Leftists and so-called "progressives" are really annoying. Some of them are obvious plants by the far-right or even Russia. The Russians or the GOP (aren't they same thing, now?) want to swing elections, so they convince "useful idiots" on the left that people like Ralph Nader or Jill Stein have a shot at being President, and that people like John Kerry or Hillary Clinton are "too conservative." Never mind the fact that their Republican opponents are even more conservative!
Problem is, these third-party candidates end up as spoilers only. If only 600 people in Florida who voted for Ralph Nader had voted for Gore, he would have won Florida and won the Presidency. 9/11 might never have happened - or our response to it might have been far different if it did.
If only half the Jill Stein votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had gone to Hillary, she would have won those States and won the Presidency. Imagine how the pandemic would have turned out instead - maybe more aid to people and less "PPP" loansgrants to "businesses." Maybe less horse dewormer and more vaccines. Maybe less appeasing Putin and a stronger Europe. It is an interesting thought.
Jill Stein, as I noted before, was photographed in Moscow during the election having dinner with Putin and Michael Flynn. No interference in our elections, nosiree!
Sadly, the electoral college makes it very easy to use third party candidates to swing electoral college votes in "swing States" where the margins are thin. And it isn't hard to convince useful idiots, particularly with the Internet, to throw away their votes. And I know this as I fell victim to it in 1979 when Carter was running for re-election. I was 19 at the time, and fell victim to the arguments that a third party candidate (John Anderson) could have a chance at winning. The margin of victory for Reagan in New York State was less than the number of votes John Anderson got. Ditto for Michigan, Connecticut, and a host of other States. It is possible that Carter may have won, but for third party candidate John Anderson and idiots like me.
It is interesting how third-party candidates end up swaying elections - in the opposite direction of the politics of the candidate! Of course, not just Republicans play this game - Bill Clinton was elected with the help of Ross Perot, who siphoned off just enough Bush voters to put Clinton in office.
You try to argue with these useful idiots (which was me, at age 19) and they don't get it. "The two-party system is no good!" they say, "The only way to change it is to vote for a third party!"
Interesting argument but dumb as a doorbell. You see, with the electoral college in particular, when you have three candidates running at the same time, two tend to be more closely aligned politically, than the other. This is not a theory, but a mathematical certainty. So you have Carter and Anderson being more aligned with each other and Reagan opposing. Kerry and Nader on the Left, Bush on the Right. Bush and Perot, Right and Clinton, Left. Hillary and Stein leaning Democrat, Trump leaning Republican (or so Republicans thought!). If you split the vote of one side of the political spectrum, the other side more easily wins.
The grand-daddy of this effect (well, at least a famous incident, I am sure there are more, worldwide) is the election of 1912. Teddy Roosevelt won the Presidency in 1858 and again, four years later. His protégée, Taft, ran in 1908, and won. But Roosevelt thought that Taft had betrayed his populist policies in favor of big business. So Roosevelt ran against Taft as an independent "Bull Moose Party" candidate and actually out-polled Taft. But, having split the Republican vote, Woodrow Wilson won, with fewer votes than the Taft and Roosevelt votes combined.
When you argue over who is more Republican, you end up with a Democrat, and vice-versa. Those who shout "RINO!" the loudest should take note. It used to be that Republicans closed ranks over doctrinal issues. Or as Bill Clinton put it, "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line!"
Again, this is not some wild theory, just basic mathematics - and history - and not up for debate. It isn't like the third party candidate represents some political ideology that runs perpendicular to the linear political spectrum, but rather further to the right of the rightist candidate or further to the left of the leftist candidate. The only exception to this rule might be in 1968, when George Wallace (an old South Democrat) ran distinctly to the right of Richard Nixon - but then again, those were the dying days of the "solid South" when the South was solidly Democratic, which was a legacy of the Civil War.
Some folks argue we should have a three-party or four-party system, and our European friends (well, the ignorant faction thereof) argue that since they do it, we can do it too! Nice Try. You see, our Democracy is older than theirs and not a Parliamentary Democracy like many European countries have. Over there, you elect representatives and they in turn elect a Prime Minister or other leader. In some countries there is a PM and a President, the latter being mostly ceremonial. They are different systems than we have. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different.
As a result, in many Parliamentary Democracies, alliances sometimes have to be made among the different parties to form a majority government - sometimes unsavory alliances, sometimes unstable alliances. There are downsides to having three or more parties, too.
The main point is, a three-or-more party system in our country wouldn't work (except as a spoiler system) unless we completely changed the structure of our government to be more like a Parliamentary Democracy, where elected leaders would choose the President, and not the voters. It may actually be a better system, but Americans, I think, would chafe at the idea of Congress choosing their President.
It would also require a complete overhaul of our Constitution - or a very serious Amendment to it. And to do that, Congress would have to vote on it, as well as the States. I am not sure any of the various stakeholders would find it to their advantage to change the system. And as I have noted (harped on) before, predicating your success in life on extreme social changes is never a good idea. They aren't likely to happen and chances are, if they did, the results would be disastrous.
Imagine the compromises needed to elect a President by Congress. As the experiences of our European friends illustrates, the possibility of electing a Trump-like creature are not less than in our system, but pretty much the same. We had the Donald, they had the Boris - or the Recep. Actually, Europe has its share of shitty leaders - as does Australia and Canada, for that matter (have you seen what is going on in Ontario these days?). So our lack of a viable third party isn't necessarily the problem - and a viable third party would likely be a Bull Moose (or Bull-something) and serve only to elect the opposition.
It is true, however, that when you vote for a third party you are not "throwing your vote away" but instead voting for the opposite party. Every vote for Jill Stein was a vote for Donald Trump. Every vote for Ralph Nader was a vote for George Bush. Every vote for Ross Perot was a vote for Bill Clinton.
