My Social Agenda
(or what I'd try to do if I were king for a month)

by Robert W. Brawn
revised in March, 2003
not copyrighted

Quick jump to the Table of Contents.

INTRODUCTION

History:

These thoughts started out as random thoughts. They became a frequent set of recurring daydreams – like what would I do if I were King for a day. I started discussing them with several close friends, and the ideas evolved. But they still cluttered up most of my prime daydreaming time.

I decided to write down some ideas. I figured that it would help me organize my thoughts, keep track of how they related to each other, refine them to the point that they might make sense, if expressed verbally.

It helped. Writing them down sort of exorcised the demons from my daydreams, and in large part I moved on to thinking about other things. Not necessarily better or more productive things, just different things.

All of this is to say that I did not write this manifesto for your enjoyment. I hope you do enjoy reading it. I hope some parts of it cause you to think. And I certainly expect most readers to agree with some points and disagree with others. I hope you are not too terribly offended by any of the parts with which you disagree, but please understand that I wrote this more to express my own thoughts than to protect the feelings of any particular readers.

In fact, if a reader were so offended that she or he organized and published an intelligent and passionate rebuttal, I would consider that a personal compliment and a socially productive result.

My personal style is an odd combination of idealist and extreme cynic. I have a comparatively insulting sense of humor. I try to include some humor in my writing. It's mostly for my own amusement. To that extent, it works.

Most of these ideas take the form of incomplete, and certainly imperfect, proposals. I am not so brilliant as to have worked out solutions to all of the problems in the cosmos. I list many of the major questions with which I still struggle. The whole compilation may seem unfinished, because it is…


Format:

I will present one major topic at a time. They are not in a strict order of priority, but I do try to hit the big ones first. Some topics include my responses to some of the rebuttals I have already heard. Of course, some themes are recurring through many of my proposals. I have listed a few of my prevalent assumptions below.

Some of my thoughts are more developed than others. Not all of them follow the format of a proposal; Some are just rambling narratives.


Assumptions:

Stupid people should not breed.

The quality of life is more important than the clinical definitions of being alive. I tend to be pro-death. I assume that many of the problems I perceive with society stem from the plight of unwanted children and general overpopulation. I am in favor of abortion (or at least the right for a woman to choose that alternative), capital punishment, and euthanasia or suicide. Quality of life is more important than preservation of life signs.

Competition is good. Each person or institution should be encouraged and facilitated to achieve absolutely the most success they can. (I DO mean success in a sense much broader than money, but in some cases money is a reasonable metric, and maybe a reasonable reward.) Any union wherein each member is rewarded in the same amount regardless of their personal performance will be far less productive than any system wherein each individual is monitored and compensated for the quality of work she or he performs.

In a free, competitive market, things will tend to work out for the best through natural competitive forces. Monopolies are harmful. Imposed restrictions and unnatural economic forces tend to destroy the healthy balance of things. Of course, that balance is always a dynamic balance.

Evolution and other sources of change are good. And even if change was not good, it’s still certainly unavoidable, so we ought to figure out how to treat evolution as a positive factor.

Prevention is much more cost-effective than cures. However, in macro-level social issues, often the ideal increased prevention would come out of a different budget than does the current cure. That makes it difficult to spend more now on education, for example, in order to reduce law enforcement spending needs a couple decades from now.


Acknowledgments:

There is no way I can adequately express my thanks to my family for the care and support that they have expressed throughout my life. Of course, they may not wish to be associated with any of these ideas, so please try not to transfer the blame justly I deserve to any of them.

My brother, John, has been a particularly close friend. We have had countless discussions over the years, and I know that his subtle influence upon my convictions has been positive.

Joy Brawn, my sister-in-law, is now a stay-at-home-mom. Before that, she was a teacher in public schools. I believe that she was one of the outstanding new, fresh, caring, creative teachers who should be recognized and rewarded for their individual performance, and their commitment to real education. Our conversations about the public educational system have been very thought-provoking. I can’t recall a single significant social issue about which we really agreed. Her thoughtful disagreements with my views have changed some of my opinions, and reinforced others, but have always been valuable.

Dennis Ray is a friend with whom I used to work. We agree on a number of issues, and we helped each other develop our "platforms". We spent several coffee breaks talking about the various abhorrent situations in American presidential politics. Dennis was very instrumental in my decision to write this paper and exorcise these demons.

Norma Abe is a former manager of mine. She is very bright, thoughtful and socially concerned. Sometimes we agree, but most often I am just too damn conservative for her damn liberal ideals. She has given me much information to process in these thoughts. One of my biggest open issues is a direct result of an article she related to me about the bottom quartile of achievers in any country's educational system. I may never resolve the internal struggles started by that article.

Brian Dickinson (see www.logical-inc.com) is more compassionate than am I, but he has some similar ideas. I have enjoyed our conversations regarding this paper, especially his desire for a "Devil’s Island" form of prison. It delights me that we reach similar conclusions from quite divergent approaches.

One person whom I will not name reinforced my value around excellence very dramatically. She wanted a church camp to host a talent show in which nobody would be allowed to perform anything at which they were actually talented. This was not a goofy idea to have a funny and entertaining evening. This was a serious and sincere attempt to keep people who couldn’t dance from getting their feelings hurt by watching people who could dance. It blew me away that anybody could honestly approach life in that manner. She always played every game to lose. Unreal. Her approach to excellence is a polar opposite from mine, and it reinforces my faith in my own values with dramatic effectiveness.

Thank you unnamed camp-counselor. The depths to which you amaze and offend me have been very educational.

Thank you Dennis, Norma and Brian. I've enjoyed our mental wrestling matches as well as our reassuring agreements.

Thank you Mom, Dad, John, and Joy. I owe you more than you'll ever know or I'll ever be able to repay. I love you.

 


TABLE OF CONTENTS

(If you link to a chapter, you may use the "Back" button on your browser to come back to this table of contents. You may also read the document from top to bottom without linking).


 

VALUES

There are a number of things that I value. The ones I list here are values that have helped shape this social agenda. I hope that this paper shows them.

Of course, there are many other things that I personally value very highly. Family, friends, music, and recreation are chief among them, but I'm sure the list would grow quite large if I thought about it.

These things have more to do with what I am about as a person and less to do with the kinds of changes I would try to make in our society if I were king for a month. I'm not sure that the distinction is very clear, but the values I listed above are the underpinnings of the rest of this social agenda.

 

EDUCATION

Concepts:

Unions suck. Tenure sucks. Competition in a free market is productive.

Teachers should be paid for their individual performance, not for their seniority or level of education. Bad teachers should be fired. Good teachers should be rewarded and respected and compensated! Taxpayers might be more generous with raises when the raises only go to the good teachers and not to the deadwood. I hope that we (as a society) really care about quality education - it's just that we are handicapped by the current monopolistic system.

Proposals:

Support competition between teachers.

Test students at the beginning and end of each term. Rank teachers on the percentage of improvement among the middle 80% of their class (treat the lowest 10% and highest 10% as statistical outliers). Also, create reasonable guidelines about how to handle the scores of students that change schools or classes mid-year.

By the way, it would be even better, and only slightly more difficult, to compare the student's end of term scores against their scores at the end of the previous term (rather than the beginning of the current term). That would remove the tendency of teachers to encourage their students to "sandbag" the test at the beginning of the term and try to get low scores. But every teacher could be expected to encourage every student to do as well as possible on the end of term tests.

Here comes a critically important point! The performance of the teacher is the amount of improvement among the bulk of their students from early in the term to late in the term. It has nothing to do with how this class compares to other classes -- only with how the students compare to themselves over time.

It’s not the teacher’s fault if the class starts out way below or way above average. It’s not the teacher’s fault if the kids in this school are in a lower social-economic class and statistically tend to have poorer study skills and less significant parental support. Don’t reward or penalize the teacher for how this class' scores compared to other class' scores. Reward the teacher for how effectively these kids learned while this teacher was teaching them!

