A simple blog with lots of kick! Pick a side. Any side. But pick a side. By Kevin Marshall on Nov 3 2008 A friend, who's clearly a McCain supporter sent me an email tonight that I just couldn't help but respond to...and I guess it fired me up enough that I feel the need to share it all with you now as well. First the meat of the email forwarded by my friend (well I hope he's still my friend): Ralph R. Reiland writing for the Pittsburgh Tribune: I interviewed two plumbing company owners over the weekend about Barack Obama's economic proposals for small business. One has 15 employees and 12 trucks. The other has 52 employees and 34 trucks. They're Joe the Plumber, writ large. Both owners had the same reaction to Obama's proposed new taxes and mandates. To not have their bottom lines reduced by government fiat, both said they'd be forced to lay off employees. Specifically, here's what the owner of the larger firm said regarding six of Obama's key proposals for the small-business sector: The average wage at his company, figuring the 52 paychecks of his office staff, installers and service workers, is $31,200, $15 an hour. First, "Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require that employers provide seven paid sick days per year," states the Obama campaign's Web site. "I give three paid sick days," explained the business owner. His extra cost for this one new regulation would be $24,960 (4 extra days, 52 employees, at an average of $120 per day). "That's one of the women in the office," he said. "I can make up that cost by letting one of the office people go." Second, Obama states that employers will be required to pay 100 percent of the cost of health insurance premiums for 100 percent of their employees or face a tax penalty. "I pay 75 percent of their coverage," explained the owner. "The family policy is about $11,000. For single guys, it's about $5,000." At an average annual cost of $7,000 per policy, his additional cost for 52 employees to cover the 25 percent of the premiums that he currently doesn't pay is $91,000. "That's the price of three installers," he said. "Just to stay even with where I am, I'd have to fire three more people or raise some prices and fire two." The result is more unemployment or more inflation, or both. Third, with the estate tax, Obama is calling for a top tax rate of 45 percent on estates valued above $3.5 million, producing an estimated "death tax" of $675,000 on an estate of $5 million. "You're kidding," he said. "They took half my income on the way up and now they want another half when I die?" He estimated that his business is already valued at more than $3 million, in addition to the value of his home and investments. "Why," he asked, "would I want to grow to 100 employees? What'll stop them from changing it to 75 percent?" The cost in jobs that will never be created in the U.S. economy because of this single disincentive to growth? Incalculable. Fourth, Obama's economic plan calls for a hike in the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour within three years. The business owner's reaction? "That's bad for two reasons. I don't have anyone at minimum, but raise the bottom by $3 and a guy making $15 wants $18. Plus it's bad for productivity when people think their pay raises are coming from government instead of from their own individual effort." Fifth, saying he'll "play offense for organized labor," Obama is proposing that workers should be denied the right to a private ballot at work in deciding whether to unionize. "That'll never be," said the plumbing entrepreneur. "I'm in business because I'm independent, not to take orders from a grievance chairman. I'd shut down." Sixth, the increase in taxes on this small business owner from Obama's proposed hike in the income tax rate from 36% to 39.8% on incomes above $200,000 and the proposed increase in Social Security taxes comes to $32,000 per year. "That's another employee," he said, referring to the termination of another installer in order to just stay even. And the jobless plumbers? They can be re-socialized to work for ACORN. As Obama explained in July: "We cannot continue to rely on our military to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded." As "well funded" as our Armed Forces personnel comes to $119 billion per year in paychecks for "community activism," a lot of money for registering dead voters, caulking windows, making sure that all the guns are locked up at the municipal buildings, and monitoring the airways to make sure that conservatives don't have too many talk shows. Bottom line, Obama's economic plan doesn't hold water. Neither will our pipes. and now my quick email response: Not to get into a big political war here or anything, but neither of those businesses mentioned are what you should call 'small business'...I have company with one employee, the business makes way under $200,000 - the policies outline will help my real small business greatly...so any employees being laid off by a slave-driving, non-small business like the ones mentioned (only 3 sick days a year and horrible wages!) can probably go find better jobs, in real small businesses anyway... I won't feel sorry for a Joe the Plumber that has been getting fat on his employees suddenly having to treat the ones he keeps like decent workers...and I won't feel sorry for the workers that are freed from the slave-drivers like them either (I'm sure good workers will land on their feet regardless