Saturday, October 29, 2011

How Creepy Is Christmas?

It's September 21th, 2011 - technically the first day of autumn. I say technically because the temperature is 91, the humidity is the reverse of that number at 19, the trees are full of leaves and no one is even talking turkey day. Little did I realize what horrors awaited me.

I'm at my local Costco store, doing my usual monthly run to stock up on consumables. My wife and I are strolling down one of four main lanes toward the back where they keep the food when my wife comes to a halt, a look of puzzlement on her face. The puzzlement is soon replaced by a growing realization that something is NOT RIGHT. Fear, terror and incomprehension war together as the awful, awful truth dawns.

"Oh my fucking god! Is that CHRISTMAS SHIT ALREADY?" she exclaims.

(Note: My wife spent a lot of years in the Navy. You get used to it from her. Seems somehow natural for her to talk that way, actually.)

What it's called is Christmas Creep.

Christmas Creep is the phenomenon of merchants to try to extend the Christmas shopping season by bringing out the wrapping and tinsel and plastic nativity scenes they couldn't sell last year earlier and earlier each successive year. It's purely secular and has nothing to do with religion. It also has everything to do with the bottom line.

While gift giving has been a long-standing tradition for all faiths, and the season (the winter solstice or the shortest day of the year) a time of celebration and feasting (and other actual atrocities which would make most people blanch), the whole commercialization of Christmas actually started in 1931 when the Coca Cola company commissioned a swiss ad agency to create a "Santa Claus" wearing a coke-emblem-red suit drinking a Coke to advertise their product.

The concept of Santa Claus goes back a long way, thanks in part to Christmas. But the idea of Christmas as a time to celebrate the birth of Christ was definitely contrived by the Catholic Church in an effort to bring pagans into the flock.

The Saturnalia was a Roman convention wherein the law was suspended for a week before the solstice. A single person from each village would be picked to fulfill the role of "enemy of Rome" and the embodiment of all that was bad. They were over-fed and forced to drink too much and tormented among much debauchery and lawlessness within the people. At the end of this celebration, this poor slob would be killed and the proceedings would be declared good since all lawlessness, bad behavior and whatnot went with him (or her) for a year. While over time they did away witl killing people, the general debauchery and lawlessness (or a suspension of morals - which in some places meant the same thing) continued. It was an immensely popular thing to do.

The Catholic church, seeing how beloved this celebration was, decided to call the solstice the day Christ was born. Originally they said it was on the 25, which several hundred years ago during the 4th century was when the winter solstice usually fell. Precession caused by the rotation of the earth has changed that to between the 20th and 22nd of December, usually on the 21st, so the day of "Christmas" and the solstice are no longer the same. But the celebrations continued and the Catholic church wanted new converts, so they came up with this excuse to keep a "time of celebration" in order to get them.

In consequence of this decision, Christmas time was also a time of when Jews were often abused in some way. In Rome, the pope was often watching in approval. This practice of abusing Jews during the Roman Saturnalia continued through the 19th Century.

This isn't exactly the "reason for the season".

Now, I talked about all this before some time ago, but that was more about religious use of public lands. The point is, without the Catholic church deciding that co-opting Saturnalia would be a great way to get more pagans, we'd probably not have much in the way of gift -giving as a seasonal thing. But it took an ad agency to popularize it.

Merchants never used to rev up for the Christmas season. Most of them were looking forward to the break. But after 1931, and the revamped Santa Claus born from the mind of an ad agency, the idea of a "Christmas shopping season" came into being. It was heavily promoted, of course, because selling things is what businesses do. If they could come up with an excuse to create this shopping season to drive up sales, then they would.

And they did.

The term "Black Thursday" was coined, originally, for the October 24th day in 1929 when the stock market crashed. The term "Black Friday" was coined to indicated the day after Thanksgiving when, usually for the year, the merchants broke even. All of the sales from that point on turned a profit for them.

So naturally, they wanted MORE profit, and the Christmas Shopping Season was created.

