iPods are brilliant pocket computers that allow you to take your work and cultural life wherever you go. And, if you know how to take advantage of the people who are trying to take advantage of you, you can get the mp3 devices for less moolah. Typical iPod shoppers would go to into a fun bricks and mortar Apple store and buy the different versions for $199 to $399 plus sales tax. The main with this decision is that it could end up costing the shopper over $180 more than it has to.

Instead of going into a bricks and mortar store, I did my shopping for my new iPod touch on Amazon.com and the savings were considerable.

First off, Amazon, being the competitive marketplace that they are, reduced the price to $357 for the 64GB version (a $42 savings).

Next, Amazon, who is affiliated with Audible.com offers a $100 discount on media players if you order a monthly audio content service at $14.95. Since, I already use Audible’s service, I just signed up for a new account to receive the $100 discount and the monthly cost was a wash.

Next, I ordered the iPod through my Amazon store’s link, which returned an additional royalty fee to my company (described in the first Advantage book).

And last, but certainly not least, using Amazon.com avoids the dreaded sales tax, which bricks and mortar stores are forced to comply with (some $35 in savings).

All in all, I saved over $180 in my iPod shopping, making the mini computer even more fun to get. Now that you know how to take advantage of the people who are taking advantage of you, so can you!

So, you’re slowly coming down from that Christmas high in which, among the video games, cute plates, and food being exchanged, you managed to walk away with a nice gift certificate from Amazon. Well, it’s time to turn that $25, $50, or $100 gift certificate into real money by checking out the classic unconventional personal finance book, “How to Take Advantage of the People Who Are Trying to Take Advantage of You.”

The book will show you entertaining descriptions of these major economic industries and 50 ingenious ways to capitalize on the system. Morse isn’t talking about scamming the system or doing anything questionably legal, he’s suggesting clever, time-tested, and legal techniques to help you maximize the financial benefits from companies you already do business with.

As one financial adviser puts it, HTAPWATTAY will, “allow you to make the most of the financial transactions you already are making.”

Get the highly acclaimed book and have a better 2009!

Question: Is it okay for Joe Thug to take money from your wallet?

Answer: I hope the reader agrees that the answer is no. That is what is called stealing. Forcefully taking money from someone is a crime against the natural law and against a civilized society and is not okay.

Question: Is it okay for Joe Thug to tell Peter Proxy to forcefully take money from your wallet?

Answer: Again, I hope the reader agrees that the answer is no. If someone doesn’t have the right to do something, they surely don’t have the authority to ask someone else to do that same thing. It’s still stealing when someone asks another person to forcefully take money from a third. In other words, a proxy doesn’t make theft okay.

Question: If it’s not okay for Joe Thug to assign Peter Proxy to steal money from your wallet, why is it okay for voters to do the same thing through a coercive government?

Answer: It is not. A coercive government is exactly like the proxy theft from question #2 and is not just or okay. When faced with this question, many readers will realize that they think it’s okay for the government to forcefully take property from its citizens because it is for the general good (or, more shrewdly, I’m the thief, so it’s okay). But the first question did not involve a qualifier of what the thief would do with the money; no matter what the thief does with the money, it is wrong. The same applies to government.

If the reader is consistent, the questions above leave only two possible ways of thinking: (1) If it is wrong for Joe Thug to steal (even through a proxy) and it is wrong for Joe Citizen to steal (even through the government); or (2) It is okay for government to steal, so it is okay for Joe Thug to steal also. This second conclusion cannot be avoided. If you accept the idea that government should be able to steal, you cannot logically condemn everyday theft by your neighbor.

Unfortunately for civilization, more and more people are going along with the second philosophy and it has just one natural conclusion: the dissolution of natural rights. When the people realize that they have the authority to steal (if only through the government), you can kiss civilized society goodbye. As Alexander Tytler said, a democracy, “can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.” The result is tyranny. That is what is happening and that is what will happen.

When people allow for a coercive government, the race is on to see who can manipulate the government the most to their will. Generally, that will be those with the most power (i.e. money) and connections. When the government decided to spend $750 billion of the taxpayers’ money on troubled assets (TARP), banks with political connections got money and those without connections were left to fend with bankruptcy. And this type of thing is the norm in what one Congresswoman has termed, “gangster government.”

We are left to deal with the consequences of the gangster-style government unless we acknowledge what the government has become, which is a proxy thief for well-connected Joe Thugs. Once we acknowledge that, we will be able to use our collective power as freedom-loving people to ensure justice over cronyism and keep what you deserve in your wallet.

JSBM
Author, “Surviving the Second Great Depression“

“Green” is often used as a catch-phrase to garner attention and push sales to people who want to do the right thing. It’s also often used by companies that don’t do the right thing and want to act like they are.

