The governor of Florida earns a salary of $141,400.20 on an annual basis. That paycheck comes with the responsibility to oversee a $117.4 billion budget and the 23 million people who live here.

Have no fear, however. The next governor will be raking in a bigger paycheck. Starting in 2027 that check will total out to $251,414. A nice jump. Perhaps one that is reasonable and even well deserved. That’s debatable, but the dollar figure is a fact.

Now, consider this.

The City Manager of Lakeland, Florida earns a bit more than the current governor. Actually not a small bit more. No, more than twice as much. His annual salary clocks in at $283,250.

Wait, a city manager overseeing a municipality with a population of just 125,520 people earns twice the governor’s salary? Yes, Virginia. That’s the way things work in ersatz public service circles.

That disparity is not an outlier, unfortunately. The city manager of Winter Haven, Florida commands a budget that represents a mere fraction of the state budget at $252 million. This is for a city with a population of just 62,313. Yet he earns $212,326 annually.

Is it possible that salaries like these have contributed in some way to the city budget increasing from $78 million to more than triple that number just a decade later?

You might be forgiven for asking that question. Or why the top dog in small to medium sized cities earn substantially more in salary than the governor of the entire state. Those questions would not go over well at city hall, however. From their perspective it’s their money. The fact that they took it from you by force has nothing to do with it.

And yet…

This is the exact reason Amendment 3 will be on the statewide Florida ballot this November. A significant portion of the Sunshine State’s population have come to the conclusion they’re being overtaxed for the sole purpose of providing ever expanding budgets to municipal and county governments that have no capacity for fiscal restraint.

I’ll use Winter Haven, Florida as an example for two reasons. One, I live here. Two, I am a former city commissioner who has a working understanding of the city’s finances and history.

In 2015 the average home in Winter Haven was valued at $140,000. Today, that same home is estimated to be worth $270,000. For those who don’t have a calculator handy I’ll confirm the current value is substantially higher than it was a decade ago.

Given that property taxes are levied on the appraised value of a home, these numbers prove without a doubt that given the same tax rate, the cities and counties are pulling in far more revenue than they were in years past.

You’d think that would be a good thing. But you would be wrong. Taking more from the public isn’t the point of local and county governments. They want much more. Far more. As much as they can get away with. Hence, the millage rate is not the same as it was a decade ago. In Winter Haven it’s higher. The rate has jumped from $5.79 per $1,000 of appraised value to $6.59 per $1,000.

Again, as with the value of the building that tax rate itself has risen.

If the owner of a home was given the full homestead property tax exemption of $50,000 their tax bill would have been a manageable $521 in 2015. Today, that same house would be taxed at $1,450. Nearly three times as much.

And lest you think this issue is only for those well off enough to afford a home of their own, I’m sorry to say you are mistaken. Rental and commercial properties pay, too. The only difference is they don’t get the benefit of a homestead exemption. Renters pay property tax, they just aren’t aware of it. So does the local Walmart, Staples, Publix, Wawa, and every other commercial entity.

How much do the tax rate increases affect them?

It’s an ugly story. An apartment building valued at $1 million would pay a city tax bill of $6,590. If that building held 4 apartments, each tenant would be contributing $1,647.50 to the city coffers each year. That’s $137.29 per month, per tenant.

If you’re wondering why the rent is so high, that’s a variable to consider. The landlord didn’t jack up your rent. The city did.

To add insult to injury the Winter Haven City Commission is currently entertaining the idea of raising their salaries. Not the salaries of police, or firefighters, or EMTs. Those jobs are on the chopping block. Who needs emergency services anyway? When you’ve got elected and appointed officials on the job who are more than willing to siphon off as many public dollars as possible into their own pockets, who wouldn’t want to pay more?

The people of Florida will wrestle with that very question this November.

Are we overtaxed? Yes. Emphatically, irresponsibly, and perpetually. Perhaps it’s time we changed that. Will the people of Florida lead us?

Time will tell.

Finances are a leading cause of divorce. There’s little wonder. A disagreement about family finances is bound to leave both parties feeling disrespected. With our feelings ignored, or worse, intentionally disregarded, anger ensues. Animosity festers. In time full-blown rage can infest the psyches of all those concerned.

Reestablishing any semblance of a normal relationship beyond that point becomes problematic, if not impossible.

What’s doubly sad about the issue is that finance is just math dressed up for a party. The rule in math is simple. Literally. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If we follow that one basic rule even the most enormous problems can be whittled down to bite sized annoyances that can be solved with relative ease.

With that in mind, consider a very real situation we might notice today.

A married couple earns an annual salary of $52,300. Not a fortune, but enough to manage the necessities of life. Unfortunately, the couple spends $70,100 per year. The shortfall is $17,800 in the first year. A daunting number that equates to 34% of their combined annual income.

Upon recognizing the error a responsible spouse would encourage their partner to sit down at the kitchen table, review their spending, and find a way to cut out the fluff. Food deliveries, lottery tickets, concert experiences, and a few streaming services might be cut out immediately. The credit cards might be locked away, wiped from their Amazon settings, or canceled outright.

That’s a start. Negotiations may take a turn here and there. She wants to maintain her nail appointments, while he insists on a gym membership. In time, if they’re diligent, they can get back on track, retire the debt, and begin to build a savings account that will serve them in the future.

That would be the ideal solution. Cooperation, recognition of the seriousness of the challenge, and an acceptance that left unchecked the current path will surely lead to ruin.

However, people being people, there is an excellent chance they will choose to do the opposite. They battle rather than seek common ground. They don’t curtail their overspending. He buys a big-ass pickup truck that cost more than their annual salary. His excuse is that he can afford the payments. She runs out to Neiman Marcus, opens a new line of credit, and loads up on the latest fashions. Same excuse. The minimum payment is manageable.

Except it’s not.

Their immaturity doesn’t just doom them to financial collapse. It irreparably harms their relationship, too. Caught in the middle are the kids who diligently do their chores, but find their allowances being cut while mom and dad spend their way toward the dream of a sense of satisfaction that never comes.

This is not a sustainable situation. With a family fractured, a small fortune wasted, and the marriage irretrievably broken, the debt remains. Nobody wins.

As you may have inferred from this little tale, it does not in reality focus on a particular American family. No, this story is about the federal government’s addition to spending and their dogged determination to never, ever, under any circumstances deal with the problem.

Republicans have maintained for decades they will cut spending. That promise wins them votes. Somehow, they never seem to get around to actually putting that promise into action, however.

Democrats claim with great enthusiasm that taxing the wealthy will close the gap. Their voters agree. But it has not. Nor will it. Because the spending continues at rates well above the government’s income level.

Even an elementary school student knows that subtracting a superior number from an inferior number will result in a negative balance. Ten minus twelve is not an indication of a positive growth story.

Lately, independents and Democratic Socialists have gained attention with the mind-numbingly myopic theory that if we simply increase spending, increase taxes, and limit personal freedom across the board everything will work out just fine.

In truth, the solution is simple, but not easy. It will require commitment and collaboration, something the American people have strayed so far from it is at least conceivable they will never stumble upon the concept of mutual benefit ever again.

We truly are all in this together. It makes no difference if you’re standing on the left side of the ship or the right side. The ship is named The Titanic and it’s going down with every one of us strapped into a deck chair. Our insistence on partisanship gives us an unobstructed view of disaster with both sides blaming the other for an issue that is truly the responsibility of all parties involved.

Step 1: If the voters required of the candidates of all parties to commit in writing to a significant cut in spending across the board, there would be hope.

Political Reality 1: Of course, as adults we know that a considerable number of those candidates, once elected, would immediately forget that pledge. Even when reminded they would make use of their public relations crew to find a way to explain how spending more, is actually the same thing as spending less. At least in this case.

Step 2: Vote those duplicitous politicians out of office. If you’re a Democrat and can’t face the idea of voting for a Republican, vote for a Libertarian, or a Green Party member who has a semblance of respect for the public they’re elected to serve.

Political Reality 2: The politicians who remain in office, who were lucky enough not to be on the ballot that particular year, will get the message. Four-hundred-thirty-five members of the House are on the ballot every year. If the voters took their role seriously and replaced forty-three of them. Just ten percent. You can bet those who remain would do so with weak knees, a sense of real political peril, and the reality that they may be forced to go home and find a real job in just two more years if they don’t act definitively.

Step 3: Repeat Step 1 with the additional promise that large numbers of voters will actively contribute, campaign, and vote against any candidate who even flirts with the idea of continuing to spend the public and the coming generations of The People into oblivion as they line their own pockets and enjoy the perks of power.

There are far more people in this country than there are political office holders. Those in office know this. But they also know the public is fickle. We’re partisan supporters to our own detriment. We vote for the team with no regard for the value of the player.

If we were to stop. To change course. To insist that our political leadership manage the affairs of the People rather than their own internal squabbles, we would see a change in the prosperity of this nation and the people in it.

Or we can continue to vote for our team with the delusional belief that this time will be different. As the great Pete Townsend wrote so accurately a sporty 55 years ago, “meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Will we be fooled again? One can hope not, but history tells a very different story.

