't have them! We must not reward irresponsibility.

WHAT ABOUT THE HOUSE DEDUCTION?

A clear majority of Americans can no longer afford a medium size house in good repair in a safe quiet neighborhood not more than an hour's drive from employment and shopping. (Isn't that part of what "middle class" used to mean, before it got redefined down over and over again?)

Partly that's because of the decimation of the middle class's income by inflation, but it's also partly because of the simultaneous explosion in house prices. And that explosion in prices was partly because of the giant house deduction (which helped the most ruthless monkeys a lot more than "regular Americans".) We need to rethink that.

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Some Perspective On The Healthcare Reform SCAM

More than half of the improvement in health from 150 years ago 'til now is just from public sanitation (clean fresh water into homes & businesses, the sewer system, and garbage collection service).

Most of the rest is just from hygiene (doctors washing hands between patients is an application of preventing cross-contamination, same as we all routinely do in food preparation).

Those two together are responsible for more than 76% of the total improvement. The remaining less than 24% is split roughly equally between:


  • Police & Fire departments
  • Improvements in civil engineering (buildings & bridges don't collapse; compare to many recent news stories from 3rd world countries)
  • Laws & regulations that intervene in the marketplace to reduce the freedom of some people to maximize their profits by poisoning us all with pollution.
  • Alleviation of rank malnutrition (somewhat walked back over the past few decades by the anti-science Cult of the Low Fat Diet).
  • The Medical Sector of the economy, which markets itself as "healthcare".


So, healthcare accounts for less than 10%, and probably closer to 5% of the total improvement in health from 150 years ago til now. But wait, it's even worse than that! Virtually 100% of healthcare's contribution is just from the ER. You get shot or stabbed, or suffer from smoke inhalation during a house fire, or something like that; all through human history until recently, that would have ended your life. Now they can prevent your death until you have time to heal, and you might live for decades more.

In other words, the effect of everything else that healthcare does - vaccines, cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-depression medications, the cut/poison/burn business model of cancer treatment (surgery/chemo/radiation), etc. - does not rise to statistical significance.

BOTTOM LINE: We, the USA, get literally NOTHING in return for MOST of the money we as a nation spend on "healthcare" every year.

The Dreaded "Socialized Medicine"

Yes, we should have a single-payer national healthcare system - but ONLY for the ER. This would save our country bigly money, and improve the lives of millions of people. (ONLY for citizens, of course.)

For long-term health creation and maintenance, the medical sector of the economy, as currently constituted, is actively harmful.

Fortunately, there are things you as an individual can do to take care of your own health & fitness:

How to sync diet with exercise

Most cancer can be prevented with nutrition

An easy AND FREE way to reduce and maybe even eliminate back pain

Drug-free ways to raise your testosterone

Signaling: the science of nutrigenomics - no DNA test required!

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Diminishing Returns, Pareto's Principle, and Zeno's (Xeno's) Paradox

The Law of Diminishing Returns: The rate at which the increase in cost decreases is lower than the rate at which the increase in benefit decreases.

As teh interwebz says, "Few understand this."

An Example

One is a certain amount. Two is twice as much as one. Three is only 50% more than two. Four is only 25% more than three. Five is only 20% more than four.

Are you starting to notice a pattern? This can help you get the "most bang for your buck."

The 80/20 Rule 

A few centuries ago, an Italian accountant noticed that 20% of the population owned 80% of the wealth. Scrutinizing that 20% further, he saw that 20% of the 20% had 80% of the 80%.

This has since been found to hold true in many areas of life.

You can apply this to exercise; lifting one day a week should give you about 80% of the benefit of lifting 5 days a week. That can free up your schedule tremendously.

But Wait, There's More!

The 80/20 rule is a specific application; the Law of Diminishing Returns may manifest differently in other situations.

Let's say doing something six times gives you the maximum benefit you could get from doing that thing.

Doing it once might get you 25% of doing it 6 times. Twice might get you up to 50% of 6 times. Three times = 70%, four times = 85%, five times = 95%.

In that case, doing it 6 times would give 100%, no? Actually, no. Six times is 96%, 7 times is 97%, 8 times is 98%, 9 times is 99%.

So, 10 times is 100% of doing it six times?! Still wrong! Ten times is 99.1%

Bake Your Noodle

Eleven times is 99.11%. Gosh, this is starting to seem like Xeno's Paradox.

The closer you get to perfection, the more inefficient the effort becomes. Appreciating the Law of Diminishing Returns can save you wasted resources in real life.

Mmmm, Pie

Of course, if you sit down to eat a pie, the first two bites won't reduce the pie by half; if you eat 100% of the pie, you've eaten 100% of the pie.

The Law of Diminishing Returns and Xeno's Paradox don't apply to absolutely everything!