Global Warming, Top O the Muffin, Muffin Stumps, and how a Show about Nothing is actually about Everything.

I believe that Seinfeld, the show about nothing, covered the issue of global warming in what may be one of the all time classic Seinfeld episodes called "Top o the Muffin".

"Top o the Muffin" gets to the heart of what is wrong with the way we conduct a capitalistic economy. Top o the Muffin was not about Global Warming specifically, but the entire story structure of what happens when Elaine decides to create a business that only sells muffin tops is reminiscent of what the entire planet is going through from an economic and global warming paradigm point of view.

The irony in being able to produce energy, water, cars, gasoline and roadways at such low prices now (just like the top o the muffin), is also creating an obstacle down the road (how to keep making the top of the muffin affordable while dealing with the muffin stumps) that will grow increasingly impossible to solve as time goes on.

Until an effective, energy efficient organic battery can be affordably created, we will continue to deal with an ever growing supply of energy "muffin stumps". Present day batteries (muffin stumps) cannot be put into the ground without harming the environment.

Petroleum, the present day muffin top, is a premium energy product that should be used to energize other types of energies that we need to develop, not compete with them.

How the Bro Stole the Country, from Cannonfire.

Check out the rest of this amazing tale at CannonFire.

The Amex "Recovery" Commercial needs to be spoofed.

If ever a commercial needed to be spoofed, it is this one. The AMEX "Recovery" commercial.

Time to END ALL Interest Rate Charges on EXISTING consumer credit card debt and reduce ALL home mortgage interest rate charges to four percent.

A couple of decades ago when I was just starting out in the film industry I worked for a film company that was in merger talks with two other film companies. Our company was 10-15 million dollars in debt and it appeared the only way to save ourselves was by merging with two stable companies so that the overall debt percentage would be minimized. Our company had already made a name for itself so combining with a financially stable company (aka too big to fail) would result in better times.

But then reality hits. It turns out that all three companies were hiding their own 10-15 million dollars of debt. Each company assumed the other two merging companies were debt free. After the merger the three companies realized they all had brought their own debt into the merger. The new and improved too big to fail company actually had 30-45 million dollars of debt and went out of business less than a year later. 

I bring this story up now because I see my microcosmic job experience is actually recreating itself on a much grander scale.

Most of world is in debt, and nobody really has a solution other than to try and hide their own debt from others.

I have a solution to the hide the debt game that is being played and since I am a nobody, I may be correct when I say "nobody" has a solution.

Gargantuan consumer debt and the destructively high interest rate charges that accompany the consumer debt has destroyed a critical component of a sustainable worldwide economy. Consumers all over the world have less money to spend because more and more of their income is going towards repetitive, revolving interest rate charges that are so onerous they have become unreduceable.

While the actual amount of worldwide consumer debt may not seem like a substantial amount of the overall worldwide debt, it is having a profound affect in many insidious ways. The bottom line is the amount of disposable income that each and every consumer is able to create is dramatically shrinking, and in the process, disposable income no longer first travels between consumers and local small businesses within local economies, disposable income now goes directly to pay a bank debt or some type of tax, and this is a huge problem.

We have reached an economic tipping point where the absolutely profoundly rich are now draining the worlds resources by expecting to get the best return on obscene amounts of savings. Money that should no longer be receiving interest payments is actually siphoning more and more capital away from the everyday person who is just trying to make ends meet.

Banksters worldwide keep stalling the inevitable. The longer the banksters wait to severly reduce interest rate charges on existing consumer debt and decrease home mortgage interest rates to an across the board 4%, the worse things will be for the worldwide economy for an ever expanding period of time.

Too much emphasis is being placed on maintaining interest rate profit margins even when those interest rate profit margins are actually spiraling every country into deepening debt that is devaluing real estate values everywhere.

Countries need to transition to alternative forms of energy that they can generate on their own land, for their own needs, or wars will increase. The key stumbling block to global energy self sufficiency is it needs to happen within the cost parameters of existing oil supplies and prices, and there in lies the parallel problem.

It takes petroleum to create alternative energy infrastructure, but petroleum is being used in a "one time and its gone" methodology.

The longer we wait to deputize oil for the primary purpose of ramping up other forms of energy as quickly as possible, the less likely we will be able to make a successful alternative energy transition while also being able to concurrently service the energy requirements of 6 billion people worldwide (and growing).

What does the world's inability to harvest new sources of energy have to do with interest rate charges? Interest rate charges enslave people to work longer and harder just to maintain their same level of debt. As consumers work longer and harder at their jobs they consume more and more petroleum and energy sources at a time when that petro should be used to create alternative forms of energy.

