Taxes. Government. Happiness?

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“The government is in the business of forcing people to do what they might not otherwise do.” Page 171 Reasonable Atheism

I read the book Reasonable Atheism and beyond all the talk about religion the above sentence stood out to me the most. Complaining about taxes is one of the favorite hobbies of our country. The only sure things are death and taxes as the old saying goes. There will likely always be some need for taxes. Not many roads get built by themselves or by private entities, although even that has been different in the past.Toll roads are evidence of that, so perhaps complete capitalism is what we are looking for? I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but I digress. A lot of our taxes are used to take care of others, via Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants for colleges, paying for high school for families who can’t afford it, food stamps and many other ways.

If we don’t want the government taking our money to help those in need, we need to take responsibility for them ourselves. If we are unwilling to do that then we need to submit to government to take care of them when we are unwilling. We need to be less selfish.

We all have to feel at some level or another that what we are doing is a bit ridiculous. We, the majority of Americans and the rest of the people in the 1st world, live in excess. We have all we need. Food. Water. Shelter. We spend our time playing with toys or chasing after sexual partners or numbing our senses to the point that we think we are enjoying ourselves. We challenge each other on who has the fastest car or the nicest lawn, who has the highest score in the newest videogame or who’s 401k is the biggest. We complain about the latest sports scandal. Deflated footballs? Really? Isn’t there something more important we could talk about anything?

There is, but we aren’t too often talking about it. We are comfortable. We read the new articles about those who are committing violence and we are assured that they are off base. They are insane. They need to rethink their lives. They need help. But not from us….. Someone else needs to help them.

Perhaps they have asked for help time and time again but no one has listened? Perhaps they don’t know how to ask for help anymore, so like children when they are ignored, they act out with violence to gain our attention.

Perhaps we should start doing what we might not otherwise not do. Of utmost importance, taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. If you don’t know anyone who is in need, that is your fault not theirs. Have you asked? Perhaps you do know someone in need but they are too embarrassed to ask for help. This is partially due to how we have stigmatized needing help in our world. We value individuality so much that to need help is seen as weakness and often if you need help you are given less and treated as though you deserve your fate.

Perhaps you are so tuned into your wants that you can’t even see the needs others have. Perhaps you choose to ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable. It should! We are too comfortable while there are people who sleep on the street! Who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Who don’t even have access to clean water!

When was the last time you stopped and thought “I have enough.” Likely not as recent as the last time you said “I need to buy a bigger TV, couch, house, car.” Recognizing when you have enough and when it might be time to start helping someone else is when you will start to find true happiness.

What if we all started worrying about how we could affect our community for the better instead of just how we could make our lives materially better?

Reaching Your Childhood Dreams

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Sometimes when I was in middle school I would bike to school. It was 1 mile down the highway or about 5 miles on the back roads. The back roads were ½ dirt. The specific day I’m writing about, my brother and I were biking down the highway and went past the one gas station in our 150 person town.

There was a guy who was in high school while I was in middle school. He had bought a 1970’s Firebird. I saw him leaving the gas station and saw 2 girls in the car with him. I was already attracted to girls, although I didn’t know why. I told myself that I wanted to get a fast car so I could get the girls.

I remember when I was a sophomore in highschool I was talking with a friend just waiting to get my license the next year. We hadn’t had much success with girls thus far, but I was sure that once I got my license I’d be picking up all the girls. Boy was I mistaken. Looking back, unsurprisingly, getting a license didn’t change my behavior towards women any and thus I didn’t pick up any girls, at least not for that reason.

Now I’m 25. I have partnered with The Job Foundation and I am mentoring 2 young boys. I occasionally take them for rides in my 2007 Mustang GT. They have some racing games for their video games and I they really like my car.

In a similar situation, the other day  was riding my 2008 GSXR 600 and stopped at a gas station. A kid yelled at me from the back seat of his parents SUV “Nice Rocket!”. I smiled. There were 5 Harley’s parked at the other end of the gas station. The kid didn’t see them. He just saw what he thought was cool. I wonder if that kid will look back and remember me some day?

These stories make me pause and reflect on what growing up really means. Sure I am a pretty fortunate guy and relatively happy but I am always looking for more. How to make a bigger difference. How to have more toys. I’m finally starting to question what the right goals are. I don’t have all the answers yet, but just taking the time to think “I’m that guy that I wanted to be as a kid”, at least in some aspects is a pretty cool feeling.

Did you have any memories of what you wanted to do or be or have from when you were a kid? Have you reached any of those goals? Did they make you happy? Did you set new goals part way through?

Help!

