Let's say we have a formula like this:

The top marginal rate is calculated as the (UR * 4)+10.

At 9.8% unemployment, the top tax rate would be 49.2%.
At 5%, the rate drops to 30%.

I see many advantages to this:

1) Government receives more revenue to stimulate the economy and subsidize unemployment insurance when the economy needs stimulating, less revenue when it doesn't need stimulus.
2) The pain of economic downturns is shared across income brackets.
3) The wealthy are more likely to invest in domestic job-producing industries instead of off-shorers and unproductive things like derivatives, shifting the economy toward domestic production rather than speculation.
4) The rich get to control their own tax rate through their investment decisions. They also see their investments grow as the well-employed consumer base grows.

I've been musing about this for a while and was surprised when a libertarian co-worker said he liked the idea. I say if the rich really do create jobs like many claim, let them prove it, and let them have some skin in the game.

So what do you think about the idea generally? Has this been proposed before or even attempted somewhere?

The blog "Guide to Literary Agents" is holding a "Dear Lucky Agent" contest, with a May 26 deadline, for unpublished fantasy/sci-fi novels. All you have to do is submit the first 150-200 words of your unpublished fantasy or sc-fi novel and link to the contest via social networking or a blog. The top three winning entries will get a literary agent's critique of the first 10 pages of the novel and a 1 year sub to www.writersmarket.com .
Details here...
http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/...

edit: subscription info was wrong

When I went to vote on Election Day I figured it would be the usual experience. I would wait in line until it was my turn and suddenly it would be a rush to get in there and get the right levers pulled as quickly as I could because other folks were waiting behind me. Normally, I vote alone but after I stepped in there and pulled the curtain closed, the ghosts appeared.

There was my maternal grandfather George. We called him "Grampy." He was raised in a rural Upstate New York town and as a young man he was best friends with the local Klan leader. He discarded that friendship and his faith when he fell in love with a Catholic French-Canadian girl, whom he later married. She died when I was too young to have any memories of her but she was their too. My grandma.

Alongside them were my paternal grandparents of whom I also have no memory. They had been very poor and left Sicily in the early part of the 20th century to find a better life for themselves and their children. Not long after they had settled in Ft. Edward, NY, one son became gravely ill and the local doctor told them they should go back to Sicily because the climate would be better for him. They took his advice but the child died soon after their return to the old country. My grandmother said she never wanted to see Sicily again, and they came back to the U.S. My grandfather worked in a mill and saved enough money to open his own shoe-repair store. In the evenings the store became a classroom where he taught fellow immigrants in the neighborhood to read and write in English, for free.

Some of their children were there too, even the ones who had died before I was born, like my Uncle Joe. He had taken a flesh-wound in France during the war but had managed to carry his seriously injured buddy to safety. There wasn't enough penicillin for everyone so Joe's wound got infected and he died there. His buddy survived to tell the story.

My dad was there too. He had never seen the ugly face of racial prejudice up close till the time he argued, in vain, with restaurant owners in a Southern town to let African-American soldiers, fresh from defending this country in Europe, eat in their dining rooms. He was a loyal Democrat through-and-through, from when he worked on the Kennedy campaigns in the 60s to more recent times, ranting on a daily basis about each new Neocon atrocity during the Bush years and writing LTTE's as frequently as the papers would allow. He had passed a few months after the Dems took Congress in 2006.

All these ghosts had known hardship and struggle, had clung to their prejudices and then discarded them. All had two religions -- one that worshipped God and another that held as most holy an idea -- that we all own this country of ours and we are all responsible for making it a place of welcome. They had neither chosen nor expected the struggles they fought in. We will neither chose nor always expect the ones we face.

The legacy of these ghosts is my cornball notion of what the idea of America means. It is, as I see it, a great dining table in a warm, well-lit place on a stormy night. This table has one rule to follow before you can be seated: bring all your tastiest foods in your covered pots and never turn away anyone from the table just because of their complexion or their creed or the way they may speak or who they love. All who abide by the simple rule of this table should be allowed to enjoy every dish set out on it and once seated we should endlessly repeat the command of my Sicilian-American grandmother: "Mangia!"

I remember when I first saw him. He was a tiny, skinny kitten, with a scratched-up bloody nose and ear, and huge eyes. He had been found on a rural road on a rainy summer day in Wilton, NY, by a co-worker who brought him to work to see if anyone could adopt him. He couldn’t keep Amos because he already had four cats at home. Having been a dog lover since childhood, I didn’t know anything about cats and I really didn’t like them and their furtive, emotionally distant ways, but I agreed to let Amos stay at my house until we could find a permanent home for him with someone who actually likes cats. He had fleas and ear mites and needed daily antibiotics for the cuts on his face but he was treated successfully and never had another flea or mite problem again.

