From My Collection...

I collect a lot of comics from the 1940s— this one is neat— shows the World’s Finest team laughing at a costume shop renting their costumes, I’m sure Bruce Wayne is about to call his Trademark Attorney to send them a cease and desist.

This one is in nice shape- value is probably around $500.

Simple Economics- Making these Giant Numbers Make Sense

If you are a stable well adjusted family you make a monthly budget of some type. You know how much is coming in and you know how much is going out. If there is more money going out then coming in you have a Deficit— if it continues for a long period of time without correction you will face economic ruin.

We all know family or friends who run their house like a 7 year old— they put ordinary items on a credit card which inflates their debt, not only does that bag of $99 groceries actually cost $145 when you configure the interest charges putting everyday expenses on a credit card is a very bad idea.

So let’s say you are a family of four— two adults, one child 17 and one child 14— you sit around the table and you’re looking at your bills and you realize there is not enough money coming in each month so you have to do something. The 17 year old should be working so they are not a drag on the family budget— I’d even argue the 14 year old should be mowing lawns or shoveling in the winter so they have their own money. Hopefully Mom and Dad are on the same page— if Dad wants to fix the budget and Mom still wants to take that Disney trip this is a problem. If her solution is to put it on a credit card and worry about it later then she is running her house exactly the way our Government runs our country. If they’re on the same page and Mom and Dad in this case either both have to have jobs then one of them needs to pick up extra shifts or a second job. If things are really bad they need to seriously look at additional educational training to get them into a higher paying job, and all of this needs to be countered with something no one likes;

Budget Cuts.

If you have a deficit, or a monthly shortfall especially a recurring monthly shortfall then you need to enact budget cuts.

Eliminate cable or satellite, change to an inexpensive phone carrier, eliminate vacations and make do with staycations for a while, cut back on driving, make shopping lists and meal plan so you aren’t impulse buying. Find a cheaper hair cut, stop taking your car to the dealership for repairs and find a local mechanic who isn’t out to gouge you. Turn off lights, turn the themostat down, yadda yadda.

We get it, right?

Well how come the Federal Government doesn’t?

Let’s go back to our Street Analogy— only this time you live in House A, acrooss the street is House B, next door on either side, House C and D— but no socialism this time—each house runs it’s own way.

So your house, House A is ecomically in trouble. You have credit card debt you are trying to pay down. You have to make budget cuts. Trouble is for years you’ve been sending money to House B because those are your cousins and you promised you’d pay for their Cable bill for some reason. House C are your in-laws and you buy their groceries every week. House D has always been a great neighbor— they even come over and mow your lawn because they know how busy you are.

House A, your house, has to make cuts. House B has come to you to ask that you pay their internet bill too. Hard to say no to House B. House C is asking if you could get those groceries at a higher end market because they feel the quality isn’t there.

Does this sound ridiculous?

It’s exactly how the United States treats other countries around the world. We pay $74 BILLION in foreign aid despite having a deficit in the TRILLIONS. Taking it back to the street, you are not going to be able to turn your family economic situation around continuing with what you are doing, and the same goes for the US Government. At some point someone has to say enough.

Do you know why some of us object to sending so much money to the Ukraine (yes it’s because you are Putin loving monsters— actually no—) before the war Ukraine was considered one of the most corrupt governments in the world— how about this from the Associated Press?

Because we continue to hurl good money after bad— HURL it. And not just into the corruption of Ukraine, but to many other equally corrupt goverments.

It cannot continue. Think about the way you run your own house— I hope and pray you are not in over your head credit card wise. Now impose those measures on our elected officials, speak up, write to them, tell them you want responsible spending in government, because the path we are on is not one of success.

Economics 101: Tax the Evil Corporations

Let’s get it out of the way- like it or not corporations for the most part aren’t evil. What’s the biggest business in the United States? Microsoft? Apple? Amazon? GM? Nope, it’s the United States Government— it has gotten so big that it is the number one employer in the US— that is an astonishingly frightening thought if you’ve ever spent any time at the Post Office (yes not paid for by us I know), the DMV, The Social Security Office, City Hall or watched a road crew where one guy is working and eleven guys are standing around watching him work. The thing that boggles my mind is those are OUR tax dollars. People get all kinds of excited when somehing is “Federally” Funded— where do you think those funds come from in the first place? So the least efficient corporation in the United States is the one WE THE PEOPLE pay for?

Wow.

Okay, tax the hell out of corporations. There is a proposal to Tax Corporations 28%— that’s only fair right? Coporations only duty is to answer to the share-holders— which once again, surprise! It’s us. Or those of us who invest in such things.

