Your ROC: Calculating SMART Taxes

Numbers increasingly rule our lives. And that is, in the eye of the most forethinker, a good thing. Us older breeds remember when Social Security and phone numbers pretty well ruled the roost on these fronts though we needed lock combinations as we do today access codes and passwords -- those and knowing the number of the birth year needed to buy beer … that was pretty much as the we had to worry about.

Today, our lives depend on an ever broadening array of numbers, some we know, some we don’t. In places like the streets of San Francisco, the number 420 is as meaningful to certain groups as is 701 to others who use figures to stay alive and comfortable (with 701 being the stamped manufacturer’s designation on certain HIV/AIDS meds).

But few realize that the actual number of major significance that we give little notice to may well be our AGI. The Adjusted Gross Income is the calculated figure that has found a home on the literal bottom line of our tax returns. And whether we like to consider it or not, it is a rather profound set of digits. A great number of very personal financial and social determinations spin off of this sum, many having direct impacts on the ways and means (the value and expenditure patterns) of the money parts of our lives. Financial institutions openly (and sometimes secretly) use AGIs to classify and categorize us for various needs and purposes. Good ones, whatever that means, serve their business interests better; bad ones, serve us as individuals worse.

Our physical money may still say “In God We Trust,” but the greater truth is that in the U$ofA, “In AGI We Assess” is more about the end all and be all of the smart things of our financial survival. And the SMART technologies that are lining up to be even more pervasive sources of assessment of our value or worth, it is the 1s and 0s of their existence that matter.

The importance of making SMART assessments of people and activities is hardly lost on those who thrive by big and excessive riches. To them, it has always been the ROI that makes profits work and grow, for they need super great Returns on Investments to exploit our consumer tendencies.  Yet, from our point of contact with their spreadsheets, we fail to return the favor of valuing our own access to such quantities. We often pay little attention to the fact that we can profit as people -- contributing, culturally valuable members of society -- by virtue of our ROC, a new concept that I attach to the Return on Our Contribution. What we offer to others, what we give back in exchange for the infrastructure that we live amongst, what we count on as services and methods of engagements, etc. are critical for us making ends meet. Our ROC thus becomes as collectively valuable as the ROI is to those who live most about money and success.

SMART Taxes -- taxation based the interactive value of our income and wealth, yes, as designated in part by our AGI -- can be used proactively to change the nature of this game. Particularly so, one might think, for those routine items and activities that we purchase from the markets that themselves depend on the ways and means of commercialism. All the foods we buy, the utilities we need, the roads, buses, Ubers and Lyfts we count on, even the InterWeb machines of connectivity, cost public dollars and return advantages to those of us who make use of them. The amount we pay for such access, in the form of sales or user taxes, could easily be tied to the value of our ROC. It surely does not at this time reflect much of the costs associated with supporting the ROI of the investor classes.

Under such a model of interactive fairness, people with a lower AGI, translated into a better, higher ROC, would pay less for using the collective system than those who take more and give less. It might take some time to work out the formulas, but in a reasonable time, the ROC could easily become a measure for turning the AGI into a working figure of fairness and justice in taxation .... or put another way, in determining SMART Taxes!

If you invest your value in socially democratic activities (listen up, those who Feel The Bern!), your ROC would become more stable and beneficial to you and to the rest of us. If you do less than other numbers might suggest you should -- based on a greed factor linked to your AGI, perhaps (take note Mr. Trump!) -- your ROC could readily sink to the bottom of the tank.

The logic is simple. A SMART appreciation of the numbers behind the numbers of the AGI can be a good and healthy math for our future. Unfortunately, at this point, I see little awareness or discussion about this by those who ought to be aware of the importance of smart taxation factors. 

Which pretty much says to me that it is the opposite of SMART Taxes that will likely prevail for some time coming. April 15th awaits, BTW.  

The Smart Part

I received yesterday, in another message delivered subtextually via Twitter, more evidence of the deep technological shit this nation is in. People who ought to know better don’t take the smart part of the smart future seriously enough.

I suspect that the reason creatures like Trump are taken even a little seriously rests within the embarrassing reality that so many people know so little about the transformative digital tsunami heading their way. The latest Twitter blip aimed at me was a warning that “the last thing we need in government is more technology!”

With heartfelt honesty, that message was meant to be serious and a sign of a worried person. But it is so fundamentally wrong it’s nerve wracking. At this rate, we’ll easily be overrun by caricature avatars even worse than the political ones who arise from their swamp of ignorance.

I’m babbling about this because I sat down to draft another entwined missive on the need for the creation of a movement to design and implement a Smart Tax reform effort. Because the above thoughts derailed my composition process, I decided to vent instead. Explaining what Smart Taxes are (or might be) requires a basic level of comfort with the strategic use of smart assumptions and the willingness to be playfully useful with such unusual creatures as the AGI, the Adjusted Gross Income number that hides in the open on the bottom line of your tax return.

It’s passed time to get real. Being scared of change is futile. The Internet of Everything is upon us in full force, and it is unfolding at lightning speed, way faster than any user manual can conceive of keeping up with.

