stonemarmot.com/rants

By Sid of Stone Marmot

Ampeg produced the V4 and the VT22 vacuum tube guitar amps during the 1970s, which were conservatively rated at 100 Wrms. The V4 and VT22 electronics are absolutely identical for a given model year. In fact, though the front may be marked “V4” or “VT22,” the back chassis of all these amps is stamped with both V4 and VT22 and have the same schematic. The only difference between the V4 and VT22 is that the V4 is just an amplifier head with no speakers while the VT22 is a combo amp with two 12 inch speakers. The V4 head was typically used with one or two V4 speaker cabinets, with four 12 inch speakers in each cabinet.

Ampeg also produced the V4B vacuum tube bass amp in the 1970s. It was also an amplifier head with no speakers, though Ampeg produced a number of different speaker cabinets that would work with it. It was quite loud for only 100 Wrms and, with appropriate speakers, could fill most nightclubs, high school gymnasiums, and small auditoriums with good, solid bass.

The recent demand for good tube amplifiers has greatly increased the demand, and hence, resale prices, for the V4B. Many consider the 300 Wrms Ampeg SVT the ultimate bass amp for live shows. The V4B has pretty much the same sound, including the unique active midrange control of the SVT, but with a more manageable power level, less than half the weight, and a much lower price.

The V4/VT22 is presently not as popular as the V4B, though in the 1970s it was much more popular and many more were produced than V4Bs. Consequently, you can buy a V4 head or VT22 electronics for a lot less, often half the price or less, than a V4B that is in similar condition. V4s are also much easier to find than V4Bs.

The V4/VT22 and V4B electronics are very similar, with absolutely identical circuits for the power supply, power amp, and tone controls (including the active midrange control). Even the power and output transformers are the same, which is unusual, since a bass amp needs a much larger output transformer than a guitar amp to accurately reproduce the low bass notes. The differences between the V4/VT22 guitar amp electronics and the V4B bass amp electronics are:

Many people have tried using the V4/VT22 for bass guitar with good success, assuming they were driving bass speaker cabinets. The first three items above can be adjusted on the control panel to be the same as the bass amp. Adding the “Ultra Lo” would be complicated as it requires an extremely rare seven pole, single throw switch to implement it in exactly the same way as the V4B (or four pole, single throw, still rather rare, if you only add it to one channel). But I never liked this switch as it filters out virtually all the highs AND midrange from your sound, leaving a pretty muddy sound.

That leaves Item 5 above. These capacitors, C3, C6, and C7, have the same reference designations in both the V4/VT22 and the V4B and perform the same corresponding functions. (See http://www.drtube.com/guitamp.htm for the schematics for each amp. The Ampeg schematics have the reference designations.) Each is 0.01 microfarads in the V4/VT22 and 0.1 microfarads in the V4B. C3 only affects Channel 1 and C6 only affects Channel 2, whereas C7 affects both channels. Changing each of these capacitors in the V4/VT22 will give this amplifier the same low frequency bandwidth as the V4B. The change isn’t dramatic (my quick “back of an envelope” calculations only show about a 10 Hz difference in the low frequency cutoff between the amps), but it does improve the clarity of the lowest four or five notes on a four string, standard tuned bass guitar.

After this change, I haven’t noticed any difference in the performance of the V4/VT22 (mine is the VT22) as a guitar amp. If you still plan to play guitar through the amp, you may want to only change one channel. For example, you may want to leave Channel 1 for guitar and optimize Channel 2 for bass. In this case, you would leave C3 alone and change C6 and C7 to 0.1 microfarads. C7 would still affect both channels.

Note that all this applies only to the V4s that don’t have the distortion control. The late 1970’s V4s and VT22s with the distortion control have a much different circuit which I haven’t analyzed and have no experience with.

Notice I haven’t shown any pictures of where these parts are located. Anyone with lots of electronics experience should be able to quickly find the parts based on the schematic. If you don’t have that kind of experience, you probably shouldn’t do these modifications yourself as some of the voltages in these amplifiers, which can be stored for a long time on some of the capacitors even after the amp is off and unplugged, are well over 500 V and can be VERY LETHAL! Do yourself a favor and take your amp and these instructions to someone with experience to do the mods for you.

