As the saying goes, character is what you do when nobody is looking. When the only people who can see you are yourself and your God, if you have one, do you do the right thing when the chips are down?

It’s easy to cheat on your taxes. The IRS can’t catch everybody, right? I could say I donated to the Salvation Army at Christmas (they don’t give receipts at the red cup, so I have a great excuse for not having one). I could say I donated a bunch of clothes — there are a few big bins around town where you can drop in clothes and shoes. There are a lot of ways you can increase your deductions or not claim income.

Every year I participate in surveys for textbook publishers, or review a chapter or two of a new version of a book, for which I’m paid anywhere from $20 to $250. I don’t get a W-2 for it. They don’t take out any federal or state income taxes. I could probably get away with not reporting it, but I do anyway. I know that every dollar in taxes that I owe that I don’t pay is going to have an effect, however small, on our government’s budget. If my school has to have a bake sale because I cheated on my taxes, that’s not right. If our troops can’t get the supplies they need because I cheated on my taxes, that’s on my head. I don’t have as much after-tax income as I might, but I sleep better at night because my conscience is pretty clear.

I’m perplexed by a few of the nominees that President Obama has put up lately. Tim Geithner didn’t pay his taxes for four years on the income he earned at the IMF. He was instructed, as every American who works for the IMF is every year, that the IMF does not pay payroll (Social Security and Medicare) taxes for their employees. The IMF even pays their employees more because they know the employees will have to fork over extra money to the government for these payroll taxes. Geithner decided not to pay his taxes. When it was discovered that he owed for four years, he only paid the two most recent years because the statute of limitations had expired on the previous two: he got away with cheating the IRS those two years because he wasn’t caught sooner. Then when he was nominated for Treasury Secretary by President Obama, and they looked into his background, he decided to go ahead and pay those two years of taxes. His excuse is basically that he didn’t know. BS. The smartest guy in the room in  almost every room he’s in, and he didn’t know? Riiiiight. I’m not sure how the person in charge of the IRS can expect me not to cheat on my taxes when he cheats on his. Sure, lots of people cheat on their taxes, but the person heading up the IRS has to set an example.

Then there’s Tom Daschle. Former Senate majority leader who was booted a few years ago, he’s been in the private sector for a while. And he’s been receiving free limousine and driver service for years, not claiming it as a benefit. Now that he’s been nominated to be the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, they discover this “oversight” and he goes back and pays taxes and penalties to the tune of $101,943. He didn’t pay $100,000 in taxes! He served in governent. He was his party’s leader in the Senate! He’s supposed to uphold the constitution and love this country, and he cheats on his taxes until he gets caught, then basically says, “Oops, my bad.”

I have no idea how John Edwards could run for president, have an affair and a child with his mistress, and think that nobody would ever figure it out. Or how Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House (the committee in charge of writing tax laws), when busted for breaking tax laws, can use the excuse that they’re too complicated. If anybody should be able to follow them, it should be you, Charlie, you wrote them! And it’s not just Democrats. You’ve got Mark Foley, Ted Stevens, and plenty of others. Lying, cheating and stealing in Washington is not about red or blue – it’s about green.

Are these people so arrogant that they think they’ll never get caught? Did they never have any character to begin with, or did they lose it when they started getting a little bit of power?

I was hoping that some of the change that President Obama would bring would start with getting rid of politicians with severe character problems. Based on who he has nominated to two top positions, I guess that’s hoping for a little too much. Is Geithner the only person who can run Treasury? Is Daschle the only person who can run HHS? Hardly. President Obama could send a clear message that he will not have anyone in his administration who has ever committed such crimes. That would signal a new era of government. That would be change in which I could believe.

I finally had my first day serving on a jury for Stearns county today. I made it to the voir dire (French for ”to speak the truth”, it is pronounced “vwa dear” by the French, and ”voyer dyer” by the bailiff today — gotta love Minnesota). After an hour and a half, everyone had been interviewed about a variety of things, and it was easy to tell who was smart (the branch manager of a bank, the guy who owned his own business, yours truly, and a few others). They needed 6 of the 14 of us for a misdemeanor trial, so they called out the names of the 8 people who were excused. Every smart person was kicked off the jury. The ones that were left included one man who, when asked if he could be impartial, sat silent for 10 seconds and then mumbled, “Yeah, I guess so.” (10 seconds to answer that question!)

