In this age of expanding government participation in so many facets of our individual and family lives, it's time to re-examine the various proposals to pay for the many new programs being touted by President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress.

The shortfall in government revenue to meet the financial obligations put upon our society is usually met with a call for new taxes or a new tax structure, or both.  However, one of the most popular ways is to put more of the tax burden on businesses and corporations.

I submit that businesses and corporations NEVER pay taxes anyway. Many reading this statement may call me wrong, or a radical, but please read on.

First of all, a corporation is made up of people; people who have invested their savings in corporate stock in the hope of the company making a profit sufficient to pay the stockholder a decent dividend on his or her investment.

In order to do this, the company must earn a profit. Without a profit there is no return for the stockholders and ultimately, no money to pay the employees. Without income, there are no taxes. Without tax revenue, a government has no funds for any program.

Winston Churchill said it well when he said, "Some people look upon profit as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others see it as a cow to be milked. Only a few see it for what it really is, the strong and willing horse that pulls the cart along."

Furthermore, all corporate or business taxes become part of the cost of making the product and eventually show up in the cost of producing the product the consumer buys.

So, in reality, corporations don't pay the taxes - they simply collect them and send them to the government.

To make it worse, every manufacturer and supplier must pay people to keep track of the taxes due, fill out the forms and send the payments to Washington and/or the various state capitals. These administrative costs to the companies become a part of their costs for the products we buy and the consumer simply reimburses the company who made the product at the time of purchase.

So, your taxes and mine and all those "embedded taxes" hidden in the cost of the product go to pay for all kinds of bureaucratic nonsense associated with this antiquated and out-dated system.

There have been several solutions suggested:

1. The value added tax. Each time in the manufacturing process when value is added to a natural resource, a tax would be added. You pay all the taxes as part of the price of the final product.

2. The national sales tax. Same thing, in a different format. Every business would collect a tax on what consumers purchase, keep track of it, report it, send it to Washington where bureaucrats would check to be sure all is correct. The valued added tax and the national sales tax would put a bigger burden on lower income families.

3. The flat tax. It has been estimated that a flat tax of between 17 and 20 percent on ALL personal income would be sufficient to run our needed government programs. There would be no deductions (or very limited deductions, perhaps for education.)

Everyone would pay except those at the poverty level, but even the lowest wage earner would pay some minor amount so that all would feel they are sharing something from their labors to help finance the operation of the government in the greatest nation on the face of this earth, blessed with the best form of government and best economic system ever devised, in spite of its imperfections.

Filing a tax return should be a simple procedure and should not require all kinds of forms or the need for an accountant or lawyer, or both.

So remember, all taxes, whether corporate, business or personal are paid by the consumer. That's you and me. So why not just tax us in the first place?

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Art Holst is a motivational speaker and legend in the speaking industry. His broad background provides the foundation for his messages spiced with inspiration, humor, and poetry. To learn more about Art, visit http://www.speakersoffice.com/art_holst.asp or http://www.artholst.com/.

What does Labor Day mean to America?  Speaker, humorist and poet, Art Holst, shares his thoughts...

The life of a human being, taken in total, is far more than just having things. There is a spiritual side of life that is at least as important as the material side. However, the spiritual or emotional side of life is made better because of the material side, or "things." I believe there is a simple formula for all material progress and it is as follows:

MMW = RM + MP x T

MMW means "man's material welfare." RM stands for "raw materials." MP stands for "man power" and T stands for "tools."

Labor Day is the holiday when we as Americans honor the "MP" manpower part of the equation. It began as an idea in New York City in 1882 as a "day off for working citizens". On June 28, 1894, the United States Congress made Labor Day a National Holiday. There were parades, fireworks and speeches by prominent people. We celebrate it more now with picnics, boating, barbecues, swimming and travel. It's like a salute to the end of Summer, and a last opportunity for travel before school begins. It also signals a beginning for the college and NFL football season, which of course is one of my favorite times of the year. In spite of all of that, the reason for Labor Day in the first place is still valid and should not be overlooked in the midst of all the end of Summer fun.