And every vote for Donald Trump - if he runs as an independent in 2024 - will be a vote for Joe Biden or whoever is the Democratic nominee. Take note, Joe - and hope Trump runs when he loses the nomination to DeSantis!
Communal ownership of goods is one of the fundamental principles of Communism - and one of the major reasons it doesn't work. When everyone owns something, no one owns it, and as a result, it doesn't get taken care of, and there is a lot of wastage as a result. When farm collectives were tried in the Soviet Union, farmers would share the same tractor. Ivan would borrow the tractor, and, since it was Russian made, it would break. He would put it back in the barn and say nothing, and the next guy to borrow the tractor has to deal with it - and likely be accused of breaking it.
At the Parcheesi Club, I was asked to change the light bulbs and polish the Parcheesi tables. Light work, to be sure, but a funny thing - everyone who volunteers for this position quits after a year or two. Not a good sign.
I noticed a few things that disturbed me. The three main problems we had were
1. Hoarding disorder
2. People throwing things away that were of value, and
3. Kleptomania.
The hoarding was quite evident. I found a stash of dead light bulbs - incandescents and fluorescents, as well a a pile of broken light fixtures (that were contemporary, not historic relics or anything). Dead light bulbs are worth nothing - so why save them? I noted before that my parents, back in the early 1940's, had an apartment in Boston on the "Edison" DC system, and if you burned out a light bulb, you could take it back to the Edison company and they would give you a free one. Maybe that is where this habit came from. All I know is, my parents saved old light bulbs and it was annoying as fuck to try to replace a light bulb in our house, as you would go through a dozen of them, only to find they were all dead.
Other things were hoarded as well - cardboard boxes for example. Erma Bombeck once said, "Youth always assumes there will be a cardboard box when they need one. Old age doesn't want to take that chance." And the LoL's at the Parcheesi club are taking no chances. Problem is, scads of cardboard boxes are a fire hazard, particularly when they are broken down flat and then wedged behind the furnace. I kid you not about this. One friend of mine used to "save" old boxes and cardboard and wrapping materials and wedge them up in the rafters - where they could fall down into the Parcheesi Club Fondue Pot and start a conflagration.
So, over the years, I have been surreptitiously removing this cardboard detritus and tossing it in the dumpster. The last thing we need is to burn down the building. The light bulb thing was new to me, though, and I have been going through them and tossing them - with the goal (nearly reached) of going all-LED. Why keep even a good incandescent or florescent in this day and age?
There is other sorts of garbage laying about as well. I am careful to make sure it is garbage, though. Historical records are important (and indeed, the local museum will accept them for curation!) and various things that have a use and are still functional should be preserved. But a broken coffee maker or a table missing a leg is ready for the trash. Sadly, some people err on the side of caution, and as a result, we have jars of bent nails to deal with and burned-out light bulbs laying about.
Food hoarding is another problem. People bring snacks and beverages for the Parcheesi tournaments and they put the "leftovers" in the refrigerator, which, after a few weeks, turns into a science experiment. No one wants half-eaten sandwiches or half-drunk sodas. It should all go in the trash, lest it cause a food poisoning event. They put a sign on the refrigerator that it was to be cleaned out every Wednesday - but that amounted to little more than an unenforceable Popcorn Memo. The problem is, of course, is you never know what is being "saved" and for who. Beyond a day or two, it should be tossed!
On the opposite end of the spectrum are people who throw away everything, without thinking whether it is of some use or not. The funniest thing that happened was someone was going through the cleaning closet and said, "why do we have three vacuum cleaners? We don't need three vacuum cleaners! Let's keep the newest one and throw the others out!" So they tossed out an "old-fashioned" vacuum cleaner and kept the newest shiny plastic one.
Problem is (or was), that "old fashioned" vacuum cleaner was an industrial model that belonged to the cleaning service hired by the Parcheesi club (with no 1099!) and they got righteously pissed-off when they found out their $500 industrial vacuum cleaner was summarily tossed to the curb. The "modern" vacuum the club members decided to keep was a cheap plastic job. The Parcheesi club ended up buying the cleaning service a brand-new industrial vacuum. What a waste of money! Not only that, what a waste to throw two working vacuums away. (By the way, and I will address this below, the other two vacuums were tossed because they were missing accessories which I later found).
There is a fine line between hoarding junk and throwing away valuable, working appliances. The Parcheesi Club, for example, occupies a three-story building. Three vacuums, three stories - the problem solves itself. Put one of each on each floor and the members can use them to tidy up!
But it gets worse than that. The Parcheesi tables require a special tool to set them up and we put this tool on a chain mounted on a hook on the wall. Someone decides they need this tool for some other purpose and they take it and it is never seen again. Other times, I carefully organize the Parcheesi pieces in a nice little cabinet, only to come back a day later and find them scattered all over the place - with some missing.
Like I said, maybe four or five things. Squirreling away valuable parts is a form of information hoarding, and in Parcheesi Club, there are plenty of information hoarders. "Where is the key to the storage room?" "Oh, only Brenda knows where that is kept, you have to call her!" So you call and text and e-mail and no response because Brenda is out of town. And the Brendas of the world do this so that they have some sort of weird passive-aggressive "hold" on everyone else and can control things simply by making themselves unavailable.
You finally find the key, make copies, label them, and put them in the key box and next week, Brenda has taken them all and hidden them, yet again. I start to understand why the previous volunteers quit after a year. And by the way, there isn't just one Brenda - there are dozens of them - maybe more! Some no longer even play Parcheesi - they belong to the club only so they can hoard information.
Hot on the heels of squirreling away things, is outright theft. Sometimes it is a matter of misunderstanding. Parcheesi Club members are old and they forget things - some are halfway into Dementia (I am only 1/4 the way). Mark brings a commercial-grade cooking sheet of hors d'ouvres to the Parcheesi meet, and at the end of the night, someone took it and left behind their lame-ass WalMart substitute. Was it an accident (wife asks husband to "grab our cooking sheet!") or outright theft ("Hey, chance for a free upgrade!"). It only takes one or two kelptos to ruin the whole thing.
