Dick and Jane are married and have three children. Dick has a job that pays him $50,000 per year. Jane takes care of their home and children. She has no income. They both agree that their lifestyle is somewhat depressed and would like to somehow give it a boost.

They mull over their options. Jane could get a job, but with child care expenses and the additional income tax they find that the additional net income would be very small, and not worth giving up her time at home with the kids. Dick could work longer hours or get another job, but he would then have very little time to spend with his family.

Then they have an epiphany. Why not just create a job within their household? Why not hire Jane to keep house and care for the kids and pay her $25,000 per year? This will raise their total income to $75,000 per year. But where will they get the money to pay her? Well, the options are to borrow the money or tax Dick’s income or some combination of both. They decide on the latter.

When their friends and relatives hear about the plan a few think it’s a wonderful idea but most have serious reservations. Some of the skeptics ask how taxing Dick to pay Jane is going to increase their combined real income. Others complain that borrowing the money will probably lead to bankruptcy or leave their kids with the debt down the road.

But Dick and Jane are undaunted. They’re too excited now about the hope and change coming to their lives.

President Barack Obama wants to develop a process for burning coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. He calls this “clean coal.” He says that a nation that put a man on the moon, surely should be able to develop clean coal.

It’s interesting to me that he makes that comparison. Putting a man on the moon was a very expensive government boondoggle. The moon program was conceived primarily as a response to the Soviets having beaten us into space with the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik. After about ten years and billions of dollars, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on 20 July 1969. The last astronauts to walk on the moon did so in 1972. They left a plaque with this message: “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972.” In over 36 years we haven’t been back.

In other words, there was no real point in putting a man on the moon; we just wanted to show that we could do it. 

Actually, I suspect that Obama’s comparison is more apt than he would like to admit. I have no doubt that given enough money and time we can develop a clean coal burning process. But once we’ve done it we will probably realize that it is too expensive to use for any practical purpose.

Like on a lot of other issues the country is divided on allowing same-sex couples to marry. To me the idea of two men or two women marrying one another is comical. But I’m not queer so what do I know.

I’ve read that there is evidence that homosexuals like the idea of being able to marry more than actually getting married. Whatever their motives it seems to me that we could all benefit from putting this issue behind us. So I’m offering a solution. Let’s allow them to narry instead of marry. (At first I was going to recommend the terms quarry, quarried and quarriage but decided it probably wouldn’t sell.) This should satisfy the same-sex couples without corrupting the institution of marriage.

Narriage would be legally equivalent to marriage except for one thing. I would incorporate into narriage an element not included in marriage. It’s difficult for same-sex couples to produce offspring (in fact, I don’t think it has ever been done) so I would provide a legal route for them to build a family. I would allow them to legally team up with another narried couple of the opposite sex. This team of two men and two women could then set about producing children for both narried couples. The details of how they do this would be left to them, except that the couple to have legal custody of a child would be declared before conception.

Ideally the two couples would function as an extended family. After all, the kids are all siblings, half-siblings or pseudo-cousins. If they stay close and visit often all the kids will have both women and men as role models. The kids could call their biological parents mom or dad even if they don’t live with them, and they could call the others aunt or uncle even if they do live with them.

Narriage then is marriage plus. It carries all the benefits of marriage and then some. So it’s put up or shut up time for same-sex couples. Do you really want the benfits of marriage or do you just want to make a political point?

Let me see if I can lend a little perspective to the magnitude of our national debt — which is reported to be about 10.7 trillion dollars. The population of the United States is estimated to be about 304 million. If I divide 10.7 trillion dollars by 304 million people I get about $35,200 per person. So each man, woman and child in the US would have to cough up over $35,000 to retire our national debt. A family of five would have to fork over more than $175,000. Are you ready to do your part when called on?

My wife and I are holding about $14,000 worth of Treasury Notes, but even after forgiving those we would still owe $56,000.

But what if we could tap everyone in the world to help us out? The world population is estimated to be about 6.7 billion. After doing the arithmetic I get $1,600 per person. Our national debt comes to $1,600 for each man, woman and child on this planet. Mind boggling.

If I assume an average annual percentage rate of 5 percent the interest alone on the debt is about $17,000 per second. That’s right, I said per second. We pay about a million dollars per minute. While you were reading this post we paid about a half million dollars in interest.