Raw Materials have no value until we add value to them by mining, processing, shaping, forming, painting, and in a variety of other ways. So Raw Materials are fundamental to production. The multiplying factor in our equation is the "T, the Tools, which are provided by investment capital and without them we would still be doing most everything by hand. This is still true in many parts of the world.  Investors, stockholders, or single small business owners are needed to provide the capital which, in turn, furnishes the tools. But nothing happens until all three parts of the equation come together. Labor has no tools without capital and tools mean nothing without a skilled man or woman to use them in shaping a brighter material future for America.

So, on September 7th, we recognize and celebrate that vital part of the equation for all material progress, the men and women with the skill to use the tools to create an even brighter future for our country.

Into each car, or computer,

Each piece, and part and whole

Go the tools and skillful labor

That gives the work a soul.

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

- Art Holst

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Art Holst is a motivational speaker and legend in the speaking industry. His broad background provides the foundation for his messages spiced with inspiration, humor, and poetry. To learn more about Art go to http://www.speakersoffice.com/art_holst.asp or www.artholst.com.

A bus ride to town cost a nickel. Two hamburgers and a Coke at George Nichols Coney Island cost a quarter, if you had one. A new Chevrolet was about $600. A first class letter was 3 cents and you could send a postcard anywhere in the U.S. for a penny. This was in Galesburg, Illinois in 1934 when I was 12 years old. By that time, even our family car was but a memory.

This was the "Great Depression" and it had a dramatic effect on my life. When I read the dire stories comparing the present business slump to the depression I knew, I smile and say, "They have no idea how much worse that was." Yet, I never heard anyone in our family refer to us as being "poor." We were, but we didn't know it! We were never on any government aid or help program, but we were on a family self-help program.

Bad economic times demand positive thinking, together with the willingness and courage to do things that haven't been done before. That was true in our family and it is true in all families and businesses today. Those who serve the best, are the most honest, work the hardest, and work the smartest, will survive and prevail.

These are the questions to ask as we ponder how to make tough times work for us:

1.  How can we provide better customer service?

This is an excellent time to retool.  Schedule a group meeting to talk about what your team and customers are struggling with.  Hold a brainstorming session on simple ways you can relieve stress and worry for the people you do business with.  Go out of your way to make someone smile, each and every day.  Let your clients know how you are going above and beyond the call of duty to make life easier for them.

2. What new product or combination of old products will be attractive to our old customers and attract new ones?

For example, I know of a company in a past recession that instituted a training program for customers on "preventive maintenance" for their present equipment and proposed new equipment. This shows the customer you care. Tough times are good education times.

3.  How can we provide a more positive outlook to help counteract the negative messages that abound in a downturn?

This is not the best time to be a news junkie.  Instead, spend more of your time reading daily affirmations and increase your positive self-talk.  Make it a point to bring up good news with your customers, partners, and other people you network with.  Pledge to be a beacon of hope with other people and express gratitude for the blessings that still abound in your life.

4.  What can we do to educate our families, our people, and our customers, in ways that will better position us both when the economic weather improves?

When my high school graduation came in 1939 my mother said, "you're going to college." No one in our family had ever attended college. I said "How?" We had no money. She was one positive thinker. She said "I don't know but we're going there right now and find out how we are going to do it."  We marched into the registrar's office and my mother said, "This young man wants to enroll at Knox College and we have no money, how do we do it?" One hour later I walked out enrolled as a freshman. Work at the school, summer work, and student loans did it. The loans were all paid off by 1950. The tuition? Just under $600 per year for tuition and books.

5. Do we have the self discipline and corporate discipline to continue the search for excellence in the face of tough times? 

When I officiated NFL football for 15 years, this was key to maintaining top level concentration, play after play, game after game.  Avoiding complacency is the number one challenge in achieving peak performance. In football, it's one play at a time - in business, it's one customer or one client at a time.

These are the questions we asked ourselves and faced as a family during the Great Depression. My mother worked clerking in a department store at 25 cents an hour. I mowed 8 yards a week at 25 cents to 75 cents per yard depending on the size of the yard. (And there were no power mowers back then, you had to push!) I made a box, insulated it, and in the Summer sold Eskimo pies and Dixie cups of ice cream to people in the hot office buildings. My father worked as a commissioned salesman and some weeks I made more at age 13 than he did.

Some say, "You have to be lucky!" but someone else wisely said "the harder and smarter we work, the luckier we get."  Many years ago, Charles Kettering, the great inventive mind at GM said "Luck is what happens when opportunity meets the prepared mind. " The above two quotes go double in tougher times. 

