Mongolians Demand Dissolving of Parliament
You too can have a rent dividend -- How?
| Losing sleep erodes health. To afford the time to sleep, we need to work less and get just as much money but from our commonwealth. We trim, blend, and append three 2010 articles from: (1) BBC, May 4 on sleep; (2) AP, Apr 5 on Mongolia; (3) and the USBIG Newsletter, Spring, on rent by Karl Widerquist at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. |
by BBC, by AP, and by Karl Widerquist
- Lack of sleep 'linked to early death'
People getting less than six hours sleep a night were 12% more likely to die over a 25-year period than those who got an "ideal" six to eight hours, UK and Italian researchers have warned.
They also found an association between sleeping for more than nine hours and early death, although that much sleep may merely be a marker of ill health.
The study looked at the relationship between sleep and mortality by reviewing earlier studies from the UK, US and European and East Asian countries.
Professor Francesco Cappuccio, leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the UK's University of Warwick, said: "Modern society has seen a gradual reduction in the average amount of sleep people take and this pattern is more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift-work.
JJS: People work too much just to make barely enough money. So, for good health among other reasons we need another source of income besides our labor. How about our land, including natural resources above and below?
- Mongolia: Protesters Demand Dissolving of Parliament
More than 5,000 protesters surged through the center of Mongolia’s capital, Ulan Bator, on Monday to demand that Parliament be dissolved and that promised aid be handed out. The governing parties promised in 2008 to share more of the country’s natural wealth with the public through cash grants or through a fund similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays dividends to residents from oil revenues.
JJS: Another natural resource yielding value to share is on the surface -- or is the surface: urban locations.
- I have a basic income
Last year, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend paid $1305 to each resident of Alaska. After eight months of saving, I am able to pay myself a dividend more than six times the amount that Alaska can pay its citizens after more than thirty years of saving and investing. If they had used all of their oil royalties to support the fund, the dividend would be at least four times what it is now.
In South Bend Indiana, the most depressed real estate market in the United States, my brother was a public school teacher. He had bought a couple houses, fixed them up, and was making good money renting them out. He had time and skills to invest but not money. I had money but no time. I was in that position because I got a remunerative job in oil-rich Qatar.
My share of the rental income will be about $8,400 this year -- a very small basic income. Yet, it is far larger than anything Congress is likely to approve for people who need it. One hears, we “can’t afford it” even though there are many people, who own much more than I do, taking in money just as easily.
I pay about $600 per year in property tax. Because we can deduct funds spent on improvements to the homes and claim “depreciation,” I can expect to pay no income taxes out of my share of the returns. If it looks like our profit will be so strong that it will force us to pay taxes, then we can put a new roof on a house, deduct the cost from our earnings, see the value of our home increase (though property taxes will not), and earn more rent.
People who actually have to work for their money can expect a quarter or a third of it to go to income taxes. Owners have successfully pushed most of the tax burden off onto people who make salaries. Most people do not understand the difference between rewarding people who produce stuff and rewarding people who own stuff.
JJS: Of course, an owner keeping all the profit from fixing up a house is fine. It’s the profit from the location -- a socially-generated value -- that we should share in lieu of taxing efforts then subsidizing insiders. Called geonomics, it’s not only fair but also effective, working well wherever tried.
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Editor Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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Also see: Can a Lack of Sleep Really Drive You Mad?
Der Spiegel reports on the BIG in Namibia
DC fixer-uppers become tax ruins or renewals? |
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