Like a hundred thousand or more young men of my era, as a teenager I harbored a rich fantasy of becoming a rock star. I bought a guitar. I learned to play. Bands came and bands went. Most were, meh. One was quite good. We made a record and moved to New York City in search of fame and fortune.

That’s where the dream ended. Thank goodness.

A young man’s dream of the rock ‘n roll lifestyle is one thing. The actual experience is something entirely different. Now, as I slip into my retirement years, I find it comforting to know I left that life of naivete and excess behind me a long time ago.

But not entirely.

As an amateur musician I owned a guitar. Then a second. Then a third. As a professional I stocked up on the tools of my trade. Guitars, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, cables, tuners, mixing boards and the like came and went. Most fell by the wayside, sold to pick up a few dollars along the way. Short term thinking used to solve short term problems.

Read that sentence again. It’s important.

Some of my old tools remain in my possession. Today, although I rarely earn a dollar from playing guitar, that option exists. I never ask to be paid when I play now, although a few bucks come my way from time to time. Usually from appreciative venue owners or fellow musicians who share the purse they earned from the booking.

That income is a trickle. Sporadic, unpredictable, and meager. The sort of income that might inspire an artsy fartsy type to wish for the adoption of a socialist economy that might fulfill all my needs and wants through no effort of my own.

But what of my tool kit?

Those guitars I bought decades ago have value. If I lived in California they might be counted as a portion of my net worth. I could theoretically be required to pay tax on their value year after year. After all, owning them suggests I’m part of the 1%. A rich bastard hoarding his wealth to the exclusion of others who badly need what I’ve acquired. Some might even suggest I’ve stolen these items, but disadvantaged others simply by having them.

Then again, they could follow the same route I did. The same path my fellow musicians did. They could invest in themselves, invest in their tools, then wait.

I own a 1971 Fender Telecaster that was gifted to me in 1980. It cost $150 at the time. It was in rough shape. I fixed it up and played it for many years. One of my bandmates even played it on our first and only album. It’s traveled widely, been well used, and found many admirers in the decades I’ve owned it. Today, it’s value is somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000. Not that I have any intention of selling it.

That represents an increase in value of roughly 2,500%. Otherwise known as an excellent investment.

One of my favorites was a yellowed 1958 Gretsch. It had the most comfortable neck of any guitar I’ve ever played. I gave it to a friend in the early 90s. Shortly afterward it disappeared in the mist of touring and traveling never to be seen again. Not by my friend or me anyway. I suspect it would be worth considerably more than the Telecaster today. But no worries. I’ve got others.

Investment isn’t really all that complicated. Investment builds wealth over time. It’s not a bet laid at the track. It’s not a scratch off card from the local convenience store. It’s the purchase of something of real value, cared for and nurtured over time, until its value increases. It’s not found. It’s grown. Month by month, year by year, decade by decade.

What you choose to invest in is your business. Literally. You might start a small company working with a friend or two. Maybe that’s a band that becomes internationally famous, earning hundreds of millions of dollars. Or maybe it’s a computer company you set up in your dad’s garage that expands to being a multi-billion-dollar empire. Or maybe you just clean pools and enjoy the freedom or setting your own schedule and being outside in the sunshine.

Whatever works for you, works for you. To paraphrase a quote misattributed to the great Shoeless Joe Jackson, if you build it, they will come. And they will. Customers will find you. Competitors will counter your best efforts. You will be inspired to improve, to become more efficient, to thrive. And perhaps with a bit of luck, effort, and assistance, you will do just that.

Whatever the outcome you’ll have your toolbox of marketable assets both tangible and intangible to work with. And that has real value. To you. To your family. And to the world around you.

Earning wealth beats the bejeezus out of simply taking something of value to others. It’s not even a close contest.

The simple and unavoidable truth is this. Wealth truly does equal investment plus time. It has to be earned to have real value. If taken from others in exchange for nothing but threats, the bounty you receive will be of no real worth soon enough. The key is to realize that dollars aren’t the only thing of value in your life.

Good luck.

The rise of interest in socialism and communism in the U.S. owes its genesis to a basic failing of our educational system. That is unavoidably true. Secondarily, a cultural shift to infantilize our young has exacerbated the problem. Today, a disquieting percentage of young people as well as more mature individuals who should know better, truly believe they deserve prosperity from Day 1.

Like it or not, this idiotic belief is gaining momentum.

Each of us deserves absolutely nothing more than a chance. That’s it. If we were to wash up on the shore of a tropical island with all the natural resources we need to thrive, there is no entity on earth that owes us housing, health care, food, water, entertainment, or an available sexual partner.

That’s all on us.

Consider William Golding’s masterpiece of fiction, The Lord of the Flies. It is set in just such a circumstance. This story illustrates how societies are formed and how they fail. Left to our own devices the average individual will descend into animalistic behavior. They will prey on people who present no threat to them.

If you doubt that assertion, feel free to study the actions of average men and women following a significant natural disaster. A hurricane or earthquake that leads to an extended loss of electrical power and fuel sources will do it. Looting and violence are the typical result. When deprived of the modern conveniences of life, too many of us resort to force to get what we feel we need or want.

And here we are in the most prosperous time in human history, depriving ourselves of the very thing we need to succeed as a unified society. The belief that we can.

Capitalism has become the whipping boy for every half-baked nut-job with access to a magic marker, a square of posterboard, or an Internet connection. No amount of evidence that our system of economics has raised millions from poverty to middle class is sufficient to quell their anger. They believe to their core that as long as someone is wealthier than they are, the world is unfair.

Reality check. There will always be someone wealthier than you are. Than I am. Than anyone you can name is. That’s the truth. Wealth ebbs and flows. It increases and drops as the economic winds blow. It has always been so. Everywhere, for all time.

There is no barrier holding those who are low on the economic ladder to the bottom rung. Just as there is no safety net guaranteeing those at the top a permanent place there.

Oh, you want proof? Okay, that’s fair. The Vanderbilts, Rothschilds, Hartford’s, Pulitzer’s, and Stroh’s were all unimaginably wealthy at one time in recent history. Today, the bulk of their fortune is gone. Taken up by upstarts who came from the lower reaches of the American economic picture.

Those lost fortunes were built into new mountains of capital by the Walton’s, Mars, Cathy’s, Jenkins, and Taylor families. Between them employment opportunities came about for millions of their fellow countrymen both directly and indirectly. Expanding into everything from grocery stores to rental cars the economy boomed thanks in part to men and women who took a risk. They built businesses that caused cities and towns and individuals to thrive.

In brief, they made themselves wealthy. Along the way they made innumerable investors and employees wealthy too.

Capitalism wasn’t the anchor holding them back, it was the rocket engine propelling them forward. And it took millions along for the economically beneficial ride.

Truth; anyone with a bucket and a sponge can start a window washing business. That modest enterprise can grow to earn the proprietor a six-figure income. Even a part-time solo operator can earn better than the national average income in a line of work that can literally be started for pocket change.

Truth: the average man or woman can start a landscaping business with nothing more than a lawnmower and a rake. Building that business will take time and effort, as every business does. But with revenue available in the mid to high six figures, and some exceptional operators bringing in seven figures annually, it’s a viable opportunity for someone with hustle and hope.

Now, let’s get back to, The Lord of the Flies and the character of Piggy. A boy who values logic and reason. A character who believes the population can survive through collaboration of effort, careful investigation of the world around them, and an adherence to the benefits of a safe and orderly society.

For his troubles, the mob kills him. They believe in the victimization of the weak, that strength and authority is derived from brutality. They will take what they want. They see no reason they should be required to earn it.

We would do well to read that book again. To consider where we fall in the list of characters. For those who strive to be productive members of society, the future has never been more perilous in this country. A growing population of takers have set their sights on the prosperity of their neighbors. Rather than learn how to replicate their success, they are seduced by the shorter path. The one that involves nothing more industrious than the murder of those they disagree with, the theft of anything they believe should be theirs by default, and the dismantling of the most thriving economic powerhouse to ever grace humanity.

Their path is clear. It does not end well, however. No matter how hard they try to pretend otherwise, the mob will eventually turn on them, too.

Robespierre led the French revolution, right up until the mob beheaded him.

Danton spoke out against excessive violence in the movement, leading to his execution by former followers.

Trotsky fell to the wayside when Stalin took power. So, he obviously had to be murdered by those following his former comrade.

Madero led the Mexican revolution, only to be betrayed and put to death by those he worked shoulder to shoulder with a year earlier.

History has given us ample warning. All of us. So has literature. Whether we want to or not, we will ultimately be forced to pick a side. This is not going to be pretty. Our best hope is to change course and decide emphatically to embrace opportunity over victimization.

The question is, will we?

You are wealthy beyond imagination.

Conversely, the members of your family who existed 100 years ago would have had a very different experience. Even if they were quite wealthy for the time, they would have been unlikely to have electricity in their home. If they did it was only sufficient to power a few light bulbs, a radio, and perhaps a fan to make sleeping in the close confines of a bedroom possible during the height of August’s fury.