So make sure to care for your customer, care for your people, and care for your community and your nation. To paraphrase the well know slogan of Hallmark cards, "When you care enough to be the very best," the chances are good you will be.

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Art Holst speaks about how to consistently strive for excellence, using examples from his personal experiences in business, sports and civic affairs.

THINK AND WHEN
I long to be the person that I would like to be.
But if I'm going to do it, it's entirely up to me.
And, I think the time to start is not some distant day
Now is the time to start that change--Now, without delay!
There's a word that was used some years ago as a slogan by IBM.
The word was "Think"- a great reminder, for women and for men.

But "THINK" alone can also be a word that's like a missing link
For there are those who go through life and all they do is "THINK".
There's another word that I believe gives power to the thoughts of men.
It's a modest word-- only four letters--that powerful word is "WHEN"!!
For when we put a timetable on the things we want to do,
Those things begin to happen, and that's how dreams come true!
      - Art Holst

Many years ago, Rudyard Kipling penned these words: "What you do when you don't have to, determines what you will be when you can no longer help it." Wise words that apply to many facets of our lives, particularly for those of us who are growing older...and that includes everyone I know! So, now at age 86, and still pursuing a career as an inspirational, humorous and informative speaker, I'm asked almost daily by countless people, "What is the secret of growing old successfully?"

I was a football official in the National Football League for 15 years and that experience remains a metaphor for many life lessons, both in our working and personal lives. Here are six things you can do to make growing older productive and fun.

1. Get Smart! Take charge of your body. The first thing an NFL player gets when he reports to camp is a physical exam. Get one. A good one. From a reputable physician. Once that is done, start an exercise program to get in shape for playing on the team when "Draft Day" arrives. I have had four hip replacements and walk several miles every day. But you have to work up to that. Do some weight lifting or stretching and start slowly. More repetitions are better than too much weight too fast. When I started my walking program, I could only go a bit over a quarter of a mile. By adding 50 or 100 steps every other day that soon became a mile, then two, and now I walk 3 to 4 miles per day, 4 or 5 days a week.

2. Maintain Your Proper Weight!  Eat a sensible diet. More fresh fruit, lots of vegetables, and limit sweet desserts and creamy salads (a tough one for me).  Be disciplined with the amount of food you eat, as well as what you eat. You can dig a grave with a knife and fork, if you dig long enough!

3. Get Some Interests! I love to play golf--but NOT five times a week! Our minds need to be kept as flexible and active as the rest of our bodies. I have always enjoyed writing and learned that writing poetry is fun and challenging for me. 
And I still speak for audiences all around America. Luckily, I don't have to travel nearly as much as I did in earlier years, but I enjoy it even more now and hope my audiences do, too. Wine gets better with age...why not people? I know a man in his mid-seventies who sacks groceries at a Publix store in Ft. Myers, Florida. He's a retired corporate vice president and loves his job at Publix. 

4. Read More! Read newspapers and the books you told yourself you'd read "some day when you have more time."  Listen to others' opinions and share your own opinions and ideas with others. You'll feel younger, act younger, and yes, you be will be younger in the eyes of your family and friends.

5. Keep Love in your Life! One of the hard facts in becoming older is that life partners and cherished loved ones will be lost. But, rich and enduring love can be found at any age. Seek it! Find it! Live it!

6. Get Going! Growing old successfully and gracefully is not easy. But like the rest of life, no one said it was going to be easy.  It takes work, dedication, discipline, and we don't "have to" do it. So remember, "What you do when you don't have to, determines what you will be when you can no longer help it."  When will you start? I suggest RIGHT NOW. Go for it and good luck!

As I pause to think of something that sets some men apart,
It seemed to me that goals in life must be the place to start.
Imagine playing football on an unmarked field of green;
Not a goal line to be sought, not a goal post to be seen.
It would be an aimless battle were there nothing to be gained,
Without a thing to strive for, not a score to be attained.
We must have PURPOSE in our lives, for the flame that warms the soul
Is an everlasting vision, everyone must have a goal.

Super Bowl XLI is history but memories linger for me. Being down on the field and a part of a Super Bowl is a life-changing experience! I was lucky enough to officiate two of them, Super Bowls VI and XII. For those who don't remember, Dallas won 'em both--24 t0 3 over the Miami Dolphins in Super VI and 27 to 10 over the Denver Broncos in Super XII. 

