The big news today: Taxes are too complicated and N. Korea is a serious threat

NPR is on my radio all day so I hear the same news reports over and over. Going by NPR and cartoonists, including Dilbert, taxes are incredibly, unnecessarily complex and impossible to understand. For normal Americans whose income comes from wages, the 90%, taxes aren’t very complicated and tax prep programs make them even easier. My income last year included wages, restricted stock options, a company paid move, and a few deductions. Using a familiar tax prep program, my taxes took maybe an hour to prepare. It’s arithmetic and I didn’t do the calculations.  The problem isn’t a complex tax code, but an unfair one – sure wish news coverage focused on the inequalities of taxes (investments taxed lower than wages, etc.) rather than supposed complexities.

Fun fact: What president orchestrated the biggest American tax cut and when? LBJ and the Democratic Congress in 1964. Look it up

News two, North Korea and a nuclear threat. Umberto Eco (The Prague Cemetery) claims every country needs an enemy. That’s seems accurate for the USA, and every American enemy lately has had an unstable, psychotic leader with nuclear weapons. (The unstable part is important because a rational leader would never attack the most aggressive military of the past 100 years.) So we’ve heard this before about the leaders of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, the Philipines, Chile, Congo, Vietnam.  </end of rant>