I’ve gotten this blog moved over to a different host and am now running on a platform that doesn’t require me to use the cludgy old software that I was using. Primarily that was what kept me from posting, but I’m back and should start posting more frequently again.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beers by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.’
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected.
They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
Each of the six was better off than before and the first four continued to drink for free, but once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got TEN times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something very important….they didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.
The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
Ok, i’ll join the hundreds and thousands of people who have blogged about what a rip off Spirit airlines is.. so here is my story:
In January 2007, I purchased four round trip first class tickets for my family on Spirit airlines to the Grand Cayman’s for a vacation from February 9th thru February 17th. I purchased the scam trip insurance from Travel Guard (accidentally).
Due to weather we were unable to get to the airport for our departure. We tried to call, along with many other unfortunate Spirit customers. After several hours and many attempts to call and receiving the usual “we’re sorry, all customer service reps are busy with other customers”. At this point I decided that getting my family there was more important than getting them there on Spirit so I chartered a private jet.
Great vacation, good times.
The morning of our return home I go online to do online checkin with Spirit, but spirit says our tickets have been cancelled. Drats, ok well they must have cancelled them because we maissed the first leg. Lesson learned. Their web site indicates however that we have a credit with them that we can use (because we paid 6k for tickets that we didnt use).
Their web site keeps having server errors while i’m trying to redeem these vouchers… no luck. Eventually I try calling Spirit customer service and *suprise* I get an hour of “we’re sorry, all customer service reps are too busy to help you”… so once again I get to choose between taking Spirit airlines to get home or getting home.
I bought tickets on American to get us home and we survived the trip.
I begin my weekly ritual of trying to call Spirit customer service to get a refund or at least get functioning credits with them for a future flight… and for about 3 months we continue to be unable to get in touch with a human being.
At my wits end I decide to call American Express, after all I am one of those lucky people with the card that everybody talks about (weee lucky me)… I figure that I am an important person so they will help me… and they try.
Spirit tells them they will call me… so Amex closes the dispute. Spirit never calls.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit says they will take care of the issue…. so Amex closes the dispute.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit says they tried calling me and will try again… so Amex closes the dispute.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit asks for me to send them a formal letter explaining the issue, I do… Amex closes the dispute.
Spirit claims they never got the letter.
This goes on a few more times. Frustrated but kind Amex reps continually spend hours trying to reach human beings in the customer service department at Spirit… they realize how hard it is.
During this entire time I have continued my weekly ritual of trying to reach a human at Spirit.. never once since the day I placed my order online did I reach a human being from Spirit… until today.
Spirit customer service rep Niurka Paulino (who can be reached at 954-447-7965 x 1711) she goes by the name “Nikki” (and seems ready to “rumble” from her loving demeanor) finds my account, puts me on hold to “talk to her manager” and advises me that these non-refundable tickets cant be refunded and that spirit wont issue me a voucher for use on a future Spirit flight…
SCRREEEECCCH… wait, did you just tell me that you are going to take my $6000 and you’re not going to even let me reschedule the flights for a different time? Yep, sure did. I guess this is how they stay profitable, taking the money and not providing any services in exchange for the money.
She was however kind enough to remind me that I had been suckered into paying $20 dollars (or something like that) for “Travel Insurance” through Travel Guard and gave me their number. Travel gaurd of course advised me that there was nothing they could do because it was my fault that I had missed the flight. The fact that Spirit couldnt actually be contacted seems to be beyond everybody’s care.
Perhaps Google in all their infinite wisdom will pick up this blog entry and link to it.
But don’t worry my dear readers, I’m not done, now I’m just going to find another way to get my money back from them.. many people have won claims against spirit for this type of practice.
I pretty much plan on doing the following:
1) Filing a complaint with the BBB
2) Filing a complaint with the Connecticut consumer affairs department (they are actually really helpful).
2) Making friends and family aware that they should avoid Spirit Airlines.
3) Blogging about it (here) so that the occassional stranger will know to avoid them.
4) Keeping a really really close eye on the skies with my binoculars in the tri-state area and making sure to report any altitude violations I see to the FAA.
5) I may file a series of small claims against them which will force them to spend some time and money defending this rip-off practice, I’m not sure.
6) I may just waste 50k suing them for fraud. I have lots of good lawyers who are always happy to to get new work.
If anything happens I will update you!
As always,
-Arlo Gilbert
Today I had a wonderful flight. It was my first 25NM solo flight, that means it was the first time that I took off by myself, flew to a destination by myself and then returned by myself.
There isn’t a lot to say about it. It was fun, I was safe, I landed well, I took off well, I used my checklists and I talked to myself as though my instructors were in the plane.
This it the one fun thing… and perhaps I wish it had been explained better to me in the beginning… but the fact is that the goal of flight training is to drill procedures into your head and this is done by constant repetition.
Of course with my luck even though I was flying solo, my instructor “Greg” happened to be in the air also and jumped in and helped me out with a confused tower/approach controller.
Thanks “Greg”!
Mitzvot dot com is my new project… no it’s not live, in fact it’s not even in development yet, I bought the domain for a few thousand dollars recently (what a steal), but after having a few conversations with my wife about problems that day schools and other small/non-technically savvy organizations have, I decided that me owning mitzvot dot com must be more than a chance… it’s an opportunity to perform a mitzvah!
Not only does the name define exactly what we will do, but it’s a really cool way to help! I’m not 60 with 10 billion dollars (yet) but I am pretty sharp and I do know more about billing credit cards online than pretty much anybody else on the planet… not patting myself on the back, it’s just something I’m exceptionally good at.
So since it’s not exactly a top secret business plan, I envision mitzvot dot com as being a one stop shop for jewish fundraising activities online. We will provide organizations with a single link that they can send to potential donors to collect from $5 to $5000 at a time… we’ll help them manage their silent auctions and charity fund raisers for almost nothing… and the fact is that what we do charge will surely be meaningless when they increase their fundraise significantly.
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks this is a cool idea, one of the richest and most successful guys on the planet today told me that he thought it was interesting as well. Who could it be? Eh… name dropping is so 2007… but it was definitely my biggest brush with fame.
I’ll try to keep blogging more regularly, when life gets busy sometimes things like blogging fall by the wayside.
-Arlo Gilbert