Out of My Mind (40 page)

I'm not a happy and contented American at this time of year because, while I don't object to paying taxes, I do object to the inscrutable language used in our tax laws that make them impossible for the average person to understand.

Our tax laws read as if the people who wrote them have a sweetheart deal going with H&R Block. If the tax laws were written in plain English, as they should be, H&R Block would be out of business. As it is, their business is booming.

In New York City, where I am, they open storefront offices all over town at this time of year, and desperate taxpayers flock in for help.

Here's one paragraph from the Alternative Minimum Tax form that I defy anyone to explain: “Step 6. If you did not complete Part III of Form 6251, enter the amount from line 28 of Form 6251 on line 17 of the AMT Form 1116 and go to Step 7 on page 8. If you completed Part III of Form 6251, you must complete, for the AMT, the Worksheet for Line 17 in the Form 1116 instructions to determine the amount to enter on line 17 of the AMT Form 1116 if: Line 53 of Form 6251 is smaller than line 54, and Line 41 of Form 6251 is greater than zero.”

I was careful in retyping that to include the punctuation, spelling and capitalizations just as they appeared. I was alternately amused, confused and infuriated by its stupidity. Who at the Internal Revenue Service decided to use the small letter “l” twice in “line 28” and “line 17” and then in the fourth line suddenly capitalize the “L” in “Line 17”?

Who was the genius at the IRS who decided that, in the phrase “Step 7 on page 8,” the word “Step” would be capitalized, but “page” would be lowercase?

Why is the word “Worksheet” capitalized?

A fourth-grade teacher would give a paper like this a failing mark.

We haven't always had income taxes in this country. For many years, the government supported itself mostly with taxes on liquor and tobacco. I suppose our Founding Fathers thought of smoking and drinking as evil and decided taxing them was the best way to raise money without making people mad.

The first real income tax came in 1862 to pay for the Civil War. War always eats more of our taxes than anything good for us, like health or education. Even back then, the tax was progressive. The rich paid a bigger percentage of their income than the less well off. Even the rich have always had a hard time arguing against that inequity. In recent years,
however, there has been a movement that would have everyone, rich and poor pay the same percentage of their income in taxes. I can't figure out whether I'd do better or worse.

What we should do is take a few million of that 2 trillion dollars next year and send the people who write the tax laws to a school that would teach them how to use the English language in a way that doesn't read like Greek to us.

Several times in the past five years, I've had some medical attention from doctors like ophthalmologists, orthopedists and cardiologists, or semi-doctors like podiatrists, optometrists and chiropractors. In each case, I've showed my card from United Healthcare, with whom I am insured as a CBS News employee. As I've left these various offices, the person at the desk says something like, “The co-pay is $25.” I pay and leave.

Several months ago, I had a bad toenail and chose a “podiatrist” from the yellow pages. The man seemed competent and after he worked on my foot, I put on my shoes and stopped at the front desk. The woman there said, “Your part, the co-pay, is $
₃₅
.” That seemed about right for what the podiatrist did, so I wrote a check.

The woman's “Your part” rang in my ears, though, and I said, “How much was the other part?” She shuffled through her papers and said, “Your insurance provider pays $
₄₇₅
.”

Something is seriously wrong with our health care system. A General Motors official said this week that health-care benefits for employees were adding $I,500 to the cost of every car. It's wrong because the money has little to do with our health, and it isn't the doctors or the nurses who are benefiting.

Last month, I came to the office one day and didn't feel good. By noon, I felt worse, so I called my doctor and went to the hospital where
he has an office. He checked me over, poking in all the old familiar places, and couldn't find anything wrong. He was apprehensive about a possible heart problem and said it would be a good idea if he admitted me to the hospital overnight.

I had a room with just one bed and was impressed by the attention I got. You can't tell who's a nurse in a hospital anymore. Nurses used to wear cute little hats but they don't anymore so you don't know who's a nurse and who isn't. And everyone wears a stethoscope. They used to be doctors, but now even the people who empty the wastebaskets wear stethoscopes.

From early on to all night long people kept coming in to take things. They took my temperature, my blood pressure, blood samples, urine samples, and they kept hitting me on the knee with that little rubber hammer to see if I jerked.

At one point, when one of them started to take my blood pressure by wrapping my arm in the elastic bandage, I said, “Someone just did that five minutes ago.”

She ignored me and proceeded to take it again. I liked all the unnecessary attention, oblivious to the fact that each test was being entered on a chart at the desk for cost-accounting later.

My doctor came in with a cardiologist he had asked to look at me. They were impressive professionals, although neither wore a stethoscope. I spent the night with bells ringing in the hallway and the stethoscope women coming in every half hour to wake me and ask if I was sleeping OK.

I was released from the hospital the next day. In the following weeks, I got a bill from each doctor. I paid them.

Yesterday, I received a statement from United Healthcare notifying me of my one-night hospital charges.

The breakdown from Mount Sinai Hospital reads:

 

Room and board, $2,875. Not covered, $525.

State of NY Surcharge, $207.98

Mount Sinai Hospital Misc. Services, $4,856.95. Amount allowed, $2,725.93.

State of NY Surcharge, $24I.24

TOTAL: $8,I8I.I7

News of the economy is not the story I read first in my newspaper. My eyes glaze over with money talk because I don't understand it.

There have been a lot of stories recently indicating that there is very little inflation in our economy. Officials in Washington concede that the price of gas is higher, but they claim other things aren't costing much more than they did a year ago. They put the increase at less than 1 percent. If the inflation rate is only 1 percent, how come when I go to the store the stuff that used to cost me $20 now costs $35?