The experience has shaken my faith in the legal system a bit. Here we have smart people being kicked off by lawyers so these lawyers can try to win their cases by persuading stupid people with arguments that smart people might question. A reverse Darwinian process, if you will, where the weakest are chosen. I guess it makes sense when you think about it, and if I were ever indicted for something I might want a lawyer who did the same, but it still just doesn’t seem right.

(There’s a good article in Time recently saying this is same time of Darwinism-in-reverse is happening with deer and other hunted animals, where the big and strong are prized and therefore shot and the weak are not. As a result, the species thrives by becoming smaller and weaker.)

One guy did get kicked off for cause, and I think his explanation was so good that there’s no way they could have possibly kept him. The defense attorney asked the jury panel if any of us had ever been in a courtroom before. This man raised his hand and was asked to explain the context in which he was in court. He said that he had been in court 4 times because he was convicted of 4 different crimes. The defense attorney asked if he ever had a jury trial. He said no, that each time he had pleaded guilty. When asked why, he said, “Because I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time, and I really was guilty, so just told the judge I did it.” When asked how his experience in court might affected his ability to be an impartial juror in this case, he said, “Well, I know that every time I was sitting in his (the defendant’s) seat, I was guilty. So it pretty much makes me think if he’s sitting there, he’s probably guilty, too.”  Sounds pretty logical to me.

I like to consider myself an informed person. Every weekend I watch pretty much every news show: Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week with George Clintonopolous, Fox News Sunday, The Chris Matthews Show, The Journal Editorial Report. I don’t watch CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer because for some reason I really can’t put into words, Wolf irritates the heck out of me. Every night I watch ABC World News Tonight and The O’Reilly Factor. I subscribe to both Newsweek and Time and read them each week. I think I’m on top of things, and I have one piece of advice for each side of the aisle.

To Democrats: Stop talking down the economy. Yes, it’s bad. Is it the worst economic situation since the Great Depression? Not quite. Since the end of WWII, we have had only 2 recessions that lasted longer than 11 months — in 1973 and 1980. The current recession is at 12 months and counting. It looks pretty much like these other two. Will it get worse? Maybe. In fact, probably. But the whole point of the fiscal stimulus package proposed by Democrats is to FIX THINGS! To inject money into the economy and get people spending and investing again. And people are not going to do that when they get their new government jobs or tax cuts if you keep telling them to buckle up, stick their head between their legs and kiss their butt goodbye. I understood when Obama was talking down the economy before he became president: it helped him defeat McCain and kept expectations low (as his rhetoric goes from “creating jobs” to “creating or saving jobs”). But he’s the president now. You would think that politicians would be smart enough to understand that when you scare people into thinking the world is ending, they’re going to sit on whatever cash they have. I think I understand why they’re doing it — they’re not sure if what they’re doing will work, and they don’t want to overpromise; if they say they’re going to fix the economy and they don’t, they’ll lose seats in 2 years. But America voted for Obama because they wanted leadership and optimism, and right now neither of those is coming out of the Democrats in Congress.

To Republicans: Quit being so sanctimonious about deficit spending. The bill put forth by the House Democrats isn’t perfect. There are some things in there that a) aren’t immediate, and b) probably aren’t even smart. When it takes $850 billion to create 3.5 million jobs, that’s $242,857.10 per job, and that sounds pretty inefficient to me. But Republicans have absolutely no credibility when they nitpick the package and pointing out a few million here and a few million there that shouldn’t be spent. We had deficits throughout the Bush Administration, and not entirely because of national defense and the war on terror. Republicans did a horrible job of keeping pork out of bills (one of my favorites is $1,000,000 to build a parking lot for an art museum in Iowa; the museum was created with private donations, but they needed federal taxpapers to pay for the parking lot — and in Iowa, the art capital of the world.). Now that the other party is in charge, Republicans need to quit acting as if none of these little spending projects would be in them if they were in charge. They would be, and Republicans would be making excuses too about how it was necessary and would provide jobs. Let the Democrats run with this and see if it works. If it does and the economy improves, Americans will be happy, and you should be happy, too. If it doesn’t, then you’ll probably gain votes in 2 years. Some of you may be saying that you don’t want to be “the party of ‘no’” but right now, that’s exactly what you are.

