Mow lawns. My bro and I make between $40 and $175 dollars/hour ($50 per hour on average) doing it part time in S. Florida. Takes a small investment ($1,400 for equipment, plus a truck which can serve as your normal trans.) and a short start-up time passing out business cards on door steps, but the payoff is truly phenomenal. The lawn maintenance business model is unmatched in almost EVERY aspect.
The National Retail Sales Tax is a lot like communism. It looks good on paper, but fails in the real world. It helps the rich (yet again) and hurts the poor. It encourages saving and discourages spending. Spending drives the economy. You want to ruin the U.S. economy? Support this flawed idea. Yes, everybody has to buy stuff. But the poor have to spend 100% of their income just to survive. If you make them pay a 25% sales tax they lose a quarter of their income. They don’t (in the initial theory) lose any more than they would with the current system… except… the rich will end up paying LESS in taxes!!! I hope you don’t expect a cite. It’s pretty common sense. In the current system, we are taxed on our income, in the National Retail Sales Tax we will be taxed based on our “OUTcome”, how much we spend. Obviously the rich people’s spending is smaller than the income. The poor? It’s the same. But the government needs the same amount of money (less IRS cost). So who is going to foot the bill when 25% isn’t enough? Hint: it ain’t going to be the rich. While everybody is still paying 25% tax, the rich will be spending MUCH less percentage of their income, which will encourage them to save or (more likely) invest to get even richer. What will be the effect? The rich end up paying less total tax. The government will have to supplement this. The tax will go up higher, say to 30%. Then the poor will be paying MORE tax than they are with today’s system. All this taxing scheme will do is make a country full of Uncle Scrooges (who horde cash) and separate the rich from the poor even more.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate the IRS as much as you do. But so far, it’s still the best system. It needs an overhaul, but it can’t be done away with so easily.
Sorry about continuing this hijack.
I’ve been thinking of doing something like this myself but I’ve held back because I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Could you offer me some advice on how to go about it? Thanks.
howso? what do you bet on.
Just about everything in this post is flawed. Time permits the correction of the notion that the rich would pay less tax under the NRST. Although the wealthy pay a disproportionate share of the tax dollars collected annually, many so-called rich people right now pay ZERO income tax, or very little, due to illegal income or creative tax-sheltering strategies. But they buy millions of dollars’ worth of stuff ever year, which spending would be taxed under the NRST at a flat rate of 15% (not the imaginary 25%). Again, if everybody but the folks under the poverty line paid their share, we would all benefit from this fairness. And the invisible tax on goods (the corporate income tax which tacks an extra 20% onto the cost of everything you buy in America) would vanish, making our manufactured goods more affordable here at home and more desirable for import by other nations.
Nothing in the world will ever stop the poor from spending every penny they make–often times that’s WHY they’re poor, not BECAUSE. A nation of people saving 1-2% of their income on average and filing a new record number of Ch. 7 bankruptcies every year (the current situation in the US) does not make for a strong economy. Neither does trying to even it out so every person earns the same or spends the exact same percentage of their income. What does is giving the people more of THEIR OWN money in their paycheck to spend and save. Under the NRST you get to keep your paycheck. No “withholding”. If workers invested a percentage of the money that they don’t get to see in their checks now starting early in their careers, they would be OK in their retirement and less dependent on the Ponzi scheme known as “Social Security”.
It’s all academic since no Congress will ever have the cojones to pass such a bold measure, but still it’s worth discussing. Maybe they could try it for a couple of years, with the provision that if it doesn’t generate more revenue with fewer headaches than the current system, it would be reversed. The current experiment with a “legalized” income tax has failed.
Why don’t the both of you take it to Great Debates?
And now, back to the show.
Hi there,
I’m doing something similar–I have a degree in studio art, but being as how that’s not a terribly lucrative field (heh), I’ve found myself a paying job, but I set up a website to sell drawings as a little side-business. It lets me keep drawing, and brings in a few bucks here and there.
I hope this isn’t considered advertising, as I’m posting for the sake of showing you how I’m doing it, but my website can be seen here: Armadillo Studios --mods, please delete the link if it’s inappropriate.
I advertised on a bunch of dog forums I frequent, and a few big working dog websites. In a month or two I’ll post an ad with the AKC and UKC, both on their websites and in their print magazines. We have a big farmers’ market here in the spring and summer, so I may try and build up a body of work and set up a booth there, if I’ve got the time.
It’s helpful if you pick a subject you’re good with and advertise yourself as such, but if you’re just wanting to sell general drawings, I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to do through a craft fair, farmers’ market, or one of those little kiosk things at the mall, or you could just build up a pile of work and start showing them to your friends, let them know your plans, and see if you can’t get a few bites that way.
~mixie
Oops, I guess it would help if the link worked.
Armadillo Studios
I take advantage of the extra money my employer hands out…
Don’t overlook 401ks (you don’t get the money now, but any match will eventually be yours), Dependant Care Spending Accounts, Health Care Spending Accounts, and - the granddaddy of my company handing out money for me showing up - the Employee Stock Purchase Plan. (Stock Options and better yet, Stock Grants are pretty cool too).
Granted, not everyone is lucky enough to have employers that offer these benefits or qualify. And most of them involve having enough cash to “front” some money now so that someone will give you more later (in the case of a 401k - a lot later). Then again, not everyone is lucky to have enough musical talent that someone would actually pay them to play at a wedding (although I could probably convince my friends to pay me NOT to sing at their weddings).
Between the 401k and the ESPP I make about 35 or more a year than I would without them. And the DCSA saves me about $2000 a year in taxes.
For the boring guaranteed-small-profits, I don’t bet as much as trade, mostly on horse racing. In the 10 minutes or so before the off, I just take advantage of the small fluctuations in market price to cream off a profit no matter which horse wins. If i can make £1- £2 a race like this, on a Saturday there are 5 or 6 races per hour, it’s a decent wage. And the best part is, it’s not taxable (in the UK at least). Free money, in the truest sense of the word.
I applied for shadow jury duty today.
I made all the pocket money I needed playing the piano and/or organ for weddings when I was in highschool and college. When I was a young housewife with little ones, I baby sat in the summer, offering unusually early/late hours.
I try to sell prints of my photographs. Haven’t had many takers, though.