I have changed these caps in my VT22 electronics (which I mounted in a home made cabinet to look like a V4) and am very happy with the results. This 100 Wrms tube amp appears to put out as much usable volume as my 350 Wrms Hartke 3500 solid state amp and is more than loud enough for any place I presently play. The EVM15Ls that I’m running the Ampeg through probably help, which are more efficient than the Hartke speakers. And it still sounds good with guitar, even through (especially through) the EVM15L 15 inch speakers.

By Sammy of Stone Marmot

Apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed that the proper landscaping can help protect your home during hurricanes. I recently found a book entitled “Stormscaping – Landscaping to Minimize Wind Damage in Florida” by Pamela Crawford. It is Volume 3 of her “Florida Gardening Series” books. The book has 168 pages and lists for $29.95.

The book is very heavy with pictures, almost like a coffee table picture book. Much of the text is fairly large print. Consequently, it is a fairly quick read. It took me less than two hours to read it.

This book has much information that is difficult to find elsewhere. It has a list of about 150 common Florida landscaping plants and discusses their wind tolerance, as well as a list of plants that should definitely be avoided. There is a discussion on why trees fail and what can hurt and improve the wind survival chances of all trees. A chapter is dedicated to designing your landscaping to minimize wind damage. Another chapter discusses preparing for a storm and how to improve your plant survival rates and minimize subsequent damage after a storm.

She confirmed my suspicions that low, dense vegetation does improve wind protection. Clusters of trees, which she defines as five or more closely planted trees, also provide a lot of mutual protection and reduce the wind impact for stuff downwind of the cluster. But the type of plant does matter, as some are brittle and break easily, some have shallow roots and uproot easily, etc. Most palms (but not all, the Queen being one exception) are among the most wind tolerant plants. Low plants tend to do better than tall plants, which makes sense, since the wind speed drops as you get nearer to the ground. But that may be because the number of obstacles the wind encounters, and hence, the “friction,” increases as you get nearer to the ground.

She seems to emphasize individual plant survival more over that of surrounding stuff. My initial thoughts are that I’m willing to sacrifice the plants to protect my house. But an intact plant is less likely to damage your house. Also, many in Florida have experienced multiple storms within a couple of months (remember 2004?) where the plants would not have time to recover between storms. So plant survival with minimum damage is probably good to emphasize.

There are a number of typos in the book. For example, there are two different chapters labeled as “Chapter 3,” with no chapter labeled as “4.” One caption states there were six major hurricanes between 1941 and 1960 even though the accompanying chart and table show and list eight storms. Errors like these aren’t really important in themselves, though they do make the reader question what else is wrong in the book and how valid the data is. One might guess that the author and publisher were anxious to get this valuable information out to the public as soon as possible and in their hurry missed a few typos, except my copy is the second printing of the book and I would think the errors would have been fixed in the revision.

The emphasis also seems to be on peninsular Florida, namely USDA zones 9 through 11, with less discussion on the Panhandle and northernmost Florida. This is OK for me, living in the Tampa Bay area. But those in north Florida may want to scan the book first to see how well it fits them.

The author also dedicates a couple pages pushing her other books. More than one page is a little annoying. I haven’t looked at her other books so I don’t know how good they are.

Despite the shortcomings discussed above, I very highly recommend the book to any Florida property owner. As stated earlier, much of the info in this book is difficult to find elsewhere. This is also a subject we in Florida (actually, all the eastern US) need to take more seriously. At the very least, you should be recommending this book to your local library, homeowner’s or condo association, and town zoning and planning organizations. I commend the author and her contributors for their efforts in creating this valuable book and hope they all continue their efforts in updating this information.

The book can be found or at least ordered from most major book stores and some gardening places in Florida (I got mine from Borders.). If you have trouble finding it, try the publisher at www.easygardencolor.com.

By Bruce of Stone Marmot

When someone mentions reducing our oil consumption, the almost instantaneous response of many people would be that we have to get rid of SUVs, pickups trucks, and vans and get everyone driving small passenger vehicles. After all, these small passenger vehicles get much more miles per gallon of gas than these other vehicles.

I wonder if we have this backwards, that is, that too many people are driving passenger vehicles.

Think about it. Most of the time personal vehicles are used in this country (the US), they are transporting one or maybe a couple of people and little or no additional cargo. What additional cargo is being transported can often be easily carried by the vehicle occupants. If this is so, why are they using an automobile at all? Why not walk, ride a bike, or use mass transit?

