Taxes

I wanted to set down some thoughts about taxes. Gonna be a lot of talk about taxes com’in soon and I want to try and get it thought out.

We all pay taxes and fees. It has to be that way. Except for a very few self sufficient individuals living in rural or near wilderness areas we all use government services. Just by living in the country you benefit from the funding of the armed services. Water, sewer, roads, schools, law enforcement, education are things that we all use, or derive benefit from and they’re paid for by a slew of local, state, and federal taxes. We have to buy tax stickers for our car windows, and plates for the bumpers. We pay an excise tax for the gasoline and other petroleum products that we use. We pay taxes to put tags on our pets. We just pay a lot of money in taxes, or at least that’s the way it seems.

The federal tax system was supposed to be simple (the more you make, the more you pay) but if it ever was, it’s far from that now. It’s been shot full of holes and tied in loops to reflect the desires of our elected officials and their “special” friends. The full code is over 17,000 pages long and so complex that federal monetary and tax officials seem incapable of following all of the rules. It’s been common knowledge that the federal tax code is FUBAR for as many years as I can remember. The instructions for the 1040EZ, the simplest form, are forty pages long, for the 1040, one hundred and five.

You won’t find a single elected official that will defend the tax system and yet it remains unchanged and the tax code grows in length and complexity every single year. How can it be that a system without defenders or a supporting constituency can continue to exist in a representative democracy?

I don’t have anything near an answer for that question, but I do think the question itself speaks to the dangerous nature of government programs. No one ever envisioned the mess that the current tax system is. It started out simple enough but then at some point turned Meta stable. For many decades it has grown as it careens about with politicians using it for their own benefit, completely indifferent to the original purpose, and without any thought as to what the purpose should even be.

And this brings me to The Affordable Healthcare Act. ObamaCare if you will. The danger is perhaps not easy to see, but if something as simple as a graduated income tax can become complex beyond comprehension and more resistant to change than the hardest metal what will come of a health care system that at its inception created no fewer than 160 new agencies and boards. One requiring many thousands of pages of cross connected regulation that no one has even the most remote chance of understanding. What defense can we possibly have from an entity like that?

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

A More Civil Tone

We have once again had our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech limited by political correctness. We mustn't say anything that would offend ANYONE. Our children play in sports leagues where there are no winners or losers and go to school where there are no grades lest we damage their little psyches with reality. Our award shows no longer have winners, only recipients lest the people who entertain us think that they are less beloved than some other. And now.... now we are being told that we must be careful what we say so that we don’t adversely affect the behavior of the mentally ill. A nation of 300 million people has been required again and again to give up bits of our guaranteed freedoms in exchange for what? What do we get for a "cooler" tone in political discussion, one where no one is "whipped up"? I can tell you what we get: We get a 14 TRILLION dollar national debt; we get an ever expanding and unaffordable entitlement society; we get an America that is neither a trusted ally or a feared enemy in the world community; we get an America that finances and facilitates the United Nations and it's globalist shenanigans, and we get an America where the disregard for the rule of law is accepted with a resigned nod because we don't want to offend anyone with an argument. Well I call "Bullshit!!" This is Bullshit, and I'm not having any thanks just the same. The President uses warm, glowing rhetoric and speaks of the "forces" that divide and unite us. Bullshit! What separates us whether most people understand it or not is the ideological divide between Federalists and Progressives. Federalists are FOR the Constitution and a government OF, BY, and FOR the people. Progressives favor the government OF the people BY the educated elite. As early as 1838 Abraham Lincoln complained about what he called "the silent artillery of time" destroying the pillars of the temple of liberty and called for a reverence of the Constitution. Its progressive detractors claim, and have for over 150 years, that it's an antique, a quaint historical document that has little bearing on the events of the current day. But the beauty of the Constitution is that it was designed for change and adaptation, but that change is not easy. It was designed to be the foundation and framework of a government BY the people and changes have to be approved both at the federal and state levels. The people have to WANT the change. But the people are not smart. Not educated. Not enlightened and so we don't change the constitution. We don't change what were agreed to as the rules at the beginning, we don't add to the official rules in the agreed to manner. Instead, men and women in expensive suits with expensive educations meet behind closed doors and speak in amicable terms and decide for us what the rules will be. I call Bullshit!! Federalists want to keep, refurbish and reaffirm our constitutional form of government Progressives by definition want to move away from that. Compromise with Progressives means that a little of the birthright of our freedom has been sacrificed.
But that's just what an average guy thinks.

