Here is a thought. In order to motivate me to go to the gymnasium and spend an hour of my time to lift weights or pedal a bike or in other ways expend energy that I have stored in my body by way of eating foods that I purchased from the monies earned by my hard work and toil, I need a reward. There has got to be a monetary benefit for everything I do which I do not enjoy. If I have to work at a job that I dislike, I better be paid some money in return. The only time you can get me to do something for free is when the thing I am doing gives me tremendous pleasure. This I believe is the basis for all people that are motivated by money and in my opinion there are very few that are not motivated by money. Those that claim money is not everything are those that either already have enough of it and they can afford to explore philosophies or are those that are performing tasks that are extremely pleasurable that money becomes secondary. As a sidenote, the pursuit of power is a very pleasurable exercise, I am told.

That being said, the only way to motivate anyone to do anything that is not something that they would rather be doing is to dangle a carrot ( or a pound of carrots ) of money. Thus, to get the average Joe to go to school, get some education and start exercising his mental muscles and learn new things and practice and become brilliant is to give him something in return for all this work. Otherwise he will continue to sit on his couch and watch some substandard television programs.

So, should we say to Joe, " Hey Joe, if you become brilliant, we will give you a break from paying taxes." After all, paying taxes is a big burden for a lot of people and by exempting brilliant people from paying taxes, more people will work at becoming brilliant. And achieving brilliance can be learnt. And to take matters further, can we say to Joe: " Hey Joe. If you become brilliant, not only will we exempt you from paying taxes, you could even get the job of the person that collects taxes from people that are stupid." For as a converse of what we said, only stupid people will be required to pay taxes.

I am sure, you know where I am going with all this introduction. If you guessed that I was leading up to the situation with Mr. Tim Geithner, then if my proposal came to fruition, then you would have to pay no taxes because you were so brilliant in guessing this. Tim Geithner is a very brilliant fellow, everyone claims. But does that mean that even though he did not pay taxes when he was with the IMF, because he is so brilliant, he should still get the job of being the Treasury secretary? And mind you, the treasury secretary is the guy responsible for the collection of taxes from the citizens eventually. But then, if he forgets to pay his own taxes, how effectively can he ask us, the stupid people, to pay our share? Does he think we are really stupid? They say he has held several high power and high responsibility positions. But that does not give anyone the freedom to stop paying taxes. It is like a policeman who enforces laws but disobeys them himself. That simply does not make sense.

By the same token, are we saying that there are no morally upright and honest people in America that are bright enough to be the treasury secretary? And conversely, did we not do enough of a background check before choosing Mr. Geithner. If brilliance were the only requirement for the job and financial mettle is the main characteristic that we are after, then why not consider Mr. Bernie Madoff ? Bernie was brilliant although he was a crook. Geithner may not be a crook but he certainly broke the law and why should we look the other way?

Looking the other way too many times has what brought upon the world the financial crises that we are all facing. I am deliberately using the word crises in plural, because there is not one but many many of these that we are facing today. And almost all of these calamities have been caused by people who conveniently looked the other way. Isn’t it time we STOP looking the other way.

And by the way, Joe, you have to pay your taxes, he he!

Source: http://articlewonders.com