The media had a blast making fun of Bush’s mispronunciations and speaking errors, and there were many, no doubt about it. But Joe Biden is on the public stage now, and if the past is any indication of the future, it’s going to be hilarious. I won’t document what he’s said in the last few years, his ”gaffes” as the media calls them, because if you’re informed you’ve heard them before; but here are a few. (My favorite: Stand up, Chuck — let ‘em see ya!)

But when does a misstatement or gaffe become a lie? The media make it seem as if when Bush misspeaks he must have some hidden motive and is lying about something, but when Biden does it it’s just a simple slip-up or gaffe. As some in the media have put it, “That’s just Joe being Joe.” My new favorite is when his wife went on Oprah this week and said Joe had his choice of V.P. or Sec. State, and the next day it was refuted by Obama. So are we to believe that Joe lied to his wife? Or his wife lied to Oprah on national television? Or is Obama simply covering for yet another Joe Biden blunder? I’m sure you know which one I think it is.

On an economic note, I’ve heard Biden, Obama, and David Axelrod all say something to the effect of: “Every economist, whether Democrat or Republican, agrees that we need this stimulus.” Every economist? Really? Greg Mankiw, a well-renowned and respected economist, posts this today. The remainder of this post is verbatim from Mankiw’s blog. I should also note that there are two Nobel prize winners  in economics on Mankiw’s list of economists who disagree with Biden’s notion that a giant fiscal stimulus is the best course of action. I agree wholeheartedly with Mankiw’s statement that if you took every economist that disagrees with Biden and put them in one economics department, it would instantly be a top 10 economics department. I guess “every economist” doesn’t include Lucas and Becker… (See here for a larger list of skeptics, which includes three additional Nobel laureates: Edward Prescott, James Buchanan, and Vernon Smith.)

Is Joe Biden disingenuous or misinformed?

Every once in a while, I take a good hard look at my life, as we all should. Usually, it means going through the list of programs that are set to record on my DVR and asking “Why am I watching this crap?”

One of the most important concepts in economics is that of opportunity cost: what you give up in any situation. Even something like free television is not free — the cost of watching an hour of television is what you could have been doing instead. For me, it’s reading a book (I haven’t finished a new book in a long time, sadly), doing work around the house, getting ahead in my work for the semester, or getting more sleep so that I’m better able to take on the day.

Last night I found myself watching Bad Girls Club. Normally I would ask the reader not to judge me for this, but last night I started judging myself, so I can’t really blame you. I slept on it, and this morning I decided that I have watched my last episode of Bad Girls Club. It provides absolutely nothing redeeming to me and, while it can be entertaining to watch a bunch of crazy women scream at and fight with each other (and definitely makes me appreciate how sane my girlfriend is), it drains 45 minutes of my life each week and provides nothing positive in return.

But why stop there? If I can free up even an hour a day, that’s 7 hours each week I get back. I think it’s worth it. So here are the shows I’m removing:

The City — I haven’t even watched an episode, but I have 4 episodes taped. I love Whitney as much as the guys in the Sonic commercial, but it’s just not worth it.

Bromance. I’m ashamed of myself for even having taped them in the first place. Like The City, I haven’t watched an episode. And thankfully I never will. And if I never see Brody Jenner’s face again, I will live a happy life.

Dirty Jobs. I love it, but I’ll just wait for a Saturday marathon when I really have nothing to do. It’s always nice to realize that there’s an episode you haven’t seen before.

