This morning, I heard an interesting local story. A few years ago, a 9 year old girl with cancer, wrote to NBC’s Extreme Home Makeover asking them to renovate the Cancer Center in Tucson. The network was so impressed with the letter that they renovated the Cancer Center in Tucson and built the family a new home. This was a big event in the Phoenix area. It was all over the news and hundreds of people showed up for the unveiling of their new home. The home was 5300+ square feet with a number of bedrooms and almost the same number of bathrooms. The family received the home with no mortgage due on the home.

Today, I heard that the home has been up for sale for some time because the family cannot afford the payments. About a year after the family received the home, they took out a loan on it for $500,000. The money lasted until 2008. The Father was a truck driver and he reports that his health prevented him from working.

What this whole episode illustrates is that not everyone can handle prosperity. There are some people in society that will find some way to become renters, no matter what you give them. This is also illustrated by a report by the Arizona Lottery. They looked at all their big winners of the lotteries since they started in the 1980’s. An interesting trend developed. The lottery winners that continued working generally benefitted from the lottery winnings. Those that stopped working, almost always were worse off than before when they won the large amounts of money. Many were divorced and most were not just broke, they were flat broke and frequently in the hole.

The question is why did some succeed and others fail? The amount of money was not important in determining success or failure of the person or family. Comparing people with the same amount of winnings resulted in some using it to become wealthy, while others squandered it and became poorer than they were before. In the case with this family, they took out loans on the house starting about a year after moving  in. The Father then stopped working as a truck driver and they lived off of the loans. In 2008, the loans became due and they are being forced to sell the home. They originally asked $1.8 million, then $1.5, now they are at $1.3 million. With a sale like that, the family is liable to come out of this with some money.

There was a principle about this I was taught a long time ago. If you take a group of people and put them on an island. You give each person the same amount of money to start. You come back after a time and you will discover that there will be a few rich and many poor. The same thing holds true for real life. No matter how you stack the deck, there will always be those who will be rich and those who will be poor. Taking from the rich to make the poor better off does not help the rich or the poor. The only thing that helps the poor be better off is to teach them how to earn more. Even then, some will try to get out of poverty and others will expect you to hand them everything. Neal Boortz calls these people the “Looters”. That is because they just take resources from others, they do not create any new resources.

Democrats believe that if you take from the rich and give to the poor, that you will achieve equality. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you do is discourage the top producers to produce and encourage the non-producers to not produce. That is the way to take the top country in the world and turn it into a third world power. Obama seems bent on doing it within one four year period. That would have to be some kind of record for turning a Super Power into a third world power. Most Super Powers of their day take at least a generation to decline and fall. A four year decline and fall would have to be a world record.

The Democrats unveiled their healthcare plan to the world yesterday. It has a price tag of $1.3 trillion. Everyone knows that the price tag is about 5-10 times below the real cost of the plan, but it is the official cost that everyone will use in the debate to come. The plan takes every bad idea that has been floated over the past 6 months and makes it worse. About the only good thing I can say about the plan is that they printed it on American paper and the printing is clear and correct.

Officially the plan only taxes the “rich” to pay for the huge cost. The problem is that if you took all of the income of the so-called “rich” you would not pay for the plan at all. So, the plan has escalators built into the plan to make sure it does get paid for, and that it includes everyone, not just the “rich”. But, the Democrats will claim that the plan only taxes the rich, which is partially true if you buy their rich argument.

Barack Obama has made a big point of saying that nobody will be forced out of their health insurance plan into the government health insurance. This plan of the Democrats puts 119 million Americans into the government health insurance plan and out of their insurance. Either they will have to change their plan or Barack Obama has been feeding us a pack of lies during this initial debate on health insurance. Of course, Barack Obama feeding us a pack of lies is nothing new, but still it is not something the Democrats should want to highlight like this.

The premise built into the plan is that people are “evil”. Why I say this is that there are multiple penalties throughout the plan for people who will not follow the plan. If this plan is so great, everyone should want to participate and these penalties will not be needed. These penalties are built in as part of the way to pay for the government health insurance. Whatever happened to the American principle of freedom? This forced compliance with a law that is supposed to be for our own good is just not the type of thing that is in line with traditional American values. This is more the kind of thing you saw in communist countries, not in freedom loving countries like America.