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“There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.” – Jan Schakowsky

Somedays I get so frustrated with the world. There seems to be so much “bad” happening. There’s a huge boxing fight that millions of people are excited about but then a few complain that one of the boxers has been tried for domestic abuse. There is a huge earthquake ½ way around the world that I sure feel like I can’t help the victims and if I do donate to some charity that’s helping where’s my assurance that the money actually helps? Even in my own city there are shootings seemingly every week! I don’t know any of the people who are shot or how to stop it. I feel helpless.

For a while I’ve been trying to stop and actually talk with homeless people instead of just handing them money when I see them sitting by the road. I feel like if I spend some time to get to know them that perhaps I can help more than just handing them money. I finally saw the opportunity last week and built up enough courage to stop. I parked my car and walked up to the man. He was sitting on a gas can eating a Snickers. I asked him how he was and introduced myself. He said “Hello” and that his name was Giovanni. After asking a few questions all the answer I got was that he didn’t speak English much. Not a great start. I continued trying to ask a few questions.
Where are you from? What are you looking for? Do you need anything?

What I got was that he was from Romania. Apparently he had 2 kids and a brother in Phoenix, AZ. Why he was here I still was not able to understand. Another man, Greg, came walking up and introduced himself also. We talked a little more and just weren’t getting much. I handed Giovanni some money and my phone number and email address and told him if he needed help to let me know. Greg said he’d fill up the gas tank. We walked back to Greg’s truck and he and I talked a little. Giovanni started to motion to me that he wanted to talk again so I walked back to him. He motioned over to his van. I cautiously walked over there. Of course it was a suspicious looking vehicle. 2002 Ford Conversion van with all the window shades down. I was not sure if he was going to try to shoot me? Who knows in situations like that? He ended up not shooting me. Thank God. He said his van was not running good. I told him I’d come back to the same spot the next day after work and look at it for him.

The next day I was pretty excited. I was ready to help someone in need fix their broken car. This was basically what I had been training to do after years of fixing up cars! A friend at work asked what I was up to that night so I told him helping a guy I had just met fix his car. The friend was immediately skeptical replying “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Well that was not the reaction I was expecting. He then proceeded to tell me that he was skeptical of anyone who needed help and that they were likely to scam you in some way. I asked for any specific times he had tried to help someone and something bad had resulted. He couldn’t tell me of any actual instances but he did assure me his dad had some stories.

Next I asked another friend if he’d come along with me. He agreed but also shared his skepticism with me that we should be careful and that Giovanni might be just setting us up to be sued. Great! Two friends, both sure some guy I’m trying to help is only trying to scam me. Now I know why people are so reluctant to help others. The risk to reward sure seems small! I assured my friend that we’d be very careful to not do anything that seemed like it’d make us liable for anything.

I appreciated my friends advice.  After work we headed over to the spot I had agreed to the day before with Giovanni. I was happy to have a friend along since I wasn’t fully sure what I was getting into.Giovanni was there with his wife, who also spoke no English. I had brought an OBD II scanner so I plugged it into the car. It provided very few codes and none that actually told us anything was specifically wrong. I asked Giovanni to drive the car and volunteered to ride along. He and his wife both insisted that I drive but after the talks from my friends I was playing it very safe. I assured them that if there was something so wrong we’d be able to tell it from riding. We drove around a bit and my friend and I could not tell anything was wrong. We drove it to the auto parts store and asked them to perform the same diagnostic test for a second opinion. They found the same issues we did and said there was likely nothing to wrong. We thanked him and asked Giovanni to drive us back to the store. We bought a wrench and he started taking off a few parts, insisting that he’d show us what was wrong. He had told us it was the spark plugs and then that it was a few other parts. All of these we assured him were ok. Eventually having determined that there was nothing that we could do and basically telling that to Giovanni he shook our hands, said Thank You and we walked away.

I sure felt like a failure. I hadn’t fixed his car. Of course I also couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I talked with my friend about it and he assured me that we had done everything in our power at that time to help. Is that true I will never know.

Reflecting on that situation, one of the real challenges was lack of communication. True it was exacerbated by the language barrier but overall I think we understood what he was saying. That his car didn’t run good. That was not confirmed to us by the testing that we did. We were not able to clearly identify Giovanni’s need so we could not provide him the help he thought he needed. We also didn’t really understand if he was looking for work here. Why he was her and not by his kids and brother in Phoenix? Was he an illegal alien? He had shown me some papers saying he had a legal entry to the US.

This helped me think more about need. How do we know when someone is in need? Often we don’t. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have good communication with others. Perhaps it’s because people are hiding their actual needs from us because they don’t want us to think less to them? Is it a pride thing? Perhaps others don’t actually have any need?

