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The Off Switch: When Money Becomes Permission

An all-digital economy promises a world without friction. The same design that makes payment effortless makes denial effortless, and it hands every government a quiet way to decide whether you may eat. Pay for coffee with a glance at your phone. Send rent across the country before the barista finishes the pour. Split a dinner bill at the table with no cash, no card, and no fuss. The case for a fully digital economy arrives wrapped in that smoothness, and the smoothness is real. The danger sits one layer underneath, in a question almost no one asks at the register: who has to approve this payment for it to clear, and what becomes of me on the day they decide not to?

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Falling into the Fallow and Hollering into the Hollow

Well, today arrived.

Donald Trump is now the President of these United States, and I can’t help but feel as if the USA just stepped into a giant hole; and no, this isn’t about liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans — this is only, and merely, about the habit of moral character, and the lack thereof — in our no-longer President-Elect.

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Making Retirees Pay

There was a time once in America when you worked all your life, retired at a proper age and collected Social Security and a pension until you died.  Those halcyon days are over.  Now, there is a war against the aged in the guise of beating them up to push them out the door instead of giving them gold watches and other incentives to beg off the payroll.  The days of lump sum payments to encourage retirement are long gone.

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The High Price of Fun

Why is the price of fun today — if you’re a novice and just trying to become an amateur — is at least a thousand dollars in upfront costs if you want to do it right?

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The Perpetual Poorhouse

First the car industry went bankrupt; next on the economic griddle — as argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education — is the rising astronomical cost of a university education that is about to burst a bloody mess upon us all.

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Beware the Freeloading Freelancer!

I have worked as a freelance author, artist and performer for my entire adult life.  I support honest freelancers that share the same work ethic and morality.  I believe in set project prices.  I do not believe in gouging people with an invented hourly rate that suddenly appears when the bill arrives.

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Taxing the Burden of Society

It is Tax Day in America.  Do you owe any money or are you getting money back?  Did you submit your tax return online or through paper mail?  If you don’t live in the USA do you feel you pay too many taxes — or not enough — for the benefits you receive?

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Pay Before Pleasure

Few people understand the need for pay before pleasure.

I not talking about prostitution.

I am talking about work.

Cultural values have shifted for the worse as workers require work to be “fun” instead of hard.

Even if work is dreary, we must learn to fight through the darkness and into the light.

It is our vested interest in each other that keeps us from merely earning a living and getting a paycheck.

Through the events of shared struggled we learn the value of joy and play and satiety — but without the burdens — the lightness we seek has no bearing.

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Paying Your Way Out of Doing Hard Time

The New York Times reported this week you can serve jail time in California via a “Pay to Stay Upgrade” if you have enough money and if your crime is relatively minor. Convicted drunk drivers are welcome. For $82.00 USD a day you can buy a private room in a “jail facility” with a regular door and the “right to bring an iPod or computer or cellphone:”

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