Subject:
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Re: Preaching to the Choir
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 11 Aug 2004 13:52:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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1986 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur wrote:
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...and the cute animal and children’s charities win every time.
An example.
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Not every time. But the alternative is for me to give $100 for charity to
a government, and the government takes $93 of it to sustain its own
bureaucracy and $7 gets to the people who will benefit from it. Not very
efficient.
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And of that $93, $47 goes to big-corporate welfare, $45 goes to
big-corporate military (and of that $45, $44 goes to the Friends-Of-Cheney
corporate group), and $1 maintains the bureaucracy.
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If ONLY we could get a 1:7 ratio between bureaucracy and benefits delivered,
I’d put up with the siphoning.
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Sure, but that’s not the entirety of what I’ve outlined. My example is still a
93:7 ratio of government machinery:benefits delivered.
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Once Kerry gets in who gets the 92 then? Or are we suddenly going to see that
92 drop to something a lot less and get an 80% rebate of taxes paid or ???
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What happens when Badnarik gets in(1)? Will all taxes be wiped away with a
stroke of his pen? Obviously there’s a lot of inertia to overcome here,
regardless of who becomes President. My problem (well, one of countless) with
Bush is that he spends as much as he can knowing that, eventually, a Democrat
will get into office and have to raise taxes to undo the horrors inflicted by
Dubya. Thereafter Conservatives will scream about tax-and-spend Democrats all
over again. But apparently spend-and-spend-and-spend Republicans are just
dandy.
I can only meet John’s silly made-up numbers with some silly made-up numbers of
my own, but here goes:
Given the well-entrenched structure of our government and bureaucracy, it would
be supremely damaging to undertake a massive cut in tax revenue (but of course
it would pad the pockets of the already-rich, so it would probably come to pass
without a whisper of dissent).
How about this:
Slash the military budget by 30%, 40%, or 50%. That would still leave us with a
larger military than the next few nations combined, and it would force us to
re-evaluate our eagerness to participate in voluntary military action overseas.
Use the money gleaned from the reduced military budget to settle, or go a long
way toward settling, other outstanding fiscal issues in government.
Eliminate corporate welfare.
Heavily tax all wealth, income, and holdings in excess of $5,000,000.00 unless
those holdings are shown to have been earned without government subsidy (direct
or indirect). This would mean that any wealth facilitated through use of
computers, the internet, the Federal highway system, the Federal Aviation
Administration, the Federally-subsidized railway system, or Federally-protected
ocean-going imports (as well as other Federal protections) would be subject to
heavy taxation.
After that’s all done, and all of the government’s debts are paid off, then we
can go about reducing the bureaucracy.
Dave!
(1) Boy, you Libertarians have it tougher than I realized. A Google News
search for “+Badnarik +Presidential +Candidate” brings back a few dozen
articles, but a similar search for Bush or Kerry yields close to 20,000.
Jeez. Good luck to you!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Preaching to the Choir
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| (...) If ONLY we could get a 1:7 ratio between bureaucracy and benefits delivered, I'd put up with the siphoning. But it's hardly ever that good. Sometimes it's 1:7 the other way. Which was the point J was making with his silly made up numbers. Once (...) (20 years ago, 11-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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