You will argue that teachers will simply "teach to the test". [Thanks to Norma for this argument] I agree. No problem. We, as parents and/or taxpayers, need to have the responsibility of refining the test. If the test covers the subjects we want taught, and the teachers pay attention exclusively to those subjects, then the imperfect system will have improved a little bit. Then the real trick will be to figure out how to include advanced skills in the test, like how to think critically, communicate effectively, and transfer theoretical knowledge to practical applications. It's an evolutionary process of continually teaching to the test and improving the test.

 

Support competition between schools.

Set up a "voucher system" similar to the proposals in recent ballet issues. Figure out how many dollars per student per day go to public schools. Let the kids' parents (or other legal guardians) decide which school to pay.

Public schools have the burden of teaching all students - even the ones who do not qualify for admission to most private schools. [Thanks to Joy for being so emphatic on the results of this point] Establish two categories of private schools. "Open" private schools can not turn away any paying student, just like the state-run public school systems. Also "Open" schools must use teachers who are state certified. "Closed" private schools may enforce any entrance and attendance requirements, as well as any hiring policies they want.

I propose that students’ parents or guardians may take:

If the student goes to any school other than the public school assigned to their residential district, then the remaining 10% or 50% surplus (over the voucher amount) stays with the default local public school.

This system may have the effect of changing the "caliber" of students in the public schools. I don't have a problem with that. What about the effect on the unfortunate teachers? Let the good teachers who care about education go get jobs at the good private schools that care about education, teaching the good students whose parents care about education. Leave the old, tenured, ineffective fossils to rot in the public schools. Or measure their performance and figure out a way to get rid of them if they are not up to par. AND NEVER TENURE ANOTHER TEACHER!

Of course, some public schools that are exceptionally well managed will become outstanding educational institutions, and will attract more students. The popular term for that situation is "magnet schools".

I really believe that there is some administrative waste in the state government and the state public school system. I also believe that some excellent teachers should be paid much more and some lousy teachers should be paid much less or simply fired. I really think that some good "Open" private schools will be able to provide an excellent education for that 90% voucher amount. Of course, many "Open" schools will charge extra tuition in addition to the 90% voucher. Some will not.

The "Closed" schools won’t be able to get by on the 50% voucher. They’ll be forced to collect additional charges from the students. That seems like a fair trade for the greatly reduced restrictions. Currently, "Closed" private schools get a 0% voucher and charge 100% of their costs to some combination of the students and/or the sponsoring organizations (like religious organizations).

I don't believe the arguments that this will improve education for the rich and wipe out education for the poor. The very rich have always been able to buy better education. Some schools will continue to cater to the rich, and there’s probably no way (nor any particular need) to change that. Some schools will target the poor and will succeed. The moderate "middle-class" folks that could not quite swing private schools before will be able to swing it now. The competition will force the public schools to improve their activities. I really see this as a strong win-win situation!

And, by using 90% and 50% vouchers, the local public schools will actually receive more money than they do now. I believe they currently receive their primary funds (generated by property taxes and doled out by state governments) based on how many "student-days" they track. Their attendance may drop, but they should still receive the same revenue per "student-day", plus the extra 10% or 50% for each student who has chosen to go elsewhere. Does this level the playing field or does it actually favor the local public school to the detriment of the free-market system? Well, at least as a transition, I believe it helps the public schools more than would a 100% voucher system, and it helps the private schools more than our current 0% system, and it puts competition more firmly in place between schools.

 

The fly in the ointment.

I do, however, have one major concern. Some years ago, I heard about a very persuasive and perplexing article. [Thanks to Norma for sharing the information with me!]

This article argued that the economic competitiveness of a country is determined by the abilities of the bottom quartile of the population. Every population has a wonderfully creative and brilliant top quartile. The real competitive difference lies in whether or not the unskilled laborers can read the warning signs on the factory walls. They form the foundation, which determines how high the other three quartiles can go. I don't know whether or not this statement is really true, but it is a compelling and thought-provoking argument.

This makes a very strong case for ignoring the best students and concentrating on educating the worst students. Boy, that sure feels uncomfortable! First, it is very difficult for me to agree with ignoring the bright ones. Second, I have no idea how to inspire the desire to learn in those who do not have that desire.

I guess that concept of "desire" should be expanded as an explicit assumption. I believe that the ability to achieve is based largely on the ability to learn. I believe that the ability to learn has a whole lot more to do with desire than with inborn talent or intellect. Those with a strong enough desire will eventually succeed. Those without desire can not be force-fed a reasonable education, no matter how "smart" they are.

I think that thanks are due to my family again, for nurturing my desire to learn. I don't know how they did it.

The easy cop-out answer is to go rent the movie "Stand and Deliver". Then comfortably rest on the knowledge that there are some teachers who can nurture the desire to learn, and that some of them want to address the needs of that critically important bottom quartile of the educable population. I recognize that this is a cop-out, and that teachers like the one in the movie are very rare indeed.

It would be nice to believe that we can address the educational needs of the bottom quartile without having to ignore those of the top quartile.

By the way, I never read the article, I just heard about it. My entire premise may be completely wrong. Whether I remember the article correctly or not, and regardless of how factual the article was, it is still a persuasive and perplexing concept to me.

I would like to support more public funding for education. Of course, I want to introduce the competition first, and then add more funding. The way to pay for these enhancements is through current taxes - NOT bonds that charge us more interest.

 

School Bonds.

Current revenues generally pay for current expenses (like salaries) in public education. The vast majority of said revenues are raised through property taxes. Construction of new schools, however, is generally paid by the sale of bonds. Those bonds are purchased by taxpayers (either directly, or indirectly through mutual funds and similar financial institutions), and are paid back over some time period, often 30 years, with interest.

A mortgage makes a great deal of sense to me when an individual buys a single home. It is a huge expense relating to a single purchase, and financing it over something like a 30-year period is the only reasonable way to get in. But if a state is simultaneously building several schools every year, it just seems to me that they may be able to pay as they go. If I could afford to buy 30 new houses over a 30-year period, I think it would make sense to pay cash for each one, rather than paying the interest on 30 simultaneous mortgages. Maybe I’m naive, but I think using bonds to build schools is copping out by spending more money than the state can afford, and letting future generations worry about how to pay the ever-increasing bills.

Based on an admittedly narrow and shallow view of the situation, I believe I would rather have us pay as we go, build what we can afford to build, pay far less interest, and create less debt burden for future generations.

 

Free Community Colleges.

We should underwrite the public college systems more effectively too. Public schools are "free" to students up through high school. Community colleges are very inexpensive, and the CSU system is a pretty good deal. Still, I would like to see some community colleges and trade schools that are FREE to the students, the same way that high school is free. I think that the up front cost of a better-educated general population is probably less expensive than the future costs of having the society support the welfare needs of the uneducated unskilled laborers. But I understand it’s always tough to make a logical investment from one budget in order to attain significant future savings from another budget.

 

FEDERAL INCOME TAX

Issues:

The federal government provides valuable services to the citizenry, and these services cost money. The citizenry pay for these services through income taxes (and many other government taxes, fees, and so forth). Federal income tax, as a system, should have the primary purpose of revenue collection to support government services.

The system is not fair, because it tries to do too much. It tries to combine revenue collection with income re-distribution. It tends to really hurt the middle class.

There is no reason to bundle the welfare function into the tax collection function. Tax collection should be about revenue collection. Lower tax rates at lower income levels are a dysfunctional concept. Let the welfare system do its job, and let the tax collection system do its job. FLAT RATE!

The loopholes (deductible items) are not fair, and they make the system unnecessarily complex. They cater to the big special interest lobbies, and to the very wealthy, powerful individuals. All deductions should be re-evaluated.

The system is so complex that the country loses valuable productivity. Between the 2 weeks per year that everybody wastes, and all the full time jobs in the IRS, lawyers, accountants, tax advisors, and so forth, I bet that we throw away 5% of our GNP on those damn 1040 tax forms and related schedules!