The problem is we as a society have gotten so used to lying to each other. We do it all the time. Any magazine you read is a lie, especially the fitness magazines. We look at sculpted abs and huge muscles and it tells us we should look like that. “They” promise us this look will come easy and fast if we buy their pill. The lie comes in when the hours at the gym or the dollars spent on surgery or steroids are not mentioned. We are too obsessed with appearance.

This crosses over into our personal lives also. People are ashamed to admit that they need help for fear they will be looked down upon. Thus, we lie to each other that we are not in need. Truthfully everyone is in need of  something. Often we try to cover up our needs by focusing on something else. Usually it’s “good times”. We neglect the important aspects of our lives but spend time partying to make it feel better. Often the partying includes things that are actually harmful to us, like drinking 10+ beers, watching porn or going to a strip club. These things will make us feel happy for a short time but eventually they will make us feel worse.

Romans 12:4-8

4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

None of us is a self made man, no matter how much you are inclined to think that. Once you make an connection and show you are willing to do a little work you will open more opportunities for yourself. Based on that, I believe we have a duty to our fellow man to help him when he is down, as we’ve all been there before and someone helped us. Often we forget the hard times when we get to the top. We only look for more to satisfy our continual hunger for success. How do we start to get ourselves back on track as a society? Perhaps we should start valuing what is actually good for us instead of what just feel good at the moment? Lets have more serious conversations at work or just with our neighbor. And after we have those conversations lets go out and DO something about the injustices we have talked about. The most important thing is to not talk ourselves out of doing something because of the tiny possibility of something bad happening to us. Ask yourself, what is the chance that bad thing actually happens? Like my story above, the likelihood is very small, especially if you are careful with what you do.

I leave you with this message from the Beatles and the challenge to expand who you think of as “your friends”.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles

Freedom!

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“We are moving to an increasing electronic society where our movements are going to being tracked.” Mary Cummings. (35 minutes 11 seconds in the video)

I recently watched this very interesting and terrifying video on drones. My definition of a drone is anything that is flown without a person in it. This can include unmanned aerial vehicles that have people operating them or autonomous drones. A current use of drones that have operators is the military used to target opposing forces. There is a camera on the drone that allows the operator to see what the drone sees. That’s terrifying enough, but the more terrifying idea is the one shared from Mary Cummings at the start of this article. HOLY MOLY that’s terrifying!

Think of everything you’ve done in your life? Likely you’d like a few of those to be left to the past. For example, I “broke the law” the other day by jaywalking or riding my dirt bike down the road. Now you might have said “Well you should have not have done that”, solely because you don’t like it or “It’s the law”. The problem with laws is that every law, once broken, must have some consequence. In debating the legality of homosexual marriages with a friend she assured me that it was “wrong” and that she thinks it shouldn’t be legal. Her argument was that it was already illegal! That’s very small thinking. This same friend also shared with me the multiple men she had lived with and had premarital sex with, yet she was making moral argument against homosexuality! WOW. To point out to her the ridiculousness of all her arguments I said “There are places where premarital sex is punishable by death. It’s the law.” She was not phased by that and was apparently convinced that the USA had perfected laws. WHAT!

Going back to my thoughts before the rant about my friend, what things do you do that might not be completely legal? How does that make you think about what other things that are “legal” might you disagree with? One of my personal favorite debates to have with people is about smoking.

Around 31 minutes, the video shows a whole city which can be zoomed in incredibly close. You can see things as small as 6 inches and they store all that data. And that’s just now and what they are telling “the public” unclassified. Think of in the future. “They” will be able to videotape the entire earth. This will undoubtedly provide some sense of safety for many people. I cannot argue that it would definitely have helped when my dirt bike was stolen the other day. A drone would be able to show exactly what vehicle and person stole it. Then they’d be linked to current face scanning technology and find the person nearly instantaneously. That would be great except for the lack of freedom it leaves! It would assure that those in power, however they got there, would be able to wield ultimate power, based on their definitions of right and wrong. I’m sure you all will agree that most of us don’t like being directed to do anything by another person.

We are continuously moving forward at a quickening pace and there are amazing and wonderful things happening every day. We need to be vigilant though that we don’t become (more) like sheep and more controlled each day. How much does the following quote by George Orwell fit with the people you know in your life?

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” George Orwell – 1984

We must carefully guard our freedoms before we do worse than lose them, we will give them away.

Gravity Payments, $70,000 For All Employees

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“What is it to you if I am generous?”- God

A link to a page to follow the Gravity Payments results of the $70,000 a year minimum wage for employees. – Added 8-29-02016

A link to a page to an update on Gravity Payment in 9-26-2019.

