NOW PLAYING: Springtime

8 April, 1999
Ah, Springtime! A wonderful time of year, when one shakes off the cold of winter and can enjoy the Great Outdoors until the summer comes to broil you alive.

Except that there's tree sperm everywhere.

It's all over the cars. It's all over the sidewalks and the roads (there was a 19-car pile-up on the interstate the other day that was blamed on the slickness of the pollen on the asphalt). It's in the air, causing sneezing and runny (or stuffed-up) noses.

Of course, the car-wash joints are loving it; they're doing banner business. And it always seems worse this year than it was the last (though that may be because we haven't had any decent rain recently to knock the crap out of the air and wash it off the surface of the earth).

It's also Tax Time (© the Federal Government), which means you have to wade through reams of forms and rules (unless you hire someone to do it for you) to give 40% or more of your money (and five months of your life -- Tax "Freedom" Day is sometime in May now) per year to the Infernal Revenue Stealers.

Here's a li'l chart courtesy of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER, Great Barrington, MA 01230) that shows the tax table for Income Tax in 1913. No doubt when the law was passed then that most people never thought it would really affect them. There was even a provision in that law which would limit the tax rate to no more than 10%, but it was rejected because lawmakers never thought the rate would go that high. Feel free to compare it to the rate you're paying now, and enjoy.

Feel better? I didn't think so. Now go wash all that tree sperm off your car -- it looks terrible!

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