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I recently noticed that my Time Warner cable bill had increased by around 7% or so, so I took the time to actually look at the statement. I know that large corporations bet on their customers not carefully examining their bills over time (particularly in this age of electronic statements and automatic payments), and, let’s face it, it’s usually a very safe bet: generally speaking, it’s not worth the time it takes to study a statement every month. Like frogs in slowly heating water, we generally don’t notice small increases, or we do register them (barely), but they’re not significant enough to motivate action. Multiply this effect by several million customers, and we’re talkin’ some real money here.

Anyway, the relatively large recent increase managed to rouse me from my consumerist stupor, and I finally took a close look at what I was paying for. The company had recently rearranged its channel lineup, making it “theme based” instead of package based, and various promotional offers – which, of course, I had forgotten I’d accepted – had expired. For instance, HBO and Cinemax had been offered bundled together for a promotional price, and now they were separate (and more expensive). Other channels (now bundled together under the headings “Digital Variety” and “Digital Choice”) were mostly in those television wastelands above Channel 99 but below the HD channels we generally watch. There were also four channels bundled together under the “HD Plus Package” that we rarely watch. So, by dropping three optional packages and Cinemax (is there really any need for cable movie channels anymore, given streaming Netflix and the like?), we were able to save about $40 a month. I also decided to take Time Warner up on a digital phone deal that will allow us to drop our present land-line service, and that should result in about a $20 monthly savings, at least for the next year or two. So, by being a little more on top of my consumption, I was able to save over $700 this year (in return for an hour or two of work).

Now if I only remember to check my bill two years from now, when that promotional phone deal has expired…

Today was the dreaded deadline to submit your tax forms or an extension form to the dearly beloved IRS, in case you somehow managed to forget about it. Cheryl and I have managed to ease the pain by intentionally overpaying a bit during the year, so that we can actually look forward to filing our tax returns… because we actually get returns.

Meanwhile Ron Paulians and other disgruntled citizens have been organizing “tea parties” all around the country to protest… I’m not quite sure what. It can’t be about their taxes, since most people in this country will be paying less in taxes this coming year than they did last year. The signs being held at these social events include phrases covering most right-wing complaints, from over-spending to illegal immigration. Some are quite general, including one that seems to be against tax collection per se: “You Are Not Entitled To What I Have Earned”. I imagine a counter-demonstrator holding a sign that says: “Unless You Pay Taxes, You Are Not Entitled To Drive On Our Interstate Freeways, To Visit Our National Parks, To Be Protected From Pirates On The High Seas, To Benefit From FDA Regulation Of Contaminated Food, To Have Your Individual Right To Protest Protected By Our Supreme Court…” and so on.

The over-spending issue is certainly one over which reasonable folks can disagree. Although I thought Ross Perot was a bit of a nut, I appreciated his concern about massive deficits, and as it turned out, he probably deserves credit for having split the opposition in 1992 and electing Clinton, who actually did balance the budget and accumulate a surplus. But while I don’t hold much stock in economists’ opinions these days (pun intended), there seems to be a widespread consensus that some over-spending at present is necessary to keep unemployment at bay. So I’m hoping that Obama and the Dems in Congress can ease the future deficits by dealing with future entitlement costs, particularly those associated with medicare and social security. Yawn.

On a more whimsical note (and more whimsical notes are needed more than ever these days), I think I’ve stumbled upon a cure for world poverty. The idea is very simple… far too simple to be accepted, of course. But it goes like this…

Since governments can obviously create money out of thin air, let’s just forgo the illusion that money represents anything real (including hard work, since those with the most money clearly work less hard than nearly everyone else). Let’s just create several trillion dollars (we can do this and still save the trees, since we can deposit all that money into banks simply by entering a few zeroes into the right databases), and require all of the banks to fairly distribute that money to those with the lowest balances – especially to those with no accounts at all. The idea is to make everyone presently living in poverty millionaires. Sorry, those of you who don’t quite qualify as impoverished: we can’t afford to undermine your motivation to work by sharing the wealth directly with you, because we need you to fulfill the pent up demand of the impoverished. We need you to make millions of (green) cars, build renewable energy plants, pave roads, and then produce the zillions of goods and services the nouveaux riches will be buying with their sudden good fortune. With the tax collections (sorry Ron Paulians), all governments with impoverished populations – including our own – will be able to build schools and hospitals, distribute effective birth control, and create new, self-sustaining industries. I guess we’d better make this a requirement of receiving the money in the first place. Then the next generation, raised in material comfort and with ample opportunities, can begin working productively, without a handout. (Oh, I almost forgot: there has to be a global freeze on prices so inflation is held in check… That should be easy enough to accomplish by printing up an extra billion or two to bribe the lawmakers). By then the multi-trillion dollar infusion will have been distributed throughout the world economy, and everyone will be much, much happier.

You may have seen this before, but if you haven’t, it’s worth watching, if only to remind yourself of the amazing arrogance of ignorance. While self-styled pundits and stock-market cheerleaders like Arthur Laffer and Ben Stein helped to lead many off an economic cliff, financial advisor Peter Schiff was spot-on in predicting the current recession.

By the way, Ben Stein helps to confirm the theory that stupidity (or at least willful, ideologically-driven ignorance) is not “domain-specific”, unlike some forms of genius: in addition to having ridiculed the truth about the economy long after others had accepted it, he’s a major evolution-denier and “intelligent design” promoter, having been primarily responsible for the incredibly misleading “Expelled: no intelligence allowed“.