The most interesting thing that happened to me today

I had a breakthrough at lunch today. My coworker Becca was telling us about what a scam the company IKEA is. You know them as the purveyors of cheap, assemble-yourself furniture. Its owner, Ingvar Kamprad, founded IKEA in Sweden when he was only 17 and is now estimated to be the world’s seventh-richest man. Some may say that also makes him one of the world’s most creative tax dodgers.

IKEA, you see, is set up as a non-profit company.

I dare say this is not common knowledge. After all, you never read about IKEA going into poor African villages and handing out bookshelves. But Kamprad, using Sweden’s lenient tax code and a series of international shell companies, managed to set IKEA up under a supposed charity called the Stichting Ingka Foundation. As a “charity,” the foundation did not pay any taxes on the 1.4 billion euro profit it made in 2004. But it did pay another company 631 million euros in 2004.

It turns out that the Stichting Ingka Foundation owns the IKEA stores, but not the IKEA trademark or concept. So it has to pay a handsome franchise fee to another company called Inter IKEA Systems, a privately owned company whose ownership is not publicly known, but whose chief owner’s name probably sounds like Ping Bar Stamp Pad. While Inter IKEA Systems did pay taxes on the franchise fees they collected, they only paid them at a rate of about three percent. I’d like to be in that tax bracket.

That’s how I got my IKEA idea. Today I am announcing that Gina, Ryan and I have officially incorporated as the Wunderbar Mӧose Foundation. You may know us from Mӧose’s Famous Swedish Meatballs™, our popular TV dinners where the meatballs and the sauce come in separate compartments and you have to assemble them with an Allen wrench. I mean, environmentally-friendly disposable spoon.

But the Wunderbar Mӧose Foundation does not own the copyright to Mӧose’s Famous Swedish Meatballs™. Instead, we pay a licensing fee to Mit Meatensauz Manufacturing of Umlaut, Germany. I can’t tell you who the owner is.

Alright, it’s Ingvar Kamprad.

By the way, let’s boycott IKEA.

Toy story

American Girl, the manufacturer known for their outrageously overpriced dolls, has stirred up a lot of controversy with their latest release. Her name is Gwen, and she has the honor of being the world’s first homeless doll. Apparently she teaches little girls about homelessness by charging their parents $95. What’s next, Furlough Ken and Barbie’s Foreclosure Dream House?

eX Box

My Xbox 360 has died on me again. Here we see it suffering the dread Red Rings Of Death (RROD), the aptly-named system display which means the `Box has fried. Apparently Microsoft rushed the 360’s to market knowing they had a tendency to do so. I know, inconceivable! Microsoft would never put out a product that had bugs! At any rate, Game Informer magazine ran a recent poll in which 54.2 percent of respondents had experienced hardware failures with their 360’s, a figure which, amazingly, Microsoft has yet to dispute.

In my case, I’ve had the same 360 fail twice. The first time it was still within its three year warranty, and Microsoft “repaired” it in a relatively quick and painless fashion. But now my 360 has the lovely RROD again, and I’m being told that I have to pay $99 to fix it. I called customer service to argue that the first repair was defective, and they assured me they “made a note” to not charge my account. But when I went back online (the only way to submit a repair), they were still going to charge my card for the $99. Let’s hear it for customer service! If I didn’t have so much money sunk into games for my 360, I’d buy a PS3 instead.

So to anyone considering buying an Xbox 360, please take my advice: buy something that is reliable and that the manufacturer stands behind if it isn’t. In my experience, the Xbox 360 scores 0 for 2 on that front.

Many happy returns

My advice to J.P. Morgan: if you want to make me feel better about getting my 401(k) reports, you may want to stop mailing them in solid black wrappers. How about smiley faces? Dollar signs? Or cats dressed up like people? Why not make the reports into scratch off cards that reveal how much I’ve lost? Come on J.P., you’re bumming me out! This isn’t a Spinal Tap album.

The high cost of healthcare, part 2

My mom made me a scrap book the year Gina and I were married. Among the mementos in it was my hospital delivery bill. I thought it might be amusing to see how things have changed in forty years. Only, it’s not so much amusing as disgusting . . .

NURSERY CHARGE

Baby Moose (1968), 3 days: $36.00 | Baby Ryan (2009), 2 days: $529.00

HOSPITAL ROOM

Baby Moose, 3 days: $105.00 | Baby Ryan, 2 days: $2,908.00

PHARMACY

Baby Moose: $11.50 | Baby Ryan: $1,081.55

LAB

Baby Moose: $9.00 | Baby Ryan: $606.00

Okay, I know that wages have multiplied since 1968, but have they kept up with, say, a hospital room charge that’s increased 28 times?

I don’t think so.

That’s also not accounting for the lower deductibles our parents paid, and the fact that their employers typically covered 100 percent of their coverage. Our out-of-pocket cost for Ryan’s delivery was right around $2,000. When I told this to my coworkers, they said, “that’s not so bad.”

Now make no mistake, Ryan’s worth every penny we paid to have him delivered.

But since when is paying two grand on top of insurance for a hospital visit “not bad?”

Dumping on Pooh

From what I’m hearing, Disney has basically ruined Winnie the Pooh. Apparently the Mouse House thought that Pooh Bear wasn’t hip enough for the kids, so they went and made him and Tigger some kind of mystery detectives. Instead of wearing his ill-fitting red shirt, Pooh runs around in a light blue top with a question mark on it. He also wears a crime-fighting mask. So now Pooh has a secret identity? But wait, it gets worse. Christopher Robin is out, replaced by some little girl named Darby. She’s got a dog named Buster and they ride around in a scooter. And Pooh and Tigger play second fiddle to this yuppy girl and her mutt.

Now, every one who knows Pooh knows that he is, at heart, a slacker. He does not run around the meadow helping Tigger solve mysteries. Pooh lounges around and only gets off his butt to find himself some honey. He barely has the mental faculties to put two thoughts together. And he hangs by the stream with Christopher Robin, not some Scooby Doo wannabes.

That’s how Pooh Bear rolls.

The high cost of health care

The bills for Gina’s labor and recovery have started to come in. Among them was a $1,081 charge for the hospital pharmacy. Granted this is before insurance knocks the rate down, but even then we’ll still be looking at several hundred for her medication alone. Now, as far as I remember all Gina had was one narcotic iv, a handful of Vicodin, and half a bottle of Motrin.

If I were a drug dealer, I’d get off the streets and set up at a nursing station.