Taxing capital gains and investment income sources tends to discourage investments in American business (stock market). That hurts the whole economy, and I think that the proceeds are not worth it.

Some sources of income are difficult to verify or measure or regulate. Examples: tips, cash under the table for odd jobs and favors, income from illegal activities, etc.

 

Proposal:

Re-evaluate and re-define ALL deductions and exceptions.

Abolish the federal income tax. Completely.

Establish a federal sales tax. Maybe 15%. On ALL items. I assume that food has been excluded from the California State sales tax because of that stupid dysfunctional convolution of revenue collection and welfare. [Thanks to Joy for pointing out the degree to which income tax and welfare are intertwined]

I think that we would have to levy a comparable import tariff, or else people will try to buy nothing but imports, in order to avoid the federal sales tax. I do not see any reason to implement a similar tariff on our exports.

Figure out a reasonable system for large, financed purchases like houses. It would be nice if the mortgage holder were willing to finance the sales tax as well as the principal value. Less desirable would be an "over time" sales tax collection. Least desirable would be a required up-front payment of 15% of the value of a new house!

As a homeowner, I like the mortgage interest deduction loophole. Perhaps the federal sales tax on an individual's primary residence should only be applied to the portion of the home sales price that exceeds the median home sales price in that area over the recent time. And the tax exclusion up to the median home price should only apply to the primary residence. I consider this loophole open for much further discussion.

By default (and hopefully for most people most years), there would be NO paperwork at all on April 15th. Your employer does not need to withhold any taxes from your paycheck and does not need to send you a W-4 form. Your investments do not need to send you 1099 forms. You don't need to keep any receipts or records for anything. You don't get a refund check, and you don't need to pay any annual lump sum.

On the other hand, if you have valid deductions, and you want to request a refund, then you do need to keep receipts and financial records. You have the burden of responsibility to send in the appropriate paperwork (and copies of receipts) to request the refund. If you qualify for a refund, then some of the sales tax you've already paid is returned to you. If you do not qualify for a refund, then there is no annual transaction.

 

Benefits:

Most states already have a state sales tax. Therefore, most retail stores already understand how to collect the money, record the finances, issue the receipt, send in the money, and so forth.

It's a flat tax. Upper class and middle class and lower class all pay the same 15%. So would most of today’s income tax evaders. So, too, would illegal aliens who have no social security number and who are paid with cash under the table, but who buy life’s necessities here.

I hear you saying that poverty-level people can not afford the 15% sales tax. [Thanks, Joy] How about if programs like food stamps pay for the food and also pay for the tax on the food? Wouldn't that take care of it? I really don't want to clutter up the tax system by commingling welfare and revenue collection.

You are taxed on what you spend. You are not taxed on what you earn or save or invest. It may encourage more saving and investing.

The income source of the money does not matter. Drug dealers and thieves and income-tax-evaders pay the same flat rate as do honest folks on a salary.

You don't have to waste the first two weeks of April doing IRS paperwork, unless you choose to claim a deduction and request a refund.

Companies are also taxed at the same flat 15% rate. Salary expenses are deductible in the old income tax system; they are not taxed in the new system either. What's taxed is the company's expenses in materials, capital assets, and facilities. Frankly, I have not spent much effort trying to decide between a "sales tax" and a "value-added tax", but either one seems far better than our current income tax.

Self-employed people don't need to worry about those quarterly estimated tax payments. They pay the same flat 15% sales tax as everybody else. No difference.

 

Disadvantages:

There is a double-edged sword. A sales tax does encourage investing, but it also discourages spending. Our economy is based on people wanting to spend money. On credit. There would be some decrease in gratuitous spending.

It will never happen because it will hurt the rich, powerful lobbies that really run the federal government.

It will never happen because the IRS enjoys being exempt from all rational laws and playing God with our lives. They will not easily give up on their abilities to perform a modern Spanish Inquisition.

There would be big increases in cashless bartering, and in smuggling of imports. Those problems would never be fully solved, and their partial solutions would require a lot of effort and money. Maybe we could identify the most dangerous borders, and retrain tax collectors and IRS lawyers to patrol those borders.   :-)   Oh well... it was just a thought.

Many tax-exempt charitable organizations would lose income, because people currently use them as tax shelters. That's a serious problem. Of course, the ones that are really important to people would still be supported. I don't know all of the results of the shake-up that would have to occur. Personally, I would still contribute the same amount to the United Way and to my church and to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I did that before I itemized my deductions, because I believed in what I was supporting with my dollars. The charities that people honestly support would survive, but many others would not.

I'm sure somebody would scream about all the lost jobs (see the border patrol joke above). I'm idealistic; I believe that anybody smart enough to understand any part of the old tax codes would be able to find gainful employment. Hopefully, their new jobs would positively contribute to the society, rather than being part of the IRS millstone around our collective neck.

Some folks in the federal government might have to figure out how to spend all of the increased revenues.

You wouldn't be able to use the IRS as a 0% savings account anymore. If your budget revolved around getting a big check every year around April 15th, you would have to set up some kind of real investment or savings plan. Unfortunately, you would have to put up with earning some positive interest on your money. Sorry. Deal with it.

Of course, the change would be brutal. It would have to be some kind of gradual transition. But I believe it would be worth the pain.

There is an organization called "Citizens for an Alternative Tax System" or CATS, which would be happy to send you a lot of mail about a federal flat sales tax.

 

WELFARE

Goal:

Provide a minimal level of sustenance to those who are unable to provide it for themselves.

 

Concepts:

Welfare should be temporary! A goal of being on the system should be to get off the system.

Welfare recipients are on a public payroll. Therefore, we should consider them public employees. They should provide some labor to the state. Part of that labor should be involved in improving their ability to provide for themselves without welfare.

 

Proposal:

Don't provide much money in welfare checks. Instead, provide shelter, food, medical care, childcare, birth control, abortion services, employment, and job training education (or tuition). Provide these things directly, and minimize the need for welfare recipients to deal with cash.

Require work. I'm thinking 20 hours per week or more. Preferably, this work should be involved in providing the care listed above. I'm assuming that most welfare recipient families would end up having to live in state-run facilities that need labor at many different skill levels - cleaners, cooks, buyers, administrators, managers, child-care providers, medical assistants, and so forth.

Require education. I'm thinking 2 classes per school term. These classes must be in a program designed to lead toward either a diploma/degree or an appropriate, achievable, marketable job skill. The classes must be either from an accredited institution, or a state-approved job-training facility.

Set rules, which outline how the state can stop providing welfare to individuals who are not trying to improve their condition. For example: One year probationary period for flunking any classes or showing unacceptable job performance. Second infraction and you're out. No correction by the end of the probationary year and you're out. I think having welfare babies should be a cause for probation. Some things are serious enough to be cause for instant dismissal, like conviction on any felony charge.

Let's verify identity, citizenship and eligibility.

There’s one other area that requires attention. As I understand the current system, if you’re on welfare and you get a job, you could lose your welfare benefits long before your job actually meets your needs. Therefore, we discourage our welfare recipients from trying to get a decent income. That’s stupid. We need to reduce benefits gradually as the recipient gradually replaces them, and we need to do it in such a way as to encourage the recipient to replace those benefits with their own income!

I guess the recipient should be able to work a part-time or full-time job outside the system, if they can. And they should still receive some welfare benefits for as long as their outside job doesn't meet the minimum level of their needs (plus some brief period of time for transition; perhaps three months). If they are unemployed outside the welfare system, that's when they should be forcibly employed and/or educated by the system.

 

One even wilder idea:

I’m reverting now to a thing that I hate: the commingling of taxation and welfare. What if we identified a minimal acceptable level of income, and paid that amount to every legal citizen of the country (including Bill Gates), and increased the level of the flat tax enough to cover it?

So now we all pay maybe 30% sales tax on everything we buy, but most of us receive a grand a month from the government for living expenses. You get yours, I get mine, the flat-broke single mother down the block gets hers, and the richest people in the country get theirs too. It ensures that every legal citizen has barely enough money to live on, and that living wage is paid for by a flat sales tax on everything purchased (whether the buyer is a legal citizen or not). The people who shouldn’t receive that governmental living wage are those: who are in jail, who should be in jail, who avoid government registration, who entered the country illegally, and maybe even the deadbeat dads who are not paying the legally mandated child support they owe.

