The Way We Live Now: taxing and spending, or perhaps doing the opposite. We're almost certain that some combination of tax increases or cuts and concomitant spending increases or cuts will help our paralyzed economy. We're not stupid.

Remember "homesteading?" It sounds like some long-lost sort of cabin-building project, out in Nebraska or something. We really don't know what it is precisely, because "reading every last story" is not something that is viable in our newly retrained new media job environment. I guess the point I want you, the reader, to walk away with is that homesteading is making a comeback, mostly because of a formula big tobacco companies figured out long ago: give away a little something free (land) and get back something of value (tax dollars).

The corollary to this, of course, is that land is worthless. Land in Nebraska, at least. Big whoop. Lots of things more desirable than Nebraska land are worthless these days, too. Like whatever it is that corporations did, or made. They find now that it's much more productive to cut things, and people, than to make things, or hire people.

That's just good solid arithmetic.

So we see that all economic indicators and indications and indexes indicate that perhaps our "best move" may be to simply give away everything, cut it right down to the bone marrow, then sit back and reap the rewards. What does this mean for the possible expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the only real issue that people that matter are thinking about these days? It means that taxes shall return, and we must simply rub our crystal balls and hope against hope that our leaders have made the right choices. Our nation's mansions are already crumbling. If this tax thing doesn't work, poor people will hardly have any mansions to gaze upon wistfully at all.

[Pic via]