Mendocino current population: 87, 628 (July 2016)
under 18 years old: 21.7%
Over 65 years old: 25.6%
Households: 34, 594
median household income: 43, 510
(US census bureau, 2016.)
$34 594 x 43 510 = $1.5B total income in Mendocino county.
However. 21.7% are under 18 and 25.6% are over 65.
21.7% of 87 628 + 25.6% of 87 628 = 41 448 not paying any taxes.
= 46 179 tax payers (potentially).
If 46k individual taxpayers produce 1.5B, then each earned about $32 500.
(Who in California can live a whole household on 32k?)
But wait. There's more.
My estimate: there are 60% of the people earning within a standard deviation of that rate, and they pay somewhere near 10% in income tax and maybe 5% in sales tax. The 20% above the average is paying closer to 30% in taxes and 5% in sales tax, the bottom 20% is paying no income tax and 5% sales tax. And I'm going to assume that no one saved a dime.
If total revenue is 1.5 B, 60% of the people account for 2/3 (900M), and 20% for 1/3 = 600M
60% of 46 000 = 27 600 @ 15% = 27 600 x 32 500 x .15 = 900M @ 15% = $135M
20% of 46 000 = 600M /9 200 = 66 100 (average income for top 20% of mendo wage earners) x 35% = 23k x 9200 = $212M
20% @ 0.
= $350M in total tax revenue (if everyone actually pays their taxes)
If 22M (out of 236M total) work for the federal local and state governments, then in mendo has 8200 government staffers.
Federal staffers make 50% more than their civilian counterparts, (links everywhere) so if the average income in mendo is 32500, then the average government staffer makes $48 750 x 8200 = $400M
Based on US government statistics, Mendocino is already in the red by 50 million dollars per year, and that is merely paying existing staff. That doesn't include pensions, welfare, schools, missiles for syraq, fire trucks, muh roads...If we estimate that staff represents half the cost of government, then mendo is losing around 500 million a year (or almost double what it would collect, if everyone actually paid their taxes) and government is probably spending less than half on staff. Just looking at their truck fleet for road repair is way beyond the cost of the guys driving them, let alone the engineered beams and concrete itself.
If money was real, there is literally no chance that mendocino could survive in its current state economically. Keep in mind, I glossed over the entire pension fiasco, all interest paid to any debt, the entire MIC (save a few salaries) and all obombacare expenditures, all foreign subsidies, and the entire FEMA money pit that just arrived to help with fires.
If mendo can't even come close to breaking even, with world class wine exports, weed, tourism and incredibly high property values, then who can? How could mendocino not be in the top couple counties nationally? Or maybe it is and everyone else is losing even more money somehow. After three years of mobile photography, we picked mendo because we thought it was one of the elite few counties we found.
So maybe no county can even come close to breaking even, but collectively they can represent the most powerful nation on the earth? As. if.
Incontrovertible facts:
The biggest problem for the cabal is that blockchain cannot be inflated. They cannot create funds, block chain governments would actually have to balance their books, they'd have their expenses exposed, and if money in would need to equal money out, the government would need to trim more than 66% of its total expenditures. Then (because about 3000 of the top wage earners would be suddenly unemployed) with the inevitable crash in real estate value, the property tax revenue would plummet, forcing the government to trim further. So what say you? To break even, mendo would need to trim 80% of government spending then maybe there would be a chance?
What am I missing? If I'm close to right, then we're not even close to being able to run a balanced open book governmental system. not. even. remotely. close.
If blockchain is planning to replace government currency, who will maintain the electrical grid?
You see where I'm going with this.
Central bankers are freaked out because they cannot be exposed to open books, or it just needs to be accepted that some group is able to create money, and the rest of the group is not. (totalitarianism).
Either way, there is no possible crypto spending power long term future. But then after this debacle settles down, the idea of open book keeping will likely never leave, and similarly, maybe humanity will finally figure out to be done with fiat currency. I mean, its only decimated economies now what, ten or twenty times?
I love the idea of blockchain, I've put in a ton of effort into this blog, and then I realized that I need 104 weeks to get the value out of the wallet. Who pays hosting? Who stores my photos? Its all free? And I get a couple hundred bucks eventually?
Show me what I'm missing.
Its also disconcerting to see really mediocre posts getting 50 bucks while posts with 10x the effort get .08. Makes me think there is a game played that me and others are simply not playing. i've seen four really great photographers quit. The guy from NYC is the one I really wish would come back. I still follow, hoping. But now my feed is getting plugged with noise from resteemers and people that post quantity over quality. (Canadians, mostly. Its like the educational system was designed to encourage that, and they bought right in.)
Convince me that crypto can replace government. Convince me that steemit isn't some insider circle jerk. Make me really want to put up original content for steemit (instead of images we sold ages ago.)
If I really have 100 followers, maybe how about even two of you comment like you actually read the post? (I say two because I know foovler is reading along. Love you bro. You should come to cali. We can put all 3 of you up.)
We've come a long way from the campground in Olympia. I'm wondering how much ends up getting shared here.