Code Publishing (and our imprints Amelior Books, New Classic Books, and LoBraü Books) don’t do much self-promotion about how they’re saving the world by doing the green thing, we just do it. We recycle more than twice as much as we throw away. We don’t use air conditioning or central heat at our offices (we are in San Diego after all). We encourage our employees to walk or bike to work as well as the grocery store and mall.

As a publishing company, we also look to be environmentally responsible. We promote electronic versions of our books and make strides to reduce the number of pages in our paperbacks. Whereas some publishers will release 400-page books that could easily fit in a compact 200-page size (usually they go with the “more-pages-higher-price-tag” philosophy). We try to condense as much good stuff into tiny packages.

It’s good to talk conservation, but it’s also good to mean it. Code Publishing means it.

I can’t understand people who camp out in front of stores to get discounts on certain electronics or toys or anything else for that matter, especially when they have to miss one of the best holidays ever conceived of (Thanksgiving) to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving money, but there are other, more sensible ways of doing it.

One of the techniques in the original TAP personal finance book is to set up an affiliate account with Amazon or other online retailers so that anyone (including yourself) who buys a product through your affiliate links will direct a portion of the sales amount to your bank account in the form of a commission (around 6% on Amazon).

When you compile those savings with the savings that you get from Black Friday deals, you’re saving more money than you’re actually spending in some cases. And you get to eat turkey all night on Thanksgiving.

From http://baumanblog.sovereignsociety.com/

Before I get to the continuing IRS numbers game, the above Times quote underscores something I’ve said many times that official IRS policies too often amount to fostering tax terrorism and intentional fear.

In mentioning the IRS fear factor I’m in the good company with three leading advocates of personal liberty I’ve quoted before.

In 1757, one of the patron saints of conservative political philosophy, Edmund Burke, wrote: “No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” In 1776, John Adams of Massachusetts, that fiery leader of the American Revolution, and second U.S. president, correctly observed: “Fear is the foundation of most governments.” Adams spoke of a tyrannical English king, but his words could be the official motto of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

And in 2002, and at many other times, my former colleague in the U.S. House, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) has said of the IRS: “It’s the use of fear to try to intimidate people. Fear is the tool used to intimidate most Americans to comply with the tax code.”

That Numbers Games

I’m not going to replay the stats that prove the IRS engages in intentional deceit, but for those who are interested, see my run down of the numbers in my Oct. 17th blog entry.

There I recounted how, in recent years, the IRS commissioners have publicly claimed that offshore tax evasion supposedly amounted figures ranging from US$447 million to US$40 billion. At the same time the number of Americans allegedly who were offshore evaders was given variously as 82,000 or 505,000 or 2 million. (The numbers changed with every IRS press release).

But let’s consider that number the current IRS Commish finds so pleasing — 14,700 possibly fearful Americans came forward when offered amnesty, with reduced penalties and interest. If they did not, they faced losing half of the funds they had in unreported accounts and possible criminal prosecution.

Tax Paying Americans

The total population of the U.S. at the moment is about 304 million. 14,700 American who did not report offshore accounts equals .000048355% of all Americans.

Let’s say one million of those Americans have offshore accounts and have failed to report them. 14,700 is .00147% of that 1 million.

An estimated 6 million Americans actually live offshore. 14,700 is .00245% of that group living abroad that might fail to report.

Lastly, the IRS statistics state that there are a total of 151 million American so-called “taxpayers” — but when the IRS uses that word they mean only the people who file annual income tax forms, not necessarily those who owe and pay taxes.

Tax Free by Law

An astonishing 43.4% of all Americans now pay zero or “negative” federal income taxes, (negative is a liberal cover word meaning they get welfare payments simply for filing their tax forms for various reasons Congress has deemed to be tax-free worthy).

The number of single or jointly-filing “taxpayers” - the word must be applied sparingly - who pay no taxes or receive government handouts has reached 65.6 million out of the 151 million who do file.

That leaves about 86 million filers who really do pay taxes, (and recall that the top 10% of those folks pay 80% of all the taxes). 14,700 non-reporting Americans with offshore accounts figures out to be .000017093% of the total 86 million Americans who do obey the law and pay their taxes.

As one observer noted: “The perils of today’s situation should be obvious. The United States is close to a tipping point where most people can skip the post office run on April 15 to mail a check because they’re expecting one from the government instead.”

Loose money from the Fed and restrictive land-use policy by local governments caused a housing bubble post 2001. When the bubble burst, some people (lots of them) couldn’t afford their houses and foreclosed, which led to defaults in loans and defaults in securities packages which were based on those loans. Credit froze and banks stopped lending to their detriment and to the detriment of their customers. Businesses stopped getting money and fired people (over seven million of them).