The People’s Court. I was going to go to law school before a professor by the name of Martha Olney at Berkeley taught me Econ 1 and put me on this track. I love court shows.  I have jury duty this week and I’m actually hoping they pick me. And it’s nice to have something to listen to while doing the dishes or cleaning up. I’ll miss her spanish idioms like “Toma la chocolate, paga la cuenta.” (You drink the chocolate, you pay the bill. — i.e., if you use a service, you have to pay for it.) But I still have Judge Judy, so Marilyn Milian must go.

I know there are more. On the DVR in the living room, I have 7 episodes of Fringe. In the bedroom, I have 8 episodes of True Blood, 3 Grey’s Anatomy, and will soon be racking up new episodes of Friday Night Lights, Hell’s Kitchen, and more shows than I care to admit. I am at the point now where I actually hope that a new series I record will be canceled so that I don’t have to watch those shows any more. When television becomes a chore, something’s wrong. But they say that realizing you have a problem is the first step towards fixing it. So thank you, Tanisha from Bad Girls Club, for scaring me straight.

I really don’t know what to make of Barack Obama. He ran on a vague campaign of change: the change you can believe in. His campaign lacked details, and the few things he did provide details on (binary choices like: will he close the prison in Guantanamo Bay? Will he speak directly with Iran without preconditions? Will he remove the Bush tax cuts? Will he move to renegotiate NAFTA?) he has changed his mind on, sometimes the very next day. It seems to me more like he ran on “the change you can imagine” — he was everything to everyone. Whatever you didn’t like about the country, you could see Obama changing it. That is a very appealing idea and explains his broad support from people from a variety of demographic groups.

What I don’t understand now is how the people who elected him are still so happy with him given that he’s gone back on his word about a lot of things. He promised a clean start, and then hires anyone and everyone who worked in the Clinton Administration. He promised to repeal the Bush tax cuts “for the rich” and then says maybe he’ll just let them expire. I don’t know whether I should be happy that he’s going back on his word (away from things I didn’t like in the first place) or upset that our new president so easily makes promises and breaks them when politically expedient to do so. (Remember his promise to use public financing for his campaign? That went out the door when he realized he could get more money by opting out.)

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not calling him a liar. Perhaps he just made mistakes by speaking too quickly (although it would be helpful if he admitted one mistake, which he never will — reminds me a little of GWB…) In fact, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that in the upcoming years, when he changes his mind on things, he will be doing what he feels is the right thing. But he will be breaking his promises. This is, however, nothing new for presidents. George H.W. Bush said he would not raise taxes and then later thought it was the appropriate thing to do, and it probably cost him re-election. Clinton promised a middle class tax cut and ended up raising taxes on the middle class. George W. Bush said he would not use our military for nation-building, then proceeded to do just that in Iraq. What promises will Obama break? We’ll have to wait and see. He’ll break some, no question. Will his supporters call him out on it? Will the media? In my mind, THAT is the big question.

(One more thing about letting the Bush tax cuts just expire instead of repealing them right away. In the campaign, Obama said that repealing the tax cuts was the right thing to do for the economy. He told Joe the Plumber that he thinks the economy works better when we spread the wealth around a little bit. OK, if that’s true, then shouldn’t a downturn in the economy mean we should spread the wealth even faster? Saying that the economy is bad, so we’re not going to raise taxes on rich people right now implies that you know raising taxes on rich people is bad for the economy. So why not be honest about it in the first place? Why lie and say that you actually think it’s good for the economy to raise taxes on the rich when your actions imply precisely the opposite? Because that would make people who don’t know enough about economics question your policy; this way, you don’t have to deal with the harsh reality of opportunity costs.)

I don’t want to end this on a down note. I’m proud that we have elected a black man to our highest office. I wish it were Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams, whose economic policies I generally agree with, but I’m not so partisan that I can’t appreciate good things about Obama’s election. It shows the world that the U.S. doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to the American Dream. It shows that anything really is possible in the United States, and that’s definitely a good thing.

