Anyone who reads my blog knows I am greatly concerned about reckless government spending and the future of America. I recently looked over Paul Ryan’s Raodmap for America’s Future and was very impressed. I’ve long supported a flat tax.
As I thought about this and many related things I realized some key problems we have in America. First of all our elected representatives are sent to Washington to serve us. Most of them are not. The reasons are explained nicely in this video explaining that the largess of government is the root of the problem. 2009 shattered records for government spending, borrowing and no surprisingly lobbyist revenue. It becomes clear that no matter how you attempt to reign in taxes and spending there is no proposed system to assure government won’t spiral out of control with crony capitalism and power and wealth in bed. Corruption is like a weed.
I’ve come across some good ideas but essentially I feel we need to focus on reality. Allow me to explain reality as is pertinent to human beings. You can either complain about the nature of human beings and suffer that the always fall short or you can recognize the nature and change the game so that they always exceed your expectations. For example when someone offends you if you immediately initiate a hostile dispute you engender hostility in return. If you approach the person with the idea that you are sure that they did not mean to offend you and explain how a problem resulted from what they did most people will want to demonstrate their goodwill and there is no dispute.
Do you doubt our nature? I was astonished to hear the other day that even in recent years with economic difficulties the US has been realizing over $300 billion a year in charitable giving. The recent Haiti disaster again showed what America is made of with hundreds of millions donated. We are by far the most generous people per capita in the world. We feel good when we are given the opportunity to help someone. We don’t particularly enjoy when someone responds to difficulty by holding us and gunpoint and robbing us while they apologize.
This brings me to my idea. Why the hell did we even do a 16th amendment and create an income tax? Could anything be more evil. The very people we elect to represent us manage the money and insure it is collected, then vote themselves raises with it. Can you imagine our founding fathers setting up such an unchecked unbalanced structure? I can’t. On top of that so many taxes are hidden they epitomize the axiom “out of sight, out of mind”. One flat tax proposal I recall was to send it in on a postcard at whatever percent of your income it was set at. Recently I got a better idea. See how you like this.
First of all every agency of the government has a manager and most have inspector generals. This derives from an idea I recently heard. Set the salary for all managers at national average. Set specific operational requirement targets for the agency or division. People using the government service rank it. Falling below a passing level docks pay, exceeding it incurs bonuses. An inspector general for fraud and waste produces a report on agency performance. Performance below a passing level docks pay and above incurs bonuses. Any additional efficiencies and savings offer a percentage bonus to management provided it doesn’t lower effective performance. Savings and performance bonuses are made available on a smaller scale to employees.
As far as government employees are concerned they work for the American people and as such there is no reason to assume collective bargaining. Unions have been raping companies but especially the government and it is why the average American job pays $44K/yr and the average government job pays $75K/yr. That has to stop and new pay, benefits and retirement plans negotiated. Otherwise we become Greece. BTW negotiated here means public hearings. If government employees are unhappy about losing their largess I think there are a few unemployed people who would be happy to have a new job!
One more thing. Power changes. Anything that would land you in jail as an executive at a public company ought to do likewise for any government employee or congressional representative. Borrowing from social security or pensions? Go to jail!
This brings me to the part which is my idea. No more taxes. Each agency posts on the internet the annual budget it is requesting. This can be discussed online and by news outlets and public information channels. Here’s the good part. Instead of the government holding a gun to your head and extracting taxes we do away with taxes. Since you’re no longer paying taxes you can certainly afford to help keep your government running. Hey, I’d love to see the president get on a public TV channel and pitch for money for a government agency. Money can only be spent that is put into that agency. Transferring funds is illegal.
So right now congress has a 10% approval rating. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that congressional funding might be down at the moment and I’m just guessing here but I bet that a really skinny paycheck would get their attention and get the leadership off it’s royal attitude. I suggest mandating that funds collected in excess of request divert by default to debt service and debt service is one option citizens could choose. By going to the main page you could see what agencies most needed your money. Now let’s say the EPA tries to use the carbon scam to regulate without legislation. We have an answer for an agency too big for their britches. When their money starts to drop there will be an outcry for new management… but then again with a really poor rating that manager might as well quit… unless they like paying fines to work.
I don’t believe as a people we would knowingly let our government fail to operate, but right now most people feel the government is not only failing to operate well but threatening our liberty. I would ask exactly what motivation our government has to behave any differently? We’re going to need to elect people with amazing courage to stop handing out candy which we dearly love and which will probably lose them their job for saving the country. Then again if they fail to do what they should or get sucked into the culture of corruption our government will fail, and by this I mean economic and social collapse. It’s not something a reasonable person can question. When you owe more money than there is and your debt is growing faster than you can ever pay it back while your currency is based on trust it’s game over. That day is coming.
we’ve been looking at how to deal with the subversion of the founder’s ideals based on what we have done. Wudrow Wilson gave us the federal reserve and the income tax, among his horrible contributions leading us to two world wars and more. FDR gave us social security, a Ponzi scheme time bomb that unravels when life expectancy rises and birth rates drop. JFK gave us unions in government. LBJ gave us the great society and medicare. Our current congress and president is just hitting it with steroids.
The government has no business in our retirement or helping the poor. I believe any organization that wants to work in this charitably should be able to apply for a certification license. If audited and certified by the government those charitable causes would be listed on government web sites and information as audited and certified organizations where their accounting records are verified as to their legitimacy as a charity. Clearly this would cost money and their would be no taxes, thus no deduction, but obtaining this certification would make a charitable cause much more high profile and give it far greater access to funds.
Along with this there should be a balanced budget amendment that allows an exception only for war or natural disaster. One consequence would be the elimination of a lot of government waste. There would be government jobs lost. However other benefits would ensue. Currently education for instance holds states hostage by handing them money with strings attached. Seems to me that is the wrong direction for such assertion of force. If we decided we were unhappy with our public education system being centrally controlled by a government listening only to teachers unions who donate heavily to their sycophantic and usually Democratic congressmen we could change all that by closing the purse. Now if Washington isn’t benefiting us we simply defund them and fund our state and local education.
Here’s what puzzles me. How did a bunch of peasant farmers and citizen militias manage to defeat the largest and most powerful army and navy in the world to gain our independence over a 2% tax on tea… and somehow this spawned a nation with the central idea of “you can’t fight city hall”? We can do anything and we can feel much better doing if it we know we are insuring freedom. One last thought on this whole idea. I believe we would not let government fail, but if we enacted my plan the economic explosion in this country would be unlike any seen before.
Another good piece.
This is so true:
“How did a bunch of peasant farmers and citizen militias manage to defeat the largest and most powerful army and navy in the world to gain our independence over a 2% tax on tea… and somehow this spawned a nation with the central idea of “you can’t fight city hall”?”
Well said.
How did we get to this point? We’ve become way too apathetic. Heck, people have learned from the media it’s “cool” to mock the very people who do get up off their couches and question the status quo.
The mockers actually feel pride for accepting whatever they’re told to do (ie work months out of the year just to pay taxes that then go to our govt’s crony capitalists, lobbiests, etc). And they feel noble for having done so.
Very sad.