Dan Price (Gravity Payments CEO) On  Yang Speaks Podcast (On Youtube) Very good discussion! – Added 9-9-02020

The above quote was shared with me via a friend. There is no argument that there is income inequality in the USA. This week there was a huge story from Gravity Payments founder Dan Price that he will both slash his own salary to $70,000 and raise the minimum salary of each employee to $70,000, even the office clerk. This was happening the same week as strikes for $15/hour minimum wage by fast food worker across the country.

Gravity is not the first company to voluntarily pay their employees higher than minimum wage. QuikTrip which pays cashier’s $40,000 a year and Costco which pays its employees $44,000 a year are two other noted examples. They are also much larger than Gravity Payments as they have thousands of employees while Gravity has 120. That is not to diminish it’s accomplishments but just to highlight facts. This is a big deal!

After I read this news I was initially quite excited at the change we are seeing these days. I have been quietly debating with friends and myself the merits of a higher minimum wage. This was exactly what I wanted! People were finally able to have a comfortable living. Shortly after that I began to contemplate further. Even the “lowest paid clerk” will make $70,000, over double their current salary, earning the promised $70,000 within the next three years. How will the, currently,  higher paid personnel react? Will their salaries raise also? For example if there was a person earning $80,000 already, compared to someone earning $40,000 currently, the $80,000 earner might be a bit peeved to learn that someone’s salary has raised $30,000 while his has remained stagnant. We are not sure if that’s the case or if higher earners wages were also increased. I will speculate that they were not. I must hope that they will take it in swing. They will recognize that it is his money and they are not losing money simply because their neighbors are now making more. They also have the opportunity to leave a company that has already showed it’s a generous company, to make more money elsewhere if they can.

This reminds me of a passage from the bible.

Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”” (Matthew 20:1-16, NIV)

The workers who came late and worked only one hour were paid as much as the people who worked the full day. Naturally the people who worked the full day were pissed! But they were reminded that no money was taken from them.

As for the people who received the huge raises, I hope they recognize how lucky they are. I hope that they all recognize the good fortune they have been given and pass some along to others who are less fortunate than themselves.One driver for inflation, in my mind, is the excess of money in the hands of individuals. If 2 people both want a thing that is $50 and there is only one left, this will create an increased price for that part. They may end up paying $100 for something that was only worth $50 initially. To combat this price war on things, we need to focus on being less materialistic. If we become happier with what we have, then the increased salaries will be just fine. The people might spend them responsibly, paying off loans or securing a future via a larger down payment on a home or larger retirement deferrals. They would do good to reference this article about retiring a millionaire. If this creates a culture of people worrying about others happiness and their own future instead of buying more material things,  this will have been a great experiment indeed.

I have found through my own journey thus far that I was really only able to realize that I could give some away more after I realized that I had enough. It’s natural for people to seek security. If that means saving up $50,000 or $100,000 before they start donating to charities that’s fine. Another good way to give without giving money is by volunteering time. Your time is just as valuable as money. You could use your time to make money or you could give it away freely. When donating time, don’t feel bad that you aren’t donating money,and don’t let others make you feel bad you aren’t donating money either. This is one issue with our culture is we like to point out the flaws we see in others instead of pointing out the positive. I have done this above a bit, in pointing out that the higher earners could be upset, but I did that just as a thought experiment and to provide discussion that I’m sure others were thinking. When I discussed this topic with friends and they mentioned it I told them what i have written. Let’s be happy that the CEO is doing good!

I did a cost of living using this calculator and found that $70,000 in Seattle is comparable to $56,000 in my current city of Cedar Falls, Iowa. While this is still above the median USA household income, it’s not by much, and it is still $70,000.

How would you react to a situation like this?

Retire A Millionaire, The Easy Way

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How to become a Millionaire in 40 easy steps. Invest $5500 a year for 40 years. Get a decent rate of return (7%). Boom. Insta-millionaire. Read below for more information!

I am not a certified financial planner. Any investments are inherently risky (although some less than others). Invest at your own risk. I just like playing with numbers and wanted to share how easy it is below.

I’ve been digging into money, specifically for retirement, for about the last 10 months. Luckily money is easy, it’s just numbers and simple math. People really make it out to be much harder than it needs to be. Let me lay out one very easy way to retire a millionaire.

While companies often have retirement accounts available weather it be a 401K for many private companies, a 403B for government or public jobs or some other type of retirement account, there is also a personal option, a Roth Saving account. This is post-tax money that you can save with the benefit that it grows tax free and you can withdraw it tax free when you retire!

For this experiment we will consider only saving in a Roth IRA as that should be available to the average American.

For 2015 the Roth IRA max contribution is $5,500. Lets assume you start investing in your Roth when you are 25. This should have given you a bit of time to pay off at least some of your college loans, your first car and maybe saved a little up for a house. It will also give you 40 years to retirement, which is a nice number to work with.