In the winter they heated their home with a cast iron stove burning wood, or coal. The fumes of which are poisonous to the inhabitants of the house. The had no refrigerator. Food lasted a day or two at best. If they lived in the city they may have had one faucet that provided cold water. In the country they would have had a hand-powered pump handle to pull water of dubious quality from the ground.

They were among the most prosperous people on the planet at the time. Today, they would be impoverished to the point churches and NGOs would use them in ads designed to raise funds for the poor.

The times are indeed changing. Technology has made our lives more comfortable. Industry has made us more prosperous. The ambition of individual men and women, boys and girls to raise themselves to an ever higher standard of living worked.

Americans of every color, religion, and ethnicity have benefited from an ever-improving quality of life. A fact that required effort, patience, persistence, and at least a bit of luck. Yet it happened to millions upon millions of us. To those native born and those who immigrated from nations all across the globe.

We are the lucky ones. The fortunate sons and daughters of people who went before, hoping their children would live in a more prosperous world than they had been given. And we did. Thanks to those who planned and labored and invested before us.

There is a slogan that serves as a warning to those of us who are too hasty. “Don’t change your horse in mid-stream,” it tells us. Good advice, frankly. Very good advice, indeed.

Hopefully he was kind and compassionate. Not all were. Hence, life was not easy. She might have been a bird in a gilded cage, or a waif left to her own devices in a world designed to deny her anything of value.

Either way, her fate was not in her hands. It was always, always in the hands of someone else.

She couldn’t obtain a credit card, or a loan, or even open a bank account in her own name without permission. What may or may not have been legal was in all practical terms off the table to her. Is it any wonder she sought marriage in the hope of being freed from the bonds of convention and law?

The young woman of the 1950s could opt to live independently, of course. Free from the constraints of being subject to the whim of her father. However, her career options were few and generally paid poorly. For those who completed higher education they might become a teacher or a nurse. Those who sought work without a diploma or certificate of some sort tended to end up in the typing pool, or as a receptionist, or running a cash register at a local store.

College graduates were atypical. Only 6% of females of the era completed their studies. Many who sought higher education did so with the specific intention of earning an Mrs degree. A term so widely used it became a common euphemism for enrolling with the intent meeting and marrying a man with greater earning potential.

By the age of 24 as many as 70% of young women were already married. Many were already in the throes of starting a family, birth control being somewhere between rare to illegal at the time.

And here’s where the surprise twist pops up. Although all her dreams had come true, her life became something of a Twilight Zone episode. Nothing was as it first seemed to be.

She was out of her father’s house. She was married. Her husband had a job and an income that could support the two of them as well as a child or two. They bought and moved into a starter home in the suburbs with aspirations to continue moving up in society as the years went by. They bought a car.

It wasn’t long before she started to chaff at the limitation of being homebound on a permanent basis. She was alone and immobile. The car went to the city with her husband each day. Her role was clear, to provide for her husband and family. His role was less restrictive and came with no guarantees.

Maybe he really was working late. Then again, maybe he wasn’t. Perhaps he’d increase her allowance when he got that big raise. Or maybe he wouldn’t. It was possible he wouldn’t get that raise at all. He might even lose his job, plunging them into insolvency in a matter of weeks.

For all the loneliness and fear of what might come, she could do nothing about it.

Within a couple years the bloom was off the rose. She wasn’t living in the 19^th Century world of her grandmothers. This was the modern era. We now had electricity, running water, television, frozen dinners, and vacation options. All of which came and went at the whim of her husband.

She was trapped. If she was lucky, she was back to the bird in the gilded cage scenario. A circumstance that would continue throughout her lifetime, unless she opted for the scourge of divorce. Single, unskilled, and without the means of earning enough to match the lifestyle she’d had, untold numbers of women stayed in domestic servitude to a man they no longer loved as a means of survival. Nothing more.

And those were the lucky ones. On the other end of the scale were the women who married tall, handsome men with brilliant smiles and thick luxurious heads of hair. Imagine the surprise when they found Prince Charming transforming into a lumpy, dumpy, alcoholic mess who lost jobs, abused them emotionally and physically, and announced the starter home was the best they’d do in their lives. If they could keep it.

These women faced the same terror of unending poverty and shame their wealthier sisters were saddled with. But they did it with generic brands from the supermarket, wearing the same dress they’d been wearing since last year, in shoes that were worn and in desperate need of replacement.

The dream worked for some. And those women sang the praises of their circumstances. Yet, it became a nightmare for others. An ordeal that continued until the 1960s when peace and love and freedom from social constraints and legal limbo allowed women to begin to stand on their own. With pride. With potential. With the flexibility to pursue any path they wished.

The road they walked may have been challenging. The obstacles were many. The defeats inevitable. But in the end, we all found ourselves in a far better world as women took their place in management positions, which helped them move up the socio-economic ladder under their own name. Women became entrepreneurial. They founded businesses, built empires, and raised up those who came behind them either literally or by providing a shining example of what a young woman could be if she only applied herself and took a risk.

You may be surprised at this point to realize this article isn’t about the women’s movement. It’s not about patriarchy or the inequities of the 1950s. This article is about the foolishness of putting our health, wealth, housing, transportation, and any other basic human need into the hands of another in the belief they will treat us well.

It may be the easier choice, but it is a perilous risk we take when we hand the reins of our life to another.

We may believe to our core they will treat us well. They won’t. We will never be their equal. We can only be their subject.

Whether a King, a father, a husband, or a government, those with unfettered power will abuse us to the degree they are able. History proves that to be true. Everywhere through all time.

A beneficent dictator is a dictator all the same. If your well-being depends entirely on the grace of another, you will never be allowed to achieve your dreams. You will only be able to rise as far as you’re allowed to, and no further. A game of diminishing returns you are guaranteed to lose in the long run.

You can never be more successful than the dominant entity overseeing your life. You will be second class, forever. The only hope for escape is to throw off your bonds and refuse the gifts offered so freely. To go independent. To become a capitalist whose goal is to rise up from your current position to a higher level of existence.

The only other option is subservience and poverty. Which is the natural state of humans throughout history. In the year 1800 roughly 85% of the world population lived in poverty. Today, that number has decreased to just 10%. Capitalism did that. Individual effort across national boundaries, time zones, and oceans made it happen.

Do not envy the wealthy. Become wealthier. Manage your own affairs. Live your own life.

This is not a diatribe against socialism, incidentally. Rather it is an acknowledgement that socialist principals have real value. That is the exact reason those beliefs have been built into the capitalist structure of the American economy. Not by force, but by choice. Not to the detriment of the working class, but to their great benefit. Not as a parasitic attack on the wealthy, but as a means of elevating the working class to ever higher levels of economic success.

This system works, too. No government intervention is required. No resentment of others is necessary. In fact, an embrace of entrepreneurialism and a bit of good old-fashioned ambition serve as the lubricant that makes this massive growing machine run.

It’s been said with great vigor; the workers should own the means of production. That includes the factories, office buildings, and the myriad businesses occupying those spaces. The working class should possess these things.

Hip, hip, hooray! You’ve got the capitalists vote on that idea. Let’s do it.

Oh, wait. We’ve already done it. In fact, we were doing it before Marx and Engels ever picked up a writing utensil to express their disdain for the system that kept them both afloat.

Capitalism in the United States not only allows the working class to own the means of production, but it’s enthusiastically encouraged. Not just in terms of empty words delivered in speeches given at political rallies. Capitalists have put those words into action. They’ve lived the belief for as long as this nation has existed. Often if not usually with far greater success than the socialists demonstrating to achieve those same goals.

Socialists should really study up on the late, great George Jenkins. As an annoyed and overlooked young man managing a grocery store in Winter Haven, Florida George set out to open his own grocery store. Ambitious to a fault he opened his store right next to the store he’d just quit in a huff.

This was the birth of a retail chain that would one day carry the name, Publix Super Market.

It was 1930. The Great Depression was pressing down on America, its business community, and its people. Yet George was not daunted. He had an idea that made his plan not just possible, but likely for success.

Publix offered top quality groceries and superior customer service. They still do. It’s an intentional choice. They aren’t the least expensive option in town, but many customers would argue they are the best. A logic that would allow Jenkins and his team to grow from one small shop in an out of the way southern town to a behemoth of industry that operates 1,442 stores across eight states thanks to the efforts of more than a quarter million employees.

So, what does all that have to do with socialism, or capitalism, or where the hell is Winter Haven, Florida? Just this; Jenkins set up his company from the start to be employee owned. Initially he offered free grants of stock in the company to employees who stayed for an established period of time. He built profit sharing into the plan. Publix contributes a percentage of an eligible employee’s earnings into a stock account annually.

The employees literally own the company.

This wasn’t an act of graciousness on Jenkins’ part. He knew from the start that employees who had skin in the game would serve customers better. Whether they’re bagging groceries, stocking shelves, retrieving carts from the parking lot, or managing the store, Publix employees have a built-in reason to go the extra mile. When the company thrives, so do they.

