Welcome to the January Business and Nonprofits: A Winning Partnership issue of NorthBay biz. We’re very pleased to say that 2012 marks the beginning of our 37th year of publishing. The magazine remains eager to fulfill its mission of serving the best interests of the business community in the North Bay as we go forward.
As we begin the New Year, I’d like to welcome the addition of two new columnists to the magazine. Christina Julian originally hails from the East Coast and has a background in advertising, publishing and technology, including working at the Home Shopping Network, being a food and nightlife writer in New York City and developing one of the first iPhone apps. She relocated to Calistoga several years ago and now works as a full-time freelance journalist. Her intelligence, wit and love for the area promise to be a real bonus as she takes the helm of our “Napa Insider” column. Scott Gerien is a director in the law firm of Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty with offices in Napa and Santa Rosa. He heads the firm’s intellectual property practice group and has practiced exclusively in the area of intellectual property for more than 10 years. Scott will be taking over our “Simply Legal” column. You can expect insightful business commentary as he’ll inform and enlighten you with his legal expertise.
This month, my column begins with a newly coined word I just learned:
Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc-ra-cy): a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
Where to begin? How about by further defining ineptocracy as the inevitable result of the arrogance, ignorance and avarice of a corruptocracy. You probably know that term better by its watered down definition—“crony capitalism.” Pretty ironic description, since most of its best practitioners are almost always anti-capitalists. Anyway, at its simplest, it works this way: Donate big money to my political party to help get “me” and “mine” elected and you’ll be enriched many times over at the trough of public funds.
It never ceases to amaze me what the power of “other people’s money” can accomplish. Solyndra, GM, Goldman Sachs and the Chevy Volt, to name but a few, come to mind as prime examples of this practice.
The incessant drumbeat of the day remains, if only the “rich” would pay their “fair share,” all the country’s problems would be solved. It seems we’re very naïve to believe we’ve simply spent too much. Three consecutive years of $1 trillion plus deficits has nothing to do with a dismal economy and languishing job creation. At the turn of the last century, the federal government scrimped along doing its job—as described by the Constitution—extracting less than a nickel of every dollar produced by the national economy. By the 1930s, that amount doubled to a dime for every dollar. By WWII, it doubled again to 20 cents, up to today where the Feds confiscate 25 cents of each dollar produced. Of course, that amount doesn’t include state, county and local taxes, which, when included, raise the total to almost 50 percent.
Yet, we ceaselessly hear calls for “shared” sacrifice. And it’s directed at the people who are already paying. I know that this certainly isn’t politically correct, but what about the people who pay no federal income tax?—the 50 percent of the country that have no skin in the game. Where’s their shared sacrifice? Where’s the, “it’s only fair” rhetoric for the millions of working folks who currently don’t pay a dime toward running the country? If you’re not contributing to the country’s operating costs, why should your voice be heard in how it’s run? Camping out and demanding more entitlements to be paid for by those already bearing the entire burden is the height of temerity. People playing by the rules already have sacrificed when the bounty of their labors are confiscated and given to others who’ve done nothing to earn it. And these “takers” aren’t even remotely appreciative, but rather more strident in their demands for fulfillment of what they are now calling their “rights.”
When all the media starts running the same story at the same time, reporting in screaming headlines, “The Rich Get Richer,” be suspicious. (As an aside, the fact that that headline is interpreted as a negative is a sign of our troubling times.) It’s almost as if they’re providing context for a populist political campaign, vilifying the successful and portraying the “poor” as victims—almost as if someone wanted to divide the country and benefit by the resultant class warfare.
However, here are some facts you won’t read in your copy of the New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle. According to the IRS, the inconvenient truth is that the rich haven’t been getting richer recently. Between 2007 and 2009, American family incomes of those earning $50,000 or less fell 2 percent, while the number of American families earning more than $1 million plunged 40 percent and their combined incomes fell 50 percent. Just a word of clarification, if the rich do get richer, it certainly doesn’t follow logically that the poor must get poorer, unless you’re some kind of trembling invertebrate who equates wealth creation as the causal root of poverty. To quote Star Parker, apparently if you’re to believe the President’s take on things, we’re no longer the land of the free and home of the brave, instead we’ve morphed into, “the land of the envious and the home of the victim.”
That’s it for now. Enjoy this month’s magazine.