If you invest $5500 for 40 years that’s equal to $220,000! Which is a decent amount of money, but perhaps not enough to live off of. Luckily for you with compounding (at 7%/yearly, which I will justify below) with no fees, it will have grown to $1,174,853 over 40 years! You’re a millionaire! Now unfortunately there are going to be some fees. Likely you are not managing your money 100% by yourself, but you can come close using www.Vanguard.com Using this you should be able to easily obtain an expense ratio of .2% or less. An expense ratio is a simple thing that really can end up causing confusion because of how it’s reported. What an expense ratio is is a percent of money invested paid to the company managing your money. A .2% expense ratio means they will take .2% of your money a year. .2% of $100 is only $0.20 that’s why it’s much more useful to convert expense ratios to a dollar value for every $1000 invested. So a .2% expense ratio is $2 per year for each $1000 invested. Once you are a millionaire you are paying $2,000 a year just for someone to hold your money! That is why a low expense ratio is favorable. It is ok to pay this though because many places will charge you much more to manage your money! Up to 1%! That’d be $10 per $1000! So off that side track, if we assume the .2% expense ratio per year this still will leave you with $1,109,739! You’re still a millionaire! That was sure easy wasn’t it?

Now that you’re retired, you’d like to start taking that money out. This calculation is pretty easy also. You simply need to understand what the annual rate of return is, which represents how much your money is growing each year. If you want to make withdrawals to eternity you can withdraw as much as your money makes a year. You should plan to withdraw just a little less than your yearly increase, to take into account down years in the cycle, of which there will be some. Since I assumed a growth of 7% we can calculate 7% of $1,109,739 which gives $77,681. Now this seems like a LOT of money (at least to me!) but remember this is all 40 years from now money.

Of course a million dollars today is not what it was 40 years ago and a million dollars in 40 years certainly won’t be what it is today. For that we will have to do a net present value (NPV) calculation. This is a very simple calculation using the assumed inflation rate and a simple equation.

NPV = R/(1+i)^t

R = future value

i = yearly average interest rate

t = number of years

How you use this equation is simple. For our situation you are trying to find the NPV of R = $1,174,853. We are assuming i = 3.22% (justified below) and a time (t) = 40 years. Inputting these numbers yields $330,696. That’s a pretty good chunk of change in 2015 dollars. If we do the same to our yearly withdrawal we will get $77,681 (40 years from now) equal to $21,865 in 2015 dollars.

Now you might think, man that’s not a lot of money, I can’t live of $21,000 a year. But I’d argue that once you are 65 you will hopefully have paid off your house, cars, etc. Of course you will also have other expenses like medical expenses, travel or perhaps helping out a grandchild or neighbor in need. Luckily you will likely have other forms of income such as Social Security in the USA, some income from a part time job or perhaps a pension from a former job.

This was not meaning to be a comprehensive end all retirement plan! When talking about investments and a 7% return and .2 expense ratio, of course you will need to do a bit of research and work to obtain those. But it’s not hard! A great resource I’ve been utilizing is The Crazy Man In The Pink Wig. His website is a wealth of financial knowledge, given freely!

To make the intro shorter and get you quickly excited about being a millionaire I made a lot of assumptions on returns, interest and the like. I will share the resources below simply so you don’t argue with me too much on these assumptions.

One important note I left out is that the maximum yearly contribution will likely increase as time goes on. This is good for you, the investor, as it means that you will likely be able to retire with even more!

The average annual inflation rate is 3.22% obtained here.

The average S&P 500 return data from 1975 to 2014 was found here and the average was found to be 10.18% average return. I also used the average bond return rate which can be between 4%-6% found here. Using that data I assumed a rate of return of 7%.

How is your retirement looking?Millionaire

Will Trade Dirt bike For Prosperity For All

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Today I had something taken from me. Well really it was taken from my father as he purchased it for me many years ago. He was more wronged than I was.
I had a 2001 Honda XR80 in the back of my truck in the parking lot where I live. It’s a small bike. Much too small for my 215 lb self. I had brought it back to Iowa to fix up so my younger brother could enjoy it as I had when I was younger.
I remember the day my dad brought it home. I don’t remember the day exactly, but I was about 12 (2001-1989) and it was a Christmas present for my brother (a year younger than I) and myself. I remember there wasn’t to much snow on the ground yet so we were able to ride it in the field. We were throwing snow everywhere! Snow rooster tails!