The President's Export Initiative

The President has said that he wants to double our nation’s exports by 2015. Wow. What a GREAT idea. It’s a great idea for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it will require that more people be working in the manufacturing sector, a place near to my heart, and my wallet. It will also mean that our country is selling more than we buy. This improves our economy and standing in the financial world. But I’m wondering. Does the President really intend to accomplish this? Does he really believe that this is within his reach, or is this just so much BS?

Okay, lets us look at this objectively. In order for the US to double its exports, we will need to more than double our manufacturing output. Wow. That’s GREAT. Think of the jobs that will be created by this need to double manufacturing output. But wait. There’s a hang up. In order for export sales to double, export orders have to double. Markets have to be opened. Any of that happening? Not yet. Hard to do. It’s okay. There’s time. 2015 is a long way out.

So what else has to happen for manufacturing to double? Gotta have the hands to do the work. Lots and lots of those available. Just one tiny rub. Manufacturers aren’t hiring. Seems they’re unsure of the future costs. Taxes could go up. Insurance costs could go WAY up. How can they hire workers if they don’t know what their costs will be? I’ve read that companies are just sitting on money rather than making capital expenditures, waiting to see what’s going to happen. I’ve also heard that (post bailout) banks have lots of money to lend at dirt cheap rates but they aren’t lending. What’s up with that? Could it be that THEY aren’t sure of what the economic geography is going to look like either?

Another issue seems to be energy. Manufacturing takes energy. Lots of energy. Electrical energy. Bzzzzzt. But the President doesn’t like energy. He’s on the record (and YouTube) as not liking energy. He wants to make the cost of energy “skyrocket”. So how are manufacturers supposed to sell their products into a global market if their taxes are up, their health care costs are up, and their energy costs are up? I’m no rocket scientist, but to answer my own question I have to say that the Presidents stated goals to double exports and manufacturing in the next five years are just so much BS.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Ds & Rs

The other day my boy asked me what the difference was between Democrats and Republicans. I had to stop and think for a moment and then it became clear what my political science professor had meant when he told us that as a practical matter, there isn’t a nickels worth of difference between the two major parties. But I felt like I owed the boy an answer, so I tried to distill it down to generalities. What I came up with sounded something like this: In general, Democrats are in favor of more government services and benefits which have to be paid for by more and higher taxes and incremental forfeiture of individual rights. On the other hand Republicans have always claimed to be the party of smaller government and lower taxes.

Republicans assume that people want to be able to provide for themselves and try to enact policy to make that possible; Democrats assume that people are incapable of taking care of themselves and therefore create programs to take the place of their self-sufficiency. Republicans support individual efforts; Democrats assume that individuals are weak, and in need of government assistance. Republicans believe in liberty; Democrats believe in government. What all this means, then, is that Democratic philosophy thus demands more programs and higher taxes and takes from those who’ve worked hard and made good decisions, and gives to those who have not. GOP philosophy then, ideally, encourages individual efforts, creates an environment that supports hard work and achievement, and then gets out of the way.

I think it’s safe to say that Democrats do favor more government services, and benefits, as well as higher taxes to pay for them, but the Republican Party has lost its way. The problem may have been the success of our economy. There seems to have always been enough money for the Congress to throw around and no one seemed to be getting hurt too badly so it was normal for Democrats and Republicans to “reach across the aisle”, and to display the comity that everyone says they miss so much. But while this made for a nice peaceful picture there was something quite troubling taking place.

Democrats want a larger, more powerful government, and over the years they’ve been very successful at getting what they want. A small entitlement program here, a government guarantee there, an executive order here and there, and hundreds of key judicial appointments over the decades have brought us to where we are today. Even Republican administrations have been guilty of pandering to voters in order to win elections. It’s hard to make yourself attractive as a candidate or party when your opponents are offering stuff, and all you have to offer is the opportunity to earn stuff. If it hadn’t been for the collapse of the housing market as a result of the government involvement in the home mortgage markets we may never have become aware of our predicament until it was too late.

So what I’m seeing now is that ANY compromise that Republicans make on a Democratic agenda is a step down the path to larger government, higher taxes, and reduced personal freedom. I oppose that step and I will support candidates who oppose that step.

Of course by this time the kid had the same look on his face that the local squirrels get when my dog goes into the back yard: they don’t know or care how, they just know they have to get out of there while the getting’s good. But I had the door blocked so he was stuck in his chair. I paused for a moment hoping he’d have a follow up question and when it became clear that he did I don’t know that I've ever been so pleased. And then he said: “Yeah, yeah. I got that. Which one is the elephant?”

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.