There are boards set up to control every aspect of health care. These boards are responsible for their portion of the health care system. They are not responsible to the people. Their job is to control costs as their first priority. Their second priority is to see that people get the best care available. In the case of a conflict, cost wins over quality every time. At least that is how it works in every other country that has this type of system. That is why the health care in countries with single-payer systems and multiple boards have health care that is second class at best. People wait for months or even years for treatment. The hope is that the person will die or get better before treatment is provided. That way the government can reduce the cost by not providing the service. It is much cheaper to bury someone than it is to keep them alive in the last stages of life. The government position in ALL single-payer system countries is to let the person die, thereby saving a lot of money that can then be used elsewhere. My experience with the health care system in England in the early 1970’s was eye opening to say the least. The clinics looked like the kind of clinic that I saw in movies about doctors in the 1930’s and 40’s. At that time, the health care was not to the point where people had to wait a long time for treatment, but the quality was definitely below what I was used to in the United States.

Why anyone in the United States would want to follow England or Canada into the morass that is the single-payer system is beyond my understanding. There is no medical reason for it to occur. The only reason to go to a single-payer system is so the government will have more control over our lives. We have too much government control over our lives at this time; we do not need more control. We need to get rid of some government control and get back to the freedoms that our Founding Fathers fought for.

I listened to a You-Tube video of a Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand. In the interview, she predicted the time we are living in right now. That was really scary to hear her basically tell Mike Wallace what a future America would be like if we did not correct the error of our ways. Her solution was to have a separation of commerce and state, just like there is a separation of church and state. If we followed that principle, we would be the strongest country in the world and nobody would ever want to mess with us in any way. Terrorists would pick other targets. Dictators would make peace with us and try to live with the regulations we put on them. The world would be much better off if we just separated commerce and state. That was a great idea when she said it. It is an even better idea right now, especially with Barack Obama dropping the ball every time he gets the chance.

On the way to work today, I heard Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt debate the pros and cons of the Fair Tax. Dennis Prager generally believes that the Fair Tax would be a good idea. Hugh Hewitt thinks that the Fair Tax is a pie in the sky idea that is impractical.

To review for those of you who are not up to speed on the Fair Tax, the Fair Tax is a consumption tax. A consumption tax is a tax on the things you buy, not an income tax. The income tax would be repealed, so you would get your entire paycheck. Since the government has to have money to pay for things it needs tax revenue. The Fair Tax would take the place of the income tax. Rep. Lindner and Neal Boortz came up with the Fair Tax and say that the rate should be 23% to replace the income tax. So that the lower income people would not have to pay any tax, people would get a “prebate” of what they would be expected to pay in tax for that month. Then, every time you bought something you would pay the tax. If you spend less than your prebate, you made money. If you bought more than your prebate, then you ended up paying the government.

Hugh Hewitt says that the rate for the consumption tax is not 23%, but 30%. I have not read his book, so I will have to take him at his word on how he gets to that point. Neal Boortz and Rep. Lindner go to great lengths in their books to make sure that the 23% figure is shown. They also address the question of whether the rate is 23% or 30%. An economist came out with the 30% figure a few years ago and Neal Boortz explained how that economist got to 30%. The economist was incorrect in how he got to 30%; I do not know how Hugh came up with the figure. I am not really sure on this point, which person is correct. I respect and believe in the honesty of all three men, so I would have to see their arguments placed side by side before I could really determine it for myself.

Hugh Hewitt’s main argument is that the Fair Tax can never be passed. I agree with him on that. There is a lot of power associated with taxes. Congress would have to voluntarily give up a lot of power to vote for the Fair Tax. Since Democrats thirst for power with every breath, they will never in their lifetimes vote for the Fair Tax. Republicans would have to produce all the votes for the bill. That would be unlikely as some Republicans like power almost as much as Democrats. You would have to have a Congress with about 70% Republicans in both Houses to have a chance and that is not likely to happen given the public is generally split 50-50.

