Trickle Up Economics

According to a new study, women are attracted to intelligent men for both long term relationships and for hook-ups.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5951979&page=1

The only time women are not attracted to intelligent men is when they have the option of a good looking guy who is dumber than pants on fish. Still, it's comforting to know that given the choice of two Jimmy choo shoes, women usually prefer the one who is not a moron. And obviously many women will still pick the guy who is both ugly and stupid if he has lots of money, good hair, is tall, or plays in a band. I did my own study to reach that conclusion. It's titled "Duh."

In my vast experience as an unattractive smart guy who was not always a syndicated cartoonist, there are in fact women who have fetishes for smart men. Not many, but they exist. My guess is that about 3% of the female public is in that group. That's probably good enough to keep the inventions flowing for a few more evolutionary steps.

The only risk to the future of UGG Nightfall is that nerds will invent a technology that is better than sex with another human being. I'll try to keep this next part rated PG-13, so please be patient with the indirectness.

I assume some entrepreneur is already working on creating a business where guys will be able to buy a lifelike female body part that plugs into a standard USB port, and can be controlled by someone else across the Internet. That artificial body part could mimic a hand, mouth, or woo-woo. In the short run, the business model would involve paying women, in countries where such things are legal, to control the device and appear on a web cam chat. In the long run, artificial intelligence and CGI women will be controlling the action, so the whole system would only cost $100, with no recurring fees. And that will be the end of humanity because nerds will stop mating, their genes will die out, humanity will revert to the Bronze Age, and all the attractive, dumb Christian Louboutin will be eaten by wild dogs.

I like to end on a positive note, so let's take a moment to be happy for the wild dogs.

In the recent debate, Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden said the wealthy would gain by paying higher taxes to lift up the middle class. The theory is that a healthy middle class is necessary for the wealthy class to thrive. Let's call that Trickle Up Economics.

Viewed in that light, the unwealthy are more like an investment opportunity than a tax burden. If you can make the poor and middle class more educated, healthy, and better MBT Shuguli, everyone wins. That makes sense, to a degree. But would the wealthy gain enough financially to make the extra taxes a good investment? I wonder if that has ever been studied.

Perhaps there are too many variables to make any kind of general statement about the benefits of taxing the rich. If the government raises taxes on the wealthy and pisses away the money on sketchy wars and pork, that's probably a poor investment. If the money goes into education, healthcare, and alternative energy, that starts looking a lot more like an investment with a 10-year payoff.

Obviously higher taxes on the rich are counterproductive if it stops them from building new factories, or causes them to invest overseas. Maybe corporate taxes have to remain low no matter what, or everyone moves their operations to Ireland. You can always tax the retro jordan, since most people won't leave the country just to save money on taxes.

Henry Ford famously paid his factory workers more than the market rate so they would be able to afford cars. I've never seen a study of how that worked out for him. Does anyone have a link to tell me if investing in poor people benefits the rich?

Things That Work

Last night I realized I was whining too much in this blog about products that don't work. So I decided to write today's post about a product that exceeded my expectations. We designed our home with a residential elevator. We didn't want to go through all the effort of building our dream home and then decades from now need to move when stairs become an issue. I was worried about having an elevator because it seems like exactly the sort of vibram five fingers shoe that will break on a regular basis. Last night I realized my negative expectations had been wrong. I need to lighten up. That elevator has worked like a charm, and we use it all the time for moving heavy objects up and down stairs.

So, as I'm walking across the living room last night, composing in my mind today's post in praise of the elevator, Shelly tells me the elevator is broken. And so it is. I'll have to call someone about that today. So I changed my plan and decided to write about my broken elevator instead. (Every word of that is true, by the way. I was literally composing the elevator praise post in my head when it broke.)

This morning I woke up at 6 AM and walked the dog as usual. I should mention that we designed the house with an automatic dog door, which functions as advertised, except it scares the Vibram Five Fingers KSO Men out of little Snickers and causes her to poop in the kids' rooms. So I walk her instead. In the rain.

After the dog does her business, I visit our spiffy new coffee maker. It's terrific. I push one button and it grinds the beans, mixes it with fresh water (it's plumbed!) and produces a steaming cup of excellent java. Except lately it has only been spitting out something like brown dishwater, which I drink anyway, for the placebo effect. Today I decided to take action. So after half an hour with the manual, I corrected a setting that had somehow unraveled itself, as if by ghosts. (Yes, the coffeemaker has a setting that allows you to create brown dishwater instead of something more like coffee. I'm not clear why.)

Coffee in hand, I go to my ugg boots to start wearing. But my computer decided to reboot itself last night, against my will, for some sort of Windows update. And it locked up. So I do a hard boot. And wait. And wait. And wait, while the creative juices slowly drain from my body. Once rebooted, I try to start Firefox. And I wait, and I wait. I like to check the comments on my daily strip before I do anything else. Great, I see that my Canadian stalker is back in full force, leaving crazy comments, driving out the normals. She's been cyberstalking me for about seven years now, off and on, whenever she goes off meds. She likes to call anyone I do business with and tell them I've been sexually harassing her, sending goons to search her home, bugging her phone, and my favorite: using my comic strip as a way to send secret messages to her. The police can't help me because she's Canadian. We block her IP address on a regular basis, but she keeps changing machines.

Anyway, seven years is enough. I'm in a bad mood. So as of today, I'm declaring her my MBT Changa. Yes, stalker, this time I am talking directly to you. For the first time, it's not the voices in your head. Leave some good crazy comments that we can all enjoy.