I haven’t confirmed this but I’ve read that it takes all the income taxes collected from West of the Mississippi River to pay the interest on the debt.

Despite this almost incomprehensible debt President Obama and the Congress want to pile on another trillion or two.

Paul Krugman, a Princeton professor and New York Times columnist, recently won a Nobel Prize for his work in economics. You might think he’s a pretty smart dude when it comes to economic stimuli and other money matters, but his recent column doesn’t support that in my humble opinion. He attempts to convince his readers that in jump-starting the economy it’s much better for the government to spend money directly than to put money in the hands of the people, through tax breaks, and let them spend it. I don’t buy his arguments. Here’s one of the three points he makes:

Write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

I’ll give Krugman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he believes government is the best judge of how to spend the people’s money only part of the time.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

Do you suppose Krugman doesn’t know the difference between income taxes and user fees? Most people don’t complain as much about user fees as they do about income taxes. They know that if we are to have a national highway system it has to be paid for somehow and a tax on fuel is a reasonably fair way to do that. The same is true of the air traffic control system. If you don’t fly you don’t pay the fee. Those who do fly pay for the ATC system. If you drive less than others you don’t pay as much for the highway system as the others.

Further, Krugman wrongly assumes that a government-run ATC system is the only alternative. He assumes that the only alternative is midair collisions. Not so. One alternative is for the airlines to cooperatively operate their own ATC system. But no matter how it’s done there is a cost and the air travelers will have to pay it.

The people are more likely to object to their income taxes being used to provide a 50 million dollar stimulus of the National Endowment for the Arts.

The point is that nobody really believes that a dollar of tax cuts is always better than a dollar of public spending. Meanwhile, it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts — and therefore costs less per job created — because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.

Krugman keeps slipping in the “always” modifier. Perhaps nobody does really believe that a dollar of tax cuts is always better than a dollar of public spending. But a lot of people believe that it usually is.

Krugman casually dismisses the value of money saved. He apparently believes that the money must be spent in order to help the economy. But I thought we were in a credit crunch. It seems to me that, provided the savers aren’t stuffing the money in their mattresses or burying it in their backyards, the saved money will become available to borrowers who will then spend it on things they need. That is, those that don’t need to purchase something are making purchases possible for those that do.

This suggests that public spending rather than tax cuts should be the core of any stimulus plan. But rather than accept that implication, conservatives take refuge in a nonsensical argument against public spending in general.

Me thinks Krugman’s arguments are a bit nonsensical. They are clearly not Nobel-winning-professor caliber.

Until today I thought I was the only person thinking it odd that President Obama wants to be identified with Abraham Lincoln. In his latest column Walter Williams makes it clear that he also thinks it was a mistake, or at least not well advised. I highly recommend that you read his column.

During his campaign Obama talked a lot about his desire to unify the country and frequently decried divisiveness. (I’ve always wondered why those who place a premium on unity don’t just switch to the opposing view, and thereby boost unity.) If he values unity that much why does he identify with the former president who did more than any other to ensure that the country would long (forever?) remain divided? No, I’m not off my rocker. Lincoln did manage — after hundreds of thousands of lives were lost — to keep the country together physically. But by forcing the South to remain in the Union he guaranteed continued political strife, dissension and division for decades, if not centuries.

I’m talking about ideological and cultural disunity and so was Obama on the campaign trail. What Lincoln did was prevent a failed marriage from dissolving. He forced the couple to live in the same house and raise their children together when all concerned might have been better served if the marriage had been dissolved.

I can’t say for certain that Obama holds this view but many on the political left believe that America is the big bully on the world playground. If Lincoln had let the country divide it is not highly likely that either the Union or the Confederacy would be that powerful today.

Williams points out that Lincoln was no friend of the slaves. He did only what he thought politically expedient. Slavery was not an issue in the Civil War until about the third year when Lincoln made it so. He needed a rallying cry because the North was losing the war at that time. The Union passed up many opportunities to abolish slavery long before the war started.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not necessarily saying that we would all be better off today if Lincoln had just let the Confederate States go. I’m just trying to point out why I think it strange that our first black president wants to identify so strongly with Lincoln.

