Closing out the month of January 2024 with Oreo LoveBugs
Posted By RichC on January 31, 2024
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Books: The Anti-Capitalism Mentality by Ludwig von Mises
Posted By RichC on January 30, 2024
As usual, I’m currently reading several different books — different genres for different moods. The one highlighted today is because I don’t really like taking my eReader to the beach. We’ve generally just been going just to walk so haven’t been sitting long enough to read anyway … I don’t want it to be a temptation for theft of my Kindle either. But “The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality” by libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises is a paperback and one that I’ve been wanting to read and discuss in our “book talk” coffees with my buddy Jeff.
Music Monday: Gin Blossoms – “Follow You Down”
Posted By RichC on January 29, 2024
Often the bumper music on business television shows catches my ear and triggers a Music Monday idea.
That was the case with the 1996 song “Follow You Down” by Gin Blossoms on The Big Money Show with hosts Jackie DeAngelis, Taylor Riggs and a personal favorite personality, Brian Brenberg. Here’s a YouTube Official Video of “Follow You Down.”
Taxes? 💰 Go (Historical) Figure!
Posted By RichC on January 28, 2024
An email newsletter from the Tax Foundation offered up a few interesting tax oriented tidbits.
As the story goes, Lady Godiva famously rode a horse through Coventry, Warwickshire . . . in the nude. But why did this 11th-century noblewoman choose to do such a thing? Taxes.
Lady Godiva pleaded with her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes on his people. Eventually, he told his wife she’d get her wish if she rode a horse naked through the streets in the daylight. So she did!
Charles Dickens is famous for his writing, but what about his influence on tax policy?
Dickens publicly wrote and spoke against England’s window tax and its impact on the health of the lower class. The popular author had influence and the tax was repealed shortly after in 1851.
Albert Einstein once said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
Einstein told his tax consultant that even he struggled to understand the income tax. That’s coming from the guy who came up with the theory of relativity!
And then there were 4: The NFL Playoffs continue this weekend
Posted By RichC on January 27, 2024
Brenda and I have been enjoying the NFL playoffs in late January from Florida this year and are looking forward to watching the final two games before Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024. This weekend America will be watching the Detriot Lions vs the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC and the Kansas City Chiefs vs the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC. My hope is for the Lions to make it to the Super Bowl … as it has been a long drought.
Although the weather in Ohio hasn’t been as cold this past week as the one prior (which was below zero), it has been a bit warmer in Florida … and we are enjoying our escape from the winter and our walks on the beach. Brenda’s hip surgery (photos below) rehab is now really complete and the goal now is all about combating osteoporosis and building bone. We are hoping the next DEXA scan shows that the Eventity injections are working!
Tech Friday: Trash or should these become drink coasters?
Posted By RichC on January 26, 2024
This will probably excite my geeky readers on a Tech Friday … but am trying to decide if old 3-1/2” disks should be trashed or used at “disposable” drink coasters. BTW, who remembers Apple Computer’s Hypercard?
EDIT: Thought … perhaps making thin wooden bases and inlay a disk to make a more creative coaster.
Walking the beach in Florida and a “Big Eye” #TBT moment
Posted By RichC on January 25, 2024
A post from over a decade ago highlighted a beach find that was rather unique for the east coast of Florida … a BIG eye … so figure for this ThrowBack Thursday #TBT it would be a way to then comment on a Portuguese Man O’ War spawn this week along Delray Beach.
Although there were thousands of tiny Portuguese Man O’ Wars washed up on the beach (difficult on to step on them while walking), there were not quite as many larger ones with the stinging tenacles. Still one of them had the longest strings of tenacles that I’ve ever seen on the beach. I walked it off to about 11 feet … although Brenda thinks if I would have straightened it out that it would have been 12!
All in all it, walking the beach in the low 70s was much preferred to the cold weather followed by “rain train” in Cincinnati this week. 😉
Living vicariously thru a friend’s international business travel
Posted By RichC on January 24, 2024
Although the time difference makes instant text communication a little more challenging than usual in staying in touch with my buddy Jeff, I’m still enjoying the interesting business travel he is starting early in 2024.
I lost track of the number of countries will be in while making cybersecurity audits of client plants, but it is substantial. The first photo (above) was the first morning after landing in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam … it’s a city (size of NYC) and has “a lot of scooters” (his comment .. but click photo and zoom in on street you’ll see them). I definitiely didn’t envy the grueling flight that took him through Incheon, South Korea. Ugh!
The U.S. is nearly a deadbeat nation and few politicians care
Posted By RichC on January 23, 2024
It’s called the third rail of politics, and in those areas of spending where politicians with the best of intentions dare to talk, nothing gets done. Only a few have suggested finding a solution to our ballooning debt and yearly deficits … or two of the primary drivers: Social Security and Medicare. These programs continue to drain the yearly Federal budget and drive our borrowing to ridiculously high levels, which will likely to only get worse if politicians on both sides of the aisle refuse to “face the music” — oh, finally a new idiom!
Few in Congress have even been able to talk about a way to “manage” Social Security and Medicare going forward without being blasted … or at least chastised enough to keep their mouths close on the subject in front of cameras. BUT everyone knows that without reform or an influx of new revenue, these entitlements will not be sustainable in the future — perhaps as soon as 2031. Yet we continues to the charade that it will somehow solve itself … or if you are a politician, just pass the problem unsolved and much larger to the next bunch of politicians.
Millions depend on Social Security, Medicare
Benefits paid out by the program have exceeded money coming in since 2021, and the trust fund is now expected to be depleted by 2033. That’s a year earlier than forecast last year, thanks in part to slower economic growth.
Unless changes are made before then to shore up the program, 66 million Social Security recipients would see their benefits cut by 23-25%.
…
The primary challenge for Social Security is demographic. As aging baby boomers retire, there are fewer workers paying into the program to support the rising cost of benefits. As of last year, there were just 2.7 workers paying into the system for each person drawing Social Security benefits.
Additionally, a smaller fraction of income is now subject to the payroll taxes that support Social Security.
Patching the program will require higher taxes, lower benefits or some combination of the two.
Music Monday: Remembering David Soul – “Don’t Give Up On Us”
Posted By RichC on January 22, 2024
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Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.