But more money and restrictive land-use policy wouldn’t have caused a bubble if the recipients of the money were responsible human beings. I bought my townhome mid-bubble, but I still have it because I didn’t borrow beyond my means. So, how do you ensure that the loose Fed money gets into the hands of responsible people as opposed to greedy reckless ones? You take away the financial backstop for lending companies that wished to profit on the easy money this past decade. If companies were responsible for their loans (and couldn’t easily sell them off to government-sponsored-now-owned Fannie and Freddie), they wouldn’t have made such careless loans. But they did and Congress bailed them out (at least the ones with political connections), setting up another cycle of corruption.

Brought to you by Surviving the Second Great Depression

Get 35 free songs and a free audiobook for signing up for Emusic’s free trial. There are some limits during the free trial, but it’s a great service and a nice opportunity to take advantage of the people who are trying to take advantage of you.

I recently spent an entire day going through all the forms and regulations that are required to start a new job. From the W-4 to the confidentiality agreement to the benefits package, I (and about six others) spent hour after hour trying to comply with government regulation and company policy. Throughout the entire process, all I could think of is “what a waste!” No wonder companies aren’t hiring. With the amount of effort it takes to hire someone, the company could actually be producing something. Naturally, the statistics reflect the waste—it is estimated that employment regulation has resulted in the loss of 3.8 million jobs in California (a tenth of the population) alone!

One aspect of the employee start-up fiasco that particularly irked me was the benefits package overview. For two hours, the HR director and the new hires went over some of the most convoluted nonsense I’ve ever witnessed. To summarize, the health care options consisted of a choice between the PPO and the High-deductible High-pay (HDHP) options, both of which had different levels of service ($1,500 or $2,500 deductible) with different options for whether you were a dependent or not. The money going to the PPO plan and the HDHP is tax deductible (I think), but if that’s not enough to support your medical care bill, you can set up a Health Savings Account, which is tax-deferred and will help you save for your deductible amount in the case that something major happens. Otherwise, your insurance will pay for most of “office visits” (whatever those are) and preventative care, which includes a lot of stuff that didn’t look helpful. On those occasions, the patient just needs to pay $20.

The majority of the insurance bill (which is still a mystery) goes to the employer, which pools all employees in order to even out the costs of care. The insurance premiums go up based on any spike in activity like the babies that a few employees had a couple years ago and caused everyone’s premiums to go up. It wasn’t clear, but I assume that the premiums never go down.

This is all normal protocol and I (being a consultant) haven’t been to concerned with the procedure, but no one seems to mind what a convoluted mess it is. They’re all too concerned with what drugs they can buy with the plan or how many dependents they can get in on their plan. It made me sick!

People don’t realize the cost of all this nonsense and the ignorance is making the situation worse. When people don’t realize the cost of something, they tend to act like it doesn’t have a cost. Oh, I can get all these drugs and services with my $20-a-month premium? Sign me up! The truth is that employee-based health insurance costs thousands of dollars a year (one estimate puts the figure of employer-based health insurance at $3,500). When negotiating salary, I was rejected a couple thousand extra dollars, and now I know why. The company was actually going to be spending those extra thousand dollars on me anyway. A raise on top of that would have been too expensive for the company.

The health care system in this country is busted, but the main problem today is that people want to fix the convoluted system by making it MORE convoluted. They want to introduce government bureaucracy and dozens of artificial steps to increase the illusion that the health care in America only costs $20 a month. As one blogger put it, the government health care options looks like the result of someone vomiting a bag of skittles all over the place.

It’s ridiculous. And the result of this candy-coated smoke and mirrors act is outrageous price increases.

The solution? People need to start paying for their own medical services. When they’re aware of the actual costs, they are wiser shoppers and force competition to lower their prices. Sure, insurance can be used as a way to hedge against unforeseen accidents and catastrophes, but, the end users need to be regulate costs, not government. So, I recommend that we keep the Skittles in our bellies and not regurgitated all over the federal budget. No on  health control regulation and intrusion and yes on real health care reform!

Like money? Like liberty? Like taking advantage of the people who are trying to take advantage of you?

If so, and the “How to Take Advantage…” book series has helped you in any way, I beg you to let someone know, or better yet, let the world know with a positive review on Amazon or Barnes and Nobel.

While the majority of the reviews for the “TAP” books on the online retailer sites are helpful and truthful, a handful of them are unhelpful and unfortunately untruthful. Still, their negative mark makes a big difference. It’s clear that some reviewers are unhappy with the political implications of the books like this review that mocks pro-liberty readers as simpletons that don’t know where this country is going.

I tend to focus on the positive reviews like this one, which is a clear synopsis of the book, or this one which adds some additional perspective to the book.

It makes a difference. If you don’t want your media culture being dictated to you, you must participate in the democratic review systems on these sites. It’s one of the surest ways that quality material will proliferate.

Thanks for your support!

Surviving the Second Great Depression