I still don’t like combining welfare and revenue collection together, but at least this compromise seems much fairer and simpler to me than the mess we have now. It's a truly flat minimum level of life sustenance (same dollar amount to each legal citizen), and it's still a "flat-tax" (same percentage collected from every dollar spent). And it should allow us to nearly abolish a couple of oppressively complex and dysfunctional government services.

 

SOCIAL SECURITY

Social security is sort of like a retirement system, but not exactly. Everybody should understand that they are likely to live longer than they are able to work for a living. Therefore, people should understand that they should save and invest money while they have an income, and use that money to support themselves while they do not have an income. Various systems are available to working people to help with that process -- corporate pension plans, IRAs (Individual Retirement Accounts), 401(k) plans, and social security.

Unfortunately, many people depend on the systems over which they have no direct control (like corporate pension plans and social security) and do not save or invest adequately. I don't have a great solution for that. Nevertheless, I think we could make social security more effective.

Social security is confusing for at least two reasons. First, it seems like a federal retirement plan, but we keep hearing that it is not a retirement plan. Second, there is all manner of political rhetoric about the "Social Security Trust Fund", and there is no such thing. Politicians talk about whether or not the federal government should "raid the social security trust fund" just to get elected. This implies that some pile of money is sitting around, earmarked for social security. But it ain't true.

Social security has current revenue and current expenses. The revenue comes from the social security taxes levied upon employees and their employers. The expenses go to those retired and elderly (or disabled) people receiving social security checks. Currently, the amount of revenue collected is greater than the amount of expenses paid out, so the social security system generates a surplus. That surplus simply flows into the federal general budget and gets spent on other federal programs.

Unfortunately, the surplus is temporary. Within a small number of decades, if the consensus of reasonable projections is anywhere near correct, the amount of social security expense will be far greater than its revenue. At that time, either the deficit will have to come out of the federal government general budget (forcing increases of income taxes and/or decreases in other programs), or the deficit will have to be reduced by decreasing social security benefits and/or increasing social security taxes.

While we have the opportunity of dealing with a social security surplus, I would like us to really have a social security trust fund. I would like to see the surplus invested for growth rather than spent on current programs.

Furthermore, I would like to see more of a direct relationship between the social security taxes individuals pay into the system and the benefits they someday receive from the system.

So here is my proposal. Gradually change the system to be based 1/2 on the evolution of the current rules of eligibility, and 1/2 on a trust fund investment with individual accounting. Allow me to choose how to invest my individual social security account, among a small number of choices like U.S. government bonds and broad U.S. stock market indexes (S&P-500, Wilshire-5000, maybe NASDAQ-100, etc.)

Once the change is complete, beneficiaries would receive 1/2 of their calculated social security benefits, plus the benefits generated by their personal social security account. Contributors would contribute 1/2 of their taxes to the general pay-as-you-go social security system, and 1/2 to their own personal account.

A change of this magnitude must be very gradual. It is not fair to the current recipients of social security benefits to cut their income in half and say to them that the other half comes from an account they have had no chance to build up. Perhaps the contributions could be changed at the rate of 1% per year over the next 50 years, and the benefits could have a 10-year or 20-year delay, followed by a 1% per year change over the following 50 years. So 60 to 70 years from now we would arrive at the final goal of a 50-50 split between the current system and the individual investment accounts.

 

DIVERSITY

Concepts:

I'm all for it. Diversity is incredibly valuable!

I think that political and corporate America's definitions of diversity are generally simplistic and shortsighted. And counter-productive!

First, inferring diversity from a few visible parameters (gender, skin color, and so forth) is wrong. It is not a true assumption that I have much in common with all other white males, and that I have little in common with all females and all people of color.

Second, we should ALWAYS employ the candidate most qualified for the job. For most jobs of which I am aware, qualifications do not include gender, skin color, ethnic background, religious preference, sexual orientation, veteran status, or physical abnormalities.

Third, quota systems seem to be based on the wrong populations. Programs like equal opportunity and affirmative action compare the demographics in a company against those of the geographic area where the company is located. Wrong! To ensure fairness, we should compare the demographics of recent hires in particular job categories against the demographics of the qualified, available applicants for the work force. Just because I live a block away from some company does not mean that I am qualified as a job candidate for any particular position in that company!

Using quotas to decide that a job candidate with under-represented demographics automatically has superior job qualifications is counter-productive. The employer certainly suffers, and in the long run, the under-qualified employee suffers as well. So do the employee's peers.

If you buy into the concept that we WASPs owe something to the groups of people stereotypically (or historically) discriminated against, then the place to make the corrections is in early education! Don't assume that you can hire or promote under-qualified people to align the demographics and solve any serious problems.

Cultural diversity used to be one of the great strengths of America, during its most prosperous times. However, the melting pot only works when the differences are melted and blended together. When groups of people preserve their cultural diversity at the expense of the evolutionary American culture, they defeat the positive results of the melting pot.

 

Pet Peeves:

Printing bilingual ballots in English and Spanish is extremely offensive. Voting is a right of American citizens. Citizens should function in the national language. Road signs are different. Visitors as well as citizens use them, and they are important for public safety -- road signs should follow the icon-based international standards. Multi-lingual directions are useful. But citizen-oriented documents like voting information should be for English-speaking American citizens.

Political correctness is often a ridiculous waste of effort. The most blatant examples are when a group of people presumes that some phrase must be offensive to some other poor, helpless group. Then, even though the do-gooders are not personally affected, they intercede and make a lot of lives more difficult. The most prominent example in my recollection is a bunch of politically correct white do-gooders deciding that American Indian names like Chiefs and Braves should not be used in professional sporting teams, because they insult the Indians. I didn't hear that from the Indians. Let the offended folks fend for themselves. Otherwise stay out of it.

Speaking of American Indians, let's talk about labels. I am a Native American. I am a native because I was born here. In fact, my parents and my grandparents are all native Americans too. But we are all of European descent. We are not American Indians.

Typically, American Indians are certainly native, by the definition of being born here. But if you want to use the term native to mean indigenous, then they are not native either. Their ancestors immigrated to this continent from Asia. Granted, that was hundreds of generations before my family emigrated from Europe. But I don't see a value in drawing a line at some arbitrary number of generations or centuries in order to be more correct when abusing the words "native" or "indigenous".

Another politically correct label that is terribly abused is "African-American". It means black. It does not mean Americans that came from Africa. How do I support this outlandish statement? I'm glad you asked. Two reasons. First, Americans who came from South Africa and who are racially Caucasian are never called African-Americans. Why? Because they are not black. Second, people with dark skin are called African-Americans even if they came here from the Caribbean and it's not clear whether or not their ancestry ever included people from Africa. I find the term "nigger" offensive, because I believe it is generally used with intent to insult. I know that the term "Negro" is unappreciated and out of date, but I don't really know why. Also, I know that the term "black" is also outdated and considered to be offensive. Again, I don't know why. So the current term is "African-American", and I find that term offensive because it is so misleading, but the offense I take doesn't count because I'm not black. Go figure.

I think slave-owners owe a huge debt to slaves. And I believe that it's possible that descendants of slaves may still feel the effects of the discrimination forced upon their ancestors, but it's a bit of a stretch. Some of my ancestors were underprivileged and persecuted, but after a few generations, I don't feel the effects. But just because at one time in this country slaves were black and slave-owners were white, I don't see how that requires all white Americans to owe something to all black Americans. Just the fact that my skin is white does not imply that anybody in my family ever owned slaves. I don't mind taking responsibility for wrongs I have committed, but expecting me to pay for the wrongs of other members of my race is exactly the kind of racial bigotry I thought we were trying to solve!