Hugh Hewitt thinks that Republicans should support a flat tax as that is more likely to be passed by Congress.  That is correct. There is a far greater chance of a flat tax passing over the Fair Tax. All Republicans could get behind it and you might even be able to persuade some Democrats to follow suit. It is unlikely to get much Democrat support, but even one Democrat is far more than you would get for the Fair Tax.

In conclusion, the flat tax is the more likely solution to the confusion tax situation we have today. Right now, if you take your taxes to 10 tax experts to have them done, you are likely to get at least 6 different answers. With a flat tax, all that would go away. Of course, so would the need to have your taxes done by a CPA. Anyone would be able to write down their income and multiply it by the tax number to come up with how much tax they owed. This plan has a similar problem to the Fair Tax in that Congress would have to give up some power over taxes. Since it is a much smaller amount than the Fair Tax would require, it would have a greater chance of success. Also, it would be a good first step to the Fair Tax if that is your ultimate goal.

If your goal is to have the Fair Tax enacted, to go from our current confusing income tax system to the Fair Tax is a steep jump. To take an intermediate jump to a flat tax and then the Fair Tax would seem reasonable. It would mean a delay of probably a few years, but that should not be a problem. So, anyone who would like the Fair Tax, you should support a flat tax as an intermediate step. Then, you can get people moving in your direction for the final leap to the Fair Tax. Problem Solved!

Earlier this week, Neal Boortz had a link up on his Nealz Nuze that just said something about it being good to start your week. I clicked on the link because I was curious and found the U-Tube video of Susan Boyle. To say I was moved by the video was an understatement.

I have been cursed with perfect pitch. That means that singers that sing out of tune drive me crazy. Since over 90% of all today’s singers sing out of tune, I almost never listen to music anymore. When Susan hit her first note, I knew I had heard a singer that was exceptional. Not only was the tone clear, full and rich, it was exactly on pitch. The reaction from the crowd took about one note longer before they also realized that they were hearing an exceptional voice singing.

When Susan came out on stage, she was unremarkable. She is 47 years old from a small town somewhere in either northern England or Scotland. That comment comes from living in England for two years and knowing a little bit about English accents. The judges were unimpressed with her from the start. They handled her as if she had no business on that stage. When she said she wanted to be as big a star as the biggest star in England, the judges were incredulous. Susan was a bit “cheeky” with the judges in response to their stern tone. At that point, people were laughing at Susan. Her hair was not well done; she probably had fixed it herself. She looked to me like your typical middle-aged housewife in England. She wore a plain dress, nothing fancy. In other words, she was up there in a plain wrapper and asked the world to believe.

From listening to the Dennis Prager show, I learned a few other facts about Susan Boyle. She was oxygen deprived at birth. That has given her a learning disability. The learning disability made her the brunt of many jokes by her classmates in school. They taunted her and bullies attacked her. Most of it was verbal and she says those scars never go away. She lived with her parents until her father passed away about 10 years ago. Then she lived with and took care of her mother until she died recently. She spent her free time singing in the church choir. She also said that she has never been kissed.

I like to think of myself as old hard heart. The real story is that when I see a success story like this, I get all choked up. She stood there with all her handicaps and won. She asked for no special favors. She was granted no special favors. She had one chance to succeed or fail. She took that chance and succeeded far beyond her wildest imaginations. One week ago, nobody had heard of her except for a few people in the collection of villages she calls home. Today, millions of people know of her and applaud her success.

Time will tell if success will change Susan Boyle. It will obviously change her on the outside. She will have money to have people fix her hair. She will have money to buy fancy dresses. She may even lose a little weight. Like almost all of us (myself included), she has put on a few pounds over the years. She is not badly overweight, but a few pounds would greatly improve her image. The real test will be if she changes on the inside. Right now, she is proud of who she is and yet humble at the same time. She is here with no regrets over what has happened in her life. Will success change that self image that she currently has? Only time will tell.

I wish Susan Boyle well in her future singing career. She has a voice that you so rarely hear. I hope some singing coach doesn’t try and change her voice into something else. Right now, she has a perfect voice. The volume, pitch and fullness are all in the right amounts. If you mess with perfection, sometimes you end up with something much less. In my estimation, she does everything right when it comes to the voice, don’t change a thing. You may need to work with her on timing or reading music, but somehow I doubt that. She already got that training in the church choir.