Category Archives: Business

Business, Culture, Education

Everyone Gets A Trophy?

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Two young men shot and killed several innocent people in Nashville TN and Louisville KY. These types of murders seem random and senseless. One was committed by a 25 year old man pretending to be a girl and the other by a 26 year old man who was given his termination notice. Is there a common thread between the two insane men?

The man/girl was a former student at the school where he shot 3 children and 3 teachers. The other man was an employee at the bank where he killed 5 of his coworkers. Hmmm, one common thread. They both had close connections to the places where they killed people.

The man/girl apparently hated Christians who believe in God and don’t believe that anyone can be a god and change their sex at will. Maybe IT discovered that IT was a failure and could never be a girl no matter how hard IT tries. The bank employee having just been given his termination notice, obviously failed. Hmmm, both were failures.

Now why would two men feel the need to kill others at the places that classified them as “failures”.

One possibility would be the societal “norm” of giving a trophy to every child. Children are taught that there is no such thing as failure.  The modern day pseudo-psychologists believe that a child will be irreparably harmed if he is allowed to fail.  The hard fact is children need to learn the sting of failure. If children are taught growing up that they can never fail, they will run face first in the cold reality of the real world failure. They will be completely unprepared for reality and perhaps this is what causes them to try and destroy that which deems them failures.

There’s a song by sung by Fred Astaire, titled, “Pick yourself up”. Written by: Dorothy Fields, Jerome Kern, Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC

The song has several lyrics that should become a mantra to kids.

“Nothing’s impossible I have found,
For when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off,
Start all over again.

Work like a soul inspired,
Till the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you’ll be a man, my son!

Will you remember the famous men,
Who had to fall to rise again?
So take a deep breath,
Pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.“

There’s are business books about failure. “Fail fast, fail often“, comes to mind. One needs to learn to learn quickly from failures and move forward to success. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, appears to take this approach. Tesla has been on the verge of bankruptcy several times because of failures. What did Musk do? He learned what didn’t work and moved forward. His company SpaceX had many spectacular explosions as they developed their own rockets. Again, ask yourself, what did Musk do?

Stop handing out trophies.

Business, Culture, Government, Politics

87,000 New Armed IRS Agents and $600

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The government is planning on hiring 87,000 new IRS agents. This increase in IRS enforcement is part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” that the Old Fool Biden and the Dimbulbs tout as wonderful new legislation.

Why does the IRS need 87,000 new ARMED agents?

The IRS will be chasing every penny and squeezing EVERYONE for more money. How else will the government pay for all the FREE MONEY programs? It was just announced that there will be a new reporting system to squeeze every last penny from the TIPS that food servers receive. According to the Old Fool, NO ONE MAKING UNDER $400.000 PER YEAR will pay anything more in TAXES. Looks like your local waitress or waiter makes MORE than $400.000 per year.

The IRS is also implementing a REQUIREMENT that ALL “Third-party payment platforms” report transaction of MORE THAN $600 per year and the individual must report these transactions with a 1099-K form. “Third party payment platforms” are service such as PAYPAL, AMAZON PAYMENTS, BITPAY, WEPAY, etc. Why the scrutiny on these services? Many people are finding out that they can have small/micro-businesses MAKING and selling things HERE IN THE USA. With 3D printers, Laser cutters/engravers, desktop CNC machines, or just making craft items by hand, people have found out they can make a few bucks with a side hustle selling items they produce on Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, or directly on the web. Almost all of these transactions are processed by the “Third-party platforms” and I suspect this side hustle money is mostly unreported. If a stay at home mom makes an extra $1000 per year selling her craft items, the IRS wants their $300 cut in taxes.

The IRS will also need thousands of agents to SPY on cash transactions such as SWAP MEET SELLERS and YARD MAINTENANCE WORKERS (your brown person gardener) who deal mostly in CASH. IF they try to deposit money in a bank or other financial institution this will again be reported to the IRS and they will “work” to get their cut taxes.  Ah come on man you might say, how much money can be made at a swap meet?  To give you an idea about how much cash flows through swap meets, the very first $60 MILLION Gulfstream G650 private jet went to Preston Henn who was the guy who ran swap meet venues in Florida. 

Here’s the rub. When the IRS starts taking all the “unreported” income prices will go up. It’s a “zero sum game”. The craft item on Etsy that was $50 will need to be priced at $75 to cover the tax burden. Directly or indirectly we will all end up paying for all the FREE MONEY programs that the Old Fool and the Dims love.

Looks like we all make more than $400.000. Thanks Joe for making me a high income earner.

Business, Culture, Finance

How Much Is Real?

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I was watching a report this morning on the collapse of FTX, the cyrpto exchange. Some pundits are stating that this bankruptcy, “is bigger than Enron“. Truth in lending, I have no holdings in crypto as I don’t understand it and what little I do, makes no sense to me. That said, there was a 20-something Gen-Z kid whining that he lost $2 million because of the collapse of FTX. My question when I hear people whining about their investment losses is, “how much of that is a real loss?“

The whiners, usually exaggerate how much loss they’ve suffered in order to sound sympathetic. During the Enron collapse, there was a young employee (I recall that she was a secretary) of the company who had her retirement savings 100% invested in Enron stock. She said she lost “a million dollars“ of her retirement when Enron collapsed. I always have questioned such numbers. How could she have legally invested “a million dollars” of capital into a retirement fund. If she was working for 5 years at Enron, she would have had to have a salary of around $450,000 per year to have “a million” to invest. $200,000 goes to taxes, $50,000 goes to living expenses, and then she’d have $200,000 to invest over 5 years. If she could earn $450,000 per year as a secretary, why the belly aching when she has another 40 plus years of her working life left. I suspect her “real” losses may have been around $20,000 at most.

The same goes for the Gen-Z kid moaning about his $2 million dollar loss in FTX. FTX peaked at $84.18, right now it’s trading at $1.88. If you use the peak numbers, the kid owned around 45,000 shares. Say he bought in around January of 2021 when FTX was around $5 per share he would have needed to invest around $225,000 which is by no means a small amount of money. In “real” dollars the kid would have suffered a loss of around $140,000 ($5 down to $1.88) which is a far “cry” less than $2 million. Even if the Gen-Z kid actually lost $2 million of cash because he bought at the peak, just earn another couple of million in the next 40 years of a working career and stop whining.  Investments have risks. Deal with it.

And don’t forget, these highly paid 20-somethings can write-off their “real” losses against earning of their 6-figure incomes.  And who pays for those write offs?  Well that would be you and me the taxpayers who didn’t invest in risky ventures.