Most won’t walk because they live too far from their destination or they are in poor physical condition. They won’t ride a bike because they live too far from their destination, they are in poor physical condition, they are afraid they will get dirty or sweaty, or the weather is not good. They don’t ride mass transit because there isn’t any convenient mass transit between where they live and where they are going.

Back prior to the late 1940s, there weren’t a lot of private motor vehicles in this country. Most of them were owned by the upper middle class to rich folk or by people who had a business reason to own a vehicle, such as farmers and delivery people. Most people either lived on a farm or in a town. If they lived in a town, they could walk to most anywhere in town and get most of what they needed in town, since the towns were more self-contained than today. If a town got too big to easily walk around, it almost always had a mass transit system of some sort. It wasn’t unusual to see towns of 20,000 people or more with their own street car system.

After World War 2 ended, the US had a lot of extra industrial capacity which was no long needed for making war materials. Many switched to supporting automobile production. Autos became more readily available to those who weren’t as wealthy. As more people bought autos, they started moving out of the towns and cities. Less and less people lived within walking distance of their jobs, stores, schools, and other typical weekly destinations. Less and less were riding the mass transit systems and most of these systems soon were shut down because of lack of business.

Now most people live too far from everything of interest to walk or ride a bike, and they are spread too thin to support a mass transit system unless it is very heavily and unreasonably tax subsidized. And the zoning regulations in many areas further aggravate this problem by making difficult to co-locate private residences, jobs, stores, and entertainment. Many areas don’t even have sidewalks, making it dangerous to walk even if the destinations were close enough. This situation was caused by too many personal passenger vehicles, making it too easy and convenient for people to live far apart from each other and everything else.

What is further aggravating the energy situation is that in the last 10 to 15 years a lot of people started buying cargo vehicles and using them almost strictly as passenger vehicles. Many of these vehicles carry a serious cargo less than 5 % of the time, if ever.

If we seriously want to reduce oil consumption, ideally personal vehicles should only be used if you are transporting cargo that is not practical to carry, like mulch, lumber, appliances, a large amount of groceries, etc. If you are not transporting such cargo, you should be walking, riding a bike, or using mass transit. Since mass transit can never be practical and self supporting unless you have a minimum population density (my observation of places where mass transit appears successful indicate you need a minimum population density of 5000 people per square mile), we need to go back to the self-contained village sort of lifestyle, with people living much closer together. If we didn’t have all these personal passenger vehicles, we could eliminate most of the vast parking lots that surround most shopping, factory, and recreation areas, allowing these places to be much closer together without having to build more vertically than at present.

Many will respond that there is nothing they can do about this. This is something that government needs to fix. But these people choose to live so far from their jobs and so far away from businesses they frequent. Retirees have the most flexibility with regards to where they live but are often the worst offenders in choosing to live in out of the way places. It was a lot of individuals’ personal choices that brought this situation about and personal choices can go far to fixing this situation.

By Bruce of Stone Marmot

U. S. government flood insurance causes natural disasters.

How can I say that? Obviously flood insurance can’t cause hurricanes or make a river overflow its banks. But hurricanes and rivers overflowing their banks aren’t in themselves disasters. Only when people are very adversely affected by these events do most people consider them disasters, and federal flood insurance encourages people to build in harm’s way.

The reason federal flood insurance came into existence is because people were complaining that flood insurance issued by private companies was way too costly and unaffordable. But there may have been a very good reason why private flood insurance was so expensive.

The only way for insurance companies to make any money is by the premiums people pay for insurance. The insurance companies also make money off investments, but the money for those investments comes from the premiums people pay for insurance. So the insurance companies absolutely want to sell you insurance so they can get those premium payments and make money. But the money they receive as premiums and make on investments must be greater than the amount they pay out for claims, otherwise they lose money. Consequently, these companies price their insurance so that the premiums cover all expected claims plus a reasonable profit. But the profit can’t be too much, otherwise they can’t compete with other insurance companies and their cost will be too high and discourage sales of policies.

