Having kids isn’t a profitable situation.

Well, most of the time. Maybe if your kid turns out to be Mick Jagger or Bill Gates, you might get a fancy house out of the deal.

But then knowing how cheap Jagger and Gates are, maybe not. Ever hear about the time Gates went into a fast food restaurant and discovered he didn’t have any money? He promised to make good the next day and the staff speculated what kind of tip they would get from the Microsoft founder. It turned out to be something like 37 cents.

OK. I digress.

I’m happy to learn I’ll be getting a little pay back from my first born, Derek.

Derek moved to New York state some four years ago. His wife, Jessica, has been there three years.

I don’t call myself a conservative. I shut Rush Limbaugh off at the first word.

But New York has never met a tax it didn’t like.

We recently visited them at their new house. Gasoline on the New York State thruway was $2.81.9 cents per gallon. Back home at the time, it was as low as $1.73.9 cents, better than $1 a gallon cheaper.

New York has massive taxes on gasoline, but I’ve never seen that big of a price difference. Even around his town, the cheapest gasoline could be found was $2.47.9 cents, and that was if you were a member of a wholesale club.

People here may vote against school levies because they can’t absorb any more real estate taxes. Go to New York and see your bill increase five fold.

Which brings me to transportation in New York. Everywhere you go, there is a toll.

Driving westbound from Pennsylvania to Ohio you are greeted with a “welcome to Ohio” sign. Drive eastbound from Pennsylvania into New York and you are greeted by an adult book store and a warning, “last exit before toll.”

The tolls don’t bother me that much. That’s because Derek and Jess got us a device that sits on the front windshield of the car. When we come to one of the inevitable toll booths, we just slide into the E-ZPass lane.

While others wait in line to hand a person money, we don’t stop. All we have to do is slow down to 10 miles per hour. E-ZPass detects our windshield gizmo. The signal light at the toll booth switches from yellow to green and off we go.