One example of the reallocation of petroleum to create alternative forms of energy is the idea of completely redoing the electrical grid infrastructure. Actually re laying every bit of electrical wire in the entire United States with the most efficient forms of conductive wiring could significantly reduce the amount of power that needs to be generated, but the petroleum to drive such a project is being diverted to simply driving our gas guzzling cars.

Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in place to create a public works program to make the revamping of the energy grid a likelihood. Instead, the interest rate trap is contributing to consumers working extra hours (assuming they can find work) at jobs that drain our energy resources, which in turn requires our government to fund military installations all over the world, which in turn provides all that extra petroleum which we should be weaning ourselves off of.

Consumer Interest rate charges on EXISTING credit card debt is creating an indebted, enslaved society that will do anything to be able to pay their bills. Most of the work that is being done simply perpetually repays repeating revolving consumer credit card debt and those nasty interest rate charges that prevent the debt from ever being paid down, which further removes us from the urgent energy goal of replacing petroleum as the dominant energy supply source on the planet.

What the world needs to do is DECREASE the amount of hours the worlds workers need to work to maintain their present lifestyle. Each work hour reduction creates more flexibility and more time for actually improving the energy infrastructure of our planet while also reducing energy consumption as well.

Any banker or politician that thinks it is a good thing to create more work hours so consumers can keep repaying repetitive interest rate charges on existing consumer debt is actually helping to accelerate the global population towards a possibly preventable economic and ecological global catastrophe.

Time to Re Do our Income Tax Laws and Simplify Income Tax Returns.

I just want to offer a new way to do income tax. The key proponent being that income tax becomes much much easier to calculate, and that the american consumer only have to pay one entity, and then that entity pays out all the other tax entities in the proper amount.

I propose a level 4 income tax system. The level 4 income tax rate includes rates of 50%, 40%, 30% and 25%. The consumer CHOOSES which level of income tax percentage rate they want to pay, and each level comes with built in deduction choices.

If a consumer chooses a 50% income tax rate, they get three full deductions of their choosing. The consumer can choose to deduct their home mortgage, medical expenses, and car payment deductions.

The consumer would have additional choices for deductions, such as college education or home improvement, but they could only choose three to actually use when they file. The consumer simply chooses the three most costly deductions. I would also allow a renter the right to deduct their rent as long as they were not related to the person they were paying rent to.

The 40% plan would allow the consumer two income tax deductions.

The 30% plan would allow for one income tax deduction.

The 25% plan would have NO deductions, it would just be a pay as you go system in which all income is immediately income taxed at the 25% rate and the remaining 75% belongs to the consumer.

To prevent people from using their deductions to pay nothing into the system, there would be a bottom end cap at 20%. No matter how much one deducts from their income tax, they would still be responsible for 20% of their gross to the government, no excuses, no exceptions.

It is possible somebody could game the system and come up with a method in which one deduction is "overused". I would not be against limiting any one deduction to reducing someones income tax liability up to a certain percentage amount. I do not know what that deduction limit should be however. It would take some testing of the 4 level income tax plan to see how much each deduction could lower someone's overall tax liability.

Would you be ok with the idea of a direct deposit of your income into a bank for income verification and your income tax payment, but then you could immediately use the remaining money as you see fit knowing you had no more income tax issues to deal with?

The bank would also handle your deduction payments. Once again, the bank is immediately verifying your deductions because they process the payments you give them that relate to your deductions.

The final and very important aspect of the level 4 income tax system is you could choose to be a part of the above program, or not. I would definitely choose to be a part of the above program, and I would probably do the 30% deduction income tax with the one deduction option.

Could income tax simplification actually increase productivity?

Could income tax simplicity allow people to make more informed financial choices since they know where they stand with their taxes and know exactly the remaining portion is that they can afford to spend?

Could income tax simplification lead to increased productivity as people spend less time in general on their income taxes? Might the banks gain an extra method of usefulness by being the actual income tax revenue splitter that allocates all monies to the proper tax collection agency?

Isn't it ridiculous that with all the advances in computing that each and every tax payer is still directly responsible for paying each and every tax bill to the proper agency? Why does the government continue to waste my time with such frivolity?

Why can't I have the choice to just direct deposit my income into one banking entity, have my tax liability split off from my earnings, and I've honored all of my tax obligations while knowing exactly what I have left over that is actually mine!

What do you think? Are you afraid of income tax simplification, or crave it for it for the simplicity it would bring?