Being a good businessman, I see the shrewdness of the move and approve.

For decades, the Christmas Shopping Season started on Black Friday and ended on Christmas Eve. Before Thanksgiving, all you would see were Thanksgiving things. All that over the river and through the woods stuff to get you to Grandma's House and all the goodies for the Thanksgiving feast.

But about twenty years ago or so, things started changing. Christmas decorations started appearing BEFORE Thanksgiving. People commented on it, but did nothing. As time went on, those green, red, gold and silver decorations started appearing earlier and earlier. This year, they've made their earliest appearance ever.

This is Christmas Creep.

The concept behind the Christmas Shopping Season was to have a special time to buy special things for that special someone (or those special someones). But it's gone too far. Merchants want to get more profit because business sales are slow, people are looking for deals and low prices and margins are tighter than before. I get this.

The point is that by extending the Christmas Shopping Season, it dilutes its impact. The pace of shopping becomes relaxed, unhurried - and NOT very impulsive. Profits are generated by impulse shopping and the more of it the better. Too much selection is fine, but the price per unit is low and so is the margin. People who are unhurried are give TOO MUCH TIME to shop. They can compare prices, find the best deals, hunt down something in another store. In short they can find the most at the least profit to the merchants.

Consumers may be expecting this, and that may be why Christmas Creep is so awful this year. But times were bad before and Christmas Creep didn't happen then. The merchants have forgotten that they can buy fewer items, available over a shorter amount of time, generating increased demand, and therefore increased premium on the price.

Today, if a toy or item available at Christmas time is popular, EVERYONE HAS ONE. That completely undermines its unique qualities. If only a few have it, and a lot want it, that makes it much MORE special to those who have it. But if everyone has it, that detracts from its uniqueness, making it less valuable, and therefore unable to command a premium price.

It also creates a throw-away and very wasteful society at a time in human history when such acts will have some very long-term, negative repercussions for the entire species. If their toys are commonplace, they're treated as commonplace and tossed on a whim. When I was a kid, I never threw away my toys. They were hard to get, fun to play with and valuable in my eyes.

(Disclaimer: I knew these Christmas presents came from my parents from the age of 3. Never let a genius sit on the lap of a Santa billed as "the one and only Santa Claus" who is wearing a fake beard. Once I figured out Santa was fake, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were quickly filed into their proper mythological places.)

People need to appreciate what they get. If they don't, they treat things like crap. If everyone can get the Sparkly Pony with the Kung Fu Grip, then it's not special to them and that toy will find itself under the tires of the family car because they didn't care about it enough to bring it in with them when they were done playing.

Extending the holiday season may be how merchants are extending their profits, but to me, they're blowing a golden opportunity. Quantity will never return as much profit profit as quality. They need to stock only a limited number of things, and charge as much as the market will bear. If some folks can't afford it or get one due to limited supply, oh well. That's how life is. And disappointment in childhood often leads people to doing more and better in adulthood.

Kids need to learn about disappointment and how to handle it, and to appreciate the things they do get. It's a life lesson that's good not only for them, but for everyone in the long run.

And maybe we can de-creep the Christmas Creep.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Fair Taxation With Representation

Much has been bandied about in the news these days about a Flat Tax. Proponents (the right-wing, of course) say that simplifying the (admittedly complex) tax code would be good for everyone.

Actually, it's pretty bad for about 50% of Americans, but hey, we already know that the Republicans are the lapdogs of the wealthy, which is the 15% of Americans a flat tax would actually benefit.

The idea behind a flat tax is to tax everyone the same percentage of income. If everyone had basically the same income, that isn't an unwarranted idea. But obviously incomes vary from a few hundred dollars to a few hundred million dollars annually. That kind of disparity in income is why a flat tax doesn't work. You can see how this works in my blog about how taxing the wealthy more and the poor less will stimulate the economy.