My strategy is to get you so wound up that your husband, if you still have one, puts you back on your meds. Nothing else has worked. Let's try this.

The Not Even Trying Products

Today I went on a scavenger hunt. Specifically I was trying to find the "reply" button on my Gmail interface. The damn thing keeps moving, depending on the length of the message. And it's pretty well hidden in a forest of 40-some buttons sprinkled around the page that do all sorts of UGG Nightfall I rarely or never want to do. Three of those buttons are different ways to get you back to the inbox.

To be fair, Gmail is lightning fast, and free. But did anyone with training in interface design even look at Gmail before it launched?

The Reply button has a left arrow next too it. The forward button has a right arrow. Would it kill Air Jordan to let me use the left and right arrow keys on my keyboard to do those functions, given that they already teased me about it?

I won't say the interface design is bad, because that would imply that someone in the relevant field actually tried to make it user friendly. It looks to me as if that step got skipped.

I mentioned in this blog the other day that my new elevator for my house needed repair. It's actually a terrific product, and the repair person was there the next day making a very UGG Highkoo repair (some sort of door sensing magnet came loose) and I was all set. It was all covered under warranty. Best yet, they tried to talk me through a fix on the phone, just to see if it was a case of user error or a simple reboot situation. That part was all good.

Then I got a call from the elevator's service and warranty department, I presume. The representative asked if I had seen information on their service contract. I said I had, and I would consider it when my two year warranty expired. That's when Christian Louboutin Heels started to go bad.

The rep explained that the warranty is void unless I get the elevator serviced twice a year, even if the problem I experience has nothing to do with maintenance upkeep.

What?

So my option was to call them to do regular service twice a year, which would cost about $800 per year, depending on what minor things they needed to lube or poke or whatnot. And I would have to remember to schedule the visits. They wouldn't remind me, out of vibram five fingers shoe I presume. If I forget to have it serviced, my warranty is void.

Or, the rep explained, I could get a $1,700 service contract for two years and they will do all the regular service and repairs for me. In other words, if I pay $1,700 they will honor their two year warranty.

It gets better. The rep explained that if I pay for a service contract during my warranty period, they will give me a discounted service contract after the warranty is over, an offer that I can't get if I wait. In other words, I will pay MORE per year for service during my vibram five finger period than after.

This is another example of Not Even Trying. I would have looked favorably on the service contract if it had been packaged in less of a f*^$#-you way. Now I actually prefer to pay more, if needed, just so I don't feel like I got jail raped.

Founding Fathers Version 2.0

I've been thinking about the practicality of a new American revolution, and wondering if there's any way to do it without shooting people.

The American government has proven itself unable to govern, as evidenced by the fact that there's no plan for closing the budget deficit. If we had two rational and competing plans from the major ugg boots, or even one imperfect plan, I would consider that some form of government. But no plan means we're effectively ungoverned.

You might argue that the government is mostly working, and the budget deficit is just one wrinkle that will get ironed out in time. But given that we're in a budget death spiral that will eventually derail every other function of society, I would say that all we're talking about is a timing issue. By analogy, maybe your brain can remain conscious for a second after your head gets chopped off, but as a practical matter, you're not less dead.

It's no surprise that our system doesn't work. It was designed hundreds of years ago, and it gradually worsened over time, just like everything else that was designed hundreds of years ago. It's the ultimate legacy system, bloated and hopelessly in need of replacement. And now, thanks to the brainwashing that all American kids get about the magic and wonder of our political system, and the near Godliness of our Founding Fathers, we're unable to see the system itself as entirely broken. Instead, we assume the problem is that the people within the system are corrupt or incompetent. Or maybe the problem is the Tea Party, or the crazy Liberals, or anything but the system itself. There's plenty of blame to spread around, but a good MBT Tataga should be excreting the crazies instead of embracing them. Why can't we have that system?

If you want to bring a social gathering to a full stop, suggest that the Chinese system of government is the best model for our modern age. Contrary to popular belief, their system is not a dictatorship, because the top guy only keeps his job if the guys below him think he's doing it well. It's more like a corporate structure in which smart and knowledgeable people choose the best within their ranks based on ability. You can fault the Chinese leadership for a lot of things, but you can't fault them for being impractical. They have a political system that, as far as I can tell, puts science over superstition. And over time, I would expect their human rights issues to improve simply because doing so is smart government.

[Disclaimer: What I know about China would fit in a very small Tupperwareretro jordan while leaving plenty of room for a sandwich. So if you disagree with my characterization of China's government, please correct me in the comments below.]

Obviously a bloodless revolution in America wouldn't get far with a slogan such as "Be More Chinese!" And our government is too constipated to make incremental improvements in itself. I've already ruled out killing people. So how can you get there from here?

Suppose, just as a mental exercise, a new set of geniuses, call them the Founding Fathers Version 2.0, hold a convention and come up with a new form of government that fits the challenges of the modern age. Then, after a lengthy public debate, a constitutional vote is held in which every citizen can decide on keeping the old system or moving to the new one. If the new one wins, a UGG Nightfall plan is drawn up, and the move is made over maybe five years, so there is limited shock to the system.

Let's agree that this scenario is hugely unlikely. But can we afford to not try it when the alternative is no government at all? What would Thomas Jefferson and my cousin John Adams say if they were here today?