And now for something completely different

Surprisingly I will not talk about anything that has happened to me since nothing major has happened to me.
ON TO THE RANDOM MUSINGS!!!

The United States is a fairly decent place, if you don't count the over-commercialism, crime, failing economy, etc. Life is fairly good here, if you are paid decently. Unfortunately not everyone is paid decently. Most people don't get outstanding wages until they have A) been in the same job for a long time, like CEO's (climbing the corporate ladder) or doctors and lawyers (paying for their education) or B) are extremely lucky and play a sport, where they get paid very well for a short period of time before they are told to retire. Inflation is ruining the economy and imports and flooding the market with useless junk while we send all of our surplus out of country. In short, the economy needs to be completely reworked.

First off, taxes. Most people say that we need to lower taxes so that we have more money to spend and raise the standard of living. While it is true that it would increase the standard of living a bit, it would harm the government by removing their only source of funding. However, one could remove most of the taxes like property, income, and stamp taxes and replace them with one tax, Sales. The US government currently has no sales tax. However, if it implemented one, it could cover all of its expenses with a single tax, say 50%, only on non-essentials. Therefore any poverty-stricken people could survive on what little they receive and not have to worry about their money going to straight to the government. It would also make those who actually have money pay for the government whenever they buy something like, say, a new car, TV, house, etc. This would also discourage waste as the prices are considerably raised.

Next, minimum wage. Totally pointless. One of the main arguments for it is that it raises the standard of living. Unfortunately those who say this do not grasp some simple economic principles. Firstly, the money for the increased wages of the workers has to come from somewhere. This means that to pay the minimum wage workers, the company has to either lower the wages of the higher payed employees or increase the cost of goods. I know of very few people who would be willing to accept the former, so usually the latter is applied. Considering the fact that most companies have to pay minimum wage, this means that prices go up all around, making the price of goods increase and therefore negating the raising of the standard of living argument as the goods went up in price as the wages went up, equalizing any gain in standard of living. In fact, this could DECREASE the standard of living, as many manufactured goods rely on other goods to produce and ship, and when the wages of these go up, each part of the manufactured good costs more, increasing the cost of the final good exponentially.

To counter this, I propose that instead of a minimum wage, we impose a maximum wage. If wages cannot exceed a certain amount than everyone lives at or near the same socioeconomic level. If we put the maximum wage at $1 an hour, prices of many goods would drop greatly, many common items to as low as a couple of cents each. This solution would not only equalize everyone but greatly increase the standard of living and make the value of the dollar skyrocket. Unfortunately, prices of foreign items might be ridiculously high until they recognize the increased value of the dollar. On the bright side, this would encourage growth in the sectors of the economy currently covered by other countries, making our country more self-sufficient and able to compete with various foreign companies with higher quality products at cheaper prices.

Some people might see this and say that it sounds like its only a step away from socialism or communism, but in truth this is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the bad press about communism is either because of poor management or propaganda set forth by big business that felt threatened by the fact that they would lose control. But that is for some other time when we look into…

LIFE,
THE UNIVERSE,
AND EVERYTHING

Today… Is a very auspicious day…

UNIFICATION DAY!!! The day we sent those brownco… wait, wrong character.


Well, this week was very eventful. Got 490 pokemans on Pearl, making my trainer card upgrade to gold. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard came out yesterday, gonna be installed today (WOO!!! LIVING ON THE BLEEDING EDGE!!!) Now all I need is a new computer to get all the features (64 bit processing, etc). Currently on a eMac with a 1.42 GHz G4 processor, thinking that a new Intel iMac would be nice. Problem is my maternal unit might not appreciate me obtaining a computer that is better then hers. Parents.


In other news, I can't think of anything else to say. Hopefully next time there will be some insight into…

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

Life. Don't talk to me about life.

The last few weeks have been relatively uneventful. Just normal school stuff. End of the six weeks. Grades, 5 A's, 2 B's. Honor roll. Most eventful thing that has happened was also the worst thing. My Nintendo DS Lite went missing after 7th period at school Monday. Grrr.
Hopefully it'll crop up again. If not, thats $150 down the drain.

On another note, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is coming out in a few days. Woot. We already have the family pack ordered, meaning that we should have it installed the day it comes out. New features, yay!

On to some random musings… I noticed recently how a large number of mythologies, religions, cultures, and sects have Great Flood myths. The most well known is probably the biblical Noah, but there are also Babylonian, Incan, Greek, Irish, Indian, Chinese, Aztec, Mayan, Polynesian, and Australian, not to mention the various lost continents such as Mu, Atlantis, and Lemuria, to name a few. Most scientists shun the Noah story as pure fantasy, but if there are so many different variations from so many diverse countries across the continents, there must be some kernel of truth to it. There is also some physical proof that could be used to verify it, such as the continental shelf, which drops off at an almost uniform depth of 460 feet world wide, the remains of structures off the coast of Japan and India, and the Bimini Road. So, I was thinking what if the waters didn't recede after the flood. That would explain why there isn't any evidence of flooding far inland, because the inland before the flood is currently under water. I could go on about this for a good deal longer, but I figure that this is enough for now. Join me for the next installment of…

Life,
The Universe,
And Everything

SAT testing

Just got back from SAT testing, 6 hours of sitting in a freezing auditorium doing really easy math and English problems. My legs don't like me at all because of all that sitting.
On another note, I decided to change the layout here a bit. Nothing too drastic, just renaming some stuff, adding some other stuff, wondering why I like to write stuff so much, and deciding to cut back on my usage of the word stuff, and other stuff like that (DAMMIT!)
Well, that's all I can think to say today, I think I would like to just lie down for about 74.5 hours or so to recuperate. Just remember to come back later for some more exciting tidbits of…

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING

YAY! Blogs and sthuff

Hey, what do you know. Its a blog. Really didn't think I'd ever
get one of these because I would never keep up with it, but I decided, hey why not. I figured that this would probably be the easiest place to put down my thoughts, so here they are. Not very interesting, are they? But you can't say that they aren't very thoughtful thoughts. ANYWAY, a big hello to all you intelligent lifeforms out there reading this, and to all those not quite there yet, the secret is to make FIRE!!! *cue ominous music* Well, that's about it for this edition, tune in next time for some further great insights into…

LIFE
THE UNIVERSE
AND EVERYTHING