How To Fix The World

Love.

If any word was ever created that evoked so much emotion without ever being understood, it was unquestionably “love”.  Why do people put so much emphasis on it?

You probably already knew this, but when I was 19….. I knew everything.  I did.  All you had to do was ask me.  I KNEW I wanted to have a career in music management, I KNEW that I was going to transfer schools, and I KNEW that I was in love with my girlfriend.  (of course now I work in financial planning, graduated from the same school, and haven’t spoken to that girlfriend since about 3 months after I knew I was in love with her)

So was I wrong?  I whiffed on the job, whiffed on the school, did I whiff on love too? I don’t think so.

That year I had several events happen that made me re-evaluate really most things I knew.  My faith changed, my ideas on relationships was turned upside down, and I was posed a simple question that I will never forget.  What is love?  It’s not something we define too often (unless you’re a hopeless romantic or emo kid, which I have been both), but think about it.  What is it?  My response was an example.  My grandfather is my absolute hero, hands down.  To me, his life is love.  To his wife, to his friends, to complete strangers, he treats people with kindness, tenderness, and most importantly, respect.  It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from.  His relationship with every person he meets is how I defined love.  His relationship with his wife is how I wanted my marriage to be one day.

Then came another blow to the stomach.

“But how do you know that’s what love is?”

What?  What do you mean how do I know?  I mean, you just know right?  Isn’t that what everyone always says.  “When you know, you know”.  Right….?

I thought that’s what it was because that is how I defined the word love in my head from the experiences in my life up to that point.  Now I’m not saying I was wrong.  Not at all.  In fact, I still define love basically the same way today.  But what I realized is that that is MY definition for love, not everyone’s.  When I tell someone I love them, that is what I mean.  They hear something completely different but equally as powerful.

To me, love is a word that describes an indescribable event.  Not a feeling, love is an event.  It’s fluid and unique.  It evokes change and action like no other word can.  Love is the best word we have come up with to describe the force that moves everyone towards a specific target at some point in their lives.  But in the end, love is just a word.  I can’t tell you what love is because I don’t know.  I know what I think it is, but the thing I feel that I’ve learned from love is that you make it your own.  You define it throughout your life.

So I guess what I’m saying is that maybe the girl who sleeps with the guy for the first time because she thinks she loves him isn’t wrong.  Maybe the guy telling his ex girlfriend that no one will ever love him like he does isn’t wrong either.  And maybe a 19 year old music management major really did know what love was.

Maybe

So I was doing some pleasure reading on economic theory (it isn’t as terrible as it sounds) and came up with a new idea.  It has to do with the American tax system.  No, I’m not going to pitch you my entire plan on fixing the American tax system because the battery life of my laptop is not, and will never be enough for that rant.  This, well this is just one of those small, big ideas.

Let’s look at what a tax is exactly before I talk about my idea.  A tax is a way to show your citizenship to a country.  It is how the government pays for incredible things like education, infrastructure, military, and the likes.  It’s also how the government pays for completely useless things (yes I’m talking to you Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally, and Robert Nardelli).  A tax is taking money that an individual has earned, and giving it to someone else, be it a government, organization, individual, or whomever, to spend how they deem best.  According to the Tax Justice Network, a tax has four main purposes: Revenue, Redistribution, Repricing, and Representation.

That sounds all great and noble, but let me show you what a tax really is.

“Taxes operate upon energy and industry, and skill and thrift, like a fine upon those qualities.  If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been contented to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, by taxing  me more than you.  If I have saved while you wasted, I am taxed, while you are exempt.  If a man builds a ship, we make him pay for his industry as though he has done injury to the state” Henry George, 19th century American economist

Taxes are set up to punish hard work and success.  Common sense would lead one to believe that, eventually, all those people who give the hard work and who create their own success will one day move to the place where their efforts are “punished” the least.  Those who are lazy will migrate to the place where their laziness is rewarded the most.  Just to let you know, if president-elect Obama’s tax plans go through, America will end up with the highest overall tax rate in the free world.