That is why private flood insurance is so expensive. Data from past flooding indicates that properties in low lying areas are at great risk of being flooded and filing large claims. Also, most of the cost of hurricane losses is due to flooding, not wind damage. So these companies price their insurance accordingly. These high prices for flood insurance should be a very strong message that these properties are a very high risk for flooding.

But many people don’t want to face reality. So they complained about high flood insurance rates. Many legislators, in an effort to win votes, responded to this consumer outcry and, probably more important, to special interests groups like builders, realtors, mortgage companies, and local government officials, and created a federal flood insurance program to provide more reasonably priced, at least in the consumer’s eyes, flood insurance. The problems with this are:

Consequently, federal flood insurance should be abolished. But, with so many people who presently depend upon this insurance, we can’t just outright discontinue it. We must somehow grandfather in all those who presently have federal flood insurance while somehow reducing the number of policies out there. I therefore suggest the following:

There is a past precedent for the last suggestion. In 1972, many properties in Pennsylvania were severely damaged by the flooding of the Susquehanna River as a result of Hurricane Agnes. In 1975, many of these same properties were severely damaged again when the Susquehanna flooded again. After this second flood, many of these damaged properties were condemned and confiscated by the local governments after suitable compensation to the property owners. I don’t know if this was a local initiative or was funded at all by the federal government. Most all of these properties have since been converted to parks, boat ramps, wetlands, wildlife refuges, youth sports fields, etc. Subsequent flooding of the Susquehanna hasn’t had as severe an impact, though there are still some losses of homes, since not all communities participated in the 1970’s program to condemn and confiscate flooded properties.

(Disclosure: One of the homes damaged by these two floods belonged to my one grandmother. She was also one of the few who fought the eviction and relocation efforts. Most people were happy to receive any money for their properties, since most of these damaged properties had little remaining resale value. She died a couple years after the 1975 flood and her home was then confiscated. The property has since been part of a public park.)

Those who don’t want to be forced to relocate after a flooding claim can always drop federal flood insurance and get private flood insurance. But they will probably have much higher, and probably more realistic, insurance premiums.

An exception to the above suggestions may be government employees, such as park rangers, researchers, Coast Guard and military, law enforcement, etc., who are force to live in low lying areas because of their jobs. Many of these people probably live in government housing anyway.

We may also have to make an exception for seafood industry workers. Large companies can handle the flood insurance issue as part of their cost of doing business. But most fisherman, shellfish harvesters, etc., are self employed or work for very small companies and are barely getting by financially. We may need to work out some alternative plan if we expect to have a viable seafood industry. An alternative is much higher costs for seafood and tariffs on imported seafood to even the playing field for seafood from countries with lower insurance costs.

By Sammy of Stone Marmot

A fairy tale: A 30 year old man has been working for the past twelve years, earning an average of about $40,000 a year and living fairly comfortably. He is reasonably happy. One day this man finds a treasure chest. He opens it and finds $10,000,000 in gold inside it. He somehow finds a way to avoid taxes and counterclaims on it (Now this is REALLY a fairy tale!).

He figures he is now rich and can live the life of his dreams. He quits his job, buys a big house, fancy car, does a lot of foreign traveling, staying in luxury hotels and leaving big tips, spending extravagantly and wastefully. He ends up spending an average of $500,000 a year.

Ten years later, at age 40, he realizes he has already spent half of the worth of his treasure chest. At his present rate of consumption, he will be broke at age 50.

What does he do? Quit living so extravagantly and wastefully and cut back to about $50,000 or even $100,000 a year, which should last the rest of his life? After all, he was comfortable and happy many years ago on $40,000/year. But no, he can’t even imagine any lifestyle other than the one he has been living the past ten years. Anything else would be like going back to living like a prehistoric caveman.

So he continues his present lifestyle, but puts a little spare time aside looking for more buried treasure. And he is finding some. He is finding an average of about $1.15 a day in loose change that people have dropped. “There must be more buried treasure chests around here,” he thinks. “After all, I have already found one treasure chest, and am finding occasional coins here and there, so there must be more treasure chests.”

This is how most of us, particularly those of us in the United States, live with respect to oil. We are literally living off buried treasure. We’ve been living very extravagantly and wastefully off this treasure, figuring it would last forever (or at least the rest of our lives, which, to most of us in our infinite selfishness, is all that matters).