The current coporate tax rate in the United States is 21%. Let’s not forget that Colleges and Universities are generally exempt from taxes despite massive profits. Funny how no one seems to want to go after them. At 21% that’s fairly high on the world stage but it’s workable, at 28% all you will do is send those same corporations to Ireland where the Corporate Tax Rate is 12.5%. Say goodbye to the local jobs and money that goes into the economy, 12.5% is pretty enticing.

All you do by raising the minimum wage and the corporate tax rate is create Detroit. Been to Detroit lately? When the car companies pulled out they took the high paying jobs with them and they left an economic ghetto in it’s place. Detroit has been on a rebound but its nowhere near it’s glory days of manufacturing.

It’s simple economics.

It’s why Socialism doesn’t work. If we take it to a local level, and I mean really local, imagine for a minute that you live in House A— on either side of you are houses B and C and across the street is house D.

You and your spouse work and you make a pretty comfortable income of $125k per year. When you were a kid you thought this would make you rich, but the reality is you still have to shop sales and probably use coupons. Of your $125k you pay roughly 22% in taxes so $28k goes to Uncle Sam and Auntie State. You still have $97,000 left over (and I also want to remind you there was a time when we paid NO INCOME TAX and when they introduced it they told us it was temporary). Well, bad news because under socialism you have to give some to house B and C because they don’t choose to work. Lucky for you, house D also works so you and they will split the bill— but after the first year guess what, house D decides to sell and move somewhere else that doesn’t enact such a proposterous idea and now you’re left with the whole bill.

It’s simple economics. The “rich” are far more likely to donate to causes, support public funding, help charities until they are forced to do so— then they take their money and they move somewhere else— probably Ireland. And now that neighborhood that you lived in is occupied by four families who don’t choose to work, so the cancer spreads to the houses adjacent to them, now houses E, F, G and H have to foot the bill for the four houses that don’t contribute.

And I’m not saying there should not be a support system for people down on their luck. Unempoloyment insurance is something we all pay into, but it’s benefits are limited because it’s designed to be a step not a crutch.

Social Security? I think we don’t pay out enough- if you worked your whole life and you retire you should have no ecomomic worries, and we could do that if we didn’t waste so much money everywhere else, including the Deficit which no one likes to think about because when you’re talking about a Trillion Dollars our calculators explode.

I’ll wrap up simple economics tomorrow.

My Semi-Annual Plea to take a minute to understand Economics

As an artist myself many of the visitors of this Blog are like-minded, and I’m afraid that many of us artists are not business minded folks— something sounds good— we want to go for it without considering what we’re actually agreeing to. “Make the corporations pay more!” “Make the Rich pay their fair share of taxes!” These are battle cries that certainly makes sense! “Raise minimum wage to a liveable $20 an hour!” All good.

This year we’ll be voting in Massachusetts to raise tip workers to minimum wage— and that sounds good, right? We need only look at California to see the devastating results. Don’t trust those “right wing” news sources? No worries, do a simple Google search of economic results of raising the minumum wage in California. Here’s a great report from the CATO institute.

It’s as simple as this; costs of goods has risen dramatically— some will blame this on the pandemic which was handled so poorly that every single person of authority in our government who stuck their hands in it should be fired and probably prosecuted. There is also the end of domestic oil production which was a result of a policy of our current administration which caused gasoline prices to rise— when gas goes up not only does it hurt us driving to work everyday— it costs much more to bring items across the country— because the number one way anything gets from Point A to Points B, C, D and E in the United States is via Truck.

Raising the minimum wage results in McDonald’s raising the prices on it’s menu, it results in Dunkin installing kiosks instead of cashiers, it results in Wal*Mart installing self checkouts so now ONE cashier oversees NINE checkout lanes. It’s very simple economics. If the cost of goods goes up it is passed on to the consumer. Is this a result of those evil greedy corporations trying to screw us over? Nope. In the Grocery Business which I had some fifteen years experience in management our margins are around 2%— you’re reading that right 2%— that means we have to control tightly every single expense we have and Payroll is almost always your biggest expense. So you cut workers, you close stores. In California Kevin Hart just closed his chain of Vegan Restaurants putting some 150 people out of work because he can’t afford to pay them and keep the menu prices low enough for a happy consumer. When menu prices shoot up, people start cooking at home.

It’s simple economics.

Tomorrow let’s look at Taxing Those Evil Corporate Fat Cats.

Seen in the wild

I spotted this Owl Cupcake at a local supermarket— A+ for effort, B- for execution.

From My Personal Collection... Abbott & Costello

I’ve always loved Abbott & Costello— along with The Three Stooges and The Marx Bros they are my favorite comedy team. They had a popular radio show during the 1940s and a relatively popular comic book series from St John’s Publishing. Many of the stories were done by Lily Renee, a female pioneer in the comics industry and a former fashion model. Lily lived to the ripe old age of 100 and only passed away recently.