It’s not unheard of for a cashier to retire as a millionaire. That’s raising the working class up by their bootstraps on steroids.

A fact that leads us to a marvelous quote from the noted economist, Thomas Sowell. “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

Earned through sweat. Earned through knowledge. Earned through investment. Wall Street is filled with men and women making investments on behalf of teachers, cops, firefighters, baristas, mechanics, insurance salesmen, and receptionists. They’re buying stocks, and bonds, ETFs, and Index Funds. Their clients are employed in one aspect of American business but invested in a far wider segment of the market.

They are workers and they are owners. As anyone with a job and a few dollars to invest can be.

With more than half the American working class invested in the stock market, it is clear that owners outnumber non-owners by a fair margin. Those workers aren’t picketing to take anything away from an investor or business owner who is wealthier and more secure. Rather they’re taking steps to become wealthier and more secure themselves.

Thank goodness for George Jenkins and those like him. Thank goodness for the socialists of Wall Street who are making millionaires of the American public by helping them to become owners of the means of production. Five days a week. From 9:30AM until 4:00PM the opportunity to buy in as a shareholder is available to virtually anyone who wants to participate.

Should workers own the means of production? Yes, they should. And they do.

While it may seem counter-intuitive or even unbelievable to you, the truth is this; money is incredibly simple.

While you may have been told otherwise, there is no great mystery or magic surrounding the decisive and productive management of money. Nobody is hiding wisdom from you that has to power to unlock the secrets to a more prosperous future. The lessons you need to learn are few. They are incredibly basic. They are these.

1: You must work in order to earn.

2: You must earn in order to save.

3: You must save in order to invest.

4: You must invest in order to achieve financial security.

That’s the whole deal in a nutshell. You do not need to earn a high income to become wealthy. You don’t have to save 85% of your income to invest wisely or effectively. You don’t need to find the best investment ever to significantly grow your wealth. The truth is, no matter how much you earn you can learn to save and invest to be on a stronger financial footing in the future.

The future starts right now. That’s true both literally and figuratively.

In future installments you will be introduced to simple, basic, easy to understand concepts of how quickly and efficiently you can begin to turn your financial life around. None of it is complicated. You do not need to have a working knowledge of higher mathematics. No special tools will be required. There is nothing to purchase and there are no mandatory classes to attend. But if you persevere and read the posts that will follow this one, you will have learned enough to start saving, investing, and prospering. In short you will have a whole new understanding of how money works. More importantly you will understand how to make money work for you in a meaningful way.

So, let’s get started.

It was a way of life. We measured our success by comparing ourselves to the neighbors. The Joneses. The goal of millions of Americans was to live, work, and vacation in a way that equaled the homes, careers, and financial capabilities of our neighbors.

This phenomenon was tremendously beneficial to Visa and Master Charge (now called Mastercard), along with Diners Club, Sears, and Montgomery Ward. Credit became debt. A risk we were willing to take because it brought with it all the minor luxuries of modern life.

There is a price to pay for keeping up with the Joneses. Yet, in the 1950s right up through the early days of the 21^st Century the risk was relatively low. We were competing against people who by and large lived in the same neighborhood. People whose kids attended the same schools, who drove similar cars, to jobs that put them in the same tax bracket we were in.

Then something happened. Something problematic. Quick, easy, and inexpensive communications expanded. Social media exploded. The idea of publicizing your best life to the wider world on a daily basis became the norm.

Suddenly we weren’t lusting for the products and experiences of folks who lived three houses away. We became enamored of the lifestyles of people we’d never met. People we never would meet. Movie stars, world class athletes, musicians, and even political leaders came into our view so frequently we began to believe we were destined to live as they live. To earn as they earn. To be as carefree and admired as they were, whether their reality reflected that carefully curated image or not.

We wanted the dream. Screw reality. We took the blue pill in industrial quantities then went back for more.

We were hooked. We no longer aspire to keep up with the Joneses. We now seek the luxuries of being a Musk, a Bezos, a Zuckerberg, or a Brin. Oprah level wealth is no longer the goal. That would be injurious to our self-esteem. We want more. We want bigger. We want it all.

What we don’t want is to work for it. To suffer. To recognize that great wealth on the scale we aspire to requires massive sacrifice. Not for a moment, but for years. Decades even. The dream comes with stress, and broken relationships, and lawsuits, and regulatory peril. It comes with oversight from boards of directors, shareholders, bureaucrats, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service.

We reject the idea that Jane and Joe Q. Public will feel free to shout epithets at us in the street based on inaccurate or unfounded beliefs. Even as we participate in that exact activity ourselves. We desperately cling to a powerful self-delusion regarding our role as provocateurs in a game we neither understand nor care to personally compete in.

Somewhere along the line we’ve lost the thread. We shifted from emulating our neighbor’s success to begrudging the victories of those who work harder, longer, take bigger risks, reinvest in themselves, and ultimately win. We pretend there aren’t a thousand broken losers for every big winner. We’ve convinced ourselves we deserve a piece of their pie, even while knowing we’ve done nothing to deserve a place at their table.

A growing minority of us have even convinced ourselves it is our right to take what others have earned. To confiscate it. To ruin the successful and dance on their graves in delight because…somehow, we deserve the fruits of their labor more than they do.

Keeping Up with the Joneses isn’t just an expression. For some of us it’s a lifestyle. A self-defeating quest that can never be fulfilled. It is a roid rage degeneration of the psyche that turns us against our own best interest. To our addled mindset, we are infallible. The world is unjust and we know it. The only possible answer to our problems is to eat the rich.

We are idiots.

Are we, really? Yes. Emphatically so.

It’s worth knowing the expression, “keeping up with the Joneses” didn’t pop up organically in the public consciousness one day. It was the title of a cartoon. A series of cartoons in fact that featured the always wanting Aloysius P. and Clarice McGinis. A couple who was unfailingly envious of their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Jones.

And so, we must as a society confront the unavoidable reality that this lifestyle of envy and selfishness we’ve adopted is based in its entirety on a cartoon. A humorous perspective on life that was at one time so obviously unacceptable it was lampooned in print on a daily basis.

It was a joke. Which is fitting since we’ve turned ourselves into one at this point, too.

As counter intuitive as this suggestion may appear to some, perhaps this would be a good time to reconsider what we truly believe we deserve to be handed in life, and contrast that with exactly what we should be expected to work for instead.

You may be surprised to learn that your local, state, and federal elected leaders are more than likely on the side that answers emphatically, yes. They will deny this of course. And who could blame them. Actual leadership requires a variety of character traits missing from a disquieting number of our elected and appointed overlords. And overlords they have become, taking by decree substantial percentages of the public’s earnings to cover expenses both necessary and questionable.

To dissent is to be unpatriotic. UnAmerican. Anti-government. Or put another way, it has become the domain of radical extremists to believe that fiscal restraint is a virtue when it comes to the public purse.

The federal government has famously spent its way into nearly $40 trillion of debt. That debt belongs to the people. It is they who will be forced to repay it. Through mandatory taxes and the scourge of inflation fostered by the debt.

This problem will not be resolved by the politicians who created it. Rather the bill will be paid by the waitresses, plumbers, fishermen, and insurance salespeople who have been unwittingly and unwillingly saddled with the bill. As well as their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Unfortunately, bleak as it is, that’s not the whole story. Citizens and residents have to also consider the fiscal status of the 50 states. Each of those entities carries a staggering debt as well.

California leads the pack with nearly half a trillion dollars of looming obligations. Notwithstanding the cost of building back entire neighborhoods destroyed in large part due to mismanagement of resources and negligent attitudes toward prevention, every man, woman, and child in California is currently on the hook to the State for $12,500.

South Dakota serves as the caboose in this train of fiscal misery with a paltry $2 billion owed. That breaks down to a challenging but potentially manageable $2,170 per person. Still, it’s an embarrassment.

But that’s just at the State level. We each owe the feds $115,000 if we hope to retire the Federal debt. That includes those of us who are actively working, small children, and retirees. In addition to our normal annual tax bill, not instead of it.

Add to that the State shortfall, and let’s not forget the cities and towns of this great nation. A disturbing number of them carry debt as well. Currently that number is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $1.4 trillion.

And you thought your Visa balance was a problem.

Pick your party, choose the elected official you wish, and throw a dart at a board divided up into Federal, State, and Local. Whomever is at the end of that short list of qualifications is likely calling for higher taxes on you and your neighbors. Although the smart ones frame their argument to make sure you think you’ve been excluded.

“We’ll just tax the rich,” they tell us. And too many of us believe them.

In 1913 the Federal Income Tax was introduced. It was aimed at the rich with only 1% to 3% of the overall population being affected. Today, as much as 70% of the population files an annual tax return.

How likely is it that 70% of the population qualifies as wealthy? Did they tax the rich, or did they simply implement a tax that ramped up over time to include as many of the employed population as possible?

You know that answer to that question. Not a politician under the sun will admit it, however.

