February 5, 2012 – RI Future

Our trip to Amsterdam was a great success. We previewed a new product line, and we expect to be building a good number of them up at the factory. As you can see from the photo, it’s an industrial design / high fit-and-finish approach that puts us in a league by ourselves. And all that glossy, shiny stuff comes from New England shops. Only the wood, the transducers and the few electronic sub-assemblies come from overseas – most of it from Europe. The “value” is added in Whitinsville, MA.

It was my first trip to Holland, and it left some strong impressions on me. The following are just random observations of what I encountered. As you’ll see, everything and everywhere has it’s pros and cons.

You Cannot Imagine How Many Bicycles There Are

Seriously, no matter where you’ve been – even China – you’ve never seen a greater concentration of bicycles than in Amsterdam. There are great piles of them. At the Central Station, there is a multi-story parking facility just for bikes. And it’s jammed full.

Almost all the bikes are the same – single-speed, upright style. This is because the city is dead flat with canals creating great arcs that reach more than a mile in from The Dam.

The record-setting cold was no impediment to the cyclists. You see them at all hours of the day and night pedaling along with no gloves and no hats. Bicycle helmets are unknown.

The bike lanes are all over – in the street, on the sidewalk, in separated areas – and it’s easy to find yourself accidentally walking in one of them. Big. Mistake. Bike lanes also carry scooter traffic. More than once I found myself leaping for the safety of the pedestrian zone.

It’s Not Particularly Clean

I was struck by the high amount of litter in Amsterdam. There are lots of public trash receptacles, but they’re not always used. Trash collection itself is just bags and piles left on the sidewalk. And I didn’t see a pattern of which neighborhoods got trash collected which days. It seems like they just put the stuff out whenever they feel like it.

Since so many people smoke, there are cigarette butts all over the place. Perhaps it was that I was there during a particularly cold and windy period, but newspapers were also blowing all over the place. Food waste didn’t get any special treatment, either, and I’m somewhat surprised that they don’t have a serious problem with rats.

It’s More Diverse Than You Might Expect

The ethnic make up seemed more-or-less in line with what you’d see in the US. Many Middle Eastern, North African and sub-Saharan faces, and in a range of places. Tram conductors and drivers, fork-lift operators, shop keepers, cabbies all showed that it’s not just Whitey over there. Or, um, Van Whitey, I suppose.

In my scant non-sleeping downtime, I managed to find two different hipster neighborhoods. In the one with the restaurants, we found an excellent place that served Turkish and Iranian fare. Tiles for the interior were commissioned out of Iran, and the ones in the men’s room are to die for.

The Dutch seem to have a predilection for Argentinean stake houses, although the one we went to in a tourist district was nothing special and highly overpriced. They also have a lot of Indonesian Restaurants, but I didn’t get the opportunity to go.

It’s 24/7…NOT

What we do at these tradeshows essentially amounts to theatrical production, so you find that you need this or that and you need it NOW! Holland is not a good place to find yourself in this situation. Most shops – and I mean coffee houses, convenience stores, etc. – open at 9am and close at 6pm. Some of them push the envelope and open at 8am.

There’s one place – ONE – that opens at 7am, and that is such a big deal there that the name of the shop is “At 7”. Want to get a pack of smokes at 2am? You’re out of luck.

They Like Being Dutch

It should come as no surprise that the Dutch think that being Dutch is awesome. Most cultures think well of themselves. They’re not too keen on remonstrations from pompous travelers from the US who are shocked and annoyed that no hardware stores will be open on Sunday and that if you want a coffee at 5:30am, you had damn well better have a percolator in your hotel room.

My colleague and I actually got the double-scolding of “tisk-tisk-tisk” PLUS the finger wag for bringing to-go coffees onto the tram.

It’s Good to Be Home

On balance, I could live in Amsterdam – I’d just have to up my planning to ensure that I have everything I need for the overnight and Sunday shutdown periods. I’d bike – like them – in the cold and rain and snow. I’d shop the open air stalls on the Albert Cuypstraat.

But it’s always great to come home to everything that’s familiar. As we say in my family: Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.

One of the more reprehensible things that conservatives have come out with of late is the idea of the ‘lucky duckies.’

This is what the Wall St Journal’s op-ed page called those of our society who are ‘fortunate’ enough to make such a low salary that they don’t have to pay fed income taxes.

This is truly verging (has crossed into?) Newspeak. You know, 1984–war is peace, freedom is slavery etc…)

In most people’s minds, getting stuck in a job that makes you $20k a year is the opposite of ‘fortunate’. And if those WSJ writers think these folks are so lucky, all they have to do is quit their cushy office job and stand on their feet 8 hours a day flipping burgers.

Lucky duckies, indeed.

[ Pre-emptive strike: the idea is that these people have no ‘skin in the game’, so they don’t care about tax rates because it’s so hard to make ends meet on $250k per year, yadda yadda. Utter nonsense. Give me the $250k, I’ll pay the 39% tax rate from the Clinton years, and still be waaaaaaayyyyy ahead of where I am now. And so would most of you reading this. ]

So far, this has been standard class warfare stuff as waged by the 1%. True, people in the bottom half don’t make enough to pay fed taxes. Think about that: almost half the country, by conservatives own reckoning, don’t make enough to pay fed taxes. Is the problem that their a) tax rate is too low; or, b) that their salary is too low?

If you’re a conservative, the answer cannot be (a), because tax rates are NEVER low enough.

And yet, that’s what they’re saying. That tax rates on the bottom half of the country have to go UP. While tax rates on the top 1% have to go DOWN. Talk about internally inconsistent.

Or, it would be if they actually cared about being logical. Or consistent. They don’t. They only care about waging class warfare against everyone who’s not part of the 1%.

What truly takes this distortion to another level, and makes it reprehensible is the way it looks at a tiny sliver of the situation, cherry-picks what suits their cause, then ignores the rest.

The fact is, this lower 47% that pays no fed income tax, pays plenty of other taxes. Payroll tax, which is hugely regressive since it’s capped at around $100k (may be higher; it moves with inflation), sales taxes (also hugely regressive) excise taxes, state taxes, local taxes, and so on.

What happens when we factor all of these in?

Here’s the result:

This is a chart done by the Corporation for Enterprise Development. It shows what the total, overall tax rate is for all income quintiles by state. It shows how much of their income the poorest 20% pays, vs how much of their income the top 1% pays in each state, then shows the ratio between the two.

The median state is Mississippi. The poorest 20% pay about 10.8% of their total income in taxes. The top 1%, OTOH, only pay 5.5% of their income.

In other words, the effective tax rate of the bottom 20% is about twice as high as the tax rate for the top%–despite paying no fed taxes.

And how does RI stack up? We’re worse.

Here, the bottom 20% pays about 11.9%, while the top 1% pays 5.5%.

In other words, the bottom 20% pays a rate that is more than twice the rate paid by the top 1%.

And Mass is two spots worse, CT is one spot better, so spare me the “Oh, I could just move to Mass and save all this money” lie. And founder of a certain ‘alternative’ party, I’m looking at you.

What does this mean? The top end earners are not overtaxed. They have a great gig going. And if we elect someone named either Willard or Newt, it will only get better for them, and much, much worse for the rest of us.