It is not that someone is stealing the cash out of the cigar box, or even stealing valuable Parcheesi boards or pieces - or even vacuum cleaners! It is just little things that go missing - little things that I guess some think won't be missed. Sometimes, they are the tiny parts you need to put together a Parcheesi table - or a special tool. People never steal the part you can buy at Home Depot - no, no, they take the reverse Imperial thread bolt with a Whitworth head. Good luck finding that!
Communal ownership of anything sucks - and is fraught with peril. That's why when I read one of these idiotic stories about "five Millenials go in together to buy a house!" I know how it will play out over time. Tim will play video games all day long while Jim is on an extension ladder cleaning the gutters. Lisa is out partying all the time, while Susan ends up washing all the dishes everyone else leaves in the sink. The house needs a new roof, but three out of five of the "owners" either don't want to pay or cannot afford to pay for the new roof. It is a nightmare.
So why do it? Well, in some instances, it makes sense. The Parcheesi club offers classes to teach people the nuances of the game (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced!). Some equipment is expensive to buy, and if you are new to the game, maybe you don't want to invest all that money before you figure out whether you want to do this or not. It is like the pottery business - there are plenty of brand-new kilns and wheels out there, purchased by folks who thought they were going to make pots, but never got around to it - or even got around to wiring up the kiln. Better off to join a guild and use their equipment until you decide whether it is worthwhile to build your own studio or not.
But it is interesting to witness how communal ownership works in real-life. There are signs and instructions taped on the walls, enunciating rules and regulations - and the dire consequences to people who fail to obey them! Of course, they are of little use, and the signs fade and fall down and not much changes. You just have to hope that the group has a sense of communal purpose and sticks together and doesn't get larger than Dunbar's number.
And yes, you will have to tolerate a little roughness along the edges. Someone will hoard garbage, someone else will throw things out that should be saved. And there will be theft and malfeasance - and information hoarding as well! But if you can keep the group cohesion together - which requires leadership, then maybe you can accomplish great things.
Ah... but that is another problem with Communism and Communal ownership. The leaders have to sacrifice for the good of the Commune, but are always tempted to line their own nest with perks, as we saw in Russia and China - special lanes for government limousines. People starve while the bureaucrats feast. Yes, even in Parcheesi club, this can occur. Years ago, some of the former leaders decided to bring Parcheesi club "upscale" and invited a world-famous Parcheesi champion to attend a special reception (which he agreed to do, and give a speech, for a fee). Government officials and local celebrities were also invited and they even hired a caterer! The repainted the Parcheesi room for the event! It was a wonderful formal night out for.... the leaders of the Parcheesi club. Ordinary members were not invited and indeed, not allowed to attend, other than some who agreed to pass hors d'ouvres for the event.
As a result the Parcheesi Club coffers were drained dry after the event was over and the leaders all resigned, since there was nothing left to do. Zil Limousines, indeed! Thank God they didn't try to pay themselves salaries! That would have been audit-bait for sure!
Which brings us to another problem with Communism and communal ownership. How did these people get elected to lead Parcheesi Club in the first place? Well, the problem is, no one wants to lead the place, as it is a lot of headaches (or perceived to be so) and many people feel it would be presumptuous for them to nominate themselves. For whatever reason, it is hard to get someone to lead such organizations.
Either you get someone who just wants to line their own nest (and that of their friends) or you get people who mean well. but just manage day-to-day operations and then throw it over the fence to the next guy. It is rare, in such organizations, to find someone who has a vision for the future of an organization, and the ability and will to lead it in that direction. That takes a lot of strength, integrity, and hard work. And sitting on the sidelines, sure as shit, will be some heckler who will criticize your every move, but offer no help or make no contribution of their own.
But hey, that's not a problem just limited to Communism - so-called Democracies suffer from the same effect, which is why we rarely end up with decent elected leaders and have people like "Our Miss Margie" Green instead. People get the government they deserve.
And yes, there are advantages to communal ownership, as well. When you combine a group of people of different talents together, they can work together and each according to his abilities and needs. Well, at least in theory. Problem is, everyone thinks they are the indispensable man, and their efforts are not appreciated. Worse yet, sometimes they are right, at least in part. In any of these sorts of organizations, you see a small group do the majority of the heavy lifting, and a whole lot along for the ride.
Overall, though, communal ownership of property is a less-than-ideal solution to anything. Even institutional ownership is a better idea, as at least an institution can enforce their rules about use of communal property. But private ownership ends up being more efficient, in most cases. Think about how well you treat your car (or should) - cleaning it, washing it, waxing it, changing the oil regularly and doing regular maintenance. Now think about a fleet vehicle - such as the phone company truck or a police car. In addition to their hard use, there is no one in the food chain who really cares for the vehicle the way a private owner would. Sure, an institutional owner like the Police Department or the phone company will do regular maintenance and wash it once in a while. But that pales in comparison to how many people will "baby" their car.
Yes, in theory, communal ownership and collectivism is more efficient than private ownership. But the reality of human nature is that some are going to exploit collective assets for their personal gain, while others end up doing the lion's share of donkey work to maintain the collective assets.
Owning things privately may be more costly, but results in all of the work benefiting the worker who is also the owner. Or, as my Italian friend once said, "In Italy, we have a saying, the best partnerships are an odd number of people, less than three!" He said this after extracting himself from a partnership where the partner did little work and just spent money instead. Share and share alike!
Of course, not everything can be done on your own. If everyone worked as a sole proprietor, nothing would get done. One large enterprise can do more than hundreds of small businesses - as Mao found out when he tried to get individual farmers to make pig iron in his "great leap forward."
The trick is, to manage that one large enterprise effectively. And self-interest is one way to insure that people work efficiently and that resources are properly managed.