In Tom Cruise’s latest movie he plays a German colonel plotting to kill Hitler. It has been reported that he had dreams about Hitler as a child:

“I always wanted to kill Hitler, I hated him,” Cruise, 46, said. “As a child studying history and looking at documents, I wondered, ‘why didn’t someone stand up and try to stop it?’

I’m wondering why the poor child wasn’t told by his teachers or parents that Hitler died about seventeen years before he was born. And that someone did stand up and did stop Hitler. In fact, millions of someones gave their lives to stop him.

I’ve decided that being stupid is a requirement for joining People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In fact, I visited their website to try to confirm this but couldn’t find any way to contact them except through snail mail.

Their “Save the Sea Kittens” campaign convinced me that stupidity must be a requirement. The goal of this campaign is to replace the word “fish” with “sea kitten.” They believe this will cause people to start thinking of fish as warm and cuddly rather than slimy and thorny. They want us to think of them as pets rather than meals. They point out that most people would never consider hooking a kitten in the mouth and dragging it toward them. I agree but I’ve never found any kittens in the lake, river or sea (live ones that is).

PETA members and their sympathizers want to redefine reality. (Actually they most likely don’t know that’s what they’re trying to do. Remember, they’re stupid.)  They ignore or are unaware of the fact that warm and cuddly kittens grow up to be natural killers. Given the chance they will kill and eat a small animal in a heartbeat. In fact, they will kill even when they aren’t hungry. Male cats will kill their own male offspring to prevent them from becoming competitors when they mature. Yes, cats make nice lovable pets but they also remain true to their instincts.

Most fish eat other fish to survive. The fish you refuse to hook while thinking of it as a kitten stands a good chance of being swallowed by another fish before the day is over. If not it will eat several others before a hard-hearted fisherman comes along and hooks it. There are also fish that will attack and maim or kill you without a second thought. (Actually without any thought. Their IQ is comparable to that of a PETA member.)

These are the same people who presume to speak for cows in demanding that we stop eating beef. (Don’t confuse this with the Chick-Fil-A cows’ campaign.) If I were a cow I’d say don’t do me any favors. If we stop eating beef the only cows we might need are those producing milk and butter, but we have already learned how to produce that without cows.

I really don’t think PETA’s ”Save the Sea Kittens” campaign will succeed. As far as I know no one has perfected kitty litter that works underwater.

According to the AP, President-elect Barack Obama is urging Congress to postpone the February 17 switch from analog to digital television broadcasting, arguing that too many Americans who rely on analog television sets to pick up over-the-air channels won’t be ready.

Obama officials are also concerned that the government is not doing enough to help Americans — particularly those in rural, poor or minority communities — prepare for and navigate the transition.

The coupon program for purchase of converter boxes started under the Bush Administration but now it seems that Obama wants to help with the installation. Have we become so pathetic that we need government help to hook up our television sets? The answer, I believe, is no. This is just another way for Obama to insert himself into every aspect of our lives in his attempt to become our great leader.

Is there a Department of Homeland Geek Squads on the horizon?

On Morning Joe this morning Bryan Williams was lamenting the imminent demise of newspapers. Several of the big papers, including the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, and a lot of the smaller ones are on the verge of bankruptcy. He said that this will cause people to rely more on internet news and opinion sites, and he is worried that the people running the internet sites and providing the reporting won’t be “classically trained” as journalists.

I wonder what he thinks the people now working for the newspapers will do after their employers close their doors. I would think they will just turn to the internet. In fact, a lot of them already have. Most all newspapers of any size already publish most or all of their content on the web. Some of them require subscriptions for access but most offer free access and rely on advertising for revenue. The New York Times switched to free access a year or two ago.

Yes, there are a lot of web sites out there putting out unreliable news and opinion (like this one?), but there are also a lot of printed “rags” out there too.

The cost of publishing and distributing print versions is huge. Without this cost some of them might survive by turning exclusively to the internet.

I wonder what Williams thinks the institutions that “classically train” jounalists and publishers will do after the newspapers go away. I would think they will start training them to operate on the internet.

Apparently he thinks we can’t adapt to significant change. Perhaps he’s still puzzled about how we managed to move from horse-drawn vehicles to cars and trucks.