Political Realities
I am a political conservative. I believe that people are responsible for themselves.
The government, by my definition, should be a group of people hired to conduct business on behalf of its employers...we, the people. But in reality, it conducts itself as if we work for it...as if it knows better how to run our life than we do.
The government does not produce jobs. It only takes our money and hires people to manage and spend it...very wastefully.
The government, at all levels, should limit itself to things it can do better than its citizens. And that is a very short list.
On a federal level, defense is one of those Constitutionally-mandated tasks. You and I can't build a battle ship. But we can elect people to do that for us.
Unfortunately, even if the government was limited to a fraction of its current role, it would do it very inefficiently. We've all heard of the $100 hammer. When people are not spending their own money, they get sloppy.
I oppose socialism, populism, and liberalism. When I hear politicians commiserating about the poor, I know they are going to follow with something like, "Elect me and I will bail you out of the mess you are in." But that never happens. The mess only gets deeper.
What has become known as liberal politics inserts itself into every possible aspect of our lives. It wants to regulate everything...from baseball to health care. There is no Constitutional justification for this. If it was somehow justified for government to provide health insurance for everyone, then:
- Why not automobile insurance? People need it.
- Why not home heating? People need it.
- Why not gasoline so people can get to work? They need it.
- Why not baby sitting...or the more politically correct term, day care? People need it.
- Why not retirement income? People need it. (Oh, they already do provide that.)
- Why not pay for their babies? People need it. (Oh, they already pay for babies.)
- Why not home insurance to rebuild after disasters? (Oh, they already do that.)
- Why not education? (Oh, they already do that.)
The list could go on and on. The problem is that every time the government tries to help people, it does it very poorly. It makes people dependent which only deepens their problem. And remember, the government isn't handing out its own money. It is handing out YOUR money.
Giving people money they don't earn strips them of their drive to become self-sufficient. We all agree with that when we talk about raising our children. We know that if we do everything for our children they will grow up to be useless adults, completely dependent on others to take care of them. Why then do so many politicians want to do the opposite for adult citizens?
Another way the government "helps" people is to regulate. It is not enough to take money from those who earn it and give it to those who don't, it also seeks to dictate how people spend their money through the confiscatory tax system.
Taxes
I believe that progressive tax rates are nothing less than socialism. It penalizes entrepreneurism, and reduces jobs. There is no rationale that justifies increasing a persons tax percentage based on their income other than socialism.
In a similar sense, even a flat income tax penalizes those with more income. If a family earned $50,000 and paid a 20% flat tax, that would be $10,000 for the federal tax. (Of course, they pay a LOT more taxes when you include state, local, county, property, sales and other taxes...) If another family earns $200,000, they would pay $40,000 in federal taxes. Yet, they don't consume any more federal benefits than the family earning $50,000. So even a flat income tax would be progressive...the more you earn the more you pay. But what we have now is penal-progression...the more you earn, the HIGHER your tax rate.
I recommend the "Fair Tax" which is a flat consumption tax. In addition to being fairer, it would stimulate business which would create more jobs with more competitive wages. A wonderful byproduct is that it would revolutionize the government, almost completely eliminate lobbying, and would get the government out of the business of trying to influence how people spend their money. You can read more about it on www.fairtax.org.
As an example of the stupidity of our current income tax system, a few years ago, the government decided that people who could afford luxury yachts could afford to share more of their wealth with the poor. That is how liberals talk...using words like "share" when they want to take money that doesn't belong to them and give it to people who will vote for them. So they levied a HUGE "luxury tax" on yachts. This was their grand plan to "balance the budget" and pay for their social welfare programs. But what happened was that many of those rich people quit buying yachts because of the high tax cost. As a result, thousands of yacht-building employees were laid off, and the tax revenue that would have come from those workers went from a huge sum to zero. Not only was that tax revenue lost, now the government had to pay those people unemployment. The net effect from that so-called luxury tax hurt the people it claimed would benefit the most.
Politicians are NOT good business persons. Most of them are lifetime politicians who have never run a business. They have no clue. All they have ever done is handle other people's money under the cloak of considering themselves, "civil servants". No wonder they don't know what they are doing. That is a long way from the founding fathers who actually took time off from their real businesses and "served" the people for short terms...not lifetime appointments.
The current hot topic is to federalize health care. What in the world makes any politician think that he or she can do that without it turning into an even bigger mess than social security? A better question might be, Why are so many voters considering it? The answer is simple: People think that someone else will pay for it...that the "government" will take care of them. The nanny state is very appealing, and liberal politicians appeal to that with promises to solve everyone's problems for them.
Formula for Disaster
Civilizations rise and fall. The United States of America is headed for some real problems if we don't turn things around.
From a pure math point of view, if we continue to increase the role of government, especially with social programs and entitlements, the time will come when the number of people who depend on those funds will be so many that the amount of money needed to pay those bills will be unaffordable. The people who are earning it will not be willing to continue to take the necessary risks, or to work that hard. We already know what happens to the economy when that happens...as it did in the Soviet Union.
Those who want the government to take care of the poor, the oppressed, the old, the minorities, the sick, the jobless, etc. would never walk into the poor sections of their town and hand out large portions of their money. But they elect politicians who will take money from them and hand it out to those people. And they take a lot more than they hand out because they have to pay the wages to all the people that handle the money. It would be a lot more efficient to do it directly!
But, shouldn't we be charitable? Of course. But the government is not a charity. Taxes are not charity. Taxes fuel a runaway government that charges confiscatory fees in order to fund out-of-control spending that requires more and more taxes to pay all those people who have become dependent. It is a vicious cycle with an unquenchable appetite.
History Repeats: Click here to read a comparison between what happened during the Great Famine and what is happening in today's government.
More to come...
Is God in Control? Can I really choose?
Marketplace Realities: How to always be AHEAD of the marketplace.
Is college worth the cost? How to get a LOT more out of it.
The ideal job description: You can write your own.
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