A single woman with no dependents earning as little as $25,000 per year would now be required to file and pay income tax. She’s not rich. And thanks to the unfettered spending proclivities of our elected leaders at all levels, she likely never will be.

If she’s unlucky enough to live in Connecticut she would also be on the hook for State income tax. A tax introduced in 1991 by then Governor Lowell Weicker with the promise it would only be necessary for three years to balance the books. That’s 35 years ago. By the governor’s own math that’s 32 years of additional overspending beyond the overspending that preceded it.

Are you seeing a trend?

Federal income tax, FICA tax, state income tax, property tax, sales tax, gas tax, excise taxes, utility taxes, hotel tax, capital gains tax, school taxes, and the list goes on.

The typical middle income American family now pays as much as 40% of their income in tax…and the government wants more. Why? To spend it on our behalf. To pay for this and that and the other thing that will get us to vote for them. To believe that if we just let them drive us more deeply into debt, somehow our quality of life will improve.

At what point will the American people wake up, in every state, in every city and town, in the unincorporated hamlets across the nation? While our elected and appointed office holders spend us into oblivion, we must at some point recognize the obvious and undeniable reason for our plight. It is the government spending us into a lifelong debt spiral for their own gain.

Not for us. They’re bleeding us dry for their own benefit.

All of which brings us back to the question, does the public represent an inexhaustible supply of ever-increasing tax revenue, or not?

I do not believe so. In fact, I’m sure of it. Our elected leadership has a very different take on the topic it seems.

What’s your answer to the question. That’s the answer that truly matters.

It’s a mixed bag really.

This brings me to the crux of today’s story. I like coffee. Which means I have visited a great many coffee shops over the course of my life. One has become my favorite. It’s local. Which is helpful. For many years I could be found there on an almost daily basis. Sometimes more than once in a single day.

Most of those visits are not especially memorable. Pleasant, yes. Enjoyable, invariably. I got my coffee, visited with friends, and I left. Mine has been a fairly predictable pattern.

Except for this one time.

I walked through the front door on that oh-so-memorable day feeling a less than stellar. The prior night had run late. Travel was involved. I was a bit bleary. My brain hadn’t fully engaged. My voice was still croaky from lack of sleep. I was moving slowly.

Stepping to the counter, the only customer ahead of me stepped to the side, awaiting her drink to be delivered. She was large, perhaps a decade older than I was at the time, and dressed in a fashion that suggested her outfit was intended to make a statement about her belief system and attitude. She was not tall, but she was very round and surprisingly lumpy. The kind of woman we southerners might describe as a big girl. In the same way we might say, bless your heart, to an idiot who meant no harm but was hampered in life for being as dumb as a stump.

Her drink order was one I consider to be a fancy hot beverage. The kind that requires multiple steps and various ingredients to concoct. That sort of thing takes time. My regular order does not.

When the girl behind the counter turned her cherubic face up to meet mine I said, “Hey baby, can I have a large black coffee, please?” I handed her a fiver. She made change, handed it back, and turned to fill a paper cup. Quick and easy.

The big girl turned to drill holes in me with her eyeballs. Her face began running through a palette of pinks and reds. The flab of her cheeks shook in defiance.

“I hope you talk to all women like that,” she exploded.

“I’m sorry,” I replied. Not as a means of apologizing. I was simply surprised, a little slow on the uptake, and unsure I’d really heard what she’d blasted in my ear.

“I hope you talk to all women like that,” she reiterated. Clearly, she was deriding me for being a chauvinist. A freak of nature who didn’t respect women as a category of people. A beast who should be shunned and driven from the village.

Considering her anger and close proximity I replied with the only words I could muster that made clear my confusion. “You hope I talk to all women the way I talk to my daughter? That’s odd.”

The barista turned back to the counter extending the blessed beverage in my direction. “Here you go, daddy.”

“Thanks, baby. I’ll see you tonight at the house.”

As I exited the shop, I passed the big girl again. She was standing beside the door at the fixin’s table. She spooned additional sugar into her cup and poured a disturbing amount of cream into the already thick slurry of sweeteners and fats. She glared at me as I slid past. I simply shrugged and went on my way.

What more was there to say? Some people just need to be mad at the world, I guess.

I still drink black coffee. That coffee shop remains my favorite. And I still use terms of endearment when talking to my daughters and grandchildren.

Is that really such a big deal?

Without context, we may think we know what the conversation we overheard meant, but do we really?

Municipal leaders are understandably concerned. After decades of barely restrained spending, compulsory tax increases, and with little interest in the plight of the constituency they’re pledged to serve, their chickens are about to come home to roost. Or to continue the ornithological theme, after persistently bleeding their golden goose nearly to death, the goose is fighting back.

Property taxes fund approximately 17% of municipal coffers. That number is slightly higher for Counties, at 18%. Knowing that, the proposed property tax relief question could result in a significant fiscal haircut for these governing bodies. This is a problem to be dealt with responsibly, not a talking point to use as a scare tactic.

A cut of this size will in no way be a death blow, although many in elected and appointed seats will take that position. Those who do will unintentionally expose themselves as being unimaginative and mathematically challenged. If you are of that faction, please do us all a favor and vacate your position in favor of someone more competent.

An income reduction of this size is a problem. There is no doubt about that. Yet, it is one that can be managed effectively and efficiently by responsible leaders. What municipal and county leadership should recognize in this time of worry and strife is that this is a problem of their own making. You took too much for too long without regard for the unavoidable backlash that would one day come.

That day is here.

This is the time to look forward. Not to whine. Not to cry. Not to pretend a cut of 17% is the end of the world. This is the time to study your budgets with great care and do what every individual, family, and business owner has had to do repeatedly throughout their lives. Cut the fat, improve efficiencies, and learn to live within the fiscal constraints of your current reality.

The vote may be in November, but this train has already left the station. Voters are understandably fed up with being victimized by the very men and women they elected to serve them.

In 2016 the median property tax bill in Florida was a shade above $1,800. Today that price tag has risen to $3,000 or more. This while the national median tax bill is just $2,400. It is not the imagination of the public that they’re being over-taxed. The numbers bear it out. Floridians are being fleeced by our own municipal and county governments.

That is simply true. You know it. So do the voters.

Since municipal or county official have rarely had any real spending constraints, allow me to suggest a few places to focus attention as you review your ledgers. These are the same areas any business owner would look to. There is no reason you can’t look at a column of numbers in the same way as you prepare to continue to operate with reduced income.

1. Staff

a. Labor often constitutes the greatest expense for a business owner. Off-loading employees may be unpleasant, but it may be necessary.

b. Not every position is essential. This is where your role as a leader will require you to determine which jobs and which employees remain and which will need to be cut.

2. Facilities

a. Maintenance and management of any property come at a cost. The time has come for government to take a serious look at the facilities they own and manage. If they aren’t necessary to conduct the business of the people, they may have to go. If the space necessary to operate effectively can be reduced, there may be buildings that can be listed for sale or lease. Unutilized space may be shared with other public or private entities to facilitate savings.

b. The Federal government has gifted municipal and county governments with buildings and land in the past. They have done this to get the property off their books and on to yours. You may have to do the same. Tough times require hard decisions.

3. Discretionary Spending

a. Not everything government does is absolutely necessary.

b. Travel, feel-good training programs, pie in the sky projects, and expenditures on outside service providers may be ripe for cost cutting.

c. As you review each line item you may wish to ask yourself, “If this position or service disappeared, would my community suffer? Would the public as a whole even notice the cut?”

4. Capital Expenditures.

a. A close examination of municipal and county expenditures makes it clear that many in positions of authority can’t distinguish between spending and investing. The former makes an individual or small group feel good. The latter serves the community.

b. If your governmental unit was intending to spend money on something that is more of a pet project than it was intended to be in the best interest of the community, consider not making that expenditure.

c. This is how savings are created.

5. Embrace volunteerism

a. Every community in Florida is filled with men and women who have talent, skill, available time, and a willingness to help their community. Few governmental entities make use of this gift to the degree they could. Now would be an ideal time to begin to cuddle up to that possibility and begin to welcome your community into the process of managing projects and initiatives.

As elected and appointed officials your meteorological senses are well honed to knowing which way the political winds are blowing. Often, you ignore them, as you have on this most vexing issue in recent years. Now, the public very well may force upon you the same fiscal pain you’ve forced on them. Which leaves you with two clear options. Cry about your plight as a public servant with fiscal constraints or become a leader who runs the numbers and serves your community responsibly.

The public is not, never was, and never will be a boundless source of revenue. It was to your peril that you treated them as such. May you take your responsibilities more seriously in the future or find the door on your way out of office.

Whichever way you choose to go, the clock is ticking.

“Hey, do you want a home entertainment system?” I turned to look. A man just on the sunny side of middle age leaned out the window of a white van. The vehicle was dented with significant patches of rust visible. His hair was cut in a manner that suggested he’d been shooting for stylish but only got as far as looking goofy.

“What?” I asked. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d heard what he said accurately.