A flat tax means everyone pays the same rate, but it doesn't impact everyone the same way. Someone who is taxed at 10% earning $25,000 is losing a hell of a lot more of their spending power compared to someone who is taxed at 70% earning a million dollars. Let's face it, there aren't a lot of millionaires out there starving on $300,000 of income per year while there are people out there starving on a $22,500 annual income. Making a flat tax of 20% means the millionaires are taking home $500,000 MORE and the poor are taking home $2500 LESS.

This is called robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Not exactly a good way to manage the economy by taking money away from the multitudes who will likely spend it and giving it to the few who don't.

But if people are looking for simple, then how about this: One formula. No deductions, exemptions, alterations. And it is applied for the average income of the household. The average income is the total income of the household divided by the number of people living there, and each person pays for their share of the income.

If you have two people and one income for the household, the income is averaged for each person. Let's say you have two people who live in a household whose income is $34,000 between the two. You divide that by the two people to give an average income of $17,000 each. Each person files for a $17,000 income regardless of who got the income.

A family of four? Same thing, only each person would be paying taxes on $8500 dollars instead - a much smaller tax burden.

This doesn't mean that everyone has to file a tax return, of course. There would one form for each person to be listed by name, SSN and such, a simple formula to calculate the taxes on the average income and then multiply that tax times the number of people listed in the household.

One page, maybe two depending on how large of a household we're talking about, with extra pages to list more people added.

Income would be defined as, "If you get it in that year and you can use it, it's income". This means interest earned in IRA's or bank accounts and any increase in the value of investments over which you have control of deposits and withdrawals would be income. You can't write off a loss.

On the bright side, since you were taxed on the money you used to put into an IRA (No deductions, no loopholes) or buy an investment, and were taxed on the IRA and investment earnings, you aren't taxed separately for taking that money out and spending it. You've paid taxes for the returns you received already. It's like a bank account and you pay taxes on the interest and earnings.

The tax formula itself would have to be worked out by someone with better math skills than I, but I imagine it would be something simple that increases with the increase in income, yet stays below the cumulative amount that would be paid if filed as one person's income. I expect it will be a logarithmic table or a place you can go online and enter your averaged income for the tax you fill in and multiply by the number of people in the household for the total tax burden.

If you have one person with $34,000 in income and 8 people with $34,000 in income between them, those 8 people in one household should pay less in taxes together than that one person in one household.

This takes care of the deduction for kids and other such standard deductions.

As for the other deductions, you're out of luck. No tax shelters. You pay taxes on interest You pay taxes on investment gains. You don't pay taxes on principle since that was your money to begin with.

Whatever the formula is (and if there's a math guru out there who can use a person's income as a specific basis for an increasing tax rate as described here, let me know), and whether it's put online for the convenience of tax payers or something they can do with a pocket calculator (A whole new cottage industry would be an app for it or a stand-alone electronic device), the idea is to simplify the codes and do it in a way that doesn't so grossly advantage the rich.

Flat rate taxes are the wet dream of the wealthy and the nightmare of the poor. The tax codes can be simplified by many other means that don't involve this kind of inequity.

Of course, there will be a lot of tax prep agencies put out of business by this, but in life, there are no guarantees - especially with regard to employment.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

We ARE Our Brother's Peeper

Much has been said about the virtues and vices of the current Internet fad, Social Networking, and I feel rather remiss in not bringing this to the attention of mankind by throwing in my own two cents on the subject. To make it short for those of you with limited attention spans because you have to get back to making sure your crop doesn't die in Farmland, I like the concept of social networking. I don't like the implementation of social networking. (Better hurry back now, the asparagus in the south 40 are drying up due to the drought!)

For the rest of you with lives and some curiosity about what I mean, please feel free to grab some coffee, unplug from the mindless tedium of examining the walls and posts of your friends to make sure none of them "tagged" you in an embarrassing photo and thereby sowing the seeds of the destruction of your professional career, sit back and read on.

