One of America’s greatest comedians, the late, great Gallagher, whose claim to fame was smashing a watermelon on stage, included as part of his act solutions to everyday problems.
One of those solutions solved noise pollution around airports. He suggested giving those homes to the deaf. Of course he was joking but still, it was a logical solution to a real problem. With kudos to Gallagher, I offer my own logical solutions to common problems.
Social Security is in big trouble. Coming from someone who paid into it and is now collecting it, I would like to see its funding issues fixed.
There is a cap on how much money you can make in a year when Social Security stops taxing your income. I actually hit that cap a few times in my career and I must admit I never noticed a difference in my take home pay. I had to work a whole bunch of overtime to reach that cap so whatever extra money I brought home was exactly that, extra. I would not have minded to continue paying taxes into Social Security no matter how much I made. As a matter of fact, if someone offered me a million dollars per year to come out of retirement and do a job with the stipulation I had to pay full taxes on every penny I would accept the offer. Don’t believe it? Try me. Go ahead. I dare you. Actually, if the salaries of our elected officials were directly tied to the solvency of Social Security, full retirement age would drop to 35.
As the saying goes in Starved Rock Country, we live where people vacation. In contrast, we vacation where people don’t want to live. If you’ve been to Mexico or any country in or around the Gulf of Mexico you’ve vacationed in paradise. So why then do people leave paradise to come here? Escape from poverty, mostly. Obviously, the money we spend in other countries doesn’t trickle down to the commoners. Money fixes everything, right? We should forbid one vacationer from leaving our country for every illegal migrant that enters ours. Just the threat of losing our vacation dollars should spur other countries to fix the problems that force their citizens to flee. Since all the extra vacationers not allowed to leave the U.S. might be compelled to visit and spend money in La Salle County we could then afford a roundabout at the intersection of Menards and Red Lobster.
Conspiracy theories, propaganda, misinformation, intentional lies, not to mention campaign promises, which I just did, are all intended to bring doubt to the general public. This is nothing new. It has been going on for millennia. Social media doesn’t help as anyone with bad intentions or just as a way to make money without actually earning it can manipulate people to suit their situation. Civilizations of the past have collapsed over simple lies that have wrought distrust from both sides of the political divide. This childish behavior which we learned in grade school can be fixed with a notation we also learned in grade school, i.e. says who? If you are going to tell me something you want me to believe then you’d better be ready to point your finger at the source of your information. It’s not enough to claim you heard it on Fox or the lamestream media. They also need to point their finger at their source. Eventually we’ll get to the bottom of it all then decide if it’s even worth mentioning again.
With that in mind I would like to point the finger at myself. My term is up. This is my last column. Many thanks to Shaw Media for allowing me the space over the past six months. Thanks for reading.
Kevin Foster is a lifelong resident of the area. He is retired and spends his days watching birds and losing at Jeopardy!