“Do you want a home entertainment system?” he repeated himself. “It’s nice. New stuff. Top quality. It’ll change your life.”

A small live oak shaded the spot where I was standing. The Publix shopping center was busy. Cars slid past on their way to the exit as a steady stream flowed in from the street to take up the spaces they’d vacated.

“I can give you a good deal. Super cheap,” said the man in the van.

“No,” was all I could muster. The idea of buying a home theater system in a grocery store parking lot didn’t strike me as an intelligent move. The look and manner of the seller wasn’t helping his case either.

“Your loss,” said the man, mournfully. “Once I’m gone the opportunity is gone with me.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said as I placed a 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, a loaf of bread, and a bunch of bananas securely into the trunk.

“I’m serious. Once I’m gone, I’m gone,” he reiterated.

I swung a leg over the motorcycle and lifted it off the kickstand. I’d backed into the parking space, allowing me to pull straight out into the lane when I was done shopping. As I rolled the throttle on I heard him call out, “You’re missing a great deal.”

I rolled out of the parking lot onto a side street. The wind in my face was refreshing as the Florida summer heat began to build. Motoring down back roads past lakes and freshly mowed lawns I couldn’t help but wonder how the guy selling the possibly stolen home entertainment system thought I’d get the thing home on a motorcycle.

The world is a mysterious place filled with some highly questionable inhabitants.

They are adamant. They are insistent. They are passionate and sincere. All of which are potentially valuable traits.

What they are not, is curious. And that’s an issue.

Based on the interactions I’ve had with this cohort of society as well as their never-ending stream of demonstrations and social media posts on their favorite topic, it is possible to surmise they see their beliefs as sacrosanct. Above reproach. Unassailable to the point they cannot and should not be questioned or revised.

They are the embodiment of the classic story of three blind men describing an elephant based on the part of the animal they are touching. The man at the tail says the beast is slender and flexible. The man touching its torso describes a behemoth animal of unimaginable size. The man standing face-to-face with the snout is experiencing a moist, windy tunnel that moves with incredible power. None thinks to explore their perspective further or to fold their peers observations into their own thinking.

“Workers should own the means of production,” scream the youthful, exuberant Socialist dreamers. A claim that resonates through the ages from Karl Marx to the public square of every large American city.

What they fail to realize about the Capitalism they despise, is that Capitalism also encourages workers to own the means of production. In fact, they recommend it. They plead with workers to invest in their own future.

Yet, too many workers (and far too many non-workers) protest this perceived abomination of social oppression without giving it a moment’s thought.

The 401(k) their employer provides allows them to invest the amount of the worker’s choosing, with matching funds from their employer, into accounts that will almost certainly grow significantly over their lifetimes. This simple act allows them to incrementally acquire increasingly large ownership in the means of the means of production. Still, they turn up their noses at the possibility and continue to demand someone else (the government) bestows this benefit upon them. Free of charge. In exchange for nothing.

At the risk of being ostracized as being mean-spirited and ignorant, I feel the need to point out the obvious. The exchange of nothing is the antithesis of production. In order to achieve production, one must do something. They must build, or repair, or design, or engineer a tangible thing.

Standing on the street corner, screaming epithets at passersby is not generally appreciated as the production of anything more than the CO2 expelled from their aching lungs.

Alternatively, the aspiring Socialist could start a business. Whether that effort results in a bakery specializing in edibles, or a lawn scaping service, or a mobile car wash, the means of production would be well in hand.

I would offer this piece of advice to anyone of any age who embraces the utopian vision that brotherly love, mandated equality, and political chants can save the world. Buy into society in any way you can. Make your purchase with pocket change, or your time combined with whatever skills you’ve got. That transaction will pay much greater dividends than any Socialist scheme you, or Karl Marx, or Eugene V. Debs could ever put into action.

Secondarily, for those who don’t have skills, or money, or time to offer the world, learn to listen more than you speak. Find someone who is successful. Financially, emotionally, spiritually, or successful in any other form. Ask them how they did it. Consider how you might mimic their path to achieve similar results.

Ownership of the means of production is the key to financial wealth, to be sure. But that is not a state exclusively reserved for the wealthy. In fact, it is the method most often used by the less well-off to become more wealthy, increasingly comfortable, and more open to helping others.

History tells the story. But we can only learn from that long success story if we’re willing to listen with intent more often than we attempt to shout down those who hold a different perspective.

Good luck to us all.

Repeating yesterday’s errors tomorrow

It’s been said we can learn from history, or we can be doomed to repeat it. That simple concept is both true and wildly misinterpreted. The problem being that many of us, far too many frankly, aren’t very good at looking to the history books intent on gleaning a lesson worth learning.

We tend to focus on the foibles of individuals. Their weaknesses. Their mistakes. We point to the actions they took that were perfectly reasonable in their time but horribly unacceptable in our own. For a large percentage of our society that is proof that we are better people than our ancestors were.

Poppycock, balderdash, and piffle, I say.

Here’s a historical fact for you to consider. The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903. That’s true. You can look it up. That same year a couple guys named Harley and Davidson fired up a company that intended to build motorcycles. That’s true, too.

Also true is the fact that Ford sold fewer than 2,000 automobiles in all of 1903 and 1904 combined. The manufacturer that would soon launch the best-selling car in the world was off to a slow start.

Harley Davidson was doing even worse. Their output in 1904 was a paltry seven motorcycles.

At that same time, the preferred method of transportation was the time tested and oh-so-common horse and wagon. Whether you were carting chickens to market, grandma to the train station, or ice to the masses, the horse drawn vehicle was King.

Dozens of wagon and carriage manufacturers dotted the landscape producing tens of thousands of horse-drawn conveyances each year. Built primarily of wood with iron fittings, the wagons and carriages under construction in the early 20^th Century were modified versions of similar vehicles that had been built and used with success for hundreds of years.

Why mess with success?

Yet, Henry Ford and his crew were pumping out better built automobiles at an ever-quickening pace. By the close of 1915 there were more than one million Model T variants in the public sphere. And Ford wasn’t the only car maker on the scene. By 1916 there were more than three-and-a-half million cars and trucks registered in the United States.

For those who saw the changing tide and went with it, there was great success to be had. They recognized a technological shift in the market had occurred. By grabbing on to that new trend of mechanization they were able to acquire appropriate skills that would allow them to thrive in the new economy of a motorized world.

On the other side of the market was the dwindling demand for horse-drawn wagons and carriages. This is where really studying history and correlating the events of the past to the events of today can really pay off.

Imagine being a young man of the time who had aspirations of entering the middle class. He may have spent a few years as an apprentice, eventually becoming the best wagon wheel maker in the land. His skill with wood and the tools needed to shape and fasten it might be unparalleled. His knack for bending an iron hoop into a protective shell for his wooden creation might be exceptional. Yet, the market he was selling to was shrinking. His employer was no doubt hemorrhaging cash in greater quantities as each quarter’s books were reconciled.

The car was crushing the wagon.

It wasn’t long before the best wagon wheel maker in America was on the street, unemployed, and without the skills needed to compete and succeed in the current marketplace. Only a few years earlier he’d been a celebrated craftsman. Now, he was little more than a hobo drifting from town to town in search of an opportunity he could make good on.

That scenario isn’t a fantasy. It happened. For some the change was beneficial. For others it was a nightmare.

There was a similar but somewhat less damaging shift that occurred when solid-state semiconductors replaced vacuum tubes in the common appliances in our homes. Going from high-voltage tubes to low-voltage semiconductors didn’t change one thing about Ohms Law. The basics of electricity stayed the same, but the application of those basics changed dramatically. The proud tradition of the television repairman vanished virtually overnight.

Time moves on. Technology continues to evolve. The key to success for any of us is to keep our eyes and ears open. To look for the coming shift in the market. To recognize that what was commonly accepted as normal in the past, will very soon be antiquated and inefficient.

You’ve seen this in your own lifetime. You don’t have a rotary dial phone in your home anymore. We each have a computerized communication system in our pocket. Train travel gave way to piston powered airplanes, which gave way to jet transport category aircraft. Rockets launch payloads to orbit every week, now. Astronauts have been living and working in space on a daily basis for nearly a quarter of a century.

Things are changing. And as technology improves those changes come more quickly. The opportunities they present are more profound than ever. With AI (artificial intelligence) beginning to make inroads to our daily lives, this might be a really good time to reconsider that degree in Art History, or Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, or Journalism. Not because they’re not potentially interesting. It’s simpler than that. Their time may be past because they’re not essential to becoming a better, more capable person. They do not impart in the student any skills that are pertinent to the world we live in today. Or the one we’ll be living in tomorrow.

Consider this; Henry Ford never attended high school. Neither Orville or Wilbur Wright graduated high school. Thomas Edison only attended school for a period of a few months. He was largely homeschooled by his mother but made self-improvement a staple of his life goals. Mark Twain (real name: Sam Clemons) left school at the age of twelve. Still, he became the best-selling writer of his time. Walter Cronkite, perhaps the most trusted name in news reporting in American history, left college in his junior year to accept a job as a reporter.

