I watched “Limitless”, a movie about a drug that increases brainpower to 100%. Good action and premise, but a dumb plot. The smart guy makes millions but forgets to pay the loan shark, doesn’t think about side effects, and fails to count the number of pills he’s got left. Kind of like not using your last wish to wish for more wishes? The real pill would be the one that made the actor’s eyes as blue as mine.Greece is still in the news, but why? Their main industry is goat-herding and nothing has happened there since 1945, so what’s with all the panic? Let them fail, so what? Like my brothers, between the thousands of times I helped them and the thousands they stole from me when I didn’t, if Greece winds up on the skids it is their own fault, not mine. Europe calls it a debt crisis. My gawd, you didn’t lend them any money, did you?
If Europe wants bail money, why don’t they go after their tax havens? Take Monaco which has no industry. What it does have is 30,000 residents and 370,000 bank accounts. Like many, I personally feel governments have had all the time they need to enact fairer alternatives to personal income tax, but have shown no inclination to do so. There are better types of taxes, but none that allow the government as much power to destroy privacy. One thing the novice should be aware of is that most tax havens have the right to tax. The ONLY difference is the tax rate.
[Author's note: the tax rate is a difference. You should be aware of a similarity. Having a tax haven is essentially idenditical to having an untraceable link to the outside world. It is no good having anyone know about your overseas bank account, or you'll have a little reception committee waiting every time you return. If you don't know how to keep a secret, and you probably don't, cheating is out. Hint, you'll need an Irish passport. They have gads of experience resolving disputes with nosey bureaucrats.]
For those looking, Belize has taken over as the top tax haven in this hemisphere. They have a cute category of “Limited Duration Company” where you can deposit $100,000 and receive $2,875 per month tax free. The catch? Minimum opening balance is $32,000. The best part? The penalty for identifying or attempting to identify the owner of a bank account in Belize is ten years in the slammer. How do you get your money back home? Easy. The Belize bank grants you a “loan” that you simply fail to pay back. Or in Canada, since they tax that too, the Insurance Company from Belize pays you a non-taxable “benefit” to cover your poor losses.
On the same topic, I heard some senior citizens saying that they were “tired of being blamed” for the mess in the world and that the younger generations should “stand on their own”. This, I am in 99% disagreement with. My generation and older are, in fact, very responsible for the wrongs of the world. These complacent self-styled “free thinkers” were anything but open-minded. I watched them squander their votes on useless platforms just to appear “nice” while ignoring 40 million illegal immigrants. You old people shunned your responsibilities; I saw it with my own two eyes. And now you want who to come to your rescue? I don’t think so.
Something else I find corny is the remakes of 1950s era music into videos. The producers have applied the 1990s formula with comical results. The laugh is how they try to portray the original star as lamenting his own feelings as if the song was about himself. You know, how they’ll present Dwight Yoakum as a poor farm boy, that brand of foolishness. Worse, many of the original artists were not exactly all that photogenic. They were in a studio doing a job. So the video necessarily has to be patched together and it looks it. People who never wore a cowboy hat in their lives suddenly chewing straw and leaning on fenceposts.
