Imagine I am the government
I've been told that "ANY DEFICIT is irresponsible fiscal policy" and that Bush Sr. had it right by raising taxes. Ha, how about cutting spending?
Who can disagree with the first part? Yet I know that Bush Sr. could have handled it differently with his veto pen. He should have vetoed all of the big spending coming from Congress. That's why he was fired. By raising taxes, he made it easy for Clinton to get elected, on a promise of lowering taxes during his campaign, to which he also reneged, and raised taxes, thus propelling the R's to power in '94.
This is the big point: Any individual knows, who has their own budget, that they way to fix budget problems is by tightening belts. You can't force your employer to give you a pay raise. Yet that is exactly what government does. It forces pay raises through tax increases, rather than cutting budgets. Ridiculous!
Here is a better analogy:
Imagine I am the government.
Imagine I had the power of the IRS to confiscate without remorse, and without possible resistance. I tell my boss that because of 'investments' (meaning government spending) I will be raising taxes (my salary). The boss says he can't raise my salary because the company is already paying me as much as it can without going bankrupt, but I enforce my rule using force (IRS). The company pays up because it doesn't want to go to jail.
Voila, I have a pay raise every year, even though I don't deserve it. And that pay raise is much more than the inflation rate, and much more than the average pay raise of the average American. And do I spend it wisely? No, I spend it on big inefficient bureaucracies, and I don't tighten my belt at all, no need, I'm the government, and I've got all the force I want. Oh, and I have the media on my side, to convince the electorate that my form of government is good for them, so that they keep voting for me. Oh, did I forget to mention that I only force the highest paid, most productive companies to pay me my salary? Those other dopey companies that don't produce very well, well I just leave them alone so that they can continue to vote for me, even though they don't pay my salary.
Sound fair?
posted by Mr. Punky Kitten @ 10:04 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Yes, I am essentially libertarian!
Thanks for your post.
A reader wrote:
At 8:29 AM, ...
Nice article, spoken like a true libertarian (though I'm not sure that you profess this ideology). The premise of a monopoly of legitimate force being granted to the US government is the social contract, not to provide means of coercion for the benefit of the elite few. Taxes have grown to be an instrument of the politician to prop up his reign in office, rather than a tool for the Common Welfare, as potentially justified (but not expressly written) in the original Constitution (i.e. without amendment). Americans need to pressure the government by calling for term limits, tighter monitoring of pork barrel spending(per capita caps, e.g.), line-item vetoing and
tax-simplification (I submit the flat-tax with allowances for medical care, but not for expenses that arise from personal choice - like child care). These ideas might seem radical, in the non-leftist sense, but I think the situation is deteriorating as the "millionaire's club" of the Congress is moving further and further away from representing the interests of the people, as an anti-federalist like Thomas Jefferson predicted it would.
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