of who's 'in charge'). And I have this opinion even after my wife was recently laid-off in the Lehman/Barclays debacle...bottom line, in this economy no matter who's elected people are going to be out of work for a bit as the world adjusts...the question is, when we regroup, do we do so under the same-old, same-old of medium-to-large businesses once again wielding all the power or do we opt for a chance at change (note I said chance) and see if we can't figure out how to help more true small businesses work their way to the mid-level stages (where their extra contributions can then start to help us all)? Anyway - just my two cent knee-jerk reaction...hope it doesn't offend anyone too much. - Kevin I guess bottom line, as with anything that really matters there are strong opinions that go both ways and the important thing is that you pick a side and move to action on your side. Don't just make the decision in your head and consider yourself included. Get out and do something to help your side win the debate. Or at the very least get out and vote to support your stance. Comments: View Comments Should I use Django on Jython? By Kevin Marshall on Oct 30 2008 Someone posted a quick question on the NextNY list today more or less asking if using Django on Jython made sense...for whatever reason, I dumped a fairly long rambling response...and I liked my points well enough that I'm cheesing out tonight and using that as my post of the day as well! Read on to see what my thoughts on the subject were... read more» Comments: View Comments Where my party people at? By Kevin Marshall on Oct 28 2008 I just cranked through a handful of annoying bugs for Bowker tonight...all the while listening to the new Nelly CD (Brass Knuckles) and a ZZ Top CD (Greatest Hits). These are the two newest additions to my CD collection - which you can probably guess just by the difference of these two, is quite varied. Anyway - I'm actually a VERY big Nelly fan and I find most of his music to provide me with a nice amount of adrenaline (however you spell that)...I especially like to listen to it when I'm on the treadmill (which lately has not been often enough)...but it's also a nice pick-me-up when I'm cranking through or struggling with some boring code (like tonight). That's all I got for tonight...I'm now off to try and crank through a little bit more Hero Brawl code! Wahoo! Comments: View Comments I really don't care about money. By Kevin Marshall on Oct 27 2008 As everyone knows the economy is tanking and so this appears to be all that people want to talk about right now. How to get your business to survive, how to protect your 401k, how to keep your house...and a million other 'how to' articles are all I'm finding around the 'blogosphere' right now. But I'm going to share a personal little secret with you...if you were in business just to make money...you were in the wrong business...and it's probably a good thing you are tanking right now. Don't get me wrong, we all need to make money since that is how society has decided over the years we are all going to interact and function...but my point is that, people put too much energy, faith, and time into the idea of money. What every happened to doing something just because of the challenge, or god-forbid, just because it was fun and interesting? If all I cared about was money, I would simply spend all my time consulting...something that I can easily make a nice chunk of change on...but as it is I feel like I do too much consulting already. Every dollar I earn consulting, is a dollar earned for time I am not doing something for myself...something I'm more interested in, or something that I think is going to be more beneficial to the world than helping company X build an e-commerce site. Even with my own projects, I'll admit I am influenced by the drive to revenues...but it's been my experience, the projects that I start (or continue) with a primary objective outside of pulling in a buck, have a lot more stickiness and generally just 'feel' more authentic. I suspect that it's the same for others - though they may not really pay attention to it as much as I do. I guess growing up poor, I was taught at an early age (by society in general) to pay attention to money...to notice who has it and who doesn't...and you would think not having it most of my life, I would have this burning desire to get it, and keep it. But really I don't. I have the same desire as anyone else to get and do the things that money allows for, but the money itself, I'm just not that much of a fan of. Perhaps it's BECAUSE I grew up poor...maybe it's just comfortable...or, I like think, it's just because I've been down that path, I know what it's like to be poor...and, for the most part, if you are the right kind of person...it's not that bad. Of course I'm not talking - no house, no food, no clothes poor...I'm pretty sure that really would suck...but I like to think that my work ethic (and my wife's) along with our financial decisions pretty much assures us we'll never really be that poor (I guess I like to think and HOPE that). Anyway - I've rambled on about this enough for one night...and I fret that I'm not making much sense as usual...besides it's all very easy for the current me (the one that actually has a bit of cash and more work than I can shake a stick at) to say I don't like money...we'll see if I am signing the same song in the future...because you never know what it will bring Comments: View