Yes … the technological revolution is upon us. Arguably, it is the very happening that Bernie Sanders has convinced everyone is his version of Democratic Socialism. And the fact is: hoping that it goes away won’t make it … pretending it doesn’t need to exist won’t slow it … striking out in anger because one doesn’t know what to do with it … these actions and reactions will not change the inevitable. A SMART society, including a SMART government, is in the works … and we cannot delusion it away.

Technology should be the proud and out friend of progressives. It is the answer we seek to bring about the death of poor, dysfunctioning budget processes; it is the perfect counterweight to all the damage done by assuming that starving the beast of public financing serves a purpose.

Smart technology will be the ways and the means, the end all and be all, of what is good for the people, even as we get  algorithmed to death into class, gender, racial, buying, liking, hating, acting, lazy, corporate, escapist, etc., etc., groups and niches. Technology is the great empowerment equalizer … and for god’s sake, we better get some great degrees of confidence in that or find a Viagra equivalent to ensure we stay upright and stiff for the task.

Money in the hands of a few makes us all dance to their access. Technology in the hands of us all makes those who seek to buy this kind of false comfort ... socially, collectively, effectively, and transparently ... poor! And that is the message of today that hides in its own way in plain site: The Smart Part Matters. 

This we must begin to accept.

Breath, Allan, breath …

"I just thought of this!" - Let's Actually Do Something

Donald the Trumpeter makes calls to action and revolution this way, based on whatever bubbles up in his brain. Deep thinking likely causes him struggles, as we’re about to see when he has to go head to head with Hillary. Still, he does try to take pride in rallying his supposed forces with off-the-cuff proclamations that, at some level, must be designed to move his forces to … well … do something.

On the other hand, there is also the Bernie Sanders type. “The Bern” proclaims, in a much more intellectual way, a similar call to collective, democratic action. He says he has a life-long commitment to bringing about a revolution against economic imbalance. Though in fairness, it appears that it wasn’t until the exploitation by the rich floated up to an undeniable level of ugliness that his focus turned to transforming intellectual anger into populous reaction -- meaning using a collective sense of better-reasoned logic and motivation to … well … do something.

Which means, from a long view, that these two potential leaders are in fact bookends of a very similar connectivity of opportunities -- individuals who are trying to reach past our elected representatives to get us to be the source of our own solutions.

Only thing is that whether their crowds be average folks or smarter people comfortable in their more cerebral celebrations, both ends are getting noticed but nothing is actually looking like it will get done. No one moved a muscle past tapping on their screens when Trump called for a boycott of Apple, any more than … say … to question why we are all (at every economic level) getting the profits squeezed out of us by the gasoline and oil sectors who are feeling their own burn of change.

For either Trump or Sanders to live up to their promises, at some point they do have to marshal their forces towards something other than just voting in anger. Yet we see nothing that suggests an awareness of this even in the face of an exploitation both sides should be able to agree on. At below $30, the actual barrels of oil are worth more than their contents. But still we let capitalism at its crassest and democratic socialism in its highest form reign in silence while we pull up to get pumped dry by undeniable greed.

The call for a return to American economic greatness by Trump & Co. is premised on the belief that if we can all blast our own duck calls, the global market forces will gleefully reward our desire for fair and just returns. If wealth and riches don’t exactly rain down upon us, we should still be able to drive to their sources and cash in on the promises of worth. But it isn’t really happening … because we still struggle to pay for the fuel to get there. And there is little indication that these folks are willing to get up off of their TV couches to move in a different direction at all.

Then again, rest easy Bernie Brains. The same can pretty much be said for your side of what could be an easily sustainable teeter-totter of possibilities. Even armed with mightier and higher principals (with or without the requisite prescription), it seems that we’re mostly willing to just pay the pump and wait for alternative fuels to be available to carry us to our promised lands. We’re really not all that much better at getting up and collaborating with others to bring the doers and thinkers of better times to action … and the result is that not much preparation is being made to get things done. 

When revolutions are in the making, people have to join together even if we don’t like or understand each other. Market economics have forever thought that consumers could, would, should do this be naturally exercising the call to right the wrongs of exploitation. Decades of conservative fiscal strategies have proven this assumption completely untenable, as have gatherings of deeper intellectualism seeking to burn other houses down.

I admit I just thought of this ... but it does seem worth considering if one side of the other actually wants to get something done.

PayDay Money Dreamers

I’m a dreamer, I admit it; particularly a money dreamer. And even though I hate so much about what others have done to the American political and electoral systems, for some reason I still have faith in using the foundations of these processes as a means to a better end. [It’s almost as if I was born and dropped into a system I have to fight to fix! Imagine that, Dreamers!]

The only problem being that for my high and mighty expectations to materialize, there needs to be a purposeful, aggressive, deep, layered, vigilant effort of dramatic, technological advocacy to ensure that creative, even disruptive (as in shockingly different business mentalities) ideas move the game forward -- the very kinds of dancing I believe, sight unseen, Obama has set in motion.