Our current system is set up to take away from the hard workers and capitalistic entrepreneurs, and give to those “less fortunate”.  We are encouraging exactly the thing we should be punishing!  Here’s what I say, let’s do just the opposite.  Let’s tax the people who aren’t contributing to society.  Let’s tax those who refuse to work or who refuse to follow the laws of society.  Let’s use the government’s financial powers to discourage the bad habits of society and let the market reward those who contribute to it.

The obvious financial rebuttal to this idea is “well the government wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to support the lifelines of the system (military, education, etc)”.  Well I disagree for two main reasons.  First, from my experiences with people in all levels of society, there will always be lazy people.  You will always have that rich dad’s son who doesn’t want to lower himself to an actual job when he has his trust fund waiting for him.  You’ll always have people who choose addictions over necessities.  There will always be those bottom feeders of society.  Secondly, with this “reverse tax”, the government will have a much smaller amount of liabilities it will have to cover.  Imagine what American companies could do if they instantly had 30-35% higher net income without changing anything.  Goods and services could drop in price by 25% and the companies would still be increasing their net profits by 5-10% (and that’s not even taking into effect the change in demand due to the drop in prices).

The next argument would be about the “fairness” of taxing the people who are “less fortunate” than others.  My answer to those who would make that argument is simple: capitalism is a system where people create there own fortune.  Anyone who has less than someone else made it so by a decision or combination of decisions he or she once made.  It isn’t a hold-your-hand, we’ll bail you out if you don’t make it society (I hope).  It is a system of hope, where anyone can prosper if they choose to make the necessary sacrifices.  The only reason someone is “less fortunate” is because they choose to be.

The bottom line is if you reward bad behavior, you will continue to get bad behavior.  If you punish good behavior, you won’t get good behavior anymore.  Punishing the wealthy solely because they have money is not a good incentive to be wealthy.  Rewarding the poor because they are poor, is not a good incentive to get out of poverty.  Think of it like raising a child: punish the bad behavior but reward the good.  It would be nonsensical to do the opposite for a child, so why is our government doing it to every one of us?

I figured I might as well start out with what is most important…..

OK, so this one is admittedly for those of us who love football, the real football, not that thing that happens on Sundays with salaries, endzone celebrations, and an infinite number of fantasy leagues (does anyone else think fantasy teams takes some of the fun out of the game?  I certainly do).  No, I’m talking about college football.  I’m talking about the best regular season in all of sports, and probably the least significant championship game.  To fix the BCS system, we have to look at what is so great about college football and what isn’t so great.

The Good:

Without a doubt, the college football season is by far the most compelling regular season of any sport.  Why?  It has to be a combination of so many things.  First of all, it’s young men playing a game because they love to play it in front of 92,746 screaming fans in beautiful fall weather.  The game completely changes every year because of graduations and transfers so every school has a new hope each year that maybe this year is finally the year their team wins the big game.  Most importantly, the college football regular season is so exciting because every game counts; slip up just once and there goes your chance at a “national championship” (see USC, Alabama, Texas, etc.).  But even if your dream season comes crashing down, there’s always a chance next year.

The Bad:

Anyone who knows college football knows that the one thing ruining the sport is the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).  The system uses a combination of human-based polls and computer systems to determine who the two best teams in the land are and then they go play in a “championship game”.  As terrible as that system is, it isn’t even the worst part of it IMHO.  Currently there are 32 bowl games played every year.  32.  With 2 teams per bowl, that’s 64 teams, or over half of all of college football.  Should we really reward a team who won only half of their games?  Not to mention the contracts signed between a bowl and specific conferences.  These contracts have created some of the most useless, uninteresting matchups possible (see Sugar Bowl 2008, Sugar Bowl 2009, Orange Bowl 2009, etc).  Enough is enough.

