Sweet Surprise…
I thought I would share something on a lighter note with you all… Here in Illinois (IL), the sales tax is a whopping 10.25%, however, necessities such as food items are exempt and are taxed at a lower 2.5%.  In prior years, candy was taxed at 2.5%. However, under the new regulation (set to increase revenue for the state) Candy is now being classified as a non-food item and thus moving up to the 10.25% bracket. How does one differentiate food from candy? Simple, anything with flour is considered food. Therefore, according to this law Twix and Kit Kat are food items and jolly ranchers are candy. Since it is only a state law, I do not think there is going to be much of a reaction from ca

Too much…
Too much of anything is bad, and government regulation is no different. I have been asked time and again why I fear and dislike too much governmental intervention. Though I have written about this issue a lot, an example of a double-jointed pendulum provides a nice visual which provides an analog to my reservations about nationalization: It is easy to anticipate the path of the pendulum when the joint is locked. However, when the joint is released the movement of the pendulum is totally unpredictable. This is a great visualization of chaos theory – where a small change causes a large amount of uncertainty. In short, the more