I like the IDEA of social networking. A way to keep in touch with friends and family is great. I do it all the time. I call this technology e-mail, telephones (or, if you're a touch more modern, cell phones which then bring in texting and picture sharing over a phone), cards, letters and, occasionally, something called a "face-to-face" wherein the parties involved engage in a conversation without the use of any kind of technology. (You can add video conferencing, if you want. Same idea but without the touch, taste or smell and with the intervention of technology).

I know, I know, this kind of technology may be obsolete, time consuming and wasteful, but it gets the job done for me while preserving something I value quite a lot: PRIVACY. All of the forms of social networking I do are those in which I can specifically and deliberately moderate and control the type and amount of information I disclose to or share with others. I can even tell select, trusted individuals not to pass along particularly sensitive information to others and, by and large, they are good about complying with that request. In return, I do the same for them when asked.

This is how REAL LIFE works and I'm good with it. In fact, I'm so used to it that I've gotten quite adept at it. It takes me little time to stay in touch to the level or degree that I want and others feel the same about it.

But then came along MySpace, and and after that Facebook.

On the face of it (no pun intended. No, really, it wasn't intended. The title of this blog was, but not this time.) one would think that having a central place for a person to put up the events in their life where their family and friends can check to keep up would be a good thing. But let's examine that concept and the implementation of what has become modern Social Networking.

Rather than just a place to put up pretty pictures of the kids and turn a website into basically a static, high-tech equivalent of "home movie viewing night" (Oh the pictures of the kids were DARLING! Look, Little Mikey spit up again and I got it in video this time!), modern Social Networking has turned into an electronic window on EVERYTHING YOU DO. I'm not narcissistic enough to want to put out to the world at large EVERYTHING I do. The world at large does not need to know that much about me. I am not willing to share that much about me with the world at large. And yet, this is what Social Networking is: Sharing EVERYTHING about you with the world at large.

Let me say that again: You share EVERYTHING about you. The worse part is that you have little to no control over what you share, when you share it or with whom. Now, I know there are those who will look at the "privacy settings" (snort, choke, giggle hysterically at the thought of privacy controls on an electronic forum which automatically shares everything you do and often times resets those controls to release even more information you DIDN'T want released) and think they're being discrete or vigilant.

They're not.

The rule of thumb (and all of the other fingers, toes, elbows... in fact the whole body) is that once you put it out there, it's not yours anymore. It's not private. It's not secure. It belongs to whomever you put it out on and they can do with it what they please.

Let's look at one example: My own.

The date: September 26th, 2011.
The time: (Who the hell knows - in the afternoon, or evening I think. I don't keep track of minutia like that).
The place: My home computer.
The victim: Facebook.
The mission: To find out whether they are as fucked up as the reports say they are about privacy.

I WANTED to create an organization page to promote this blog. But they don't allow organizations to "network" there. Apparently, organizations must have a real person (singular, not plural, so even partnerships, you figure out who the senior partner is). Once I signed up, I could create one, but I had to sign up as an individual first.

Okay fine. Before signing up, I first signed up with a proxy server. A proxy server changes the Internet address you use to connect to the Internet (and thereby revealing your location in the world - within a few miles - to everyone else). They use this information to deliver you location-relevant ads and data. Your cell phone does much the same thing if you have Internet on it. They want to know where you REALLY are, it seems. Before I did anything, I thought to myself, "I don't want to share that." and took precautions.

I found out where that Internet location was, got a zip code from there and was set to continue.

Of course, the FIRST thing they want you to do is agree to their Terms of Service.

I read them. Yes, yes I did. I've seen the Southpark episode and didn't want Zuckerman (the owner of Facebook) to turn me into a Facebook-inspired human-powered iPad. The thing that got me the most was the fact that you agree they can keep everything you post, upload or offer to them pretty much forever, and they can use it as they see fit.

Let me repeat this: THEY can use YOUR STUFF as THEY see fit - forever.