Steve Jobs attended college for less than one year, but went on to found Apple, one of the most profitable companies on the planet. Mike Melvill was the first astronaut to reach space in a privately funded vehicle. He piloted SpaceShipOne to 100 kilometers above the surface of the earth, then landed the spacecraft on a runway in California. Mike is a high school graduate. He has no college degree.

The embrace and mastery of new technology and its application in the real world is a far more beneficial use of our time than the study of what was conventional and widely accepted a decade or more ago.

It could be argued that it would be wise to develop skills pertinent to the economy we live in now, and the one we expect to see in the near future.

Or, you could become the best wagon wheel maker you can be. That might be a satisfying pursuit. But know up front, in the era of electric cars, intercontinental jet travel, computerized everything, and at the dawn of the space tourism industry, the wagon wheel market might not have the growth potential you hoped it would.

Over the course of a lifetime, we tend to gather many things we perceive of as having value. It might be an art collection. Maybe you’re one of those who stocked up on Beanie Babies when they were a hot item. Perhaps you’ve been investing in blue chip stocks, or index funds, or real estate. We all have something we hold dear.

Yet are the things we value, the tangible assets of life, really all that important in the long run? Could there be something we’re missing that has greater value?

In truth there is only one thing we all have control over in our lives. It doesn’t reflect on our net worth, but it does count heavily toward how worthwhile we are as an individual.

Any one of us can lose everything we have. It can all be taken from us. For all our planning and careful execution, we aren’t fully in control of our health, or wealth, or even our life itself. Bad luck, recessive genes, economic collapse, or even a global pandemic have the power to take it all from us overnight. And there’s not much we can do about any of it.

What we can control, we too often choose not to. We’re too ethically flexible for that.

I’m talking about integrity. Your commitment to be honest. To carry yourself through life with the promise that your word is your bond. To accept and admit your faults, even when that admission can hurt you.

Nothing in life trumps integrity.

Once it’s lost or wasted it can never be fully restored to its original luster. Cheat on your spouse and you’ll carry that black mark on your record forever. Welch on a debt and you’ll have a hard time finding a loan in the future. If you do it will likely come at a significantly higher rate than it would have if you’d been honest.

Risk comes at a cost, and nothing suggests we are a risk to others like the knowledge that we have run afoul of others in the past, through no fault of their own. If we lack integrity the word tends to get around. And that ain’t good.

Let’s face it, being honest and true can be hard. We’re all flawed. We all fail from time to time. Those of us who strive to accomplish big things share that in common. We’re not all so committed to our reputation and our standing in the community we live or work in that we’re not willing to fudge a bit here and there. Especially if it helps us get ahead. At least for the moment. We can fix the reputational damage later. Can’t we?

Look, it doesn’t matter if you’re a janitor or a CEO, a bus driver or an airline pilot. Whatever your station in life, your integrity is the only thing of value you really have, the only thing you will ever have, that is completely within your control. Which leaves each one of us with a nagging internal question that we might be inclined to ignore to our own detriment.

That question is this; am I a good person?

Only you can truly know the answer to that question. And yes, you can lie. You could lie to your spouse, your employer, your friends, even your children. But can you carry off that lie for decades? Can you live a full and complete life without at least occasionally letting the cat out of the bag? At least to yourself during those quiet hours late at night when some unidentifiable issue or other is keeping you from falling asleep. Your unquiet mind is vexed by a worry of some sort. Perhaps one that you can’t even articulate, but you know it’s there and it won’t leave you alone. Maybe not for the night. Maybe not for years on end.

Fortunately, human beings can be forgiving. If you’ve let your integrity, get away from you, there is always time to redeem yourself. Perhaps not completely. But enough to win back wronged friends. You might restore a bruised business relationship or two. You might even patch up the leaky boat that your marriage has become due to your prior willingness to play fast and loose with the truth.

No, you will probably never be able to bring yourself back to the childhood innocence you once possessed but threw away. You can try, however. And that effort alone has real value – provided the attempt is sincere.

This year, you might consider giving yourself the gift of integrity for the holidays. For those of us who have kept theirs intact, there may be no more precious attribute we could commit ourselves to preserving. For those who may have let their store of integrity lose some value over the years, there’s no time like the present for taking on the most relevant construction project you’ll ever face.

I wish us all good luck, good friends, and prosperity. All of which are enhanced when sprinkled with the magical fairy dust of our own rock-solid integrity.

As Americans digest the bloat of Thanksgiving dinner, and dessert, and snacks, they prepare to invade retailers to spend, spend, spend whether they’ve got the cash to make those purchases or not. This venerated day that marks the profitability quotient of brick-and-mortar merchants large and small, is also the day that incentivizes the public to plunge themselves into deeper and deeper debt. With a purpose, of course.

Austerity is hard. Retail therapy is easy. Virtually our entire population is one credit card away from the perception of happiness. Buy whatever you want. If it fits in the car put it on the card. Take it home. Wrap it up. Gift it to a friend, a relative, a family member. Bring joy into their lives by paying 18% interest on that sale priced item.

The problem is that gift may be unappreciated. Or if it’s much loved and cherished, it may last only a matter of weeks or months before it’s broken, out of style, or worn to the point of no return. The giver keeps the unpaid balance on their card for many months, however. In far too many cases, for years. As long as the minimum payment is achievable, they keep buying. Their debt gets bigger and bigger until the number owed is insurmountable. With a maxed-out credit card their world comes crashing down.

Now they’re making payments on products long transferred to the local landfill. That hurts.

On the bright side, if you’re active military or a dependent of an active military individual your credit card rate is capped at a gut-wrenching 36%. That’s thanks to the military lending act. For the rest of us there is no upper limit.

Miss a payment, any payment, and your interest rate can easily double. Suddenly that 25% off sale doesn’t make much sense, mathematically speaking. Then again, it didn’t look so good at 18% either. Yet we buy anyway. It’s Black Friday! Let’s load up and head out to the stores!

A recent Circana survey found shoppers budgeting $771 for holiday shopping, on average. Parents were anticipating spending a bit more. Their average came in at $1,014. All spent in a few weeks in an effort to elicit a smile and a heartfelt, “Thank you,” from someone on their gift giving list.

As bad as that is, and yes, it is bad, it can get even worse. Should John or Joan Q. Public find their credit card (or credit cards) maxed out before the shopping list is complete, a simple call to the provider will often result in an increased credit limit. Yes! The debt they can barely afford now can be increased with the push of a button. Sometimes by thousands of dollars.

Let the quest for sales continue in earnest.

It doesn’t take a math whiz to realize that spending less and saving more would be a far better choice for most of us. Gifts of our time and attention might have a more lasting effect on those we love, and on ourselves. But without the colorfully wrapped gift taking up physical space under the Christmas tree, does it really count as a present worth having?

In the interest of our own long-term financial and emotional well-being it is time most of us reconsidered the commercially driven spending holiday known as Black Friday. It’s the day that keeps on taking. All year long. Dollar by dollar, draining our paychecks, depriving our savings accounts of new contributions, and preventing us from investing in our own future.

Take a break. Start a new tradition. Give the gift of you rather than your money. It may be a bit jarring in the short-term but in the long run you will be much better off. Financially, emotionally, and with the ability to identify your true friends from those who were just in the relationship for the goodies you sent their way year after year.

It’s something to think about. Better yet, it’s a behavioral change well worth making.

Good luck to us all.

To be an artist is to be broke. That’s true for many of us who choose to spend our time honing a skill others assume to be easy. Barely worthy of thought, let alone action.

There are a small number of our brothers and sisters who achieve true greatness in their time. An even smaller number are remembered and celebrated after they’ve left this Earth. They may be the lucky ones. For the majority of us money is a problem.

As it has always been. As it shall always be. Unless we choose to make a change in how we perceive cash and its equivalents, we will suffer.

The solution is simple. Not easy, but undeniably simple. It is this; save a percentage of every paycheck or tip you receive. Pick your own number. One percent? Five percent? Ten percent? Whichever number you select, marry yourself to it. Make it your guiding light. An inviolate rule made by you, for you, to follow forevermore.

I reflect on this thought as I gaze at my office wall. Wood paneled, warm and inviting, it is adorned with a with a small collection of artworks. Those pieces comfort and inspire me.

Perhaps the most meaningful piece from my perspective is a framed page of stationary from a SAAB dealership that once existed in Cape Cod. To be more specific the facility was located on Route 6A in Barnstable, Massachusetts. The page is filled with a line drawing, a self-portrait. It features the profile of an unhappy man. His mustachioed features augmented by a tear sliding down his cheek.

It is clear for all to see this man does not wish to be the manager of a SAAB dealership in Barnstable, Massachusetts. He does not wish to be the manager of any car dealership, anywhere. His goal is to be a writer. A full-time, non-stop, artistic vessel the words can flow out of like water. Every sentence more beautiful and engaging than the last. Every story memorably significant.

The man’s name is featured at the top of the page. It is, Kurt Vonnegut.