The Parcheesi club is a 503(c)(3) organization, because in addition to putting on Parcheesi tournaments, they do volunteer work at schools and provide educational programs and training in the fine art of Parcheesi. Seems like a pretty basic deal, but all the LoL's (Little Old Ladies) got their panties twisted into a knot when they found out they were being audited by the IRS!
Surely they would all go to jail and have to join a gang for protection - and get tattoos! The end of the world is nigh!
It is funny, because we used to live in the DC area and our friends all worked for the "Gub-ment" - if not for the "three letter agencies" then for something like DoJ or IRS. My IRS friends told me that their greatest weapons were (1) withholding and (2) the irrational fear of the IRS. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Withholding is important, because if Johnny Lunchbucket never paid into the system during the year, he would be shocked, come April 15th, to find out he owed thousands in taxes (mostly to fund his own Social Security and Medicare in retirement) and he just wouldn't have the money to pay it. So he would have to pay penalties and late fees, or take out a loan. Withholding (and the so-called "Payroll Tax") pre-pays these taxes and at the end of the year, it is all balanced out and most people get a small refund.
I digress, but for self-employed people, you are supposed to pay "Estimated Taxes" quarterly or even monthly. And yes, they get all pissy if you don't pay throughout the year. Ask me how I know this. As an employer, you have to pay that withholding into the system every month as well, and "borrowing" from your employee's withholding is a very, very bad idea. The IRS gets really, really pissy if you do that. It is like borrowing from a loan shark - don't do that either!
The fear of the IRS is what keeps people in line. Horror stories about being audited are passed around the cracker barrel and as a result, people are afraid of the IRS - unnaturally. Ironically, the people most afraid of the IRS are middle-class wage earners whose taxes could be calculated on the back of an envelope. They hear these fear stories and have this nagging fear in the back of their minds that they somehow filled out the forms wrong, and their spouse will have to visit them weekends in San Quentin or something.
This is not to say you should take taxes lightly, but to understand them. And understanding taxes includes understanding how they are processed and what is kicked out by the computers as audit bait.
If you run a business or are self-employed, you have to file a tax return, and you list all your income as well as your expenses, on Schedule C. You add up all your income and then subtract your expenses and come up with a net income number, which is what you pay taxes on.
If someone pays you a fee, say for Patent services, they generally issue you a form 1099 at the end of the year, saying how much they paid you over that year. They also send a copy to the IRS. In order for them to declare your bills as "business expenses" they have to file a 1099 for any amount over a certain number (say, $600 - it changes over the years, consult a tax advisor for current amounts). Similarly, as a business owner yourself, you have to issue 1099 forms to contractors you pay, for example, your Patent searcher or Patent draftsman.
So you see, there is this interlocking web of 1099 forms. And if a customer issues a 1099 to me and I fail to report that income on my Schedule C, well, the computer can detect this rather easily. Similarly, if my client is deducting my fees as a business expense, they damn well better issue a 1099. It creates a closed-loop system for the IRS, as deductions made by one business are offset by corresponding income declarations by another business.
One sure way to get audited is to not report income on your schedule C, particularly if a 1099 form has been issued to you. Now even then, the consequences might not be so dramatic. I recall one year, I forgot to put a 1099-INT form (interest income) on my Schedule B. The amount was not that great, and they simply amended the return for me, sent me a notice to that effect, and reduced my refund by a small amount. IRS Agents are not the enemy - they are just people like you and me, trying to do a difficult job.
The computer also kicks it out if you declare someone's fees as a deduction, but fail to issue them a 1099. Now again, this applies to contractors you hire. You buy a box of paper from Staples, you don't need a 1099 for that - merely to keep the receipt for seven years. If you hire the neighbor boy to wash the windows of your office, you need not issue him a 1099 unless he is paid more than $600 (or whatever this year's cutoff limit is).
The Parcheesi club stepped in the dogshit by not issuing a 1099 for their cleaning contractor, who vacuums the floors and wipes down the Parcheesi tables. They paid them well over $600 for the year and claimed it as a deduction, but for some reason felt they didn't need to issue 1099 forms.
The computer kicks this out. It is not a matter of a human even getting involved. The scale is not balanced. The income in Column A is not balanced by deduction in Column B. No word on whether the cleaning contractor declared the income - they would be audited too, if they failed to declare income. And by the way, on a scale of 1 to 10, failing to declare income is an 11.
Yes, you can go to jail for tax evasion, but it has to be pretty substantial and intentional. Failing to report income or getting involved in sketchy tax-avoidance schemes can bring about criminal charges. Taking home a box of paper clips from your company probably isn't quite at that level of malfeasance. Declaring personal items such as girdles as business expenses, is - ask Leona Helmsley about that!
So, a newly minted IRS agent is on the case and going over the books and asking all sorts of silly questions. The Club hires a lawyer and an accountant to handle these things, and it is doubtful there will by much in the way of taxes, fines, or late fees due. The major hassle or expense is whether they have to file amended returns for the last seven years as well as retroactive 1099 forms.
A similar issue has been bugging me over Mark's pottery sales. The Arts Association allows members to sell items in the "shop" attached to the gallery and the Association takes a 25% cut - which in the world of art is considered very generous. They have never issued any 1099 forms to artists, even though many sell hundreds or even thousands of dollars of art per year.
This is where it gets weird. You see, the IRS gets antsy about "hobby businesses" which I discussed before. You decide to restore old cars and declare it a "business" even though you lose money every year and the cars you restore are just cars you collect and drive. After five years of declaring losses and never showing any income you will get audited and the IRS will claim you are running a "hobby business" and trying to deduct what are actually personal expenses as business losses.