And you have to agree to this or you don't get to play in their little garden of horrors. I thought to myself that I'm glad I'm not going to be "me" or this could seriously fuck up my life in unimaginable ways. This is especially true for young kids (teens and early twenties) who have more life ahead of them to get fucked up than I do. I had already confirmed one rumor: Facebook keeps your stuff even if you "get rid of it". It's still there. Once you upload it, you can't get it back. You can't delete it. You can't do a do-over if you upload the "wrong thing". It's out there, it will remain out there and you will never know when, where or how that will be used by them.

So I clicked "I agree" and moved on. One of those little things you agree not to do was use a proxy server, but I had already figured out that my Facebook foray was going to be fast. I wasn't going to give them any real information anyhow. Why would I scruple to tell them where I really am?

Next it wanted to know things a resume would demand you put on it: Where do you live, what do you do, gender, date of birth and all of the normal things you usually tell an employer. Then it wanted me to put in hobbies, interests, movies I liked, books I had read, all of the other things you DON'T put on a resume.

I managed to resist the impulse to put in anything accurate. I listed my name as something other than my name, my occupation under the "other" category as "Gadfly" and everything else came from the "Guide To NOT Losing Your Identity Online" in that I told them nothing accurate. My date of birth was the wrong month, the wrong day and the wrong year (but over 13). My location was based on the Internet address from the Proxy Server I was using.

After about an hour of messing around, I managed to get it all set up. The "privacy" settings were hard to find, but once I did, I made sure that they were set to "Share with NO ONE."

As if that was going to help.

One of the things I found most annoying was the "People you might know" section. There was one person in it, who, of course, I had never heard of. I fail to understand how anyone could derive that a person with no true identity, no true age, no appearance, no other accurate information could possibly know anyone. But this poor person was sitting there in my "People you might know" section, urging me to "Friend" them. There was no "No thanks", "Go away", "Leave me the fuck alone", or "Get out of my People You May Know section!" button.

Facebook desperately needs an option other than "Like".

I discovered that if you want someone to go away, you can't do it wholesale. It's strictly a retail thing. Each person has their own individual like and don't like settings. That is, if you want to be left alone by people you don't actually INVITE, guess what? You have to tell the whole world to fuck off face to face, one at a time. Maybe this works for Facebook and it's fresh-faced fans, but for me it would be tiresome, tedious and time-consuming. Facebook needs a less open policy than allowing anyone to "Friend" you and you having to set the level of privacy you want for each one, one at a time.

(Keep in mind that privacy isn't, so when the whole exercise of not sharing with some people can be erased at the touch of an "upgrade" on the whim of some sociopath nutcase who decided being face to face to make friends was too much work, all of the things you may have done in the past to keep yourself "safe" may well be rendered moot at any time."

For someone with a couple of hundred "Friends" this kind of thing can take hours, or even days, to deal with. If you consider it can only take a single update to undo, one begins to see the problem with Social Networking.

But the most interesting (and scary) thing was yet to come. Once I got the account all set up (I even made up a nice, little graphic that meant "Destiny" for it) and was ready to FINALLY get on with my life, Facebook followed me EVERYWHERE I went online.

I post in a lot of comments threads in various news organization sites. Each one I visited while holding Facebook cookies in my cookie jar threw some stupid little pop-up urging me to "like" the site. Well, I knew that if I "Like"'d anything, it would immediately appear on my "wall" where anyone browsing my profile - whether friend or NOT - could see it. The same went for various business sites I occasionally visit. Everyone wanted to be "Like"'d.

That was pretty much the last straw for me. I signed in, "Deleted" my account, deleted the cookies and haven't been back. I say I "Deleted" the account because that's what the option was, but it didn't "delete" it. The account can't be deleted - just suspended. Remember those Terms of Service that let them keep everything you give them? That's right. They "suspend" your account so that if you have Account Deleting Remorse, you can re-activate it again anytime just by signing into your account. How long do they keep it suspended? The data doth not say. It could be for as little as a month, but it's likely forever, like the ToS agreement said.