In the early days of our life together, he was shut in the upstairs bathroom with his food, water and litter box whenever I was out of the house or asleep. I didn’t want him to sleep in my bed for fear that I would crush the tiny thing during the night. I relented after a few nights of his crying from the bathroom at bedtime and I would wake up each morning to his wide-eyed face only an inch or two in front of mine. Remarkably, I didn’t crush him.

We played the chasing game I had played with my dogs in the past. This involved running after each other and hiding behind furniture and surprising each other. The tension was too great for him one day. He was staked out behind a rocking chair and I was behind a coffee table. I kept taunting him until he could contain himself no longer. He ran to me on his hind legs screaming like some ancient Celtic warrior.

I could not eat anything without him joining in and he’d often get right up onto my dinner plate. If there were rice or barley in the meal, it would be flicked everywhere by his darting tongue. Once when I was eating Raspberry Newtons he stole a bite and fell in love with the flavor. He tried to take it away from me but I resolved to keep the cookies from him because I figured they were probably not good for cats. By this time he had the run of the house when I was at work, having proven he would not get into too much trouble. I would come home each night and he would greet me at the door, vocalizing wildly as though there were news to report.
One day I got home and he wasn’t at the door to greet me. My heart sank. I feared he’d gotten stuck someplace or injured or worse. I called his name but there was no answer. I looked around and discovered an odd thing: an unopened package of Raspberry Newtons I had left on the kitchen counter was now lying on a step halfway up the stairs to the second floor. I examined the package and found the corner had some small tears and something had attempted to eat one of the cookies. I found Amos curled up on my bed, sleeping the deep sleep of the totally exhausted.

Though he was a house-bound cat, I tried to bring him with me whenever I could while visiting friends or family or running quick errands. I worried that when he stayed in the car while I ran into a store that he might get stuck under the seats or bolt into the street when I opened the door so I had gotten a cheap slip-knot leash advertised as appropriate for kittens and tethered it to the passenger side headrest.

One day, while I was waiting in the checkout line at the supermarket and Amos was leashed inside the car, I suddenly had a feeling that something was wrong and I needed to get out to the car to check on him. An lonely elderly woman ahead in line was chatting incessantly with the uninterested cashier while my worry continued to build. When I finally got checked out, I ran out to the car as though I had just robbed the place. Amos had gotten his leash stuck, had fallen between the seat and the door, and the leash was tight around his neck. I carefully freed him and he made a few little coughs. Later that day, I bought him a small harness.

As the years went on, he remained as playful and curious as he was in kittenhood. When I was away, the people taking care of him said he would call out my name (“Joooooe!”) in the middle of the night. I cannot paint a picture of any important time in my life in the past 16 years, any time of great sadness or joy, that would not include his image. Without him the world is a less amusing place, a place less scratchy and bitey, too, but also a place less softly furry and without the easy engine idle of his purring, and, worse, a place that doesn’t seem to need me so much anymore. The bond between man and beast that we shared is not gone with him. I have just assumed full possession and locked it away in my heart. If the richest man in the world had lost all of his wealth and power and friendships in one moment, he could not feel so broken as I do now. I regret I never found a permanent home for Amos with someone who actually likes cats. Fortunately, he managed to find such a place on his own.



Amos
circa June 1, 1990-May 1, 2007

Merle Knotts, an MS patient, is pedaling 3,300 miles on a tricycle from Marietta, Georgia to Oak Harbor, Washington to attend his 50-year high school class reunion. He is soliciting tax deductible donations to the Georgia Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for the fight against Multiple Sclerosis and hopes to raise at least $5 per mile between now and the end of the trip.

http://www.merlesmilesforms.com

I'm posting this because Merle Knotts is an old long-distance friend and co-worker of mine. I didn't know until reading this that he has MS. His variety of multiple sclerosis has mostly caused sensory impairment and he is fortunate in having only a few months of motor impairment since his diagnosis in 1980. But you can read more about him at the site. What you won't read is that Merle is a terrific person and not just because he has two rebuilt electron microscopes in his basement and he wrote a complete data processing language for the typesetting industry that's still in use. This from a guy who started out as a music teacher and got into computers when he tried to program a series of synchronized Commodore64s to play complex musical arrangements. BTW, he's also a fellow liberal.