My Mother went through this with her bookstore - which rarely showed a profit. She was incensed that the IRS Agent made noises about a "hobby business" which she took as a personal insult rather than a technical term for a tax concept. Lesson learned: They showed a profit every few years and the IRS left them alone. This is not to say you can take a real hobby and deduct it, only that for a real business, you can't just keep taking losses forever and not expect to be audited.
Since the Arts Association does't issue a 1099, we don't declare it as income. Why? Because the expenses in making pottery are not offset by the income from the sales - by a long shot! We spend close to $30,000 on the studio. A new Kiln costs thousands. The various tools, pottery wheels, slab roller, spray gun, compressor, spray booth, etc. costs thousands as well. We could declare that small sales income, but it would be blown away by the cumulative expenses - and we would be showing a loss for every year for a decade or more.
But then the IRS would say "hobby business" and deny the loss!
But if the Arts Association did start issuing form 1099's then I would have to declare this on Schedule C and either pay tax on the gross amount, or itemize our deductions for clay, tools, materials, and of course, depreciate the cost of the building, the kiln, and the other tools of the trade. And again, we would show a loss, which would trigger an audit - Catch-22!
This is one reason why I have logged every expense Mr. See has made for his pottery hobby on Quickbooks, under the category "Pottery." If the IRS comes a-calling, I can quickly show them a list of expenses that far outweighs the sales income.
So why do amateur potters sell their pots? "It pays for the clay" they say (hey!). Unless you are a full-time professional potter (they do exist), chances are, you aren't making money by selling your pots. And the same is true for a lot of artists out there - and explains why art is often quite expensive, particularly for us middle-class people. While "Collector" art might sell for millions at auction, lesser pieces might still command thousands - which most people still can't afford. But in order for an artist to make any money at art, they have to charge pretty steep prices - that few can afford to pay.
Now you know why they call them "Starving Artists!"
The IRS audit at the Parcheesi club will eventually blow over and the nervous LoL's will calm down and change their panties. It isn't quite the end of the world, Katy-Bell! as Booley would say.
But if you want to avoid an audit, issue a 1099 for contractors whose invoices you are deducting from your income!
UPDATE: A reader asks, "We hire a cleaning service for our house. Do we need to file a form 1099 for them?
Answer, usually NO, unless you plan on deducting that as some sort of business expense (a pro rata portion perhaps, for your home office - but consult your tax advisor as it sounds like audit-bait to me!). But things you buy and people you pay for personal use are usually not tax deductible and thus no 1099 is required. Think of it as a balanced scale, with the 1099 form on one side, equaling a deduction on the other side. You can't have one without the other. Well, you can have a deduction without a 1099, but... damn!
In this age of Tick-Tock influencers, truth has become more and more fluid. People vie for views and hits and clicks as "influencers" online. If you can get one video to "go viral" you can end up having a second income stream - or maybe a primary one. We like to watch this woodworking guy as we find his videos interesting and oddly calming, even though I have zero interest in becoming a woodworker. Apparently one of his videos "went viral" and now he makes more money from YouTube than from making tables and desks. For now, anyway. These Internet channels seem to have a story arc - eventually the mob moves on to something else, particularly when the content provider starts phoning it in. But I digress....
A reader sent me this link to an outrage story and I smell mendacity. The story is so outrageous that you have to wonder if it is true. There is no real evidence (that I can find) other than a photo of a girl sitting on a car, holding an unrecognizable piece of paper. I Googled some search terms and find the same story, repeated verbatim, on many other sites as well - all of them being sketchy sorts of sites that publish clickbait and outrage.
The story? The young lady "bought" a 25 year old Ford Escort, which on a good day might be worth $500, for $289 a month for 84 months, which means over eight years she would pay over $24,000 for the car. Outrageous!
The story is designed to get you outraged, no matter if you are right or left. You can almost predict, word-for-word, what sort of responses you would hear from the mouthpieces for each end of the political spectrum.
From a Tucker Carlson type:
"This young lady can afford to buy designer 'distressed' jeans and pay for hair extensions, but can't scrape together a few hundred dollars to buy a 25-year-old car! This is a failure of our American educational system, which would rather put more emphasis on Critical Race Theory, Wokeism, and Political Correctness, than basic math and reading skills! If she only knew how compound interest worked, she would never have signed this rotten deal! This is an outrage! How can this happen in America?"
From a Rachael Maddow type:
"Another example of how the corporations are screwing the underprivileged! Because her credit score is so low, this is the only financing offered to her! She has no other choice! Privileged people are poor-shaming her for taking the only option she has! We should have laws in place making low-interest loans available to the very poor! This is an outrage! How can this happen in America?"
As you can see, there is plenty of "red meat" in a sketchy story like this, for people of any political persuasion to latch onto. I was skeptical of the story from the get-go because it had all the hallmarks of an outrage story:
There is no evidence presented to back up the claims, nor any way to verify what actually happened. The "source" of the story is an Instagram posting from "raphouse" and it is more of a meme than anything else. This didn't stop MSN from picking it up, reporting the "controversy" rather than the story itself. These things bootstrap themselves.
The story appears all over the Internet, word-for-word, cut-and-pasted, copypasta. There is no third-party source, other than the "meme" cited above. No one bothers to ask whether it is true or not, although some say things like, "I doesn't sound real, but.... [launches into outrage scenario]"
The story immediately triggers outrage when you read it, because it is so over-the-top.
You can be outraged by the story from different political angles.
Do shitty deals exist in this world? You betcha! And sub-prime lending for auto loans is one area where shitty deals abound. People are desperate for a car - any car - and will sign their life away to get one. Problem is, they are not sophisticated with money or with technology, and the end results are predictable.
Oddly enough, the very poor often buy the most impractical cars, too. You would think that if your credit score was in the trash and you had little money to spend, you would seek out a sturdy economy sedan, much as my friend did. Sadly, you see status craving the worst among the very poor. So a single Mother working a low-wage job decides to buy a gas-hog Suburban of all things, and then complain about how expensive it is to own. Ditto for esoteric German cars, sports cars, convertibles, and so on. If you are poor, you got no business buying bling cars (or buying crap cars and blinging them out). Well, you can of course, but that is how the poor stay poor - and that gets no sympathy from me.