As an aside, let me describe one of the experiences in my professional life that offended me the most intensely. I took a class on diversity early in my career at Hewlett-Packard. We learned about two silly programs, Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. I have blocked out some of the details, but I do recall some of the most distasteful concepts.

Both programs were started with the admirable, noble goal of making sure that decisions about hiring and promotion were not unfairly based on racial discrimination.

Essentially, Equal Opportunity was enacted to assure that the demographic makeup of employees of any large company closely match the demographics of the areas where the company's offices are located. That's comparing apples and oranges. It ignores the fact that promotion is based partially on experience. Many companies did, in fact, practice unfair discriminatory hiring policies decades ago, and did abolish those unfair practices in the last few decades. But if it takes 30 years in a company to work ones way up to becoming the CEO, and if unfair hiring practices were abolished between 20 and 30 years ago, then the observable current glass ceiling is a natural result of those 30-year-old practices. It's not fair to compare the total employee base; but it would be fair to compare those hired within the last decade or two. But once again, the local residency is the wrong population against which to compare the employee base. The only comparison that would really make sense to me would be to compare recent hires to the pool of available job candidates with appropriate training, experience, and skills for the job.

I found two things about Affirmative Action particularly distressing. First, it is based on quotas of genders and races. In order to fill quotas, the gender and race must become part of the qualification for the job. It ENFORCES the very action that it is trying to correct. Second, it was established as a TEMPORARY corrective measure. Being an engineer, I asked how it measures when it has finished correcting the problem, and how the program will be terminated once the correction is complete. I shocked the presenter with this question. She assured me that the situation will never be fully corrected (at least as long as any of us in the room were still alive), and that there would never be a need to terminate it.

It seems to me that if a temporary program can not measure it's success and can not complete its mission, then it must be going about it the wrong way. Objectives must be measurable and achieveable. If the program can't get the job done, then we should throw away the program, and design a new one that CAN AND WILL get the job done. And once the job is done, then the new program should be abolished. Getting rid of racial prejudice is a wonderful goal; it is a goal that I whole-heartedly support.

To my great displeasure, I have come to realize that the instructor was probably correct. The situation will never be color-blind the way it should be. Why? Because our solution to color-blindness is to heighten awareness of color. As long as our solution involves quotas, we will always use racially discriminatory hiring practices. Call it "reverse-discrimination" if you like, but it is still discrimination. The current solution will never solve the current problem.

I hope that, someday, we will be mature enough to hire the best qualified person for every job, regardless of gender, skin color, race, religion, sexual orientation, physical disability, and similar demographics. But I have no idea what kind of political breakthrough would be required to get us to that point!

 

Truly Valuable Diversity:

Let’s seek the kinds of diversity that are truly helpful. In my work experiences, the best teams were comprised of great diversity:

Please notice that combining those kinds of diversity has tremendous value! And has nothing whatsoever to do with skin color, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical disabilities, or any of that other politically correct dysfunctional bullshit.

One more thing. Some fools think that the way to implement inclusiveness is to thwart any individual excellence. To make everybody perform homogeneously at the level of the least common denominator. Bah, Humbug! Encourage heterogeneity, specialization, and excellence. Let's really make creative, productive use of the outstanding diversity available to us!

 

TRANSPORTATION

Concepts:

Transportation systems should be inter-operable. We have several different types of systems that do not connect. That’s dumb.

They do not help most people, because most people do not live near one station and also work near the another station. They still have to drive their own cars to and from the mass transit.

 

Proposal:

Design new "Land-Ferries" mass transit systems that support personal transportation.

I like BART. That’s the Bay Area Rapid Transit system for those of you who don’t live near here. It’s a comparatively modern rail system that has frequent schedules and pretty well automated ticketing systems. And it goes to stations fairly near a bunch of useful places. However, it should be easier to take bicycles on BART. The routes should have spur lines to airports, train stations, bus stations, and boat docks. Of course, they should also hit major shopping centers, universities, employment centers, amusement parks, sports arenas, and similar densely "populated" areas. "Mass" transit systems should actually go to where "masses" of people need to be. Duh.

I hate the fact that my city, San Jose, put in a politically correct light rail system that is not compatible with anything else. It can’t share tracks or vehicles with either BART or Amtrak or CalTrain or any other mass transit system. And it doesn’t quite reach any airports or terminals of the other nearby mass transit systems. You can take a bicycle on the San Jose Light Rail, but it’s not very convenient. If you don’t live very near one station and work very near another station, it’s very difficult to dream up an idea why you’d want to ride the thing. At the very least, it should have been built on BART standards so that maybe one day it could connect to other systems, but instead it is a totally distinct island of useless rail.

We do have municipal bus routes that include stops at the train station, but the bus route schedules are not synchronized with the train schedules. This is yet another example of how our systems of mass transportation have not reasonably considered the needs of the masses.

We should create "land-ferries" which carry you in your own car on some rail system.

I would like to drive my car down to the nearest CalTrain station, pay for my ticket, wait for the next train, and then drive my car onto a train flatcar. Then stay inside my car during the trip. I could listen to my car radio or read or even take a nap on the way to my destination. When we get to my desired station, I drive my car off the flatcar and drive the (short) rest of the way to work. The train carrying 100 cars is a lot less wasteful and pollutive than the 100 cars each operating under its own power. And based on my freeway experiences, it must also be at least an order of magnitude or two safer.

I just described a commute to work, but the same system would be excellent for moderately high-speed shuttles between major population centers. The whole time I was going to school in Chico, I kept wishing that I could be in my car on a train between San Jose and Sacramento, and then just drive the other half of the trip from Sacramento to Chico. It would have been worth slightly more money and slightly more time for me to be able to relax and catch a little shut-eye during half of the trip.

If you were taking a vacation a few hundred miles away from home, wouldn’t it be great to get most of the way there in your own car, without having to drive yourself, and then have your own car (already packed with your own luggage) upon arrival?

Of course, our litigious society will never allow a cost effective liability insurance coverage on a land ferry. If an old lady can spill a drive-through cup of hot McDonald’s coffee on her lap in her car and sue for a million bucks, I don’t even want to think about what the lawyers would do with the stupid klutz that would drive off a moving train between stations!

 

Proposal:

Synchronize traffic signals on major roads.

It would take some effort, but this proposal is more realistic in our society than land-ferries. If we could use computer network theories to view our major city streets as network links, we could create timing models for them. Synchronize the traffic lights to allow packets of cars to go as far as possible, at the speed limit, without stopping at very many intersections.

The thought is that once you turn onto a major road, you'll be stopped at the next traffic signal. Thereafter, you'll be in a packet of cars that may travel at the speed limit and hit mostly green lights.

Of course, our city streets are not laid out as cleanly as a typical computer network. We might have to give top priority to roads going North & South, as an example, and then do as much synchronization as possible with the East & West roads. In this area (San Jose, California and up the penninsula) I would start by synchronizing the El Camino Real, Foothill Expressway and Central Expressway. Then try to hit large roads crossing them, like Lawrence Expressway, Sunnyvale Saratoga Road, and so forth. The diagonal and circular roads like Saratoga Avenue and San Thomas Expressway may not derrive much benefit, but at present they seem to not to have any attention at all to signal timing, so there would not be a substantial negative difference.

One other major gripe: mass transit systems must have extended schedules, or else I will not use them. Some days I only work till 17:00. Other days I work till 23:00. I refuse to be stranded at work all night just because the transit schedulers work a conventional day shift and are not very creative.

Some of our rail systems run every 10 minutes during "rush hour", once or twice an hour during the non-peak times, and not at all for a 5-hour period overnight. It also doesn’t help me get home from a bar while drunk without driving, if the bar closes at 02:00, but the last train of the night left the station at 01:00!

 

PRISON

Goals:

Serious criminals should not be allowed to roam around in public.

Prison should be rehabilitative, but in most cases it isn't.

Prison should be a deterrent (in advance of the commission of a crime), but in most cases it isn't.

Prison should be sufficiently unpleasant a punishment to drastically reduce the occurrence of repeat offenses. Here we have a little bit of success, but not enough.