Eventually we bought another older (1980’s vintage) XR80 off the internet so my brother and I could ride together. I am sure we rode around quite a bit but I only distinctly remember one time. We were both going through this field with tall grass. He was off to my right. The grass was pretty tall so we couldn’t really see what was in front of our tires. He ended up hitting a stump or piece of wood that happened to be in the middle of the field. I distinctly remember looking to my right and seeing him seated on the dirt bike in a normal position, except the bike had the wheels straight up and his head was near the ground. Don’t ask me how that happened but it was there. Of course shortly after that moment in time, everything unraveled rather quickly. The bike maintained more momentum as it was heavier and went farther, which was fine as luckily it didn’t land on him. He landed on the ground and we walked the bikes home. We even had a baseball game that night. I’m pretty sure he had some memory loss from that incident.

Over the years the bike had deteriorated. I had acquired a larger CR125 and enjoyed riding that with a friend who also had a 125cc dirt bike. They are much more powerful than an 80cc. I had brought it to Iowa one time and had tried to fix it up some so my much younger brother (14 ish years younger) could ride it. It was only semi successful. It at least ran but didn’t idle good and unfortunately he never got to ride it like we had as kids.

I was home for Easter weekend, 2015 (a few days ago as I write this) and had decided it was time again to fix up the bike for perhaps another attempt to have my younger brother a dirt bike to ride. I loaded it up and drove it back to Iowa with me. I live in an apartment complex on the North West side of Cedar Falls, by all accounts one of the best parts of the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area. I came home the night of 4-8-2015 and noticed that my dirt bike was not in the back of the truck where I had left it since returning Sunday (4-5-2015). It’d been there a total of 3 days and it had been stolen. I have even left my bigger dirt bike in the back of my truck over night before. Now I’d be pretty hesitant to do that!

This is honestly one of the first acts of crime that has been perpetrated against me. I can honestly say I was pretty confused. I called the police and told them something was stolen and I was calling them because “That’s what you do when you have something stolen.” They asked me my address and sent a guy out to look at the crime scene. We didn’t find much. They even left the pretty sweet tie down’s I have in the truck? Why? Idk.

Anyway, I’ve got pretty low expectations for getting that back. I’m not really the loser here as I never paid for the bike. I sure feel bad for my father who just wanted to buy something nice for his sons all those years ago and it was well appreciated, used and loved. But now the joy that was going to go to some future kid, maybe my brother, maybe some kids I have yet to meet that I was hoping to introduce to the joys of dirt bikes, will not be realized.

What will become of that bike? What was the motive of the person who stole it? I can only hope that they stole it for a “good” reason. Were they stealing it because they can’t afford a dirt bike for their own kids? If that’s the case I wish they would have asked if they could have borrowed it instead. I have read about 90% of the way through “Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth” as of today and one sentence really resonated with me.

“It is utterly clear to me that the highest priority need of world society at the present moment is a realistic economic accounting system which will rectify, for instance, such nonsense as the fact that a top toolmaker in India, the highest paid of all craftsmen, gets only as much per month for his work in India as he could earn per day for the same work if he were employed in Detroit, Michigan.” P112 Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth”  R. Buckminster Fuller

Did the person who stole my dirt bike feel that he didn’t have any other option to get money than to steal my property? How can we rectify that?

I have yet to read this book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” by Peter H. diamandis and Steven Kotler but from what I’ve gleaned thus far from the back cover is that they are arguing that we have the capability to fulfill everyone in this world’s basic needs through application of current technology. I agree with that assessment completely.

How to address this issue of inequality is another problem. I make more money than the average household in the USA. Because of this I am able to save for retirement, give to charity and purchase unnecessary toys and take fun trips. How to help distribute my income so that everyone can live in peace is something I’ve been trying to understand for a while. One of the issues is that we as a society have made it shameful and hard to ask for help. We value independence over just about anything. We see it as a strength not to have to ask others for help. This is good in that it does make us stronger, but it is bad when at times we do need help we are unable to ask for it. Often when we ask people do look down on us or feel pity for us. Neither of those are helpful reactions. We should work to identify why someone is in a bad situation and help them out of it, not think lowly of them for it. We’re all in this together.

Ultimately I’m upset that my dirt bike was stolen, not because of the money, but because of what it meant to me. The love and joy my father had purchasing it and giving it to his sons who were equally or more joyful at having such a fun new toy, like nothing they had had before. I guess the people who stole it decided that they needed it more than me, and it’s sad our world is like that. Please help me make the world a place where no one feels the need to steal.

Guns II

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Often the gun control debate is framed as “I am for every single person having a  gun.” or “I am against any person having guns.” I think that is a simple but not useful or accurate way to frame the discussion.  We all want the same thing, restrict people who will do violence from having guns. If you follow the link you will find a graph under #11 that shows that people who want guns aren’t necessarily for everyone having a gun. In fact, most people do not want felons or mentally ill people to have access to a gun. This makes plenty of sense. I certainly don’t want someone who would potentially harm myself or others to obtain a gun.

