I’m starting to read the 2014 Form 1040 instruction booklet today. This is good for the economy; much better than building bridges, fixing cars, or painting a beautiful sunset. I got two pages into it and blew a fuse. Of course, I’m excited to make my Shared Responsibility Payment. There are little sixteen-year-old girls who were even more responsible than me. Whereas I was locked up by my parents’ command, these responsible girls were out getting pregnant. Now, I must pay the price for being irresponsible lest one of their love children, for whom neither they, nor whichever of their seventeen responsible committed partners was responsible, can pay.

It got me thinking. We need to get all our teenagers pregnant. Doing so, we were just told by Buncombe County leadership, will leverage $9 from the state and federal government for every $1 in county tax revenues spent. Those same $9 will then filter through Walmart as food stamps are used. Walmart will then spend the proceeds to hire more sub-living-wage employees who, in turn, will need welfare, which will be grounds for the county to go out and leverage more money at the 9:1 ratio.

If you have a teenage son whose stodgy gender identity is preventing him from getting pregnant, encourage him to sell drugs or at least go around stealing. With enough offenders, we can justify building capacity in county youth rehab programs that will leverage more outside dollars for our community.

If none of those strategies work for you, write a letter pressuring the county to raise taxes so we can recruit more industrial giants to the area. At least last night Asheville City Councilman Marc Hunt admitted the awarding of economic development incentives was not fair. He’s said so much before, but he’s trapped by the “everybody’s doing it” mantra. Mayor Esther Manheimer, though, scolded us all, again, because we’re too dense to grasp yet that industrial giants are spirits. They can ride tax-free a few years because they waft through our community adding no demand for public services, and therefore justifying no drain on the public treasury.

For another example of how irresponsibility fuels our exponentially skyrocketing economy, cliquez ici to read about the crushing impact of the state’s refusal to spend near-term, tenfold multipliers on Medicaid expansion.

Where were we? Oh, yes, searching for the instructions for line 61 and Form 8965.