The Ugly:

Having to choose between rooting for a Big 12 team with a powderpuff defense and who is known for running the score up on teams, or rooting for the scum of the Earth, Florida, whom I would rather root for Al-Qaeda on any given day than this team, in the “national championship” game.

The Solution:

Let’s start with the national title game.  Simply put, you have to keep the regular season as important as it already is.  The championship game, however, is so worthless that something has to change.  Contrary to popular belief, a playoff is not the answer.  Creating a full-blown playoff will subsequently make certain games irrelevant.  A team could lose a game or two without worrying about being knocked out of the big game because the top 8 or 16 or whatever number will go.  No, a playoff won’t due.  What we need is for every conference to have a championship game and then use a plus-one system.  This system means that the top four teams play each other (1 v 4 & 2 v 3), and the winner of those games goes to a real National Championship Game the following week.  That way you can avoid a team with a weaker schedule getting in the game and not punish someone with a more difficult schedule so harshly as the current system does.  Let’s take a look at the 2008 season for a perfect example.

The top 4 teams vying for the Title would be Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, and Texas.  The other teams that could make an argument would be USC, Penn State, Utah, Texas Tech, and Boise State.  The following list is why each team’s argument is irrelevant:

USC - lost to Oregon State who ended up losing 4 games, one by 31 points and another time by 27

Penn State - Lost to Iowa who lost 4 games, all to unranked teams

Utah - Strength of schedule - 57th, hardest game - Michigan, who we all know was terrible this year

Texas Tech -Lost by 44 points to one of the teams in the top 4 (obviously not in the same league)

Boise State - Strength of schedule - 79th, hardest game - Oregon, the 2nd or 3rd best team in the worst major conference

The top 4 teams all lost only one game, two of them were to another team in this top 4 and the other two were to teams playing in top, non-BCS bowl games.  So with these 4 teams selected, 2 bowl games will be played the first Saturday in January and the championship game will be the subsequent Saturday.  This way we can easily decipher from the top four playing each other who is the best and keep the regular season as exciting and relevant as it already is (since the 5 teams i mentioned that got left out all had zero or 1 loss).

Now as for the other bowl games, forget these conference loyalty contracts.  No one wants to see Cincinatti play Virginia tech in a BCS game this year just like everyone thought a UGA v USC Rose Bowl last year would be better than the actual title game, not to mention the respective Sugar and Rose Bowls.  I say throw out the conference loyalties and, outside of the top 4’s plus one, have 13 bowl games (26 teams plus the 4 playing for the championship would be the top 30 teams in the country).  From there on out have 5 play 6, 7 play 8, 9 play 10, etc.  Take at look at some of the top matchups we would have just based on the current BCS standings:

USC v Penn State (ok so they got one right)

Utah v Texas tech

Boise State v Ohio State

TCU v Cincinnati

Ok State v Ga Tech

Oregon v Georgia

and on down the line.  These might not look like extremely exciting games but wouldn’t you rather see Alabama fighting for the title than playing Utah who would have a much better game against someone like Texas Tech.  And don’t forget we still have the 3 playoff games in addition to these.

This has to be the best way to fix our current system.  It keeps the regular season as the most exciting season of any sport, creates a national championship that actually means something, and would create bowl match-ups year in and year out that would be way more fun to watch (and draw in a lot more money for the networks, bowls, and schools).  So feel free to leave feedback or argue why one of the top 4 I have shouldn’t be there, but I’m telling you, it’s feasible and it works.

I have created this blog as my own personal soapbox.  I have ideas in my head that I want people to know and I want both feedback on my ideas as well as your own original thoughts.  The least I expect from this is a medium to express my ideas, if only to myself, and the most I could hope for is to spark some intelligent conversation.  There won’t be any rhyme or reason to when I write or what I write about.  I’ll write about something that interests me whenever I come across it (or have the time to sit down and write about it).  So that’s it.  Nothing too fancy; nothing really even that important.  Just something to put my ideas out there for myself.