We have been told repeatedly since the 1960s that there is only so much oil in the ground. We have used about half of what has been found to date. We are always finding more, but it is “pocket change” compared to what we have found in the past and what we are presently consuming. The biggest oil find this century only provides us a couple more years of supply at present consumption rates, which are still steadily increasing.

Many of those who acknowledge that there may be a limited supply of oil behave like they expect oil to be the same price, dirt cheap, until the last drop is extracted from the ground. When we first started using petroleum on a large scale basis, we just had to go to some field or cow pasture, drill down a couple hundred feet, and it would gush out of the ground on its own pressure. Then, it was dirt cheap. Then it would no longer gush out of the ground on its own pressure. We needed big pumps, which need continuous energy to run, to extract it from the ground. This increased the cost of oil. Then we had to bore thousands of feet into the ground to find it. This increased costs more. Now we need big metal floating islands hundreds of miles offshore, drilling miles into the ground, the surface of which is a mile below their floating platform, islands that need to be serviced with ships and helicopters and are more subject to the whims of Mother Nature (like hurricanes). This has greatly increased the cost of oil. Or the oil is found on the other side of the world from where it is consumed, greatly increasing transportation costs. It is often found in unstable regions which require expensive security and greatly increased defense budgets (plus a big cost in human lives).

The point is that we have used up almost all the cheap oil. We continue to use the cheapest oil first, so all that remains is much more expensive to get. This also means we will never really run out of oil, at least not until our sun turns into a big red giant about five billion years from now and boils all the volatile substances, like oil (and us), off our planet. Instead, what will happen is that petroleum will get more and more expensive as it is harder to find and extract until it gets to some price, say $150,000 a gallon, where it will be too expensive to use compared to alternatives.

We also can’t imagine any other lifestyle worth living if we aren’t using energy at the rate we presently are. We think any other lifestyle would be like living like prehistoric cavemen. But right now, we are extremely wasteful in our use of energy. Some of that is due to present technology and can be partly improved with technological improvements. But the vast majority of the waste is due to our lifestyles.

Most people also appear to believe that we are entitled to cheap and convenient energy, as if it was written in one of the Ten Commandments or is a natural result of Maxwell’s Equations or Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity. Grow up, people! Just because we had for a while some cheap and convenient form of energy in the past, that doesn’t mean we are assured an equivalent alternative in the future.

Does this mean we are doomed to living in the Stone Ages again after this petroleum is mostly gone? No, not if we wake up, start using what we have more efficiently, and use what we have to prepare for an alternative lifestyle and economy that uses more renewable energy sources.

But the truth is most people don’t care if we are running out of petroleum. They live in denial and only care that there is enough to make the rest of their lifetimes convenient and comfortable. After they are gone, they could care less what happens to the rest of the world, to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. These people, which are most of us, lie to themselves that some miracle is going to happen and everything will be fine. If this miracle never occurs, they won’t know and care since they won’t be here. They are only concerned that the oil lasts the rest of their lives.

I’m surprised the younger people haven’t been more vocal about this. After all, anyone younger than the “Baby Boomer” generation will probably start to really be impacted by this in their lifetimes. Add in Social Security, pensions, health care, and global warming, the older generations are really throwing a heavy burden on the younger generations. Maybe that is the real reason so many older people are in denial about all this: They don’t want to face a revolt they can’t hope to suppress or win.

By Sammy of Stone Marmot

Many people are complaining about the record oil company profits when gas prices are at record highs. If they stopped to think about it, this makes perfect sense, is to be expected, and there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, it shows our economic system is working.

Profits are usually a percentage of sales. If an oil company get 10% profit on any sales and gas is selling for $0.30 a gallon, they will be making $0.03 a gallon. If gas sells for $3.00/gal., their profit will be $0.30/gal. If gas sells for $4.00/gal., their profit will be $0.40/gal. So, record gas prices will also be record total profits, even though the per cent profit on sales stays the same.

This all assumes demand stays the same, which it pretty much does. There has been some drop off is gas sales recently at prices above $3.50/gal., but not in inverse proportion to the increase in gas prices, so overall sales, and correspondingly profits, still increased.