Where the pro-gun vs. anti-gun people differ is on how we think that should be reached. Pro-gun citizens believe that they should have the option to defend themselves when they are threatened with a gun or other device of harm such as a knife, hammer or a person physically larger than themselves. We may have different opinions on who should have a gun or how many they can have but hopefully we can agree that there are legitimate uses for good people to have guns such as hunting, target shooting, trap shooting and self defense.

There are multiple ways to obtain a gun. One is to purchase it from a store. At least in Iowa, USA, you have to go through a background check when making this purchase. If you fail the background check, for example if you are a felon, you can not purchase said gun. If you are a person who is apt to follow the law there is no issue with purchase of a gun from a store. That is where you will buy a lot of your guns and you are OK with the simple background check. From talking with a friend and avid gun enthusiast, he is ok with background checks but he is more concerned about gun registration. His argument is that if the government knows where you are and how many guns you are basically at their mercy. I sympathize with his argument. While “the government” has more sophisticated weapons at it’s disposal it also would need to talk soldiers into using those weapons against citizens. It’s unlikely any one leader would use a whole military to subjugate a population single handedly, and if he did, it would only take a single bullet to remove said leader. Therefore, guns as an equalizer is a fair argument for their existence by the general population.

Another way to obtain a gun is through purchasing a legal gun from an individual. This makes it possible for a gun to potentially be purchased by someone who is a felon. I personally would never sell a gun to someone I don’t know.

A third way to obtain a gun is to purchase a gun illegally. This is the least safe way for everyone involved. Unfortunately even in countries where there are gun bans in place murder rates and general crime rates don’t seem to be affected. Could someone explain to me how the Charlize Hebdo shooting occurred? Could someone explain why crime rates in places that ban gun laws often go up or at least remain constant?

“If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”

Unfortunately by the simple fact that they are bad people criminals will not care if you make laws that say they can’t have guns.If you read this article on gun violence in the UK you’ll see that criminals are quite ingenious in their efforts to circumvent the law. Making more strict laws does not disarm criminals. Often the argument against guns comes down to numbers of murders in a year. That is a very simple number and not representative of the use of guns in a country. If you check this article the US ranks #22 in total crime vs. #4 UK, despite having many more guns and more guns per capita. Also if you are ultimately concerned about human lives, there are almost infinitely more things that kill people than guns, most of them are diseases, some are car crashes and accidents. If the goal is to stop deaths we should start there, not removing useful means of self defense from law abiding citizens. Here is an article sharing some stories of people who stop crime based on having access to a gun. The gun is an equalizer.

If you read the story of Amanda Collins’ perhaps you’ll understand that there are legitimate reasons someone might want a gun for self defense. She was raped while in a gun-free zone. That didn’t stop her attacker from using a gun to threaten her. It was likely an illegally obtained gun and the fact that a criminal was using a gun doesn’t mean the gun was at fault. Being a man larger and more dangerous than her he could likely have done this without a gun, he also could have used a knife. A gun is a tool. A gun is also an equalizer. If Amanda had had a gun we don’t know what the outcome would have been, but she would have had an equal chance of walking away from there unharmed instead of having no chance.

Ultimately the facts are that a gun is simply a tool. It can be used for good or for evil, like any other tool. Completely outlawing guns is a fools task. While background checks are a good idea they are not practical for individual sellers. Requiring gun registration is one step towards removing guns from the general population. Remember when terrorists obtained legal training to fly airplanes? Was the argument that we should outlaw all flight training? Where’s there’s a will there’s a way. Bad people will be bad regardless of the law. If you haven’t considered that guns are not inherently evil by the end of reading this, and all articles reference, there is no helping you. But don’t be alarmed, I’d still save you given the chance. I just hope I’m around to help when you are threatened by a criminal.

You can reference Guns I here.

Guns

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If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. – Lost to history

A friend shared a video with me today called “Guns With History”. It disgusted me. This group of anti-gun activists set up a mock gun store with the intention of luring innocent, unsuspecting, first time gun buyers in only to share stories with them of every horrendous crime committed with a gun that they could think of. They had guns from the Sandy Hook school shooting and others where a child had accidently shot a sibling or parent.

The problem with this approach is you could do this with any common day object. “Want to try being a carpenter come on in! Hello. Do you like this hammer? Did you know that on average 584 people a year are killed in the USA by hammers!” “Oh I had no idea how dangerous hammers were, I’ll never use another hammer in my life” the clueless person on off the street might say.

What’s worse, did you know that 812 people in the US are killed in a year by hands, fists or feet! We should outlaw hands, fists and feet!

You can find the data I referenced for the 584 hammer deaths/year from the FBI here.