So my foray into Facebook was finished. Even though I put in nothing that can lead back to me, I still felt violated and in need of a four hour shower.

What did I learn in all of this? Well, for one, Facebook is evil. The concept of sharing one's life with others has been turned into a farce - a constantly streaming overload of intimate and not so intimate details which no mentally stable and healthy person ever needs to know about anyone else. Least you think this is just a trivial matter consider these facts:

You don't really know everyone you "friend". Maybe some of you are careful about that, but probably not. You don't know who who looks at your "wall" - which details your life with such precision, people can find out the patterns of your life and location so well, they can stalk you, know when you're not home and rob you or simply observe you for whatever twisted reason they may have.

And you have almost no control over that.

Even your friends can screw you over. You're all linked together. If any of your friends tag their photos as you, and someone checks out your Facebook page, then the ones of your friends, your topless dance at that private party you over-indulged that one time five years ago may become the REAL reason your boss wants you fired from your dream job - even though it wasn't on the company time or the company dime.

It can all be summed up in one acronym: TMI. Too Much Information.

Your life is laid bare for anyone to peruse and you can do little to nothing to keep it to yourself.

So why is it this way? Money, of course. All of that information out there about you can be used by Facebook to direct advertisers to you thereby monetizing your life for their benefit. The data is useful to businesses, police agencies, spy agencies and other such folks whom Facebook cares to share your data with. Remember, they can use it howsoever they see fit.

The really sad part is how enthusiastically Facebook users embrace the raping of their privacy, lives and futures. It's probably ignorance on their parts. Possibly it's the "it can't happen to ME" mentality the young are afflicted with for too long. The only other option left is "I don't care", which means you have given up all desire to control what people know about you and have abdicated any chance to avoid criminal activity.

The only defense against this is to not get involved in it at all, ever. If you're not on Facebook, your friends can't tag their photos and link them to you. Maybe your name will come up, maybe not. Normally, people don't include full names and locations, but it's possible. However by removing ones' self from Facebook you remove 90% of the danger of that level of "Social Networking".

By not being on Facebook, no one will know whether you like something without you telling them. You can also avoid the up-and-coming feature everyone's talking about (which I didn't experience since it wasn't implemented for newbies by then): The Timeline.

The Timeline is supposed to be just that. It's supposed to be a convenient way of seeing what you did and when you did it.

This will make it FAR easier for criminals to decipher your patterns, learn where you are, hunt you down and rob you of that new iPhone you bragged about getting, wait until you are due to leave home on vacation and rob you blind (because he's seen the pictures of your home you posted by posting family photos and knows in advance what he wants and where it is), or even follow you as any good stalking pervert will.

Before, they had to actually work at things to make a timeline to find your habits and patterns in order to use them to their advantage. Now, Facebook will do that for them. It will also generate gigatons of metadata to follow people around, learn their habits and bother you even more with "relevant ads" wherever you happen to be.

And all the while you, and your friends, are willing and eager accomplices to all of this simply by signing up for a Facebook account.

Now, I know that it's entirely possible you found my blog through someone else's Facebook account. I recently enabled the "like" feature on the blog so it could be liked. This may make me some kind of hypocrite except for the fact I'm writing this blog so soon after doing that. As it turns out, I don't need a Facebook account to promote it in any way. I just need others to promote it by liking it. But at the same time, I'm urging everyone to suspend their Facebook accounts and never, ever, sign into them again.

If you like by blog, fine, bookmark it or add it to your favorites. You can sign up to get an e-mail when I post a new one if you want to keep track. But dump the Facebook ASAP. Even without the stupid games, it's a time suck of epic proportions, it's violating you in ways you don't even know about yet and, assuming you have a future life you want to live to distance yourself from any past youthful indiscretions, is simply a privacy time bomb lurking out there ready for one Wall view to screw up a lifetime of hard work.

Failing that, go ahead and "Like" the blog. If you can't save yourself, maybe by doing that, you can save someone else.