 

Concepts:

A society is a group of people that (to some extent) have chosen to live together with some organization and cohesion. We choose to enforce social rules upon ourselves, in order to maintain the condition of the society. Those who break the rules in a serious manner are (at least temporarily) removed from the society and stored in prison.

 

Proposal:

Let's become hard-assed about it, and realize that rule-breakers give up their rights in the society. That's what the rules are all about.

Death sentences are not significantly less humane than life sentences - both represent permanent removal from society. I would not care to be in prison for the rest of my life without the possibility of parole, and that's with the current prison system. I'm in favor of making prison even less pleasant.

If the crime is so bad (or just so often repeated) that society wants the criminal permanently removed, then let's have a nice speedy, inexpensive execution. Give the criminal their choice of execution methods from a short list. I wish the legal battles were less costly and less time consuming.

By the way, one alternative I would propose for execution would be surgery. With the prisoner's consent for this choice, simply have an anesthesiologist put them under, just like anybody else having an operation. Then harvest any useable organs for transplants, and make sure that enough vital organs (like the heart) are disconnected that they die on the table without ever waking up.

I agree with the requirement for an appeals process to ensure that the death sentence is warranted. But I just can’t understand why it takes 10 – 20 years to go through that process. It seems to me that once the death sentence verdict is first reached, then the appeals process should be limited to a year or two, and the death sentence should be carried out in that same time frame, unless the appeal overturns the verdict.

WHY DO WE BOTHER WITH DEATHROW DEATHWATCHES? I simply do not understand. If any prisoner wants to commit suicide, we should graciously offer any reasonable assistance they require! Offer a speedy, humane execution to any prisoner who wants it. It’s uncivilized and gruesome to prevent a deathrow inmate from hanging himself with his belt, just so that we can all enjoy watching him fry in the electric chair the next day. I don’t get it.

Prisoners get room and board from the state. It ain’t free. We should consider them state employees, and give them jobs to do – menial, unpleasant, labor-intensive, or other unpopular types of jobs. We have a shortage of prisons. We should try to save money on new prison construction efforts by employing inmates to do some of the grunt-work. Of course, they need good supervision and randomized frequent job rotation so that they can not engineer escape routes during construction. They might be motivated to perform good quality construction work on a structure they'll have to live in during earthquakes or hurricanes. And we should be able to make them work a lot cheaper than regular professional construction workers.

Offer educational classes to short-term inmates! Teach them some marketable job skills, if they desire it. I'm sure that educational efforts are worth the cost to society. Anything that actually improves our success rate with rehabilitation and reduces repeat offenses benefits the whole society. We don’t seem to offer recently released convicts any reasonable alternatives to provide for themselves. Based on no hard evidence, I have to believe that the long term costs of inmate job training are cheaper than the long term costs of incarceration of repeat offenders.

I’ll freely admit that I have trouble with figuring out how much punishment "fits" the crime. It is very clear to me that some crimes deserve a slap on the wrist while others deserve a speedy execution, and that there are nearly infinite shades of gray in-between those extremes. I think my discussion of prisons above is specific to those crimes I consider very serious. I do believe that minor punishments for minor crimes can accomplish deterrence. I also believe that some members of society will never agree to live by the rules of the society, and that they should be permanently removed from the society.

I’ve heard stories of people actually trying to become arrested because the jail offered them a bed and a bunch of meals that they believed they could not obtain any other way. If that’s common at all, then we have a really horrendous inconsistency in how we deal with jail and welfare. Deciding to break a law for the free meals should never be the most reasonable option.

One more aside. It seems that we spend a lot of effort deciding whether or not alleged murderers are legally sane enough to stand trial. If media coverage of trials is anywhere near reality (which is doubtful in itself), then "temporary insanity" is a frequently misused excuse. How can one argue that any sane person would plan and commit a murder? Clearly I don't understand the legal definition of sanity if anybody is declared sane and then convicted of murder. [Thanks, John]

I understand that the legal question is whether or not they were aware that they were doing something "wrong". Perhaps wanting to spare the insane from the death penalty comes from a desire to rehabilitate; or perhaps it is that sane people warrant our retribution and mentally ill people do not. But my whole approach here is what is good for society, and I believe that permanent removal from society is warranted for some serious criminals regardless of their mental state at the time, and that death is not significantly more severe than life imprisonment without parole.

 

GUN CONTROL

Concepts:

The constitutional right to bear arms is fine. Let's keep it. But it doesn’t have to be so easy.

I wholeheartedly support gun registration, mandated training, and waiting-times for background checks in the purchase process. Don't let an angry person legally buy a Saturday night special, and go use it the same day.

I'd like to make it very difficult to obtain a gun. Major criminals will always have access to illegal weapons. That's not the issue. The issue, in my mind, is the pervasiveness of stupid domestic violence. There should be fewer guns available to angry or panicked citizens. And whenever a gun is used in a crime, we sure ought to be able to look up the registration (from the ballistics report, ideally) to locate the owner.

I support buy-back programs, where police forces offer to buy guns from local citizens. I heard about a recent program like that and I thought it was great! It's a very long-sighted, creative, intelligent investment in reduced incidence of violence. Then I heard that they auctioned off the collected guns back to (other) citizens. Too bad they had to finance it that way! It would have been much better to scrap the guns and melt them down! Oh well.

The right to bear arms does not guarantee the right to bear any kind of arms. Even the National Rifle Association does not really want me to own a tank. It’s a matter of where to draw the line. I am comfortable drawing the line at automatic guns, guns easily converted to automatics, bullets designed to pierce bulletproof vests, and other similar assault weaponry.

Law enforcement officials, of course, should have access to whatever kinds of weapons are reasonable to keep well-armed jerks from harming me.

In California, you are required to pass a training class before you are allowed to buy a can of pepper spray, but you can buy a gun without any education at all. That’s exactly the kind of inconsistency I deplore. You need a license to drive a car; let’s make sure you need a license to pull a trigger!

 

ELECTORAL COLLEGE and THE POLITICAL PROCESS

History:

I do not understand why this system ever existed. I have assumed that it was put in place during a time when cross-country communication required days or weeks, and when much of the population was not literate. Although TV has not done much for literacy, it sure made a difference in the speed of long-distance communication.

 

Proposal:

Completely eliminate the Electoral College process. When the national election ballets are collected, the team of candidate President & Vice President with the PLURALITY of popular votes gets the office.

 

Details:

The electoral collegians of a state tend to decide to all vote the same way as the plurality of the state's populous. That is by convention, not law. If some of them wanted to vote for Charles Manson, or even Robert Brawn, they could.

Since the whole block of votes for a state goes the same way, the candidates need to win large, powerful states. They do not need to win other states.

If the election were based on popular vote, that would remove state boundary considerations. Then, the candidates would have to address needs of different large groups of voters. They could not afford to concentrate on a few states at the expense of others. Of course, they might just concentrate on urban areas at the expense of less densely populated rural areas, but still, they would have to appeal to a lot of people.

Years ago, when Ross Perot was an undeclared candidate with a real chance, there was a fascinating possibility. He might have split the vote enough so that nobody won a MAJORITY of Electoral College votes. Under our current system, that would have thrown the decision into congress. The house could have elected anybody as President. However, the Senate, who elects the Vice President, is limited to two candidates. (I think it's the Republican & Democrat, but it might be the top two vote-getters; I'm not sure.) Perot may have won the PLURALITY of both popular and Electoral College votes. The (Democratic) House may have elected Clinton. The (Republican) Senate may have elected Quayle. There was a very real possibility of us facing a Clinton-Quayle White House. Surely that is enough of an argument to change the system!

Primary elections would have less importance, but if a political party wants one, it's fine with me.

Voting should be more convenient and also more precise. The whole Florida dangling-chad recount fiasco with the election of George W. Bush was one example of a very pervasive problem. It only came to light because the race was pretty close in that state. But I suspect that every state has totals that may be wrong by plus or minus several percent. I’d like to see several changes, including the elimination of error-prone devices like punch cards.