Years ago, I hired a young woman to work for me. She couldn't wait to get that first "pay stub" so she could go out and buy a brand new car. Rather than save up money or start out with a used car, she bought a cheap economy car brand-new and paid through the nose for insurance. She "loaned" the car to her boyfriend (who of course, was unemployed) and he returned it with half the front fender torn off. That was the first week.
I tried to dissuade her from buying a brand-new car and I let her know that there was no way I could guarantee she would be employed throughout the term of the loan (I was downsizing at the time). She was so obsessed with showing off that she had "made it" and had a brand-new car (that stays brand-new for one week!) that she signed her life away.
There are people out there so delusional that they have no understanding of how money works. Even a meth head will show up at a car dealer, with no money, no job, and no credit, and expect to be able to buy a brand-new car.
And yes, shady car dealers (are there any other kind?) offer crappy deals to low-income people, as I noted before. Monster Motors is still in business, but I noticed when we drove buy there the other day they had few new cars on their lot (it is, or was, a Toyota dealership). They seemed to be pushing a lot of used cars. Mark and I went there once to look at a truck, but they won't let you onto the lot unless escorted by a salesman, and then only after they have run your credit score. Tellingly, their reviews on Yelp are almost all 1-star. To get an "average" score of 2.0 you have to really work at it.
Funny, too, because a Toyota dealership is a license to print money, and instead of going after volume sales, they decided to go after sub-prime borrowers and tack on outrageous fees ($3000 for the "Monster protection package") and sell fewer vehicles. I wonder if Toyota is starving them of cars or something. As I noted before, sometimes you have to drive a little to a larger dealership that is willing to deal and be willing to walk away from crappy deals rather than fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and try to "rescue" a shitty deal.
And yea, we used to have laws against such shitty deals. You sign a shitty deal, you pay the stupidity tax. And guess who votes for the candidates who promise to repeal "onerous government regulations" that used to outlaw such shitty deals? Yup - the very same people who pay the stupidity tax the most.
Assuming this story was legit (and that's a big assumption) or that someone else signed a shitty deal like this but not so outrageous, why would a finance company loan the money? Well, they make back the purchase price (that they paid for the car) in the first few months or so. So if the car goes a year without a major breakdown and the consumer continues to pay, they get their money back - and then some. Default and repossession is all but assured, as the car has some major mechanical malfunction and the consumer stops making payments on the car. It probably isn't even worth repossessing at that point. If the customer is smart, they declare bankruptcy, but even then, the balance of the loan might be"worked out" over time and it is likely that given the onerous interest rates and long term of the loan, that very little of the principal was paid off, even after two years.
But that's not the point. The point is we are supposed to be outraged by it all - the story isn't likely true, it is just click-bait designed to troll us, so they get clicks and get revenue. And this is true not just for plainly outrageous (and sketchy) stories like this, but for almost everything you see on the Internet.
And such stories existed long before the Internet. 60 Minutes and other "news" programs liked to put up stories about shady operators operating out of storefronts in suburban Miami. The 60 Minutes "news team" would show up with a camera, shouting, "Sir, we have some questions about your burial insurance scam aimed at the elderly!" and the man would put his hand over the camera lens and say "No comment!" Ratings were boffo!
Of course, none of these news programs would ever dream of going after their advertisers. Small-time scam operators or sleazy used car dealers were fair game. Major corporations? Rarely, if ever. Maybe back in the day, they went after Ford for the Pinto and GM for "side-saddle" gas tanks or Suzuki for the Samurai (in all three cases, the "investigative reporters" hired people who did doctored demonstrations). But today? It would be suicide to go after your own advertisers, unless of course, you were trying to blackmail them into advertising on your channel.
Oh, right, that never happens.
So, what's the answer? Well, there probably isn't one, as we see these "outrage" stories and click on them, which perpetuates these types of stories. Even if you click on it to debunk it or to confirm your suspicion that it is click-bait, you clicked on it. These bastards always win, it seems.
Lately, however, it seems that in order to get hits, people have to crank up the "outrage meter" all the way to 11 in order to get a response, as we are so inured to outrage at this point. Tick-Tockers stage "pranks" designed not to get you to laugh, but to get you outraged. In a famous one recently, a "prankster" steals someone's luggage at the airport and then when the owner gets upset, accuses them of being racist. It was probably all staged - including the alleged "victim" involved. But it is disturbing that people are thinking that public space and public decency is something to be exploited for Tick-Tock points or whatever. It makes you not want to go out in public.
Maybe that's the point.
But how to shut this down remains to be seen. Some want to ban Tick-Tock, but that just shuts down one channel among many. "Influencers" would simply move to Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or whatever, if they are not already cross-posting to all these outlets.
Social Media serves one master - the almighty dollar, not us!
First off, sorry not to post lately - I took a short break and went on a camping trip. More blog fodder. Why do so many small businesses such as campgrounds, fail to invest in infrastructure and instead take as much cash out of the business as they can and use it to buy depreciating assets like useless monster trucks, jet skis, and four-wheelers? I am not impressed when the owner of a campground comes roaring up in a $30,000 four-wheeler, but won't bother to fix the broken sink in the restroom. One represents an squandering of capital, the other an investment in an ongoing concern. You let the business fall apart and eventually people stop coming and it is worth nothing.
But I digress.
It seems in recent times, the world has gone insane due to social media. Basic concepts that 50 years ago we had all agreed upon, have been thrown out the window. You know, things like "Communism doesn't work because... humans" or "Nazism isn't just a bad idea, it is a horrific one" or perhaps "Racism and antisemitism are just plain wrong."