And I have to give Obama credit in one very important area. He said we’re not red states and blue states. He said he wanted to bring the country together. And he’s actually trying to do that, in my estimation. He invited Rick Warren to give his invocation, even though he knew that many in his base oppose Warren as a crazy Christian who hates gay people. He sat down and had dinner with about a dozen influential conservative columnists –  and strangely was skewered for it by some on the left (how dare he even TALK to those people? They’re evil, aren’t they?); tolerance anyone? He has not turned his back on some far-left groups now that he is president, as the right-wing would hope. With so many of his actions, Obama is saying “I don’t care who you voted for. I don’t care what you think about a particular issue. You’re all Americans and I welcome all of you into the discussion.”

I only wish the rest of us would listen to that message. Your neighbor may not agree with you on abortion or gay rights or tax policy. But they are your neighbor and they are an American and they should be treated with respect. You may not agree with them, but that should not shut them out of the discussion. I hate the word tolerance, especially since so many people who call others intolerant are not tolerant themselves. (Don’t think so? Explain to me how gay people who oppose Warren for not being tolerant are not being intolerant by saying Obama should not have him participate in the inauguration.) Tolerance is what you do when you hate your roommate but know you have to live with them for the next year. Tolerance is what you do to the annoying person in the front of the class who asks stupid questions all the time and doesn’t realize he’s (it’s usually a guy) dominating the classroom discussion and wasting everyone else’s time. How about acceptance instead of tolerance? How about understanding that they feel and think differently than you, but they have value as a human being and have their own things they’re going through that have shaped their philosophy. You may not agree with it, but you haven’t walked in their shoes. Let’s try a little acceptance in this country.

I wish Obama well. I hope he continues to move to the center, as he has done with many of his appointments to his cabinet. I hope he really tries to unite us. More than that, I hope we follow his lead and return to civil discourse and working together to solve our problems.

Update: That was a very good inaugural speech. I especially liked the part where he said that if a government program was not working, he’d cut it. I think he’s working to earn political clout with the population as a whole, and succeeding at it, so that when partisan bickering occurs in the House and Senate he can step in and tell them to do what he wants them to do, and they’ll look like they’re opposing the will of the people if they don’t comply.

Sure, it’s not perfect. No system is. But one thing capitalism is great at is unleashing the ingenuity and productive ability of a population. And markets reward firms that can reduce costs, leading to innovations in design and production techniques. Over time, while prices may rise due to inflation, most products get cheaper in real terms. One way of understanding the “real” cost of something is to ask yourself: how many hours would the average person have to work to be able to afford a product?

In 1949, the price of a toaster was $16.95. Average wages being $1.26, someone would have to work 13.5 hours to buy a toaster. Now at a price of $19.99, a toaster costs about an hour of a person’s labor.

In 1949, a refrigerator took the average worker 178 hours to buy. That’s 22 days. Over a month of working days to buy a refrigerator. Now it will cost the average worker 3-5 days, depending on the model.

In 1981, the price of a VCR was $1,289. I remember them — my uncle was a police officer and somehow managed to get all the latest gadgets. He seemed to know when one was going to fall off a truck somewhere. We had a VCR and it was giant. At $1,289, that’s 187 hours of work, something clearly only rich people would be able to afford. Now if you can find a VCR (since most places now only carry DVD players), it will set you back maybe $60, or 3 hours of labor.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the idea. Capitalism isn’t perfect. Sure, sometimes people are unfortunate and end up with the short end of the stick. But even with the short end of the stick, you can buy a pretty decent basket of goods these days thanks in part to the innovations that capitalism inspires.

Before the Fall 2008 semester, I had the opportunity to be part of the First Year Experience (FYE) program. I was part of the “Professor’s Perspective,” where professors talk about what we do, what we expect from students, and how college is different from high school. A lot of it has to do with things that high school students just don’t know. College is a different culture and schools can be different. When I was an undergrad at Berkeley, we called all of our professors “Professor.” In grad school at WashU, we called them all “Doctor.” Some of this is institutional. Some of it is just plain common sense, if you think about things from a professor’s perspective.