The reason demand hasn’t dropped off is that people are addicted to their gasoline. They feel they absolutely must live 30 miles from work or school. Parents feel they must drive their kids to school rather than letting them walk or ride the bus. People feel they must make ten trips a week to the store to immediately get what they want rather than planning ahead a little and getting it all in one trip a week. They feel they must drive those 100 miles to see their favorite football team or to go to a concert. Effectively, they have voted for high gas prices and, correspondingly, high oil company profits, with their lifestyles.

Companies also need to make profits. If they don’t make a profit, they eventually go out of business. They need profits to attract investors, and most investors are not multimillionaires, but pensions, IRAs, 401-Ks and the like. Without corporate profits, you would have no retirement income other than Social(ist) Security. Do you want your pension plan or IRA to invest in a company that isn’t going to make any money?

Would you yourself work for no profit, getting just enough of a paycheck to cover your costs for going to and from work and any special work expenses, such as work clothes? Why should you expect others to work for no profit?

Ignoring investors, profits are also necessary for a healthy business. It is profits that allow oil companies to finance the exploration for new oil fields. It is profits that allow oil companies to finance research for better ways to extract the hard to get at residual oil left in older existing fields. It is also profits that allow companies to absorb and recover from hurricanes and other unexpected emergencies. If a company is just barely squeaking by financially, it is not going to be investing in such luxuries as research and exploration. It will be too concerned with simply making ends meet. Any unexpected major expenses, such as hurricanes, will destroy it.

If you really don’t like large oil company profits, quit giving these profits to them! Stop using and buying so much oil!

(Personal disclosure: I have no direct involvement with the energy industry in any form. I probably have some investments in some energy companies through my some of my mutual funds in my retirement plans, especially the index funds which buy a cross section of the whole stock market, though I haven’t looked recently so I really don’t know and I doubt that they are a significant portion of my investments. I have also reduced my gasoline consumption by about 75% since 1999 without changing my place of residence or getting a new vehicle. I did it mostly through lifestyle changes and am still having as pleasant a life as I’ve ever had.)

By Bruce of Stone Marmot

In a previous rant on this blog, I stated that:

“Capitalism is the most democratic economic system there is, for every time you spend a dollar, or refrain from spending a dollar, you are casting a vote. That is why so many people hate capitalism, because, with capitalism, the world people live in is the sum total result of each of their individual actions. In other words, capitalism makes people responsible for their own actions, whether they like it or not.”

I got responses from a lot of people who agreed with the rant is general. But I also got a lot of responses that disagreed with points in the rant. I will respond to some of those here.

Some stated that capitalism doesn’t seem to be working in the US. I feel the main reason capitalism doesn’t appear to be working is that people are impatient and want everything now. People want at least the same standard of living as their parents, which is reasonable. The problem is that they want at age 25 the standard of living their parents didn’t achieve until their were in their 50’s, which is not reasonable. Consequently, they ignore all the other consequences of their money practices because achieving that standard of living as soon as possible is the only thing that counts.

Another reason capitalism doesn’t appear to be working is that we don’t live in a 100% capitalist society. We have a tremendous amount of government restrictions on what we can do. The government is also the number one market for goods and services. And taxes still take about one third of the average person’s income. This greatly reduces the power consumers have in the marketplace. This is what also gives politicians their power, not capitalism, but the government’s restrictions and favors on the market and its taxing and buying power in this society.

Some stated that our “capitalist” medical system is presently messed up. But it worked reasonably well way back when it was about 100% capitalistic. Then socialism crept in with companies and the government offering health plans for their employees. This resulted in employees abusing these plans running to doctors for every little insignificant thing, which they wouldn’t have done if they were paying out of their own pockets. This also encouraged providers to jack up costs because they perceived the company and government health plans as having deep pockets. Lawsuits over every little thing haven’t helped either. Now costs have escalated so that you can’t afford medical services unless you are in a health plan, and many who don’t have company or government plans can’t afford their own health plans. I suspect it will complete the move to socialist within the next decade.

In most cases, we choose to be in debt. There are always exceptions like those who are struck with sudden bad luck, like an injury or serious illness, but those are the minority. Most are in debt simply because, as stated above, they are impatient. They want everything now, aren’t willing to save for anything (the typical US household now has a 0 % savings rate, according to recent news), and live to the limits of their paychecks. They live to their absolute financial limits with no regard for putting money aside in case something goes wrong. Then when something does go wrong, they are immediately financially strapped.