EOS anyone?
Lot of tough questions. The An-Caps and the Libertarians would argue that some essential services should be privatised and competitive. Social services would be funded via donations and goodwill of the public. Maybe idealistic but it would work for me. I frequently donate to the Salvation Army, Red Cross and charities for kids or the homeless. But I don't give money to meth heads or bludgers.
If you believe in socialist government then crypto doesn't work unless you create a crypto backed by government who control the mining/minting process. We might go that way too.
As for steemit being a circle jerk. Sure, I am not convinced either way either. I've seen some big abusers get called out an busted up. Self-regulation is probably the answer here. Contact @berniesanders or join up with @steemcleaners or @curie or some other community focused group and add your support.
It can all work, but it needs some work. Good to see you thinking and talking about it :)
Thanks for the great comment! I'm going to respond in blog form about the first two concepts, and then check out @curie because I noticed on the two posts I did that went over $60, curie was the first upvote.
Thanks for reading and commenting. I really appreciate the thought you put in.
Don't give up! I know it's hard to really get the ball rolling. But your photos are great and it has been seen by one of the bigger whales @hendrikdegrote.
It's also disheartening when you spend so much time writing up a blog and not earn more than a dollar.
I have been blogging and wrote hundreds of thousand words of blogs in my website and have not earned a cent. When I started earning at least 20 cents in Steemit, I was ecstatic!
When I reach $1, I was over the moon! Your one of the few photographers that knows their shit and you are a valuable member of the community. I wish I can do more for you other than vote your contents.
Hoping that you will get more exposure so people can see what I see.
Thanks for the offer for putting us up! We might actually take you up on that! eheheheheh!
I love that I can count on you to actually read the blog. Cali is calling. Maybe I should post images of this penthouse. You won't even believe what we've got going. I can't really myself.
I too have spent a thousand hours blogging with no fiscal end, and while blockchain spending power is definitely an attractive element to this site, really I want to find people that are actively seeking to be better photographers, I want to meet people who are trying to buck the system, and I want to meet people who talk about actual meaningful shit rather than Everything Is Awesome, again. Three different commenters here is pretty encouraging. Thanks for writing.
What you say is true but lacks vision. Governments won't like crypto for sure, when they understand how it works. But for me the all point of crypto is to work outside of governments, not be endorsed by them. Yes I'm a dreamer talking about a potential revolution, I know people tell me that all the time ! :)
A reader! Omg. You're the guy with the elephant photo! Great post processing.
I can envision a government based on blockchain, but I cannot envision it being able to function remotely like it does now. There is no way a block chain government could be so obese because the math wouldn't add up. No one could cook the books without the GAAP double entry system, and so it would need a huge reduction. And then essential services go, like electrical grids.
Dream on, please don't stop that because of me or anyone. I just don't know how government on blockchain could even begin to resemble fiat governments. I don't want blockchain to break society remotely, but I also don't see how it could both become mainstream and not break the fiat system.
Thanks for your comment. Restores some hope for sure.
I agree with you. But as you say the maths doesn't add up. So crisis after crisis the people will get tired of getting all the taxes money injected into banks to save them. So they will turn to blockchain monetary systems. The process is already on these days.
What I hope is not that al governments will start fonctionning on blockchains, just that they understand why people take interest in the blockchain (it's basically a metter of trust in the end) and make the necessary changes to the financial word so it don't collapse. You can say I see the blockchain technology as a massive warning to all the powers of this world.
Well I'm not sure I'm very clear, sorry for my poor english I am a native french speaker.
And thanks for the compliment on my photo ! :)
The english comment, I must say, caught me by surprise. Didn't notice a single phrase that wasn't technically correct. Incredible.
If the people pull their wealth from the banks and move it to blockchain, even 10%, the system will likely collapse. If ten percent of the money was pulled out of the stock market, all pension funds would go red, bailouts would be fought over, government revenue would plummet, and more people would jump ship.
I just can't see how these can exist, fiat and block chain, side by side. One is lawful and fair, the other is criminal and controlled. One is climbing daily, the other is losing spending power at a seriously negative rate. The USD has lost 98% of its value since 1913? No one would back fiat, except the few that actually pull the levers.
I would love them to occur side by side until the day I pass. I suspect they won't, because fiat has nothing attractive over blockchain. Except the ability to keep the grid running, and I guess, the military complex in place.
hard to argue with that... I gues we'll see, crypto is still a very young technology, I guess the next decade will tell us more about its impact on our world
Well said.. People should really be shown and educated as to what is going on in the system before it's too late. I know one Youtuber who had a family in Venezuela who had to rely on his Bitcoins during their time of economic crisis. Just one of the things Bitcoins are trying to solve.
Yeah. I'm kinda never hoping to need that, but absolutely recognize its possibility. We travel with PM's and haven't yet lost our bitcoins in any boating accident, but really, because we're a pair of full time photographers, there really aren't very many of each.
May btc be there for all of us, should the house of cards collapse while we still have the need to eat.