Preparing for my lecture, I decided to speak with my colleagues about what they would like incoming freshmen to know. Here are a few suggestions for students based on those conversations with my colleagues.
1. Address your professor as “Professor X” (X = last name) unless she tells you otherwise. You can call her Doctor X, too — that’s always nice. If she tells you that you can address her by her first name, then feel free to do so. (Note: if she signs her e-mails with her first name, that is not an invitation to call her by her first name — I don’t sign my e-mails “Dr. Switzer” and don’t really know many professors that do. I personally don’t mind if students feel comfortable enough with me that they call me Dave; other professors loathe it.) Never ever ever call her Mrs. X or Ms. X. We worked hard for our PhDs. Well, maybe we didn’t all work hard, but we worked for a long time on them anyway. We earned that doctorate. Respect us enough to honor that.

2. Proper e-mail ettiquette can go a long way. Unfortunately, most students have grown up with instant messaging and no longer know where the Shift key is located on the keyboard. Maybe we shouldn’t, but we take it as a sign of disrespect when you address us at the same level you would address someone you just met in a chat room. If you send me an e-mail, you should do a few things. (I think these hold for a lot of professors, and you can never go wrong by being too formal).

- First, start it with “Dr. Switzer” or “Hi, Dr. Switzer.” — something along those lines. Don’t start with “Hey, dude.” I’ve received that e-mail before. I’m not a dude. I’m your professor.

- Second, get to the point. Think about what you’re going to say and say it as succinctly as you can. You have 4 or 5 professors, so communicating with them may not seem like a burden on you. We have over 100 students, so we like to save time whenever possible.

- Third, use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. Capitalize the first word of a sentence. Don’t use abbreviations like “c u l8r” or “wtf was up with ur lecture 2day?”

- Fourth, if your e-mail requires a response and you get one in a very timely manner, send back a quick thank you. It shows us that you acknowledge that we’re going above and beyond for you, trying to be helpful. And we like being appreciated for the work we put in. We won’t think you’re a suck-up — we’ll think you’re one of the few students who really understands just how much we care about helping our students.

3. RTFS. Read the freakin’ syllabus. It costs you virtually nothing to fire off an e-mail asking when the final exam is or when the homework is due. (Hint: go to the SCSU main page, click on “current students” then click “academic calendar” and click on the “final exams” link to find out when your exam is.) The majority of questions students ask are actually in the syllabus. We wrote it for a few reasons. One of those was so that we wouldn’t have to answer the same question from 30 different students about how much of the course grade the homework assignments are worth.

That’s about it for now. I could go on and on but I have the feeling if I did, you’d think I was a grumpy old man. I’m not. The vast majority of the time, this job is the best job in the world and I feel lucky to have it. As professors, we want to know that you’re taking your education seriously. And treating your professors with a little bit of respect makes us think you do that. And when we have students that we feel are taking our classes seriously, 90% of us will bend over backwards to help them. Some day you’ll need a letter of recommendation for grad school or a scholarship or something. When that day comes, you’ll be glad you were friendly and respectful to your professors. I know I’m not writing a letter for the guy who sent me the “Hey, Dude” e-mail any time soon.

Update: I almost forgot one more good thing not to do. If you miss class, never e-mail your professor and ask, “Did I miss anything important today?” That makes me want to answer, “No, you missed nothing of consequence whatsoever. I stood up in front of the class and rambled for 50 minutes about complete nonsense, none of which will ever be useful to you in this class or in life overall.” Hopefully you’ll pick up on the sarcasm and not e-mail me back and say, “Okay, good.” If you miss class, it is your responsibility to get notes from another student. If you have a nice professor, you may take a stab at asking if he/she can tell you what you missed. But don’t ask if it was important. For us, it’s all important, whether you see it that way or not.

This is a new show on the Discovery Channel with Last Comic Standing finalist, and Minnesota native, Dave Mordal. It shows you some of the crazy, usually fairly white trash things that people do like race lawnmowers and train to wrestle alligators. The first episode was pretty funny; Mordal has a good dry humor and doesn’t usually just go for the obvious joke. And you can’t go wrong with a television show that shows you a girl getting bit in the face by a 12-foot alligator, and then coming back to finish the training.