Banks are out of control. I thought my cell phone company was bad with hidden charges in every nook and cranny, but my bank has them beat. My (current, soon to be former) bank has instituted a charge for using an ATM, should you try and get more money out than you have in your account. Let’s consider the logic behind this one. Say, it’s the end of the month, and your spousal unit paid the bills, leaving less in the account than you expected. You are a little short of cash and stop by your friendly neighborhood ATM to get some walking around money, for those little luxuries like gasoline and food. You pop in your card and are instructed that by pressing “YES” you are giving the owner of the ATM permission to ding your account for a couple of bucks for the priviledge of using their machine. Not fun, but you’re used to it. You then click on “withdrawl” and choose $100. Not so fast, bucko. Your significant other left just $95 in the account. Payday is in two days. Now what do you think happens? In a fair and equitable world, you’d see the screen tell you, “whoops…you’ve asked for more than you’ve got…would you like to get a ballance so you can take what you need without getting an overdraft?” But no. With B of A, what you get is a SERVICE CHARGE FOR ATTEMPTING TO TAKE OUT MORE THAN YOU HAVE ON HAND.
Pause with me for a nanosecond.
I’ve been thinking a lot about bad drivers. The holidays seem to bring out the worst in people. They’re in a hurry. They’re rude. They take the laws of self-preservation less than seriously, then get mad if you so much as touch your horn in protest.
Do you have a favorite magazine? TV show? Online site? Forget, for a moment, political speech media – news shows, political blogs, partisan sites, and such. Let’s just talk about “Mainstream Media (MSM)” I’m talking about special-interest magazines, network television, Top-40 radio, et cetera. Have you noticed lately that they seem to be getting more and more politically opinionated? I have. Everything from Law & Order to Wired magazine seems to have veered from “entertainment” to “screed” in an alarmingly short period of time. And another thing – I’ve noticed that the vast majority of these media outlets espouse a doctrine that is far to the left of the political spectrum.
Okay. Stay with me on this one. In America, we tax everything. There’s income tax, sales tax, inheritance tax, and on and on and on. That doesn’t even begin to cover all the hidden taxes – user fees, surcharges, and the like. I, for one, would dearly love to see the entire U.S. tax code scrapped, and either a flat tax (X% of income) or a VAT (value-added tax) to replace all of it. Since I don’t think I’ll see that in my lifetime, I have a modest proposal for an alternative that would generate all the income the government needs, and then some. It’s simple, effective, and likely to be welcomed with open arms by a vast majority of the public.
