With the upcoming presidential elections, it seems that the entire focus of any discussion gravitates towards taxes in one form or another. Generally someone is accusing the rich of having tax breaks and not having to “pay their fair share,” or someone else is tired of having to pay so much in taxes so that so many can live on welfare, or others complain about not having enough money after taxes.

Those who have lots of money, albeit they do pay for a large majority of total tax revenue, appear to have the ability to also avoid paying taxes either through tax loops, or sending money out of country (if the majority of your wealthy feel the need to send their hard earned cash out of the country, that probably says something about the country itself, just saying). They are also forced to pay a higher percentage (of income) than those who make less. Then there is the middle class who generally don’t get any tax breaks/loops, and who still have to pay a good percentage out of their income as well. Then the lower class have problems just having enough money to make ends meet without having to worry about taxes. And I’m going to add in another group, those on welfare, who pay no taxes, and in many cases, even get money from the government (which came out of someone else’s paycheck mind you). And on top of the problems of income tax, everyone must also pay sales tax, property tax, gas tax, etc.

Now here is where I may tick a few people off, but bare with me, everything should smooth out by the end. Here’s a little scenario. One person (Bob) must pay say 35% income tax in order to support 3 other people (Frank, Jane, and Sue) who are all on welfare and also don’t pay any taxes. However, all four of those people get the same voting power when it comes time for election: one vote. I personally believe that it is unfair for one person to have to give more to support the government and still be expected to have the same say in political matters as someone else (who may not even give anything at all). There is a bit of logical fallacy in giving someone who can’t even take care of themselves the same amount of say in how our country should be run, as the person who is forced to support them. *personal rant over*

It seems that no matter which way you look at it, the current tax system is unfair all around, and I haven’t even gotten started on the biggest issue.

If you ever heard stories or watched movies about the cold hearted mob boss forcing collection of “protection fees” on innocent store owners in their area, you would need to look no farther for the real deal than our own government, and the IRS. The IRS is the epitome of lack of justice. They can claim that any one has failed to pay their taxes, and never have to prove it (the unlike the rest of the US governmental systems, where the burden of proof is put upon the accuser, with the IRS, the burden of proof is given to the victim). They can seize any of your property or finances for “compensation” of unpaid taxes. And again, they will never have to take you to court or get a warrant in order to do so. Worst part of all, IRS agents are paid on commission, meaning their paycheck is based upon how much money they can squeeze out of who ever they believe hasn’t paid their taxes, meaning that for those working for the IRS, it is in their best interests to go after as many people as possible for tax evasion.

So with all that in mind, I began to wonder what could be done to fix things, or at least what system could work better than the one we have currently. What I came up with would require an entire rewrite of the entire tax system, from the ground up; luckily, it is a pretty simple system. So starting from nothing…

There is only one tax that anyone will have to pay, at all, ever. That is a sales tax. Anytime you go to buy a product (except medicine and food, those are tax exempt as those are necessarily for life), you will be charged a sales tax for the local municipality, another for the county, another for the state, and finally, another percentage for federal. Now, that sounds pretty bad, cause at that rate, you may very well end up paying something along the lines of a 20% sales tax, but remember; you only pay the tax whenever you actually buy something other than food or medicine. Money that you earn in your paycheck will never be taxed. Money that earns interest in a bank account will never be taxed. Money given to you will never be taxed. Unless of course you spend it on something, and only then will you pay a tax.

And of course, it’s a flat tax rate across the whole board, upper to lower class. After all, why should someone have to pay more in taxes for the same item you’re buying, simply because they earn more. And if you’re thinking, “well, because they can afford to pay more,” trust me, they will. Why? Because if you have more to spend, guess what, generally you’re going to buy more things, meaning that you have more instances you must pay taxes than someone who doesn’t. And with a flat rate, that should solve the fairness problem associated with voting, or it may not, I’m still thinking on that issue, as it’s a tricky one.