So give him a donation if you like or just leave a note of encouragement.

To all the volunteering corps
Who knocked on every voter's door
Your influence was strong
And so I dedicate this song
To all the volunteering corps

To all the folks who manned the phones
And heard some rants in angry tones
I want you all to know
We couldn't make it so
Without the volunteering corps

To all who wrote LTTEs
Against your local Repub sleaze
You really did your part
And won a place inside my heart
With all the volunteering corps

To all the union folks, I say,
Who worked long hours to win that day
There was lots of overtime
For which you didn't get a dime
But you surely made those bastards pay

To all who sent their money in
When it's tough to put food on your kin
The spots that money bought
Pushed back their ad onslaught
And helped to bring this epic win

While all the pundits spin and spout
It took you folks to get votes out
It wasn't just a wave
That made the Repubs cave
It was all the volunteering corps.


I did a little of this and a little of that this election but I know a lot of you folks did an awful lot more and I wanted to show my appreciation. What better way than a crude parody of an old earworm? Thank you, volunteers, for your energy and commitment and sacrifice. I salute you all.

There are many Christians that are beaten up by groups of anti-Christians. Sometimes they are even brutally murdered for their Christianity, even though Christianity is not evil and it was not even their choice to be Christian -- they were born that way. And some young Christians, when they become aware of their Christianity, are driven to suicide, because they fear that our anti-Christian society, and maybe even their own families, won't accept them, and because they are made to feel that somehow their Christianity is bad. Did you know that some states don't allow Christians to marry or adopt? People even ascribe to Christians a secret agenda of indoctrination, which is just plain crazy. Christians don't want to turn other people into Christians. They just want to live peaceful, productive lives and let non-Christians do the same. Let's stop this hatred of Christians cuz at it's heart the issue is not really about the freedom of speech, it's about violence against the innocent.

Corporations exist at the pleasure of the state that chartered them. Most states have provisions for revoking a corporation's charter if it acts illegally or against the public interest. One could make a case that any corporations that externalize excessively are acting against the public interest. Imagine if charter revocation were common. The threat of a such a penalty would move stockholders to either divest or push the management to reforms. It would not only clean up corporate activities but would force corporations to become more efficient and innovative.

Study says unconscious consideration yields most satisfying decisions.
by Helen Pearson

The best way to make a tough decision is to put your feet up and think about something else. So says an investigation of people shopping for cars, clothes and furniture.

Many people assume that the best way to tackle a difficult choice is to list the pros and cons and ponder them deeply. Others believe we do better to sleep on it, leaving the decision-making to our unconscious, or intuition.

A team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, carried out a series of studies to distinguish between these ideas. In one experiment, university students read a list of features about four different cars, such as facts on their mileage and legroom, before deciding which car to pick.

more...
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060213/ful...

Interesting article. I heard about this on NPR this evening and thought I'd post. You might be wondering why I posted in this group instead of, say, the Science Forum. Well, (a) I think the subject matter is appropriate cuz a lot of what is discussed here relates to what some folks might call the "unconscious" mind, (b) I don't hang out much in the Science Forum and (c) I went with my gut decision.

http://www.homeowatch.org/articles/jaroff....

The page is an article by Leon Jaroff that describes an attempt by a Belgium "skeptics" group to show how worthless homeopathic remedies are by consuming remedies derived from poisons and not expiring as a result:

Even more ominous, the solutions were labeled “30C.” This meant that one part of the original substance had been diluted in 100 parts of water or alcohol, shaken, and then diluted again at a ratio of 100 to one, a process that was repeated 30 times. According to homeopaths, each time a solution is shaken, the properties of the original substance are miraculously transferred to the water or alcohol solvent, and each cycle enhances or “dynamizes” the :properties of the solution. Shouldn’t that make the original poison even more potent? Apparently not. All of the 23 volunteers survived, but some who came by car had to wait before returning home because the alcohol in their homeopathic solutions had made them too dizzy to drive.

If you are familiar with homeopathy, you know that the remedies are not considered even remotely as toxic as the original substance. In fact, that is why Hahnemann diluted medicines to begin with. So this dog-and-pony show was nothing more than a "straw man" that involved as much deceit as any travelling medicine show. The "skeptics" group was counting on the ignorance of their audience. A real journalistic would've been careful to explain this obvious flaw in the demonstration yet Jaroff never mentions it.

I wrote this poem a while back, inspired by a caption of an online photo that depicted children surrounded by the devastation in the wake of Katrina. The caption noted how these children had been forced to grow up too soon and it got me to thinking...