Knowing that over 100 million viewers are watching worldwide and knowing that one of your decisions could decide the game is a sobering thought. So, the drama and excitement of this year's game brought back a flood of memories and metaphors.

In every game, there are short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. Four downs to make a first down--crossing the other guy's goal with the ball in your possession for a touchdown--winning the game and finally, the ultimate goal, the Super Bowl. You don't have to be a Ph.D. or a rocket scientist to know where the goal line is. To be able to put that kind of football clarity into business or family objectives adds an "exclamation point" to Yogi Berra's famous quote, "If you don't know where you're going, you may end up somewhere else!"

Many people have asked me what common thread is woven into the fabric of a great coach that puts them a notch higher in the record books. After all the scouting, viewing hours of video tape, developing game plans, and the countless details that go into the making of a team, it has to be won on the field and I think the one word that stands out in my mind is EXPECTATION. Great coaches and great managers expect their people to be better than they think they can be themselves. I saw this in Vince Lombardi with the Green Bay Packers, I saw it in Tom Landry, the Head Coach of the Dallas Cowboys, in Chuck Noll of the Pittsburgh Steelers and you saw it this year in the remarkable job done by Tony Dungy and the Indianapolis Colts. They knew where they were going. They knew who was going to get them there and they had the skills to make the game plan come to life on the field. And, that's where it counts!

For 37 years I lived in Peoria, Illinois, the world headquarters of the Caterpillar Tractor Company. Caterpillar is the world leader in earth moving equipment. They make bulldozers of all sizes, including backhoes for digging holes and ditches and many more pieces of big equipment designed to reshape the world. The specific piece of equipment I want to refer to here is the motor grader. This is the machine whose tires can tilt one way or the other and which has a blade to smooth a roadbed for a proposed highway or perhaps a building site.

"Well," you may ask, "what does all this have to do with speaking?" My answer to you is this. To me, humor is the motor grader that smoothes out the bumps and ruts of life and makes it livable. God made us the only animal with the ability to laugh. He must have figured that if we couldn't laugh at some of our foibles, failures, and frustrations, we'd all end up in the loony bin!

Humor is a very delicate and serious thing. It can be, as my speaker colleague Dr. Charlie Jarvis so succinctly has defined it, "a painful thing told playfully." Witness the jokes or humorous stories we have heard told about death or illness. For example, this Henny Youngman line: "A doctor gave a man six months to live. He didn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months!"

I use the following story when talking about being able to laugh at yourself when things don't go as you planned. "Just to be nice, I sent flowers to a friend of mine who opened up a new branch of his business. I went out to congratulate him and, naturally I looked for my flowers. What I found was a wreath with a bow on it that said, 'Rest in Peace.' I left in a huff, called the florist and said, 'I sent a guy flowers to wish him well in his new business and you sent him a wreath with a bow on it that says 'Rest in Peace!' The florist said, "I'm not worried about you, Art. But someplace in this town, there's a guy being buried, and he's got a big bouquet of roses with a sash that says, 'Good luck in your new location!'

This story allows me to make a serious point. Sometimes our best intentions go down the drain. So, the selection of humor is not just a matter of whether or not it is funny; it is also a matter of whether it is relevant to the message.

In another example of humor, I may be talking about why knowledge is so important for the sales or management person. I will use a comparison between NFL football and life.

When a football player comes to pre-season camp, he is expected to be in good physical condition. Before anything else happens, he receives a rigid physical examination. The number one priority in football, as it should be in any line of work, is to be physically capable to perform. After the physical exam, the player gets a playbook. That's the beginning of the knowledge factor. Complete knowledge of the plays and what the player is expected to do on each play is pre-supposed; the same as physical conditioning is pre-supposed.

I follow this information by saying something like this, "Knowledge isn't everything, but it is tremendously important." Then I tell how I was working a pre-season game in Memphis when a player cussed me. I whirled and yelled, "What did you call me?" He said, "Guess. You've guessed at everything else today!"

After that anecdote, I say to my audience: "You cannot guess; you've got to know. The key issue is how do we use what we know to solve somebody else's or our own problems?" That little vignette is used to point out the relationship between knowledge and problem solving.