The ballot should be open for a fixed period of time, with the same start and end regardless of time zones. That period should be longer – perhaps 24 to 36 hours, so that it’s likely to hit some non-work times in all common work shifts in all American time zones. Reporting of preliminary results before the polls close should be discouraged. It would be best if the voting could be done in a computerized fashion, allowing absentee voting by website. And the voting done in the polling places should be intuitive – perhaps a touchscreen system that forces the voter to confirm the system’s reading of their choice before finalizing the submission of the vote.

Also, we would benefit from some better education. It would be nice if every voter knew that they did not have to vote on every issue – they are welcome to vote on only the ones about which they have sufficient knowledge and strong feelings.

I don’t understand the huge drives to "get out the vote". Voting is a precious and rare privilege of our society. If you don’t want to vote, please don’t. Please allow my vote to carry more weight on the issues about which I have strong feelings.

And I certainly don't understand bilingual ballots! We have a single national language. Citizens determining our future decision-makers should do so in American English. I don't mind multi-lingual guides being available on request for a reasonable cost, but spending my tax dollars to put Spanish as well as English on every single ballot pamphlet is an insulting waste.

 

Political Parties:

One more minor point. We clearly have a two party system. Yes, there are other parties, and there are a small handful of elected officials from one of the minor parties. But our political systems would not be much different if the two major parties were in fact the only parties. That's unfortunate. It would be nice if other parties actually had a chance.

I find that I personally tend to agree with Republican positions on financial matters, desire for a strong military, desire for government to be most influential at the most local levels and as small as possible at the federal level. I disagree vehemently with the Republican positions on abortion, sexuality, religion, and invasion of my personal privacy. I tend to agree with the Libertarian positions on personal rights, taxation, and generally keeping government away from our personal lives except where the federal government really matters. But I can't handle the total lack of environmental controls that Libertarians support. Occasionally there is a Democratic position with which I agree, but they are few and far between, and I can't honestly remember a recent example.

I would love to find, join and support a new party with Republican finances, Libertarian personal freedom ideals, and a true separation of church and state. But I suppose that any party agreeing with my personal priorities would truly be a tiny non-influential minority.

 

MINIMUM WAGE

Concepts:

When there was no minimum wage, employers could take advantage of employees any time that there was a relative shortage of jobs.

With too low a minimum wage, it has little or no effect. When the minimum wage is below the level of benefits available through welfare systems, then there is no incentive to work at low-level jobs.

With too high a minimum wage, large classes of people can't find low-level employment. I'm thinking primarily of high-school students looking to sell fast food part-time for a little bit of pocket money.

 

Proposal:

I don’t really see the need for any minimum wage, but if we must have them, then I prefer a multi-level set of minimum wages.

Set up a low minimum for unskilled labor.

Set a higher minimum for a job that requires a skill-set similar to that required for a high school diploma.

I would support a third level of minimum for jobs that require a college degree, but frankly, I have not seen a need for such a minimum wage at this skill level. In my (admittedly limited) view, there is sufficient competition among college graduates and among the employers recruiting them that wages tend to take care of themselves.

I am undecided about an idea in which there is a differential for part-time and full-time jobs. My goal is to ensure that high-school students can sling hash in the afternoon at below-welfare wages, while uneducated families can still perform full-time unskilled labor at poverty level or better income. Seems like there ought to be a way to balance those two diverse goals.

I also believe that there are some jobs whose intrinsic value is below a minimum wage. A shop owner should be able to hire a kid to sweep the floors for a real cheap wage. If the shop owner has to pay minimum wages for that kind of work, they won’t do it. They’ll sweep the floors themselves. But a high school kid working 10 hours a week might want to sweep the floors for a very low wage.

The problem is setting a one-size-fits-all wage for radically different needs. Parents supporting families and kids looking for odd jobs are in radically different circumstances, and we should not try to find the right level of minimum pay that applies to both deals. That’s counter-productive. Once size does not fit all!

 

HEALTH CARE and INSURANCE

Narrative:

There's a lot of talk about a national health care plan. I don't believe that a single plan can address everybody's needs. Why don't I hear about systems that include a few different health care plans?

I think it would be better to have a national system that meets only the most basic needs, and still have a variety of private insurance options available to meet more than the basic needs.

I think that some kind of no-fault insurance system would help substantially.

Also, we should define some multi-level minimal benefit systems to go along with the multi-level minimum wage plans [see above]. Mandate a pre-defined minimum level of health care (and other benefits). Then let the employers provide these benefits through any means they choose. Keep the health care market free and competitive!

I’d support a similar deal with car insurance. A minimum level of liability insurance provided by a pay-at-the-pump system, in addition to a free market of various additional insurance programs available at an additional price.

Make liability insurance a federal deal, which would completely wipe out the need for uninsured motorist coverage. But keep comprehensive and collision insurance private so that each person is free to purchase whichever options make the most sense for her or his particular situation.

 

UNIONS and STRIKES

Narrative:

I believe unions are inherently dysfunctional. I do not understand the social and economic conditions at work when unions were first created. However, in today's conditions, I do not see what good they do.

I do see some harm unions do. They actively seek to treat the entire union work force as a single, homogeneous collective. Like the Borg. They remove any incentive for individual achievement. In fact, at their worst, unions discourage excellence because of the way that the better individuals make the rest "look bad".

Unions promote attitudes that polarize "labor" and "management" against each other. Some non-union enterprises forge a team, containing both labor and management, in competition against the real market-place competition. The latter sure seems more productive!

I think unions should be decommissioned. But not until the replacement systems are in place -- systems that monitor, recognize, and reward individual performance.

Now a few words on strikes. They're a great way to decommission the unions. Just fire the people on strike. That was a gutsy move on former President Reagan's part when the air traffic controllers went on strike. There were some problems training a replacement work force, but in general it was the right move.

It seems to me that strikes happen when employees and employers fail to reach agreement on pay and benefit terms of contracts. If the employees are worth the terms, then surely they can find employment from another employer in an open, free, competitive market. If not, then they do not deserve to receive those terms. I do not understand why or how unions force a monopoly between employers and employees. Individual employees should be able to negotiate their terms with any potential employer in the market.

An interesting requirement might be the retooling of assembly lines. Individual performance must be monitored. The individual should be able to set the pace. Get the units off the single chain and onto individual dollies. Insert your parts, and then hit a button the advance to the next unit. Allow many units to get backed up behind the slowest individual station, while the more efficient stations are free to work at their faster pace. Then re-engineer the stations and relocate the individuals in order to minimize the delays. Also, try to track individual's error rates. Some employers might consider paying a fee per defect-free unit rather than per hour. That might encourage more efficient and productive work.

The employers should have to earn the respect and loyalty of the employees. The employees should have to compete and excel to earn their compensation. Your compensation should not be tied to my performance. And if I go on strike, that should be substantially the same situation as if I had quit my job in order to make a statement.

Let me just mention that my Grandmother worked in a cannery. Both the quality and productivity of her work was substantially greater than the vast majority of her coworkers. She was paid the same hourly wage as her coworkers. They encouraged her to slow down and not take so much pride in the quality of her work, because she was making them look bad. When she was unwilling to comply with their request it escalated to actual threats of personal violence against her. Clearly, that system did not reward her for the quality or speed of her work, did not encourage good work or good productivity, and ended up having the cannery put out sub-optimal products at uncompetitive prices. That situation is the filter through which I view unions. It's no wonder that contemporary multinational corporations are sending so many jobs to overseas non-union shops!

 

VICES

Concepts:

Many vices are victimless crimes. Some are legal (like alcohol and tobacco). Some are not legal (like marijuana, gambling, and prostitution). Prohibition taught us that these problems will not go away. Let's stop trying to prevent the inevitable. Just collect the taxes and call it a day. Draw the line at public safety.

 

Proposals:

Legalize prostitution.

Keep it in state-licensed brothels, where safe-sex rules are enforced, and where the prostitutes are required to have frequent medical checkups for sexually transmitted diseases. Much like it’s done in a few counties in Nevada.

