Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
I’ve added a new section to the newsletter: Game Corner. I am a moderate board game aficionado (oxymoron?), with many games to highlight.
Updates
The election for city council is coming up soon. Because of sickness and travel I haven’t been able to canvas over the past three weeks. While there is still time and I plan on canvasing a fair amount next week, ballots have already been mailed out. At least I have a website up now and some palm cards to pass out.
I’ll keep you posted.
I heard a lot about how complicated taxes can get and how much they can distort behavior while growing up. As I’ve invested in more projects and more states, and started working with larger amounts of money, I understand what people meant. Take The Abbey for instance. I pay a fairly hefty property tax each year. And I pay over 11% in sales & occupancy taxes – which meant paying over $5000 for the third quarter. Then I am taxed on whatever profit I have left at the end of the year.
Then for W-2 wages, there are federal income taxes, state income taxes, FICA taxes, and sometimes city income taxes. That’s a lot of taxes!
Add consulting gigs and honoraria, other real estate into the mix and taxes get really complicated (and expensive). So now comes the distortionary part. I (and millions of other Americans) am thinking hard about ways I can change my financial arrangements to reduce my tax liability – from finding worthwhile expenses in the businesses to reduce profitability to increasing IRA or HSA contributions.
I shudder to think how much behavior is distorted for companies that literally have millions or tens of millions of dollars at stake depending on how they structure their operations.
News
The widespread support of Hamas via “pro-Palestinian” groups is truly frightening. If these folks limited themselves to expressing concern for the people of Palestine, I’d have little objection. But the whole “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” chant demonstrates shocking bloodthirst. What do these people think they are advocating? What do they intend to do about the “Jewish problem?”
And the story about the hospital in Gaza supposedly being destroyed by the Israelis is sickening. While it looks like the parking garage, not the hospital was hit – by Palestinian, not Israeli, weapons – initial misreporting sparked riots and violence across the Middle East. If I were a reporter on this topic and had shared what seems to be an entirely false story as being obviously true, I’d hope I would turn in my badge and walk out of the news building. It would be a sign I needed a different occupation.
Finally, our public officials only care about politics. They don’t even try to do the right thing anymore. When is the last time you had the sense that a politician was genuinely telling you what they thought, or maybe even genuinely apologizing for not have a better solution or making a mistake or disagreeing about something? The drama over the Speakership highlights this.
Why won’t any democratic lawmakers vote for one of the Republican candidates? It’s not as if they are more likely to get a democrat into the speakership. Nor are they likely to have more success getting their policies enacted. The primary reason seems to be that Republicans struggling and failing to appoint a speaker looks bad for Republicans. It looks really bad. And that’s what the democratic members seem to care about – not getting the House working again or ready to deal with the many, many problems facing the United States at home and abroad.
Reflection
I’ve been thinking recently about how difficult so many people find it to get along with each other. I am not think so much of global conflict as I am of domestic conflict close to or in the home. While arbitrating conflicts between five headstrong children gives me some insight, it’s actually media portrayals and anecdotes that I find most visceral.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself in recent weeks thinking while watching a movie or reading an article: “Just let it go!” or “Don’t say that,” or “Just be clearer and more transparent.”
Our society seems to be suffering a kind of unfriendliness epidemic – and unfriendliness in our most intimate relationships: between parents and children, between spouses, and between siblings. Divorce is rampant. Estrangement between children and parents is common. And sibling rivalries and disagreements are often fierce.
Why is this?
From my perspective, it appears to exist where there is little humility or patience. That’s what I see on the screen, especially in movies with otherwise interesting, magnetic, or strong male leads whose relationships end up looking like a fifty-car pile-up. And it’s what I see in my kids (literally between drafts of this newsletter).
Unmet expectations play an important role too – but humility and patience help us work through unrealistic and unfulfilled expectations. Commitment, also, is too often lacking. While people may be totally sold out on their diet, career, or personal growth, they are rarely sold out on their commitments to others – in part because they are afraid of getting burned by other impatient and proud people who are also commitment-phobic.
Part of our social mess comes from this self-reinforcing deterioration of commitment. As people find fewer examples of commitment in their lives, they have even less reason to be strongly committed to others themselves.
Writing
I’m working on an oped about “Why We Can’t Have 4% Growth in the United States.” It’s not because we don’t have sufficient innovation or entrepreneurship or natural resources or financial capital. It’s not because other countries don’t want to trade with us or that we don’t have enough people.
The problem is that our public officials won’t let us have 4% growth.
Innovation primarily occurs in sectors with a light regulatory touch like software. We know how to build nuclear power plants, but government regulators have made it prohibitively expensive. It’s true to a lesser extent with desalination plants. We could build high-speed trains, but political interests, environmental regulations (and in California required union-labor), and other government roadblocks, make it nearly impossible. We have abundant natural resources but government officials have shutdown pipeline projects, banned drilling, and restricted the transport of oil.
It's nearly impossible to open new mines because of the approvals and the regulatory specifications required to do so. Government limits access to water, forests, and many other resources. We have sophisticated and large capital markets, but the federal government is now sucking up $2 trillion of investment funds every year! People have started asking why investment in the economy is declining – it’s partly because the Feds are sucking all the air out of the room.
Regulations and taxes are so many weights on American economy racehorse. You can’t expect it to run faster by putting more weight on its back and in the wagon train it pulls. The horse will run much faster if you set it free.
That’s why we can’t have 4% growth.
Game Corner
Let me introduce the “Game Corner!” I’ll use this section to discuss a specific game, or some gaming theme, each week. Unfortunately, this week the only game I’ve played worth reporting on is Boggle.
For those who haven’t played Boggle, the game is quite simple. It involves using 16 dice with various letters on their faces. You shake them up and put them down for a timed round of the game. During the round, all the players write down as many words as they can make from the letters on the face of the dice. At the end of the round, players take turn reading their list of words and crossing off any words found by other players.
You then score 1 point for every three- or four-letter words that no other players got, 2 points for five letter words, 3 points for six letter words, etc. After playing as many rounds as you want, the player with the highest combined score wins.
I enjoy the activity of playing the game and finding words. Unfortunately, my wife and my in-laws are all exceptionally good at the game. No matter how well I think I am doing during the round, I nearly always lose. The main exception is when I discover a couple long words that no other players picked up on.
But this is a rare occurrence.
Archives
I’m taking a hiatus on this section until further notice.
Talk to you next week!
Thanks again for the 'Report.'
The points you made with respect to the unfriendliness epidemic are spot on. The culture seems to have moved from listening to understand others to shouting so you will agree with me. Our sinful nature always reflects our heart's desire when we only consider our perspective and do not consider other's perspective. If your purpose in life is to get your way because you are the center, then your actions in all that you do will focus on that purpose.
Your observation of demonstrating humility and/or patience would go a long way in addressing the problem. In addition, I believe a significant part of the problem comes from the idea that "your feelings" are the driving factor in defining truth. Unfortunately, society is teaching that your "feelings" and desires are the most important part of who you are in our world.
Once again, I believe the cause of some of this cultural confusion is due to removing mandatory logic classes from all levels of education. Logic demonstrates, teaches, and acknowledges the truth. There is not your truth, my truth, their truth, etc. There is only "the" truth. Of course, we can have different perspectives on how we interpret and react to "the" truth. However, there is still only one truth. If you allow your feelings to rule you then you never end up in love, compassion and empathy since truth is always subject to your feelings. People who only follow their feelings always end up mired in fear, hate, and violence.
Shalom. - Duane