We thought these basic problems were solved, particularly after he had vivid demonstrations in real-life to teach us. But perhaps a new generation has come up, taught that all of that is ancient history. When I was a kid, they showed old films from World War I, with the Kaiser marching at a rapid clip - because the frame rate of hand-cranked movie cameras was slower and when played back at the "modern" 24 frames-per-second, so everyone in those "olde timey" films looked silly marching along at 1.5 normal speed.
It was pretty grainy color, too.
Of course, today, you can watch those same films on YouTube, frame-rate corrected and even colorized and it is startling how "real" it looks today. But old Black-and-white films of World War II make them seem like ancient history. Maybe they have colorized those as well - most I see are still B&W perhaps as an editorial choice to make it look like "ancient history."
When I grew up, we didn't play Cowboys and Indians, but Nazis and G.I.'s - as we had some old military equipment my Dad brought home from the war, including a real Nazi helmet from El Alamein with a neat bullet or grenade hole in it (cool!). The Nazis always lost. So World War II seemed like recent history. Today, I have friends down the street who were born in a Nazi work camp. But the WW II generation is slipping off the mortal coil rather rapidly and the lessons learned in that era are fading quickly as well.
It seems we forget history pretty quickly. We forgot all about Vietnam when we invaded Iraq. Putin forgot all about Afghanistan when he invaded Ukraine. Sadly, no one really cares or remembers what happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Maybe we have become inured to violence and degradation. Or maybe, as I speculated before, human beings just go nuts every so often and start killing each other. I hope to be out of town when that happens.
I mentioned before - and it is no original idea of mine - that each new type of media seems to generate this type of cognitive dissonance. Whether it is the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, television, the internet, or social media, people don't seem to be able to handle these new forms of communication - at least at first. And at first, it seems people are willing to believe almost anything that comes from this newfangled form of media.
I noted before that in the Revolutionary War era right up through the Civil War, pamphleteering was all the rage. People would publish "anonymous" pamphlets. Often, these pamphlets were not unlike the type of "news" put out by Infowars or Tucker Carlson. The publishers published over-the-top outright lies about their opponents but like today, didn't expect people to take it too seriously - after all, it is just like political humor and can't you take a joke, bro?
So they put out pamphlets about Lincoln saying horrible things about him. Maybe most people took that sort of thing with a grain of salt, but I am sure some others (particularly the intellectually challenged) took it to heart, particularly if it aligned with their preconceived notions about the world. And even those who don't believe the B.S. are aware of it, like background noise. Say, maybe there is something to this "Hunter Biden's Laptop" thing, although like Trump Indictments, it seems to waver and disappear into the ether whenever you try to reach out and hold it concretely.
Over time, though, I think people became more skeptical of print media. The newspaper magnates were know to have biased views and you bought a paper based on whether its views jibed with yours - which is why even small cities had two, three, or more hometown newspapers. But people were aware of "Yellow Journalism" and sensationalism and tabloid journalism. You don't read the New York Post to be informed, you read it for entertainment value. So the power of print may have faded away over time. Probably the fact no one reads anymore added to its demise.
Which brings us to things like radio and television. Again, we see the rise of the great dictators following the popularization of radio. David Sarnoff, a young Russian immigrant, took radio from is nascent two-way form (like the CB radio of the 1970s) and invented broad-casting and the concept of the nationwide network. One transmitter, many receivers. One voice, many listeners. Audio communication spoon-feeds ideas to people at a rate determined by the speaker, not the listener. Unlike print, you can't skim or skip over pages to cut to the chase. And this is why I don't listen to "podcasts" - they are a bunch of hooey. You try to listen to one, hoping to get to "the good part" but they just blather on, apparently loving to hear their own voices, and you keep listening, hoping for that hit of dopamine.
I mentioned before that we crossed Kansas once and the only radio was Rush Limbaugh on AM. He kept talking about how he was going to say all this great stuff but never got around to saying it. He was talking about talking. Talking but not saying anything. We turned it off. He was social media before social media - people kept listening hoping for a hit of dopamine. Or maybe they could call in and get on the air and say, "Mega-dittos, Rush!"
Television of course amplified the effect of radio. You can edit any piece of video to show what you want to show - often just by clipping off the start and end points. Want to show an example of "Police Brutality?" You just take the video and cut off the beginning part where the "perp" argues with the police, reaches for an object, tries to wrestle with the cops and makes a grab for a cop's gun. You leave in the part where he is slammed to the ground and then add captions saying he was a good "kid" (age 30) and was just walking his dog or whatever. This is not to say police brutality doesn't exist - it does. But you can manufacture a controversy (and a lawsuit) with a cleverly edited video. And since most bystanders don't start recording until shit has already gone down, half the editing is done by default.
Video can create a false narrative. Yet we believe (or believed) that it would do the opposite - expose the truth and make everyone agree on what happened and see reason. I guess people felt the same way about radio, until people like Father Coughlin arrived on the radio. Funny thing, he started spewing a lot of nonsense toward the end of his career, including antisemitism and they "canceled" him. Nothing old is ever new again.
And I suppose when print first came out, you saw everything in "black and white" and thought that would create a truth that everyone would agree on - writings would teach everyone the truth and superstition, rumor, and conspiracy theories would melt away. Yet, printings like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kampf illustrated that lies had long legs on them - perhaps longer than the truth.
So it was with the Internet. We thought this great new form of media would liberate us, and it ended up enslaving us. We have access to the greatest database in the history of mankind, and yet we debase ourselves by wallowing in the worst sort of dreck - conspiracy theories, lies, outright lies, innuendo, gossip, and speculation. Send Nudes!
Social Media seemed at first to be a friendly thing. Indeed, they talked about "friending" people, right off the bat! So you would hook up with family and friends and communicate on a daily even hourly basis. And we realized very quickly why it was better to see and meet people only occasionally. It wasn't helpful to know what all your friends and family members were thinking, doing, eating, or whatever, 24 hours of the day. Facebook was bad enough, Twitter was even worse, as it reduced "Social Networking" to bathroom stall graffiti.