Children of the Storms

I'm thinking of all the children
Who grew too old too fast
Who lost their only childhood
When the wind and rain swept past

Their parents wearing modest clothes
They could not slake their thirst
And were forced to sacrifice their bonds
By putting them on choppers first

Many are lost
and many have cried
Their homes are broken
And some have died

I'm thinking of all the children
Their hearts full of high ideals
To make the world a safer place
By curing all its ills

Their parents wearing uniforms
They could not keep them whole
Or channel their bright virtue
To achieve a righteous goal

Many are lost
and many have cried
Their bones are broken
And some have died

I'm thinking of all the children
Who haven't grown up still
Who thought to bring salvation
You need to hate and kill

Their parents wearing pinstripes
Made weapons from their sickles
Protecting them from God's own truth
And bribing them with nickels

Many are lost
and many have cried
Their souls are broken
And some have died

Now there comes a time to be a child
And a time to defend your land
And a time to grow in wisdom
And as an adult stand

But when the times are all mixed up
Then love cannot keep pace
And all the many storms that rise
Will make the world a dreadful place.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we're having to deal with it and will." Pres. George W. Bush

"And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff.

"In this catastrophic event, everything that we had pre-positioned and ready to go became overwhelmed immediately after the storm." FEMA Dir. Michael Brown.

"I hadn't ever drove a bus." Jabbar Gibson, a 20-year-old New Orleans man after commandeering an abandoned bus, picking up 70 evacuees and driving 13 hours to Houston.

The Breaking of the Spell

A hundred thousand summers past
There walked here then, on virgin ground,
A medicine man that burnt his herbs
And made a spell to which this place was bound.

To the earth, he scattered ashes
To the sun, he raised his hands
And said, "All are welcomed to this place
But none can say they own these lands."

I was born of this one's blessing,
Seeded by his long travails,
Nurtured by his sacrifices,
And delivered by his rhythmic wails

I am the purple mountains
And the golden fields of grain
I am the snow that cools you
And the gently falling rain

I am also brick and mortar
Both the concrete and its cracks
The asphalt pressed by rolling wheels
And the locomotive tracks

I am the sand and sudsy wave
The desert heat and clammy cavern
The thirsty, sun-baked flatland lot
The storm-tossed boat and smoky tavern

So I am not just a gaily colored cloth
That flutters on a granite dome
For I am mostly what all beaten souls
Have come to call their foster home.

But now I fear my story ends in quiet
As eaters of death begin to spread an evil mood
Where even love is slurred and honor is berated
So you must help me wake my sleeping brood

My children doze in night but in their day lit time
They fought for me and unseen foster kin
Related not by blood but by their courage
And the principle that hatred is a sin.

Wake the ones who fought machines of murder
Their ancient words where taken from their jaws
Their homes uprooted and their game depleted
Their children stolen by the men with laws

Wake the ones who were taken here in chains
Who picked the cotton and pulled the heavy rope
They marched to find a freedom unremembered
Within a world that gave them little hope

Wake the ones who were stoic and unswerving
Who left the cozy hearths of their own birth
To fight for something men are all deserving:
To be counted for their own God-given worth.

And wake the wretched refuse, who had traveled very far,
The souls in dusky mine-shafts and the farmers in the sun,
The laborers in factories and toilers of the sea,
Wake them all because their work is not completely done.

Wake them now because my health is fading
Wake them from their slumbers in your heart
Know them as you know yourself, my children,
And let them show you how to play your part.

The shaman's spell, I fear, is close to breaking
Foul shadows gather to conspire my end
They use my name to bind you to their crimes
And into slavery they'll lead you to descend

So I beg of you to stop this needless sleeping
And stand up for the ancient promise keeping.

My name, you know, is "Liberty."
Your courage is my cost.
Speak out and wake that courage now
Or I am surely lost.

I read How the Irish Saved Civilization a few years ago and it taught me that St. Patrick deserves a lot more respect than he is usually accorded. A former slave himself, he was the first known figure in Western history to condemn slavery for it's own sake. His conversion of the Irish to Christianity was more successful than previous attempts because he didn't insist the Irish give up many of their pagan ways as long as they treated each other well (ie. stopped murdering or enslaving each other) and did good works. Maybe this Patrician philosophy led to the "green martyrdom" and the preservation of ancient texts that were being destroyed on the European mainland by the morally strict Augustinians. Without this preservation, maybe there would have been no Renaissance or subsequent Enlightenment So maybe our modern world would be a poorer place without St. Patrick. What do you think?