Comments little distractions... By Kevin Marshall on Oct 21 2008 I was working with a friend on Friday trying to bring him up to speed on some basic web development stuff...and so I ended up being a little too distracted to post. Throughout the weekend, we had a pretty full social calendar -- going out for an 'no kids' night with some friends back on Long Island Sat. and hitting a kids birthday party on Sunday. So I was too busy to post. Monday I spent a lot of time debugging production code for some critical features for the day job. When I got "home" (usually I work at home for the day job, so I just mean when I switched hats), I was all set in my mind to do a post on 'growing up poor'...but then I got involved in some updates for hero brawl and the next thing I knew it was about 1am and I was too tired to post. So, in the past few days I've been too distracted, too busy, and too tired to post. That sounds all good, but the reality is, I've just been too lazy to post. I could have squeezed in a few minutes each day to post some rambling thoughts (like this one), but I just didn't. I bring this up, because my laziness is something I struggle with each and every day. Sure I do a ton of stuff, and I'm always moving something forward a least a little bit...but I'm still never as productive or as active as I could be. Or as I should be. It's something I know about myself, and just something I have to keep working on. Anyway, on to some other tidbits: 1. I did finally convert the comments section of this blog from my own custom commenting system to that of Disqus...I struggled with the decision for awhile because it's so simple to build a commenting system...but in the end, the network effects you get from a system like disqus that already has large adoption is what really makes it valuable in my mind. It's also nice to dump off some of the more annoying chores/tasks of a comment system (like dealing with spam) so that I can focus on the other things I find more interesting. 2. We've been pushing hard with hero brawl to get what we are considering a first version out by Nov. 1st. On one hand it's funny because the game has been available since Feb. when I was the only one working on it (and playing it for that matter)...but the basic idea was that we wanted to set a date to work towards for certain goals. The hope was it would keep us focused and active, and as far as that goes, I think it's worked well for that. I think the biggest problem we are still having with the project as a whole is the lack of an overall plan...we are just sort of making stuff up as we go, and since we are a VERY small team (me and two friends), we can get away with it. But since we have no 'REAL' plan, it's a bit of a mess figuring out what to do when and it's easy to lose sight of what we are trying to do (esp. since what we are trying to do can so easily change from day to day). 3. I'm planning on going to an event tonight labeled "Going to the Mattresses"...it's basically going to be advice for startups on how to survive through tough economic times...ie. how to live poor. In a lot of ways I find this funny, because what startup do you know that doesn't already survive poor? I also find this especially funny because who really needs advice on how to be poor? (I've had a lot of first hand exp. on being poor -- so I'm pretty sure I don't need any advice on doing it!). Still, I think it's going to be very interesting to see what people's views on the future of the market and how it relates to startups goes...so I'm really looking forward to it. Oh and it should give me a chance to catch up with some of my favorite people involved in startups in NYC too...so that's always a bonus. Comments: View Comments « Older posts

flip pic. » Search All Posts » Subscribe » BotFu feed with RSS reader BotFu feed by Email Latest Comments » Steve wrote » Make new friends and beat them up. Limits, it's what makes the market go round. Hysterical hero: ... read more » Kyle Brady wrote » I think you should be in the PR business. You obviously have a flair for it, and can twist a dead moose ... read more » Kevin wrote » Yeah I've actually been using both for quite awhile now (since back in the early days of ruby on rails ... read more » Kyle Brady wrote » Check out the Prototype JS Library as well... it's like the functionality-oriented brother of Scriptalicious. ... read more » Kyle Brady wrote » Being married for more than 6 months is one of the leading precursors to death. Because you're getting ... read more » Blog Details » This blog now includes 220 wonderfully exciting posts from 1 unique and very special writer! Archives by Category » (24) Code » (4) ColdFusion » (11) Database » (8) Factor » (221) General » (9) JavaScript » (12) Perl » (12) PHP » (16) Ruby » Archives by Month » December 2007 » January 2008 » February 2008 » March 2008 » April 2008 » May 2008 » June 2008 » July 2008 » August 2008 » September 2008 » October 2008 » November 2008 » Sites you gotta visit » bar.ackoba.ma BotFu.com Draftwizard.com Fubnub.com Reviews.com StoryRank.com Kevin Marshall - Who's that? I'm just your basic programmer. I can't spell to save my life, I'm not the greatest story teller, and I often ramble on about nothing. This blog showcases all of that! Believe it or not I wrote a book (Pro Active Record) for APress and a PDF (Web Services with Rails) for O'Reilly. If you're bored drop me an email at info at botfu.com or view my outdated resume.