I think a lot of people saw through this right away. And over time, I think more and more people will as well. The younger generation - the reviled Millennials and Generation-Z, were born into this shit, pretty much. These are people who got their first smart phone in Kindergarten. They learn early on, that not much you read on that little glowing box is actually true.
As a kid, I thought this was an institution, not something novel.
I was raised on television. Saturday morning cartoons, with a bowl of Captain Crunch, was a weekly ritual in our house (that and Dad grousing that we were rotting our brains out and would go blind sitting so close to the set and why didn't we go outside and get some fresh air and play?). I didn't realize at the time that it was a recent invention in 1967 when I was seven years old. Tje advertisements were all aimed at me, and I begged and screamed to get my parents to buy the things advertised on television.
And I realized that the television lied to me. One incident in particular still sticks with me today. Chocolate Quik had an ad where they said it made "little chocolate explosions!" in your milk - accompanied by a doctored film showing just that - the amusement of a boy nearby. I wanted exploding chocolate milk too! My mother said it was just fake, but I insisted - and maybe she gave in realizing it was a teaching moment. And sure enough, when you put two spoonfuls of the vile chocolate powder in the milk, it just sank to the bottom, like sludge. Maybe it was defective? I really wanted to believe! We all do.
It seems a lot of people today are still raging true-believers, too. They watch television or look at social media and swallow every sort of nonsense, hook, line, and sinker. The commercial stuff is bad enough - it just empties their pockets. But the "social" in social media has devolved into social warfare, where people are encouraged not to just disagree with their neighbors but hate them and perhaps go to war with them.
And maybe the commercial part isn't just emptying their pockets. A 40-something man loses a chunk of money on speculative investments he read about online. Rather than have a Chocolate Quik moment and realize they have been lied to, he doubles-down his bet by blaming his downfall on social issues. Transgender Jews formed a cabal to steal his money! Bring down the social structure! Democracy is no longer worth saving! It is appealing to believe that nothing bad that ever happens to you in your life is remotely your fault.
We have lost an entire generation, it seems, to social media. And it isn't that they have gone down one rabbit hole, but a plethora of them. Sure, the far-right with its neo-Nazi, antisemtic, white supremacy, MAGA election-denying, anti-vaxxing, conspiracy theory nonsense is the worst of it - and seems to draw in the largest segment of lost souls. But there are similar bottomless cubby-holes online for Al-Qaeda wanna-bees or Brides of ISIS. There are some younger people who, after making a slew of bad choices in life (student loans, shitty grades, pointless degrees, crappy jobs, low work effort, drug use, etc.) decide that only a Communist takeover of the world would make their life complete. Like I said, it is appealing to believe that nothing bad that ever happens to you in your life is remotely your fault.
It is also appealing to be part of a "movement" even if the movement isn't moving you anywhere. People like to subsume themselves to a greater cause - making a noble sacrifice for their country, their God, or their Führer. "There are greater issues at stake!" the stoner living in Mother's basement says between bong hits. Maybe he'll take the AR-15 his Uncle bought him and hitch a ride to Kenosha this weekend.
I know this because I met many such dudes (and they are usually male) in my lifetime, particularly when I was younger. These are people who could solve all the world's problems but couldn't balance their own checkbooks. Sounds a lot like Lenin and Trotsky! Maybe there is a pattern here - if you can't get your own shit together, then go out and save the world. Externalize.
But as I noted before, the greatest deed you can do as a human being and as a part of a civilization is to indeed look after your own needs first. It is not "selfish" but selfless, as you are not creating a burden to the rest of society. Believe me, the world has enough agitators and "Community Organizers" to spare. We don't need another one. If people looked after their own shit, well, the world would be a better place and oddly enough, a lot of our social "problems" would be solved. What creates social problems is when people give up and blame their problems on "society" - which is an easy cop-out.
The question remains as to whether the effect of Social Media is temporary or permanent. It is hard to say - the printing press was invented in 1436, but of course, there was not a lot of printed matter to go around as not a lot of people could read at the time. It wasn't until education became more universal that printed matter had more of an impact. It isn't just a coincidence that slave States forbid teaching slaves how to read. Powerful stuff, that printer's ink - intoxicating, too.
Each new advance in media seems to occur on a shorter and shorter cycle, and I think our infatuation and disassociation created by each form of media is shorter as well. There are still some hardcore people out there on Facebook who are willing to believe whatever "Meme" comes down the pike - and I doubt they will ever change. But many of them are quite old as well.
For a lot of people, the insurrection of January 6th was Chocolate Quik moment. I noted before some friends of mine discreetly removed their Trump yard sign that day. A lot of people who were willing to "look the other way" turned away in disgust after that event. Maybe "owning the libs" was a fun game to play, but overthrowing the government was a step too far. Political humor suddenly didn't seem so funny, particularly when it was mean-spirited or encouraged violence.
But there are still hard-core adherents, of course, Someone had to vote for "Our Miss Margie" Green or Lara Boobert. People hang on every word of Ms. AOC - "Did you just hear what she said about DeSantis? She destroyed him!" - or some such drivel, reducing the governing of our nation to professional wrestling match trash-talking.
Time will tell, but I am not sure that "culture wars" are enough to boost DeSantis or the GOP in general into office. The results of the last election cycle should be enough to demonstrate that. What little power the GOP has has been squandered with pointless grandstanding "investigations" or at a State level, introducing ludicrous "bills" most of which never see the light of day, but disturbingly a few actually do.
I think, by 2024, people will be less concerned with drag shows (which are on television for chrissake!) and punishing Disney, than with bread-and-butter economic issues. That is, of course, unless the GOP can successfully blame the cratering economy on drag queens.
And you know what? Some folks in America would believe that!