Collect sales tax from each transaction, and income tax from each prostitute [see my section on federal income tax], and property tax from each brothel. Also collect certification and licensing fees which cover the state's administrative costs.

Let vice squads worry about serious crimes with victims.

Extra-marital sex should be thought of as a moral question - not a social or legal crime. Let each person make the decision with their partner(s) and their religious beliefs and their own moral frameworks. Government should not dictate what goes on in the bedroom between consenting adults, unless it pertains to a real public health or safety issue. This concept also applies to pornography. Child porn should still be illegal, but aside from that, let the capitalist free market determine what is acceptable and what is not.

 

Keep abortion safe and legal!

Legalize RU-486!

Provide contraceptive devices and information to anybody who wants it! We don't need the government ensuring an ample supply of unwanted babies - there will always be enough. Abortion (like extra-marital sex) is a moral decision for the individuals involved. It should be neither a political issue nor a crime!

Abortion, along with other alternatives like adoption, should be promoted. Unwanted children do not have much quality of life. It would be nice if parents had to take some training and pass some tests before they were allowed to raise children, but I don’t even want to imagine the kind of government bureaucracy that would administer the test!

 

Legalize gambling.

Try to keep it in legitimate business, not in those stereotyped organized crime families. Tax it! I don't see much difference between California's lottery and Nevada's casinos, except that the state of Nevada gets to spend a whole lot of money earned in California! As part of the registration process for the casinos, enforce that some of the profits are used to support programs to help people recover from gambling addiction problems.

 

Legalize marijuana.

If people drive under the influence, or otherwise threaten public safety, then arrest them for that. Punish it sternly. On the other hand, if people want to relax at home in the evening and smoke a joint, let them do it. Legal competition will wipe out a few drug lords (but not all of them, of course). Purity and potency can be controlled. Collect all of the appropriate taxes. Let the cops fight more serious crimes, like smoking marijuana or tobacco in restaurants and blowing the damn smoke in my face!

I don't quite know where I want to draw the line. If alcohol and tobacco are legal, there is absolutely no reason to make marijuana a crime. Still, I'm not comfortable legalizing extremely addictive drugs like Crack or PCP or LSD. I keep trying to draw the line at mind-alterations and serious hallucinations, but then I can't justify why alcohol is legal. And to be perfectly honest, I would miss my moderate use of alcohol a little bit if it were illegal.

The point is to enforce laws about public safety, like driving a car under the influence, or being a serious public nuisance. If you want to ruin your health in the privacy of your own home, the government should not be involved. I don't know how to address the social issue of health care costs. I support the helmet law, so I guess I need to support limiting use of recreational drugs to moderate levels somehow.

If you criminalize caffeine and/or sugar, I may need to consider moving to Switzerland!

 

SEXUALITY and NUDITY

Concepts:

Did you jump to this section first? It's a provocative title, isn't it? Well the title is a little inside joke. Of course, I'm the only person laughing yet, so it's a very inside joke.

I believe that the automatic association between nudity and sexuality has been, and continues to be, the root cause of a lot of our societal problems. They are two completely different things, which are somewhat related to each other sometimes and not other times.

Let me use examples to make the point about the separation. Have you been naked or mostly naked during a medical examination? Was it a sexual event for you? There you go -- the two events of nudity and sex are not always related!

It really offends me that a movie with dozens of violent, bloody murders gets a PG rating, and a socially responsible movie that shows a nipple gets rated R. I’m much more offended by violence than I am by nudity.

I think that if we were less puritanical about our bodies (including their appearance and their sexual functions), we would have far fewer sex-related problems. I don't understand the mentality that says we can control our children's sexuality and morality by limiting their sources of information to the bullshit they hear from their peers in locker rooms!

 

Two Thoughts:

First, clothing-optional facilities and activities are good. So are clothing-mandatory facilities and activities. There are plenty of the latter; I would like to see increased proliferation of the former.

Clothing optional family recreation is a growing trend, and I think it’s very healthy. I think if young people learned that baring skin does not always have to lead to sexual activity, it would make adolescence a lot less difficult and dangerous. Also, it’s probably useful early in one’s life to understand that most people’s bodies do not look like the airbrushed supermodels used to sell nearly every product there is. Furthermore, there is a subtle but very real set of walls put up by clothing. Without clothing, I think people tend to judge each other more on internal personality things and less on perceived social standing or societal roles.

References:

 

Second, it would be great if restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities were grouped in sets of three, rather than sets of two. In most cases, I still want to see one exclusively for women and one exclusively for men. It would be nice if a third facility were available for families and other multi-gender groups. That's where a single parent should take a child of the other gender. And consenting adult couples should certainly be allowed to continue their conversation at the gym while showering and changing, if they so choose.

Obviously, sexual activity is inappropriate in most public settings (like bathrooms and locker rooms) regardless of whether those facilities are co-ed or single-gender. I truly believe that if we as a society embraced public nudity with more understanding and less embarrassed titillation, then the risk of nudity causing sexually charged environments would decrease.

 

BAR CLOSING TIME

Stupid idea. It kind of discriminates against those who work swing shift or graveyard shift. All the drunks are out on the road at the same time. It makes 02:00 a very nasty time to have to drive anywhere! We should realize that the "days" when everybody did the same activities at the same times of day are long gone. Let each such establishment determine its own hours of operation.

 

NAMES AND FLAGS

Here is something I just don't understand. Why do we put so much value on names and flags and symbols?

Why do so many of our hymns and other verbal religious traditions praise the NAME of God, rather than praising God directly?

When we recite the pledge of allegiance, why is it that we pledge our allegiance to the FLAG of the United States of America, and then add the republic for which it stands almost as an afterthought?

I have heard that in older cultures, the knowledge of a name for something had great value. I just don't understand it.

I think that burning a flag, although disrespectful and distasteful, is exactly the kind of freedom of speech that this country values, whether or not some talking head on the TV refers to what the flag stands for.

Perhaps pledging our allegiance to flags, while ignoring the values of the country, is exactly the kind of idol worship that gets prominent billing in the Jewish and Christian 10 Commandments.

 

SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF

OK, this is just a rant. I have observed something over the last several years that I simply can not explain. It seems to me that people get the most upset over the smallest things.

A few years ago, there was this surprising situation around a traffic accident near the San Jose International Airport. It seems that everybody was frustrated with the traffic congestion, on one of those hot days when people's tempers run short. A woman let her car bump in to a pickup truck in front of her. The driver of the pickup was very angry. He walked back to her car, grabbed her small pet dog through her open window, and threw the dog into moving traffic. The dog was seriously injured and soon died.

Naturally, I find this behavior seriously unacceptable.

But I also find the reaction to it unacceptable. This dog-killer got more media attention than the last several rapists and kidnappers who brutalized people. The vocal minority who call in to radio news-talk programs wanted to capture and torture this jerk, and they expressed themselves with more anger than I remember hearing about any other subject in years.

Similarly, people ignore sports stars who get in to fights during games. But one player spat in the face of an umpire some years ago, and there was serious talk about banning him from the game forever.

It seems to me that people can ignore big things while getting downright hysterical about much smaller things. Perhaps we are so over-stimulated that we just don't notice the big things anymore. Personally, I think the level of public reaction is annoyingly inconsistent. And perhaps the extent to which it bothers me is another fine example of how ridiculous this kind of thing can be.

 

THE END (for now...)

 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I would like to acknowledge and thank each of the following...

  • John Brawn for continuous technical support, advice, great ideas, and numerous working examples.
  • Susan Brumbaugh at www.aphids.com for technical references.
  • www.aceofspace.com   &   www.ender-design.com   &   www.eosdev.com   for generous donations of background art.
  • Angel Inn Capital Management for disk space, web hosting and other computer resources.



    • If you arrived directly at this page by using a search engine or some other direct link, you are welcome to click on www.angelinn.net/robert to go to the homepage of my personal website. You will find additional personal information there.