A simple sales tax should also fix all issues of tax evasion, as there is no way to avoid paying taxes, as it is added to the charge whenever you check out, and the company charging it doesn’t lose any profit in doing so.

Well, those are just my thoughts. I’m sure many of you disagree with me, and I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. I was just thinking, if there is so much wrong with what we have now, why not something simple and fair. A flat sales tax for all levels of government seems to be fair to me, and simple too.

Cheers,

-Murphy

NOTE: I didn’t cover the topic of a balanced budget or controlled government spending, and although those would pay a significant role in how high the percentages are for this system, that is another topic for debate later.

One of my passions in life has been finding a more sustainable model/method of… Living! How could we make our lives better not just for us, but for everyone else as well.

One part of that vast topic is city expansion or sprawl and housing. I’ll be the first to say that I absolutely despise suburbs, and how the majority of cities in the U.S. are laid out. I find suburbs to be both terribly boring and monotonous, as well as terribly inefficient. This summer I’ve been working as an instrument man for a surveying company, so I’ve gotten to see plenty of suburb construction first hand. From what I’ve seen, they are nothing but wasteful from start to finish. The houses themselves appear to be designed by an architect who had no real care as to the construction process of the home, or the maintenance required to keep it livable. Rather, it appears as if someone just couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted, and so they tried to pack as many rooms as they could onto the lot. Then once construction starts, the crews end up throwing away entire dumpsters full of lumber and other materials because they can’t or won’t be used any where else. Meanwhile the owner ends up paying for all that would that just went to the nearest landfill. Then once construction is complete, and the new owner moves in, they have to spend hundreds of dollars simply keeping their home air conditioned, not to mention the decades ahead of mortgage payments they now have to make.

Compare that, to tiny homes (generally 500 sq. ft. or less), which are often designed to use as much of the bought materials as possible, eliminating waste. And since they are smaller, they require less energy to heat and cool them. And when built yourself, the final price tag is often only $2000 to $7500, which obviously can be payed off in a couple years, if not a matter of months. Plus, designing and building yourself, you can make your home as unique and different as you like, a big plus to artsy types. Even better, you can fit 4 tiny homes on the same lot as a normal suburban home, and still have room left over for a small central courtyard.

That being said, I think there is a path to a brighter, healthier future. We must combine two movements: A) the tiny house movement with their work towards more efficient housing design and construction, and B) New Urbanism, and their work towards efficient and sustainable city design.

If you had a chance to design a new town, what would you differently from the status quo?

I’ve attached a link to the Congress for New Urbanism if you’d like to learn about that, as well as a couple of links to some good tiny house sites.

-Murphy

http://www.cnu.org/

http://www.tinyhouseblog.com/

http://www.tinyhouseliving.com/

Check it out! First draft of the new graphics. Hopefully now it doesn’t look so bland. Now, on to the meat of this post. Let me introduce you to my ongoing humanitarian project, the “O’Kollow Project”. Originally, this was my capstone project for the Pre-Engineering Academy at Gordon Cooper Technology Center, but after I got quite a bit of feedback from everyone who I had talked to about the project that I needed to continue, I’ve decided to keep working on it to see where it goes.

Remember the Haiti earthquake of 2010? 1.5 million people were left homeless after that natural disaster; that’s 1,500,000 survivors with no where to live. Two years later, half a million were still without a home. Yes ladies and gents, you read that right. Two full years after the original earthquake 500,000 are still living under tarps, in the mud.Japan, 2011, another half million were left without a home there as well after the tsunami.

I don’t know ’bout you lot, but I see a problem there.

Around the 2nd year “anniversary” of the Haiti earthquake, NPR was doing a bunch of stories documenting the recovery (or lack thereof really) of Haiti. They described the conditions the people were living in; in tightly packed town squares or courtyards, in the mud, with only a tarp over their heads. There was no sanitation, and diseases were rampant. No security either, theft was common, and even reports of rape.

