It's not often that I miss a day posting, but yesterday was one of them. I kept thinking that I would get the ten to fifteen minutes that I need to do a post sometime yesterday, but it didn't happen. I don't know why I should be surprised, I had been trying for nearly a week to get the quiet one hour or so that I needed to double check the numbers on my tax return.
With a full scale CRM migration at work and the customization required to make it work for us along with the information needed for a full afternoon's managers' meeting, the evenings have been long. I haven't even had time to mow the yard this week which is strangely enough one of the things that I enjoy. I still have yesterday's topic on my mind, but I'm going to go ahead and run with today's thoughts and hope to come back to Thursday's post tonight.
Yesterday's sunrise to the left was a little better than today's which is the first picture in the post.
Having just finished my taxes it's easy for me to understand if I've made a profit or loss on the enterprises that I took up after I left Apple. The good news is that we made money last year with my consulting business. Some of the other enterprises have farther to go, but as they say Rome wasn't built in a day. Our rental property is doing well, and I've sold some of my prints which is amazing considering that I've done little of what you're supposed to do when you want to sell prints.
At this point I feel on top of my financial situation. I can see that cash coming in exceeds cash going out even with a substantial tax burden. Now I have a full time job, the cash flow is even better. I wish I could say the same about our government.
Paul Krugman has an interesting article in the NY Times, "Weapons of Math Destruction." The whole article is worth reading, but his closing statement say it all.
Again, the point isn't merely that the Bush administration has squandered the budget surplus it inherited on tax cuts for the wealthy. It's the fact that the administration has spent its entire term in office lying about the nature of those tax cuts. And all the world now knows what I suspected from the start: an administration that lies about taxes will also lie about other, graver matters.
I didn't notice a lot of tax cuts helping me out last year, then again I wasn't in that group which Krugman says got 32% of all the cuts. You had to make at least $341,773 to get in that group.
There's another good article, "Red Ink Run Amok," by David Broder in today's Washington Post. It's a good thing I didn't run my business like the government ran theirs.
The cover letter in the report from Treasury Secretary John Snow contains the bad news. Whereas the budget deficit for fiscal 2005 was officially given as $319 billion, "the government's accrual-based net operating cost . . . was $760 billion in 2005."
That $760 billion is the real difference between the money the government received and the obligations it added in the past year -- in other words, the unfunded costs being passed on to our children and grandchildren.
For years, the federal budget has been stated in cash terms, not the accrual accounting method, which Cooper said has been in use for five centuries and is now mandated for all private corporations. The difference, as he explained it, is this:
If you go to Target and buy an item for cash, it's felt in your wallet immediately. If you buy the same item on a credit card, unless you are using accrual accounting, it is disguised until the bill arrives.
The U.S. government has been running up bills -- notably the promises of pensions and health-care benefits for military veterans and millions of other retirees -- without putting the obligations on the books.
Well what can you say.? It's the government they do as they please when it comes to numbers. The shame is that some people still
believe these folks. The small government folks have created the biggest financial mess in the history of country. They have given away the store to people who really didn't need a helping hand. It's a good thing we have a resilient economy, but we will see a day of reckoning when all of these obligations come due. It will be similar to what is happening to GM and other companies that have huge pension and medical care obligations for their retired workers. Unfortunately it will be hitting all of us.
My hope is that we elect some sensible people next time around. If we don't, our only pleasures might be enjoying flowers like this Iris that has decided to take root in our ravine.
I did miss an absolutely stellar sunset yesterday. I was without a camera while going out to dinner last night. I won't make that mistake again.
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