ACE COMIC CON REPORT - Chicago Part 2

The view from our Hotel Window — GIBSONS— no finer place to dine on Earth.

We’ll be revisiting some of these con reports over the next few weeks.

After checking in and getting ourselves situated after the short but still tough flight from Boston to Chicago we took a walk around the Convention area. The show is actually in Rosemont, which is a couple of miles outside the city and right next to the airport. I’m familiar with the town because I come here every year for Wizard World— but this was the first time with Veronica.

Now if you’re a regular reader here you’ve heard me go on about GIBSONS Steakhouse. It’s easily my favorite restaurant in the world. The Spaghetti Place in Nagoya Japan is a close second, but there’s just something about GIBSONS. It feels solid. It’s wood and leather and heavy on the guy-ness and they make the best steaks anywhere. The secret is an 1800 degree oven that gives the Medium Rare steak (please don’t ever order a steak any other way) a nice warm center and a crisp outside. You can cut their filet with a fork— it’s that tender.

All right so I go on about Gibsons here on the blog, imagine how I go on about it at home. It’s gotten to the point that Veronica rolls her eyes when I start talking about it— so planning our Anniversary dinner there added a great deal of pressure, it had to live up to my buildup— so I did the only thing any sensible husband could do— I reached out to the manager of the place and told him the stakes.

He did not let us down.

Our dinner was five star and he comped us dessert which was so huge we shared it with the front desk at our hotel. Veronica really liked the place and she could understand why I speak so highly of it.

After dinner we walked over to the King’s Entertainment Complex— it’s a sort of grown up Chuckee Cheese area situated behind the main street— I think you have to know its there to find it and it’s a lot of fun. There is a mexican restaurant, a german restaurant, an Irish Pub and KIng’s which which has a full restaurant with pretty good food. Nearby is Murray Bros— Bill Murray’s restaurant which is equally good (and surprising because it certainly could just get by on the gimmick of being owned by Bill Murray).

We got in a good walk before heading back to the hotel to prep for day one of the show. Here’s the thing about traveling with Veronica. Yes, she’s my wife and she’s gorgeous. She’s also a very sweet person and one of the most genuinely fun and funny people I’ve ever met. I could have fun sitting with her in a car stuck in a garage during a snowstorm (and I have). So traveling with her is always perfect.

The next day the show didn’t start until 4pm so we had some time to kill. The hotel has a full breakfast— and I don’t mean a chintzy pile of cheese danish and stale coffee- it’s a full on breakfast complete with an Omelet bar— always go with the hotel Omelet bar if they have one. We ate breakfast and then got all of our things situated for the show before heading over a couple of hours early for setup.

Our table was right in front— virtually the first artists you see after you’ve come through the experience area. You could get your picture taken with the Batmobile, or with Star Wars props, or as a life size Pop Figure— etc, and then there was us. We were set up next to Dexter Soy who is one of the finest artists working in comics today— I’m a big fan of his work and he’s a wonderful guy— so is his little brother who helps him out.

Dexter Soy

That’s one of the things I like best about doing these shows, meeting people. Not just amazing artists like Dexter, or spending time with equally amazing artists like Art Baltazar, or even the people who are our fans (although they are really cool) but I like meeting the people at the front desk, the people who clean up the convention center, the waiters and the waitresses or even people like Dean who I got to know in the elevator of our hotel and roughly a ¼ mile walk together to a nearby restaurant to pick up dinner for his family.

Dean is from Chicago’s suburbs but he and his wife came into Rosemont to take their two year old daughter to SESAME STREET LIVE— where she was mesmerized by the $20 bubble wand he bought her. We laughed at how kids are. I told him two was a great age for kids but it’s even better when they’re 22.

Anyway, back to Friday— this show promoter is the former head of Wizard Con, so I’ve known him for many years. He was particularly gracious, the show had produced a special SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH Comic with Kiernan Shipka on the cover and our art on the insides, he asked how many Archie had given us and when I told him zero he had someone swing by with BOXES of them and told us to feel free to sell them for the same price the show was ($15/ea). That might seem high for a comic book but since Kiernan was a guest at the show it was a sort of quasi program/memento too. We ended up blowing through ALL of them pretty quickly. Usually Friday’s are dead at conventions—people have to work right? Well this one was straight outl the moment it opened to the moment it closed at 9pm. We walked back to our hotel and I can’t for the life of me remember what we had for dinner. Breakfast couldn’t have possibly held us over. That might have been the day I got a pretty great (and huge) Turkey sandwich from the convention center restaurant.

We got in a good walk and had some fun and then turned in by midnight with the following day’s show starting at 10am.

Continued Next Week.