On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:10:36 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:
On Sep 21, 9:48*pm, F. George McDuffee gmcduf...@mcduffee-
associates.us wrote:
Someone must pay for the infrastructure improvement and
maintenance, e.g. roads, bridges, canals, ports, airports,
sewers, water, etc. *Someone must pay for "education,"
especially for free, universal compulsory education, which
is required to keep the whole thing running. *Someone must
pay for the military force to defend the country. *Someone
must pay for the emergency/public safety services we all
take for granted such as police, fire, and EMT. *Someone
must pay for the courts, land registeries and prisons.
Someone must pay for clean food and effective drugs. Someone
must pay for the social services and "safety nets."
Unka' George
A long time ago I lived in Madison County, Alabama. The taxes were
fairly low, but those that worked for the county actually worked. And
were paid realistic wages. They had adequate pensions, but not gold
plated ones. At the time Madison County was the only county in the
U.S. that had every road in the county paved. And the roads were in
good shape. Not the pothole pocked roads that exist around here.
So yes all those things have to be paid for, but the total wage packet
for public workers should be about equal to the total wages in the
private sector. What has happened in most places is that the state
and county workers have unionized. And the union has been able to
bargain for better pensions and better healthcare than exists in the
private sector. This happens because those that approve the wage
contracts have no incentive to keep costs contained. If they approve
gold plated pensions, the public workers vote for them. So the
politicians prosper by approving wage and benefit increases.
This ends up requiring higher taxes. Which increases costs for
businesses, and leads to jobs going overseas.
We can afford all the government we need, but can not afford
government that gets paid more than the private sector.
Dan
==================
Indeed, this is one of the factors, and appears to be an
extremely common "symptom" as organizations increase in size
and complexity. General Motors Corporation is the poster
child for this.
Another factor, noted in a separate posting, is a tendency
to lose any sense of the value of money, given the millions
and billions the managers deal with every day.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...nferences.html
$16 Muffins Found at U.S. Meetings
By Seth Stern - Sep 20, 2011 2:58 PM CT
Yet a third factor is the borderline fraud, angle playing,
and corner cutting, which (apparently) crosses the line into
actual fraud, as it is commonly understood, fairly
frequently, e.g. TARP, most of the FRB stimulus schemes, and
of course the latest item to float to the surface --
Solyndra.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...78J5RE20110920
snip
Reuters) - Solyndra LLC's chief executive and chief
financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights
and decline to answer any questions put to them at a
Congressional hearing on Friday, according to letters from
their attorneys obtained by Reuters.
snip
There is nothing new in this with the current
administration. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
started under Herbert Hoover and continued under FDR, during
the "great depression" had the same types of problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconst...ce_Corporation
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearc...srre1951120500
You might try reading the rest of my previous post where I
wrote:
---- from prior post ------
When individuals and organizations attempt to enjoy the
benefits and services of a developed country but are
unwilling to pay their share of the cost, it is called
"freeloading" or tax evasion, and what they don't pay, but
use *MUST BE PAID FOR BY EVERONE ELSE.*
{I will add that fraud, waste and abuse are part of the
costs which must be paid, like it or not.}
Even when a corporation relocates their production out of
the country to reduce labor and regulatory costs, they still
make use of large numbers of benefits and services, for
example patent/trademark protection by the courts and law
enforcement. Their real property is protected by the
courts, land registry, and fire/police. They make extensive
use of the infrastructure such as roads, bridges, canals,
ports and airports to distribute their products. The
individuals running these corporations expect public safety
services for themselves and their families. They expect
their food to be safe and their drugs to be effective. They
want their schools to be effective. They just feel it is
unfair they or their companies have to pay for any of it.
Even if the other posters are correct with the old saw
"companies/corporations don't pay taxes, their customers do"
(which is highly questionable, as some of the cost is
allocated to the owners in the form of lower dividends), it
is still worthwhile to tax the corporations their full and
fair share of the governmental operating costs, so their
customers know the actual cost of the product/service when
the pay at the cash register, rather than making only a
partial payment at the cash register and an additional
*LARGE* payment on April 15th, through the IRS.
NB == Having said that, it is also apparent that huge
amounts of US governmental revenue, at all levels, are
diverted and wasted on obsolete, extraneous, and fraudulent
schemes and programs. However, the Greek solution of
"do-it-yourself" tax cuts and a large and growing informal
or "black" Greek economy, rather than undertaking the
difficult but necessary task of repurposing and
reconstituting their government to minimize waste while
meeting current vital national requirements, does not appear
to be a viable solution.==
----- end of prior post ------
I will however add, that this is a very difficult task with
the deeply embedded status quo and grossly excessive
political influence of several of the major economic sectors
such as finance/banking and import/marketing which appear to
be major causal factors in creating and prolonging the
current economic malaise.
It may well prove to be impossible to repurpose and
reconstitute the US government (at all levels) to meet
current requirements, until a major economic collapse
occurs, analogous to the need for an addict to "hit bottom"
before an intervention has any chance of being effective.
The historical parallel was the landslide victory by the
Democrats in 1932, with filibuster proof majorities in both
houses, as well as the presidency, which enabled FDR's
"first 100 days," for better and for worse.
There are far worse historical examples such as the French
revolution, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and the
Chinese revolution/civil war, where entire social classes
thought to be responsible for the conditions leading to the
revolution were liquidated.
We are indeed living in "interesting times"...
--
Unka' George
"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"
-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"