I did a little research as to how this could possibly have happened. I mean, we had all heard of all the Non-Government Organizations (NGO) and charities that had gone to Haiti to provide aid, and they’d had two years to get at least something done, so why hadn’t they? Here’s what I came up with. Immediately after the earthquake, of course, everyone and their dog rushed in there to “help.” It seems the first thing organizations like the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity did was hand out a sort of “immediate reaction kit,” which consisted of a five gallon bucket with gloves, a hammer, and a tarp. This is logical, give them something immediate to get out of the rain, as well as tools to start cleaning up debris to give a place to start to rebuild.

Now here is where the problem arises. All of those organizations that went in to “help rebuild” did one of two things. A) They asked the locals what they needed to start fixing things, usually money or materials, and then said they would “be back as soon as possible with what you need,” and of course, they would never come back, or B) NGO’s that did come back to help rebuild went straight into the rebuilding permanent homes. Now imagine that, nearly every Haitian has been giving a tarp to live under “for the time being,” but that is all they have for shelter while they wait for the NGO’s to finish building their permanent homes, which as I’m sure you all can guess, a home like that isn’t build in a day or two. And with homes needed for 1.5 million survivors, you can see how the waiting list piled up, and how so many were stuck in conditions like they are today.

So the problem I saw was a need for some sort of temporary shelter that:

• Could be built cheaply and quickly offsite.
• Efficiently shipped to the disaster area.
• Erected onsite within a matter of hours.
• Would provide shelter from the elements, and security from outside threats to the inhabitants.
• Would have a lifespan of roughly 2 years.

Now, I’m sure that last point made some of you think, “Huh??”, so let me explain. These shelter are supposed to be temporary, meaning I don’t want the shelters to become the permanent residencies. These are merely to provide a stepping stone between immediate reaction, and long term rebuilding. I specifically wanted to make sure these didn’t become a shanty town, and to push the inhabitants to get out and try to do better for themselves. So, I only wanted the structure to last for a couple years at most, give or take.

Well, I finally came up with a design. It’s quite simple really. It’s essentially just a plywood box. A big open room 8 foot wide by 16 foot long, with windows along the entire back and front walls, with the exception of one door on the front. The walls are built in 8′ sections so that they can be stacked for shipping, and then quickly put together on site. The interesting thing is that since the structure is essentially just a box of plywood, there doesn’t need to be much interior framing, as the plywood itself is the load bearing structure.

From the design, my friend Dugan, my dad, and I built a prototype on my parents property. We’ve been living in it over the summer for testing, seeing what might need to be tweaked or fixed, as well as how the construction process could go better. Honestly, everything has gone well so far. You can take a look at our progress from start to now on our blog at The Adventures of O’Kollow.

I suppose my next step from here is to finish my report on my findings over the summer, and try to get ahold of some organizations who would be interested in using my design. My first thought was Engineers Without Borders, but if any of you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know!

Cheers,

-Murphy

Brief description on the title: my friend Dugan and I originally started creating a primitive camp site to go camping on out in the woods. When it came time to find a place to build the cabin, it just seemed like an appropriate place to put it, so the two projects got morphed together, and honestly, I didn’t have a name for the humanitarian project, so the campsites name just stuck.

CLARIFICATION: This project was not specifically targeted towards Haiti, though it was the most documented disaster I could find. The design however is capable of being used in many different disaster situations.

Woah, what’s this? A new blog? Uh oh…

Haha, well, ladies and gents, in case you didn’t read the tagline under the blog title, this is the place where you will find all of my random little ramblings, complainings, mutterings, and possibly even something intelligent here and there.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering, why should this blog matter to you? Well, honestly, I don’t have any real answer. I’ll post up different information on items that interest me or that I’ve been working, and if you’re interested too, well heck ya! If not, well, no one is keeping you here by force.

Anyway, currently, I’ve still got a lot of site editing to do before this is at all presentable, but once that’s done, I’ll start throwing some more posts up here.

Cheers,

-Murphy