Best Way to Make Money

I'll probably return to this theme a lot. There is quite a backstory to this, but in essence I've learned the best way to become rich is to teach (for a fee of course) someone else how to make money. This applies to Real Estate Gurus - see Carelton Sheets, various pyramid schemes such as Amway and Mary Kay, and the Rich Dad guy. I can't say whether "rich dad" and "poor dad" are real people, but I can say the author became a lot wealthier telling people about them.

This also applies to those who do it under the gambit of educating others. There are a lot of attorneys who will for a hefty fee teach other attorneys how to make more money litigating various issues such as Bankruptcy Litigation and Fair Debt Collection.

I have had peripheral involvement in at least two "get rich quick scams" and they are both pretty funny. I also quasi dated a person, who was really into selling some fruit juice called Monavie. These are pretty funny stories.

The reality is there is no template to making a lot of money. Sure you could say "start facebook", "win the lottery", or even "work hard". All of these are true, and will make you rich, but for every guy who wins the lottery millions lose, and many poor people work very hard. I have no doubt some people have a secret to make money, and guess what - they use their know how to make money - for themselves. They would in fact lose money if they taught these secrets to others, as it would no longer be a secret.

Point: If you are paying someone to teach you how to make money, the only person profiting is themselves.

Citizen Initiatives

I think direct democracy sucks. Namely because your average person is some combination of not very smart nor very informed about the issues. Theoretically, elected representatives are supposedly to represent us, but when then fail to do so, we have the ability to goto the ballot to rectify the wrongs. At least this was the idea when citizen referenda were instituted in the Progressive Era.

However, in the modern era, it is about as classic example of astroturfing as it gets. Virtually every citizen initiative seems to take away the rights of a suspect class i.e. gays, immigrants, criminal defendants, and parolees etc.... or they give people what they want i.e. lower taxes, or more services, but no balancing on how to pay for what. I mean you never see an initiative saying maybe incarcerating 1.4 million people is a sign of a deficient criminal justice system.

This article sums it up well. Most insulting in this whole process is Henry Nicholas. He is a big advocate of victims rights, if the accused is poor and preferably non-white. However, for people like him, he is a big fan of things like due process, the 5th amendment and high priced lawyers.

Red States on Welfare

The recent election seemed to prove Americans don't taxes. Or is it defecits. Or is it a bad economy. I also learned rich people are not wealthly people, they are "job creators". Apparently, giving them a tax break will create oodles of jobs for the masses. Presumbably these jobs will be better than working at Wal-Mart or Arby's but that remains to be seen.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had recently with a guy from Georgia. I was at the bar watching my beloved college football team get destroyed. I made some muttering about how it'd be nice to goto bowl game before I'm 40, and the gentlemen next to me said his team sucked this year too. Anyhow, as it tends to go, once the debate about whether Herschel Walker or Michael Stipe is the most prominent UGA grad ended, it turned to politics.

This gentlemen was a Republican. His whole argument was the Georgia and "all the red states" have balanced budgets and kickass economies while us liberals in blue states have massive unemployment because we tax the job creators and pay our teachers and prison guards 100s of thousands dollars a year. We chatted a little more, and he said he was voting for Romney and I said, I usually don't vote for people with magic underwear and his response was you voted for Harry Reid, right? Good comeback. Anyhow, I was kind of drunk and forgot about the conversation for awhile.

Recently, I read an article that California was "net payer" in the federal tax system. That is for every $1.00 Californians pay in federal taxes, it gets less than $1.00 back. Here is a list from 2006.

Take a look. Mainly red states on the dole. Maybe if us Californians demanded our fair share back, our budget crisis would go away, and the people of Kentucky could actually do something useful life get educated.