Does anything you buy cost the same as it used to? I'm talking about ordinary things like a cake of soap, a loaf of bread, or a pair of shoes. I saw a pair of sneakers in a store for $83. Sneakers? Whatever happened to Keds for $7?

Last weekend, I made a 250-mile drive. The small country road I took met the Thruway, and I was ready for coffee. There's a small place there where I often stop. “Small, black to go, please,” I said. A pleasant, courteous young woman went about drawing the coffee.

“How much is that?” I asked as she put the top on, foolishly fishing a dollar bill out of my pocket.

“A dollar eighty-two,” she said.

Everywhere you go you're faced with price increases no matter what economists say about there being no inflation. Motion picture attendance is down sharply this summer. The producers are puzzled and have offered a half-dozen reasons why people aren't going to the movies as
much as they did a few years ago. Have they given any thought to their prices? Obviously, one reason people are staying home is that it costs them nothing to watch a movie on television in their living room but they have to shell out $9.50 a person to get into a theater. A bag of popcorn is $3.50 and a soft drink $2.50. I'm waiting for theaters to start charging people for using the bathroom.

The price of a hotel room has soared. In big cities, it's usual for a room to cost more than $200 and, if you order breakfast, it costs more than the room would have cost a few years ago.

Our telephone bill came the other day and I was shocked to see that a call I made to information for a local number cost $I.99. Didn't information used to be free?

A pint of Poland Spring's water costs $I.35 in the cafeteria in my building. The price of gas may be high, but if gas cost as much as water in those little bottles, you'd be paying $I62 to fill your car with fifteen gallons.

In Florida, farmers say they're growing more oranges than they're selling. Has it occurred to them to reduce the price so all of us up here can afford to make a glass of juice for less than $5?

I'd like to have dinner some night at a good restaurant in Washington with a government economist and have him pay the check, just to give him a more realistic view of inflation.

I haven't heard yet today, but I suppose gas prices hit a new high. They always do. The last time I filled my tank, I hit a new personal high. It cost me an even $50. I've never known exactly, but I think my tank holds seventeen gallons and it must have been almost empty. My personal low cost for a tank of gas came when I was in high school. I remember getting five gallons for $I at the Shell station. I was loyal to Shell for several
years and then loyal to Texaco. Now, I buy gas where it's cheapest. I think it all comes from the same place. It's the same gas.

Oil was $73 a barrel the last time I bought any, according to news on the radio. I don't know why they always tell us how much oil is a barrel. No one ever buys a barrel of oil. How would I get it home if I did? They'd probably charge me extra for the barrel itself.

The price they give for what a gallon of gas will cost at the pump on any given day never bears any resemblance to what I pay.

New York borders both New Jersey and Connecticut, and gas is cheaper in New Jersey because the gas tax is less. The tax is 32 cents in New York, 25 cents in Connecticut and 14.5 cents in New Jersey. Georgia has the lowest tax, 7.5 cents per gallon but I'd have to drive about 700 miles to get it.

I often drive to upstate New York, and I make a point of driving a route that takes me through New Jersey. After driving about 30 miles, I come to the New York State Thruway. I always try to get to New Jersey when I'm low on gas, then I drive to a gas station that's just before the New York border and fill up there.

I drive 130 miles north and two days later, after the weekend, I return and can usually get back to New Jersey before I have to fill up again. I continue on into New York and can usually get home with more than three quarters of a tank left. I don't save much but it makes me feel wonderful.

If radio announcers want to tell us something we don't know about gas, tell us how much the guy who owns the pump pays per gallon. Tell us how much the wholesaler pays the big oil companies. That's what we'd like to know.

There are seventy gallons in a barrel of oil, but the oil in the barrel is the crude stuff, straight out of the ground. From that, refineries can produce only about thirty-five gallons of gas that we can burn in our cars. Let's say a barrel of crude costs $70, I figure a gallon of gas would cost an oil company something like $I.40 a gallon to produce. With gas selling for more than $3 a gallon at the pump, even after all the costs they
must factor into their prices—things like trucking, rent and salaries—gas station owners and wholesalers must still be making a big profit. For the most part, I don't think it's the gas station owners who are ripping us off. The wholesalers make more than the retailers.

Oil company profits are sky high with the new prices and this gives capitalism a black eye. Oil companies shouldn't make a single penny more on a gallon of gas when the price goes up. They should make the same profit on gas selling for $3 a gallon that they made when it was selling for $2 or $I.50 a gallon.

I have some ideas for saving gas myself. I'm going to put a note pad in my car and every time I get in I'm going to write down where I'm going. I'll start the car, go where I said I was going and no place else. I'll go directly there and directly back home. No wandering around. I'll cut my gas bill in half without ever having to go to New Jersey.

About four years ago, I was a guest on Martha Stewart's television show. I was impressed with her charm, competence and attractive appearance. I liked her a lot, although I was amused by her aggressive personality, which was apparent in everything she did. More recently, I was impressed with the classy way she behaved during her five-month stay in prison. She just took it. When she came out, she was so open and public that she came off more as a victim than a criminal.

The only thing wrong with all that is, my semi-friend Martha did something wrong and deserved what she got. She contributed to the lack of confidence a lot of Americans have in our economic system. A jury concluded she lied when she said she didn't have inside information before she sold 4,000 shares of a stock that plunged the next day.

There is plenty of reason for all of us to worry about this sort of thing. Our economy is based, to some extent, on trust. We have to trust
that the people who run the institutions primary to our economy, in business and government, are honest. It's bad for all of us when we have good reason to lose confidence in such important people.

It was bad public relations for our free enterprise system this week when the chief executive of Boeing, Harry Stonecipher, was forced out for having an affair with another Boeing employee. It wasn't the affair that did Harry in; it was being a hypocrite.