My last posting was about what is becoming known as Qualitative Economics and Impact Investing, academic contemplations that could put one to sleep faster than Dr. Ben Carson’s simple existence. Still, like it or not, these are important financial avenues of access that are already being widely seen and experimented with by various levels of people and institutions in the American money networks -- and I believe it is incumbent upon us to hire a new political CEO to do all she can do to keep this trend advancing.

Hence the foundation for my point of view about all the grumblings associated with the place of the Democratic Party (and it’s chief employee) in regards to consumer financial services:

Payday loans, quick and expensive extensions of short-term cash, are the horrible love-children of bad and ugly players in the money industry. But they exist for a reason; one that needs to continue to exist, though without such back-bending appeasement to usurious demons.

It is possible to have an empowering, routine money liquidity system that helps, not hurts, those most in need of being able to play with the ways and means of success. There is a deep need at this time of ongoing recovery and there will be in the future as well for ready and fair access to money here and now. As everything within the internet of exchanges begins to occur at breakneck lightening speed, expecting lesser well of souls and families to have to wait a while to get paid will put them at an unfair economic disadvantage greater than just being broke. And this reality is soon going to be upon us no matter whether the nation is run by a pukey obnoxious, capitalist failure (right Trump), or by a revolutionary driver of democratic socialist convictions that envision degrees of equality for all.

But getting to that point? Now that’s going to take some fiscal prowess. Financial liquidity makes movement, growth ... makes change, big and small, feasible. Harnessing the better parts of this … well … that’s an idea of considerable, empowering value.

I’m a dreamer but not entirely a fool. Even as President Hillary settles into office and goes through the painful process of trying to achieve some amount of cooperative bipartisanship, she will already be facing the fact that dramatic, impactful, sustainable, quantitative system for financial fairness is already being developed. And, no matter what shape the revolution that seeks to balance profit and social purpose takes, it will become a form of fiduciary interactivity that will involve the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the banking and investment sectors -- all of whom have their claws in the payday gambits. A winner tries to be administratively smart about upgrading this progress with the technological promises already taking shape.

Like it or not, Congress and the traditional money grubbers will be involved; and they are learning how to swallow the promises of putting cultural value into a spreadsheet. But they will not be allowed to do this alone and with extreme selfishness as in the past. New and innovative thinkers and doers will be at the heart of this change as well.

What exactly the payday games of the future might look like, how they could work fairly, even who will invest their personal excessive dollars in such greatly altruistic initiatives … well, that’s harder to say. Personally, I’m willing to bet that the driving forces will cover the spectrum of the Alphabet, Inc. or, at least, that engage some which span the reach from the Cs (as in Chan) to the Zs (as in Zuckerberg), a couple of whom have already socially broadcast their intentions.

Blaming the Democratic Party and its public head for what is likely a much bigger game seems unfair. And my hopes are on the fact that our Madam President will be far enough ahead of the thinking to be able to cash in readily come next year.

Then again, when it comes to putting stuff to work … I admit, I’m a bit of a money dreamer.

Campaigning for Impact Investing & Qualitative Economics

What many of the grandiose candidates showcase about political campaigns is that they are not set up to deal with leaders grounded in the here, now and coming -- factors which, as I like to say, are about the bight of the river ahead.

I’d be curious to know if any of the major contenders have had any substantive discussions on Impact Investing or Qualitative Economics? Or more basically, have they been asked about what they think of these issues?

These are serious questions, folks, and ones that some candidates ought to be struggling with. Particularly for those like Bernie Sanders (or the tRUMP if he actually had a finance brain). These ideas are the pumping blood of the bleeding hearts of the finance and marketing sectors rapidly heading our way; they are the very core of what the most compassionate of excessively wealthy but concerned individuals are looking at to help get them out of their binds about being exploitive profiteers. And someone with grand ideas about putting participatory socialism into action ought to have wet dreams about the concepts.

To be honest (IMHO), the one most likely to “get” such a question would be Hillary. It is feasible that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio might know the references given their academic foundations, but once again it is Hillary and her philanthropic foundation (literally and figuratively) that have likely been most exposed to program-related investments and such, a second cousin of sorts. But I digress....

These topics are very much the soul of the ways and the means of the future. Impact Investing is the art of figuring out how to fit sustainable and planetary awareness (humane and humanitarian costs) onto a finance spreadsheet. As it stands now (often by law), most investor dollars by and for corporations must be directed to monetary ROIs (Returns on Investments), not socio-cultural outcomes. Failing to do so could constitute fiduciary fraud (seriously). If Impact Investing ruled the finance roost, considerations of the wider benefits and costs of placing money would be more equality factored in -- no small boat to be riding.

Qualitative Economics, on the other hand, takes similar considerations to broader degrees of economic interactivity. It (as a much newer viewpoint) extends a similar reach across virtually all the layers of capitalism, possibly communism, and definitely deep into a living and breathing democratic socialism.

Yet we hear so little (or actually nothing) of these important, nay, these Earth-saving conceptualizations by those fighting to guide us into the smarter, more balanced future that is around the bend. 

Why might this be? Is it because they don’t get it or because they fear we won’t? Either way campaigns pretty much ensure that we won't know and will thus have to head blindly into whatever lies ahead.

And you thought the tRUMP was the only scary factor!