Many responded that we need to live to our financial limits just to survive. This is true for a small minority. The majority live in much bigger houses than they really need, which increases their mortgage, utility, and maintenance costs far more than necessary. They live way too far from where they work (typically 10 to 20 miles, though often more), which makes them very susceptible to increased transportation costs. Most households have a TV set per person in the household, a cell phone per person, many even have a car per person. Most middle school kids these days expect to have their own cell phone. Most teenagers feel they are entitled to their parents buying them a car when they turn age 16, and most get their car. Video games, iPods, and iPhones are still selling pretty well, and none of these things are cheap. Concert tickets for an major artist now start around $50 and can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a two hour show and most of these artist are still selling out venues.

None of this sounds like just barely making ends meet. If the majority in this country were “barely making ends meet,” we wouldn’t have computer and cell phone industry multi-billionaires and athletes, pop music stars, TV celebrities, and movie stars, etc., who are making tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. These people all make their fortunes off our discretionary spending.

Socialism doesn’t work. Socialism doesn’t give anyone any incentive to work, to improve, to conserve, to do anything, because socialism implies that someone else (typically the government) is going to do everything for you. For the average person, unless they see some possible additional benefit for additional efforts, they will do as little as possible.

Other than capitalism, socialism (or communism, which is very closely related), subsistence (where every family is responsible for producing 100% of what they need), or some combination of these three, I know of no other alternatives to meeting needs. I’m very open to ideas, though.

I’m not asking people to do the impossible. I’m asking people to do things I already practice myself, unlike Al Gore and others who want people to make all sorts of sacrifices but are living high off the hog and unwilling to make the same sacrifices themselves.

By Sammy of Stone Marmot

Global warming can’t be real!

How can I say that? With all the evidence showing long term trends for receding glaciers, increased average global temperature, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, melting Arctic ice, hundreds of square miles of the Antarctic ice shelves collapsing into the oceans, rapid melting of Greenland’s ice, etc., etc?

Because NO ONE is calling for us to start doing the most obvious thing to avoid disaster from the results of this warming, that is, the depopulation of our coastlines.

Most all the impact due to global warming, such as some areas warming, growing seasons changing, some areas drying and others becoming wetter, pests and diseases migrating, storms getting worse, etc., is speculative. The only major impact of global warming that isn’t speculative is that the ocean levels will rise, though there is still a lot of debate on how much and how fast they will rise. The areas affected for a given rise in the ocean levels are very easy to define.

If global warming is real, we should be making efforts to reduce our coastal populations. We should immediately enact a moratorium on all coastal construction. Any coastal structures that are destroyed, be the cause fire, storms, whatever, should not be rebuilt. We should be discouraging people from moving to coastal areas and encourage people already living in these areas to leave by greatly increasing property taxes and insurance.

But NO ONE is calling for any of these actions. Is it because global warming isn’t real? Is this cry of “global warming” just a ploy for media attention, to get more research funding, try to bring down coastal property prices so some people can get cheap beach front property?

Or are people scared of the “shoot the messenger” syndrome? The actions I stated above would be very, very unpopular. Is it that no one wants to be the first to state what is obvious to anyone with any brains? Are all these people crying “Global Warming!” hoping that the rest of the world can see the obvious so that they don’t become pariahs for being the first to state the obvious?

By Sammy of Stone Marmot

Many politicians, including (especially?) presidential candidates, talk about providing affordable health insurance. They try to make you think that they are doing this for you. The truth is that they are doing this strictly to benefit the health insurance companies. If they really want to help you and me with affordable health care, these are the two issues they really need to address:

1) Price gouging.

If you have health insurance, your insurance company is usually charged one sixth to one tenth as much for the services than you are if you don’t have health insurance. In other words, if you don’t have health insurance, you pay six to ten times more than what the insurance company would pay. Not 6 to 10 percent, or even 60 to 100 percent more, but 6 to 10 TIMES more. For, example, for some recent blood work, my bill had the following charges, which are typical of all my bills:

This is backwards. Medical institutions have to file a lot of paperwork and frequently wait months to receive payment from health insurance plans. For someone paying cash, they have no additional paperwork and receive payment immediately (or as soon as the check or credit card clears), so this saves them lots of time, effort, and money. So, for making life so much easier for these medical institutions, they “reward” cash customers with ten times higher bills. Makes sense, doesn’t it?!!?

