What if your company where you worked were bought out by another company and in that acquisition you were offered $100,000.00 as a bonus for the acquisition?  Would you take it?  In the state of Colorado where I live taxes on that money, including federal taxes on that money would put you at having 40% taken in taxes (without itemized deductions and what not).  That would be like actually getting 60,000.00.  Would you still take it?  Oops, I forgot something.  The Federal Government actually takes a bonus 20% on top of that for them because the money is a lump sum.  That would leave you with $40,000.00 out of an original $100,000.00.  Would you still take it?

Sure, you’d still want the money, but I think that the recent hullabaloo that I’ve heard recently about taxing the wealthy (AKA ‘rich’) to distribute the wealth is not as forthright as it sounds.  There are two (or more) areas that concern me about this.  The first is that recent numbers show that just under 40% of the entire nation’s federal income tax is generated by the top 1% of America’s earners.  That’s right, the ration is that askew [see: http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/23440.html].   The second is that in my own household if I am strapped for cash: I have to either go into deeper debt (which I’m digging out of) or I have to cut spending.  I can only go so far deep into debt, so we cut spending.  If the Federal government wants to get their budget together, they too, should have to cut spending and not raise billions or trillions of dollars in debt.

Here’s the kicker: if you add on sales tax which there is the potential of the $40,000.00 being spent ‘in state’ you could see up to 10% MORE tax being taken at the register depending where you go shopping.  That means that out of the original $100,000.00 the person who was rewarded by their company has now had 70% taken in the form of taxes.  That would make me want to throw another tea party.

I know that as a country we’re all trying to see equitable charity, the furtherance of our families and the general well being of the population, but if we can’t afford wellfare programs because we don’t have enough money, if we can’t afford to pay for a massive military (which is a hot topic and I won’t attempt to address it in this post), if we can’t afford to watch our airports with a crack squad of TSA agents (who fail to find my pocket knife every time I forget I have it with me) then we need to cut things.  This hurts.  This could impact jobs, this could impact the entire nation.

Here’s an opportunity for Americans to be innovative again.  This nation had a time of prosperity that was unbelievable.  We had brilliant thinkers making brilliant products brilliantly.  But we’ve passed that and now we’re all hoping to be lucky enough to make it with the next e-business, dot com super-story, or sue someone else for their money.  But what if brilliant people worked together to make new brilliant products that we then sold to the rest of the world just like the ‘good old days’ only it was now?

Well, if that were to happen we’d tax the snot out of those brilliant people and punish them for their productivity.  I think I’d prefer to just shuffle along and make moderate wages and not be taxed up to 70%.  This isn’t Bill Gates’ problem.  This isn’t Warren Buffet’s problem.  This is your problem.  It’s my problem.  It’s our problem.  Lets vote next month (not too many days away, now) with a conscience.  Lets send a message to our representatives that we’re not going to take it any more.  We, as a people, have a right to the fruits of our labor and at present we’re not looking out for one another, and it makes me sad.  The good news is that there are ways out of where we’re at.  It will take determination, and it might hurt a bit, but if we can make a united effort, we might just be the United People of the United States.

I grew up hearing stories of my dad’s college days.  One such story included an acquaintance that owned a pair of pants that he did not wash until they were told to have disentigrated.  The pants at one point in time could stand up in a corner on their own from all of the materials that had been collected in the fibers of the fabric.  My personal hygiene alarm goes off every time that story comes to mind.  My skin crawls with the imaginary microbes, bacteria and germs that those pants must have harbored.  The pants were not standing up because they were filled with something, namely legs, but instead they were standing up because of external influences.

I had a realization this week as I was pondering the significance of the numbers of trillions of dollars that have been lost globally in various financial markets.  The realization was not one that I should have had to wait until 31 to have and I wanted to pass it along in case others had not been exposed to it: The stocks in the market may very well need a good washing because there are not always legs holding up their pants.  Each stock is not worth the value that is given to it on the market that day, it is worth the value the people (thankfully not germs) put on it and built into the fibers of the stock the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years before.  But unless the companies behind the stocks are actually doing amazingly good things and you’re owning a piece of a real company that is worthy of ownership, you could be buying extra crunchy pants.

You could be hard pressed to find a company that is worth the esteemed value of the stock, but it is important to remember that not each person who owns a $132/share stock paid $132 per share.  They might have paid $32.00/share and others after them paid more than that.  Obviously that’s why the investor makes money if they buy at $32.00 and sell at $132.00, but when the market tumbles and share values drop its not a loss of actual wealth, its the loss of unrealized wealth.  There’s a BIG difference.  Its not that the estimated value doesn’t matter, but instead it is important to have the principles of the theory behind the market in mind as you’re looking at the numbers.  If I buy a stock at $32.00 and sell it at $30.00 I very literally lose $2.00 per share (plus any trading fees to buy the stock and to sell the stock).  What you need to realize is that as an investor I may have also missed the unrealized reward of the stock jumping to $64.00 per share and in an attempt to ‘hold out for more’ the stock reversed and dropped me down to where I realized the stock was going to go down to less than I paid for it and by the time I could find a buyer, it had devalued to less than my original buying price.  Realized and unrealized wealth are two different things and when the media or overly dramatic persons speak about trillions of dollars in wealth disappearing, it isn’t all like real dollars going up into real smoke (we’ll ignore the carbon footprint of that smoke & money fire), it is some real smoke and some real fire shot from an impressive camera angle that makes the pants look taller than they are.  They’re standing in the corner, looking tall and legless, but they’re still pants, and they still need to be estimated at a reasonable value that reflects the worth of the company - much like pants that really, really should have been washed so that I never, ever had to hear stories of my dad’s friend’s pants that probably smelled foul.

Ewwwwww.

I had someone hit this site looking for, “Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”  I can’t believe that people would consider this, but then again, its people we’re talking about: the anonymous mass of Internet users who don’t have to be identified and so asking such a question doesn’t come with the stigma that asking it of your friends and classmates might.  The question that begs is this: What is a million dollars worth?

In our modern relativistic culture there is little value placed on sexuality within marriage, and the sanctity of marriage (sanctity being the setting aside as special) .  Sex is not worth a million dollars, that cheapens it, it is invaluable.  A million dollars is a lot of money, but it isn’t enough money to offset emotional scars, the fact that you’d be engaging in prostitution (see: Eliot Spitzer).

Various people have posed nude in magazines for money, taken jobs that they didn’t agree with because of a high paying salary, and of course there’s the age old televangelist schtick as well.  Money is not important if it is gained in an ill gotten fashion.  Having standards, focusing on the long term impact (how many women did something pornographic and then had children and were mortified that their children would find out?  What about parents finding out?).

A million dollars won’t buy you happiness, love, or a long term financial state (it is just as easily lost on frivolous activities and spending).  What’s a million dollars worth to you?  Is it worth your dignity?