When I did Living Cheap News, I had a section
titled “Dumb Idea of the Month.” There was always a wide selection to choose
from.
I recently came
across two news items that I think deserve mention, and no, our streetcar is
not one of them. That may well qualify as the dumb idea of the century if not
the millennium.
The first dumb idea
comes from Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of and culture officer for New York
based WeWork, a co-working firm. He announced that not only will WeWork not
serve meat at company functions, it will not reimburse employee meals that
contain meat while WeWork employees travel on business. WeWork wisely did not
impose those restrictions on those who rent space from them.
I find this dumb on
so many levels but most of all on the level that Mr. McKelvey thinks his
employees should not eat meat, so he plans to do what he can to impose his
views on his employees. Who knows what’s next? Perhaps lowered performance
evaluations for meat eaters?
The second dumb
idea demonstrates that we have a government that works—just not for us. The IRS
now has enough data that it has the capability to prepopulate information on a
tax form for each of us. Imagine how simple this would be. You get a free
online tax form showing your salary, your interest, etc. It’s almost as easy as
the postcard our president promised. But it’s not going to happen.
There is
legislation working its way through Congress to prevent the IRS from providing
any such assistance, courtesy of our own H&R Block as well as Intuit, the
company behind TurboTax.
Can you imagine not
only how easy this would have been? And how much effort and money it would have
saved, not only for taxpayers, but also for the IRS, which would probably not
have to spend so much money getting people to correct errors that such an
online form would have prevented?
© 2018 Larry Roth
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