Yes, friend. There was a time when one of the most successful, best-read authors of the 20^th Century couldn’t sell his work for enough dough to keep his family housed and fed. So, he understandably took on a side hustle. A day job. An uninspiring slog-fest that occupied his days. The benefit was in the funneling of a small but sufficient amount of money into his pockets, and a schedule that would leave him free to pursue his muse in the evenings.

The day came when Vonnegut became a name that could sell books in large numbers. Huge volume. Yet, as with so many artists, there was a lingering worry that poverty lay just around the corner. The tide could turn. His audience could dry up. The possibility hung heavy in the air that one day he might be back at that SAAB dealership.

Insecurity and doubt never leave us entirely. But those dollars we hid away in a savings passbook, or a brokerage account, or a tin on the top shelf of the pantry, those dollars can give us comfort.

I wish with all my heart and soul that every artist of any stripe will find the success of McCartney, Streep, DiCaprio, and Jagger at some point in their life. Most of them won’t, of course. But I will wish it anyway. Just as I will wish they squirreled away a few shekels during the good years as a buttress against the lean times.

Of course anyone can take that same path to fiscal security. The line of work doesn’t really matter. The saving and investing of a percentage of our income does. As the Kitty Kallen’s 1954 classic suggests, Little Things Mean a Lot.

A little, plus a little, repeated over a long period of time, adds up to quite a bit.

That’s worth consideration, no matter who you are, where you’re from, or what you do to earn a living

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If we are lucky in life, we’ll grow up with an overbearing parent. If our good fortune continues, we will start our working life in a low-paying entry level position with a manager who regards us as less than worthy of their time. Our best chance of winning the self-improvement lottery may well come at the hands of an irate, disrespectful, overly emotional customer who lambasts us at length over some perceived slight that has little to do with us as an individual.

These are all uncomfortable, unfulfilling experiences with the potential to mar our self-esteem. Yet they are also learning opportunities that some of us will glean real insights from, while others find nothing more profound than a reason to give up, to stop trying, to plateau at a level far below their potential.

Thank goodness for adversity.

Many a farm kid has found themselves in a field as the sun sets. It may be raining. Their tractor may have died after running out of fuel, or splitting a tire, or overheating after a long day of heavy use. Perhaps the livestock they were charged with herding back to the barn have gotten out to the wrong side of the fence.

These are real problems. No less important, and possibly far more critical than the challenges of a dishwasher who drops a tray full of new dishes, or a bartender who upends a rack full of expensive glassware, or a receptionist who inadvertently shreds the wrong document.

There will be problems in life. Count on it.

Learning how to deal with the emotional burden due to professional misfortune is a necessary skill for anyone who hopes to succeed in a big way, regardless of the industry or area of endeavor. We will all fail from time to time. Sometimes big. Sometimes small. Management may discover our errors, or they may not. Either way, we bear the brunt of the defeat.

The salient point is, do we get up, brush ourselves off, and take another whack at it? Or do we quit? There is little doubt that our ultimate success is closely linked to how each one of us answers those questions.

The equity investor will see peaks and valleys in their financial statements. Do we bail when our stock picks plunge to new lows, or do we double down and buy more?

The farmer will see drought, and flood, and disease, and insect infestations. Are they better served to plow their crop under, or should they fight the threat tooth and nail with artificial means?

The small business owner who arrives at work one day to find fire, or thieves have destroyed their place of business can give up and go home or rebuild with an eye toward making improvements that will appeal to their existing customer base while drawing in new converts.

Those who have grown into adulthood with minimal push-back from the world are often inclined to be the ones who cave to the whims of ill fortune. Their hard-scrabble counterparts don’t like the circumstances that have brought them low once again, but they’ve been there before. They’ve persevered and come out on top. They know that living to fight another day has value.

Make no mistake, achieving success at anything involves a battle. Finances will be challenged. Energy levels will sink. Customers will be hard to find. A percentage of those customers will make their dissatisfaction with your product or service known to you in an altogether unpleasant way. None of that indicates failure in and of itself. They’re merely broken rungs on the ladder of success.

If you can find it within yourself to resolve those issues, there will be more demanding, less easily vanquished problems on your horizon. But you will be better able to handle each new arduous task because you’ve been down this road before. You’re a fighter.

Not even the most gifted fighters leave the ring unscathed. The goal is to find the path of least resistance, to put your efforts into a place where they’ll do the most good. To overcome the challenges put before you by zigging and zagging and ducking and weaving until you find a soft spot that can be exploited to achieve the best possible outcome.

The path of no resistance may sound appealing. And while walking that trail you may encounter a fair number of people with far greater net worth. People who seem to have it all. And maybe they do. But they didn’t get to where they are on the path you’ve chosen. The flat and level path where nobody is ever challenged and problems resolve themselves, that is not the road to success. It leads nowhere. Unfortunately, by the time many pilgrims on that route realize their mistake, too much time has passed for them to reverse course.

Long live adversity, I say. The existence of problems in our lives allows us the opportunity to develop powerful problem-solving skills. To be creative. To seek insight from those who have come before us and have answers to issues that fill us with nothing but questions.

The beauty of the American system of opportunity is that each of us is free to choose our own path, on our way to achieving our own goals, unfettered by the conventions and limitations of yesterday. Consider the adversity you encounter along the way as a built-in work-out program for your leadership skills.

You can face the issues that plague you head-on, or you can take a side road to avoid them. Just as the athlete can spend hours in the gym or take time off to lay in the shade. The question of who is best suited for the next contest will be answered emphatically when they meet again.

Which path are you most likely to follow? Me? I’ll take the uphill climb every time. The view is always better from the top.

Imagine yourself a football player. A good player. A really good player. The kind who carries the ball and blasts past opponents with apparent ease. You’re the guy who crosses the goal-line and runs up the scoreboard. The sort of competitor sportscasters love to talk about and heap praise upon.

Unless you lose. When you lose you’re a pariah. It wasn’t just a bad day. It was an indication your career is over. Your arm is gone. Your legs are weak. Even your ability to think and perform under pressure are questioned.

Then you win again. All is well. Until you lose. The cycle repeats.

Now imagine you’re another player. A lineman who doesn’t get nearly the praise the ball carriers get. You don’t score touchdowns. But you know you facilitate those scoring drives. Without you the premiere players carrying the ball wouldn’t make it past the line of scrimmage. They’d be flattened by the monsters you sacrifice your body to protect them from. And you make that sacrifice willingly.

Then one day, while giving a locker room interview, the premiere player says something you thought disparaged you and your fellow linemen. You take that disrespect to heart. It festers within you. The hurt turns to anger. The anger demands justice. So, you hatch a plan.

You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for this asshole again. If he’s going to ramble on sharing negative opinions of you and your peers, you’re going to leave him to the wolves. Yeah, that will show him.

When Sunday rolls around you suit up, as usual. You warm up as you always do. You take the field as always. Then you coast. Your efforts to hold the line are perfunctory at best. Your opponent gets by you more often than not. He pounces on the premiere player, planting him into the dirt over and over again, just as you’d imagined he would. A mighty sense of satisfaction grows in your heart. You have the power and you know it. Now, after taking his beating and feeling a level of physical pain that approximates your emotional hurt, perhaps the premiere ball carrier knows it too.

The scoreboard sees your protest differently. It shows a loss. Your teammates are discouraged. Your coaches are steaming. The stands are filled with disappointed fans. Some noticed that you weren’t giving your all. You weren’t even giving your most. They’re pissed.

Your coaches watch the game tapes. They see weakness in the line. They see their path to victory vanishing as their players ditch their responsibilities for unknown reasons.

The coaches don’t care if you like each other. Their job is to help you win. To excel. To lead the team to a championship. And that’s not going to happen if they allow petty displays of individuality to replace the hard-earned sense of team unity they’ve been fostering among the players.

When the next game rolls around, you find yourself on the bench. The second stringer who waited patiently for his chance takes the field like the beast he is. He plays his heart out. The ball carrier finds a big gaping hole in the line every time he moves toward your old position.

The bench becomes your new home. You’ve been replaced. You’re diminished personally and professionally. A month before the season ends you’re informed you’re being released. You’re now unemployed with a reputation for not being a team player. Options are few. Your degree is in communications but even the local radio station doesn’t want you on their airwaves.

Your bank account is shrinking, your bills are piling up, and job offers are non-existent.

Sitting home watching the last game of the season on TV, your former team triumphs. A reporter approaches your replacement in the locker room and begs the question, “You had a career high day out there today. Your opponent was on his back for most of the game. Do you and (premiere ball carrier) have a special relationship that inspires you to play so hard?”

Your replacement scoffs. “I hate the fucker,” he scowls. “My job is to open a hole, so I open a hole. I don’t care who comes through it as long as they’re wearing the same jersey as me.”

The reporter is shocked. At a loss for words he merely holds the microphone in your replacements face as he searches for an intelligent question or comment to throw out there.

“I’m here to win,” says your replacement. “I support my coach, my teammates, and our fans with all I’ve got. That’s my job. Nobody cares if we like each other or not. We all just want to win.”