In most states, if a gas station charged people with a certain credit card $3.60/gallon but everyone else $34/gallon, they would be prosecuted for price gouging. Many have been successfully prosecuted for charging the government a great deal more for the same services and products than what they charge commercial customers. Yet medical establishments do this price gouging all the time. And the people they are gouging are usually the ones least able to afford it.

Some may argue that people should shop around for more reasonable fees, especially those without health insurance. But frequently you are physically unable to shop around, like when you are taken to the emergency room unconscious and they have minutes to do something or you will die or lose major body functions. Even if you have a lot of time to decide, like my above blood test, most medical establishments will either refuse to give this information, make it very inconvenient for you to get this information, or simply refuse to accept you as a patient.

2) Jacking up premium payments exorbitantly if any significant service is rendered.

It is almost universal in the US that a health insurance company can’t drop an existing customer because of new or previously accepted conditions. But in most places they can jack up their rates without limit. So, this is what they do in most cases to get rid people who suddenly need a lot of care, just jack up the rates so these people can’t afford the insurance anymore and are forced to drop their health insurance. How is this any different than simply dropping the customer?

I have had my health insurance claims exceed my insurance premiums in any given year only once for the over twenty years that I have been an adult. The total of all the premiums I and my employer have paid over this time is at least ten times, probably much more, than the sum of all my claims over this same time. Yet, if I were to have a major medical problem in the near future, the insurance company would probably jack up my rates to where I couldn’t afford them. All this previous time that they have been making lots of money off me, basically using me to pay for everyone else, is irrelevant to the insurance companies.

So the numbers you see about how many people have health insurance are meaningless and greatly exaggerate the extent of health care coverage, since many of us who pay for our own private health insurance would be forced to drop it due to the rates being exorbitantly jacked up if we filed any significant claim. For most of us, this is our greatest affordability fear. And, if we are forced to drop our insurance, the first item above, price gouging, just makes it much worse.

So, if any politician is really serious about affordable health care, they need to address these two issues. Most politicians don’t even appear to recognize them. It is also in the best interest of the health care establishment and insurance companies to address these issues. Otherwise, we will rapidly find the US heading to socialized health care, which would benefit no one other than maybe politicians and bureaucrats.

By Cindy of Stone Marmot

Ben Franklin is claimed to have said that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” This is not true. A penny saved is usually worth more than a penny earned, often a lot more.

In the US, you don’t have to pay federal taxes on any saved money, only on earnings and investment income. That means that, if you are in a 25% tax bracket, you have to earn $1.33 to end up with the same amount as $1.00 saved ($1.33 – 25% = $1.33 - $0.33 = $1.00, rounded to the nearest cent). If you are in a higher tax bracket, you obviously have to earn more for each dollar saved.

You also don’t have to deduct Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare taxes from money saved, only earnings. Add another about 8% for these taxes to the 25% in the above example, and now you have to earn about $1.49 for each $1.00 saved.

Some states, counties, and cities and towns have income taxes, occupation taxes, or similar. If you assume you something like this in your area (I don’t here in Florida) and it is about 2%, then you have to earn about $1.54 for each dollar saved.

Some may question these numbers. They may think that “25% of $1.00 is $0.25, so I should only have to earn $1.25 to match $1.00 saved after taxes.” But, remember, you pay taxes on the total amount you earn before any deductions, not on the aftertaxes income. That is usually true for all your taxes and other paycheck deductions. So the correct way to calculate this is to add up all your deduction percentages (converted to fractions), subtract this result from 1.00, and then divide this result into your desired after-deductions amount to find the amount you need to earn before deductions. For the above example of 25%, 8%, and 2% deductions, the total we need to earn would be $1.00 / (1 – 0.25 – 0.08 – 0.02) = $1.00 / (1 – 0.35) = $1.00 / 0.65 = $1.54, approximately, for each dollar saved.

So, as you can see, these deductions take a big bite out of your paycheck. If you are earning $20/hr. and have the deductions in the above examples, that means you have to work an extra about 3.85 hours a month, not 2.5 hours as most may think, to cover that $50/month cable TV bill. When you think of your expenses in this manner, as the number of hours you have to work to earn enough to pay these expenses, you start to more seriously question how necessary are these expenses.