If you have understood by now I am trying to make a point that guns aren’t the problem. Yes, guns sure make it easier to kill someone and they also make it easier to conduct other crimes, but they also make it easier to stop someone who’s trying to perpetrate a crime with a gun. Read the tragic story of this girl. A “gun free zone” policy was in place on her campus. Therefore she, being a law abiding citizen chose to follow the law. She was assaulted and raped by a man who had a gun. Her comment about gun free zones follows “leaving them (law abiding citizens) defenseless against gun-wielding criminals who disregard the laws.” Did you read the last five words? Criminals don’t follow the law anyway. That’s why they are criminals.

Another important topic to discuss in the gun debate is the role antidepressants have played in gun violence in the past 20 years. The world can be a sad place, but the internet is a great place as far as sharing information. I will let you, the concerned reader, check out this article and this website documenting all the dangers of antidepressants and the role they have played in murders and suicides.

I leave you with these summarizing thoughts.

Outlaws don’t play by the rules. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

You can’t simply outlaw things because they are dangerous. Hands, knives and bats are all used to kill people everyday.

Antidepressants have played a role in most mass shootings and play a role in many other murders and suicides.

If you really want to help, focus on helping people and addressing what’s giving them the urge to shoot people, don’t try to simply stop them from shooting people, because if they can’t shoot someone, they will find another way to kill.

Challenge Your Norm

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“Somewhere else is just someone else’s back yard.” – Axel Hoogland

I have been actively looking for a job outside of Iowa for the last year. Specifically in Georgia or North Carolina to continue with my current company but I met no success.

My stated reason was to get out of the cold. I hate winter and want to drive my nice RWD cars year round, that was it. I wasn’t able to leave, despite an interview in North Carolina in August. After that I  decided to be content where I was. Eventually I started getting more ingrained in the community. I joined a dancing team at the University of Northern Iowa. We are learning to do the cha cha, rumba, triple time swing, waltz, foxtrot and tango. In December 2013 I couldn’t even have told you what those dances were. Now I can dance some of them with enough skill to trick people who don’t know much about dancing into thinking I actually know what I’m doing

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

I also got involved in mentoring kids. Specifically, via The Job Foundation. Going into it I wanted to help the kids learn. Little did I realize that I’d be learning just as much as they have, maybe more. Working with kids as an adult has exposed me to a whole new world. Well I guess it’s exposed me to the world of a child, again. I am able to take these kids to events that are old to me and they are fascinated by stuff that seems mundane to me. I took them to a shop recently. We played with an engine hoist for 45 minutes. They picked me up. They picked each other up. They picked up just about everything in the room. They were learning how a hydraulic jack works, without even knowing it. Sneaky me.  I can not remember in my memory having that much fun with an engine hoist. After that they spent 45 minutes taking a small wooden table apart with screw drivers. Again, they loved it. Another time I took them to the shop they played with a car jack for the same amount of time. It only picks you up 10”. They must have ridden up and down that thing 20 times. Kids don’t need much to be entertained. Just something new. And the same goes for adults!

“Iowa is so boring. The same old thing happens everyday. There’s nothing to do here.” This is what a lot of people complain day in and day out. And they have a valid point, in their own mind. For them, their days all seem to run together. They go to work, the store, maybe the gym. They see the same friends. Eat the same lunch etc. It’s mundane. Boring. Not thought provoking.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Challenge your norm! You can seek out dissenting opinions in any city. Especially a city as big as the one I live in (100,000). Go to a new place to eat. Take a new route to work and look around. You might be surprised what you find. Change up where you go after work one day. Explore your city. Talk to new people. They probably do something different from you everyday and maybe it’s something you can find an interest in. If you don’t think you can, try acting interested in what they are telling you. Actions can drive changes in feelings. The point here is that a change can appear small at first but in the long run could provide some some life changing opportunity.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It's sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It’s sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Another thing I’ve been doing lately has been purposely exposing myself to people who I perceive to have different religious beliefs than I do. I am Catholic. With a small group from my church we have started visiting other denominations of Christianity as well as other religious centers. We visit 1 a month (2nd week/weekend of the month). Thus far we have visited with Lutherans, Mormons, Universal Unitarians and have in the works plans to visit a Methodist church and a Mosque. From the start I had to ask myself what my goals were with visiting these places. Did I want to come in telling these people how I disagreed with them and that they were going to hell? Honestly there was a small part of me that wanted to do that. But why? What good would that do anyone? I have worked very hard to only ask genuine questions to understand others beliefs without volunteering my own, unless I’m asked. This has proved to be a great way to meet people and build mutual respect. You find that often people are really more alike than different. Why do we put ourselves and others in boxes? I think it’s often because people are afraid of what they don’t know. If you are brave enough to just venture out a bit and challenge your norm, you’ll find where you are is a more  interesting place than it used to be.