This is an open letter to any and all of our elected representatives in Washington D.C. (and here at home too if it applies).
I've listened to President Obama and every other politician from both sides of the aisle tell us countless things since before the election that kind of boils down to these three key points :
- That we (the people) have to sacrifice in this fiscal emergency, in order to fix this mess.
- That we (the politicians) have to do things differently in order to get things done, in order to fix this mess.
- That we (everyone) must approach things in a way that never has been done before in order to see real change, in order to fix this mess.
I am wondering that if all of those statements (or any of them) are true and plausible , then why is it that the answers to the problems no matter what they may be are always the same tired old thing? The same old tried and true political doublespeak comes from both parties. The same tired rhetoric from every one on Capitol Hill. The exact same answers that Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan used are being re-hashed and given a different name, but they are doing the same things. Everybody is busy diving for cover and blaming each other, with both sides saying the other is wrong. One or two old timers in both parties are telling everybody who will listen within earshot that the other side has it all wrong.
I say Enough. Enough is Enough is Enough. Baloney, Fooie and spit is what I say. 9 days into the Presidency that was supposed to change the world and the best we can do is to posture, change executive orders that we don't like and gripe because we are in the minority? He may be left handed but it sure seems like most everything else is just about where we left off in December. You want to help me? Fix Jobs now. You want to help me? Buy back 30 % of every mortgage that is overvalued and out of reach. Let millions of people keep their homes. Tell the banks you'll give them 20 cents on the dollar for every mortgage they modify down from the rip me off pricing and then give them my so called tax break. New growth industry overnight. Lawyers would go nuts over this one. You want to help me? Give the bankruptcy judge the power to modify an existing mortgage to a fair one in this economy that makes sense to the average American. If you want to give out tax breaks, don't try to give it at tax time to a family of four barely surviving on 50,000 dollars a year in a double income household. This may help the balance sheets of the treasury, but come payday it don't mean squat to me or to anyone else. You can call it billions of dollars in tax breaks if you want to , but the fact is an extra $2.62 every week don't excite me a bit. Factually you are giving me my own money back and it took you 15 months to do it after I earned it. How's that going to help me?
Will one of you people please tell the truth for once? Can any one of you please do the job you were elected to do and stop looking for one minute at the next election? You were not elected to be right or to beat the other party. You were not elected to begin re-inventing your party so you don't lose next time. You were not elected so you could find cover from tough issues come election time, so you can deny you are part of the problem. You are not there to put off making decisions about today's problems until you are re-elected. You are not there to be a chairman of a committee. You are not there to be powerful. You are not there to go on trips abroad. You are not there to run special elections and run special investigations. You did not get elected to be able to charge thousands of dollars in 5 years giving speeches to half drunk nitwits at a convention and enrich yourself.
You are there to serve me and everybody like me. You are there to fix what is broken, not to ensure your continued re-election, cycle after cycle. You are there to make a difference and to make sure America is prosperous and survives with all our freedoms intact for the next 200 years. If that's not why you are there, then you need to go away and go away quick, back to your law practice.
You want to radically change the life of the average American you talk so loftily about? You want to make life easier and better in this country? Good, so do I. Here is a radical thought. If you want to give me a tax break, Get out of my paycheck. You guys have taxed and taxed and taxed and came up with new ways to collect taxes so many inventive ways that you are literally taxed from birth to death and beyond and it never stops, and new taxes are applied every day. The latest iteration of this goofy philosophy is that you want to give a tax break to only those people who can prove they have a right to work here because they have a social security number? Tax breaks are a stupid idea whose time is well past because you have to have enormous sums of money in the first place in order to see any benefit from them at tax time. They do absolutely no good. They may sound pretty in speeches but it has never been proven that a tax break helps the average American in any substantial way, once he has spent his tax check.
Here is a better idea. Make everybody pay taxes fairly and make certain that every income earned no matter how it was made, is subject to taxation. Make gang bangers who sell drugs pay taxes. Make illegal aliens pay taxes. Make people who get paid cash pay taxes. Tax our 40-45 % of all Americans who never pay a dime of income tax, yet somehow get a tax refund check anyway. Make criminals pay taxes. Tax the Mafia, the Russian gangsters and the Yakuza all at once. Make them pay their fair share. Tax every hooker, pimp, burglar, drug buyer and seller and every one who buys pervert pornography, and make them feel my pain. The way it is right now, virtually none of the examples I've cited pay income taxes, yet they can live lavish lifestyles and then guess who supports them, by paying their share of taxes and then paying for their incarcerations?
The average American everybody talks about, that's who, and I for one am sick of it.
The problem as I see it, is that fundamentally the tax and tax break equation is all wrong. It is backwards. Instead of applying a tax rate to income, then allowing exclusions and loopholes and tax breaks and enterprise zones to eat the heart out the tax rate and then thinking of complicated and insane ways to give me a tax break, just get to work and adopt a strategy that taxes spending instead of income.
If you tax spending, I decide what I spend my money on and you always get your cut from everybody. No one can escape paying taxes with this strategy. Criminals, Gangbangers and drug dealers and illegal aliens have to eat don't they ? Good, when they buy food or eat a lavish dinner collect a tax on that. When a rich guy has a big pool built, tax it. When a supermodel has plastic surgery , that's right, tax it. Even if I am here illegally and don't have a single piece of legal ID at all, I still buy groceries and electricity and gasoline and alcohol and toilet paper don't I? Tax the tax if you want to, but do it so that everyone is treated equally under the law and I am not tax discriminated against because I choose to be law abiding and pay my taxes owed. Tax every good and every service without exception at an equitable rate no matter what it is and we can stop having this idiotic argument about who is right, because our problem is not that I need a tax break, our problem is that not all of us pay taxes.
See the two issues at play here are really pretty simple. It goes like this.
First, income taxes were invented. No one person , not one law firm, CPA or accountant, and no single agency understands the entire tax code. Lawyers and legislators have made it so unwieldy and cumbersome that it no longer works. There are so many exceptions to the code that people make a great high dollar income out of small sections of it by helping other folks to not pay taxes. It is broken. Accept this and move forward.
Second, as soon as everybody figured out that taxation was going to based on the theory of tax collection on income, the underground economy took off, and by some accounts it is actually bigger than the reported economy, depending upon who you believe. Everyone who works for cash figured this out a long, long time ago. Ask any waitress or waiter. You think they declare all their tips, just so you can take it from them ? This process allows and encourages people to lie in order to save money, and only punishes those too ignorant to hide their income.
Its not that hard to say out loud and If I can figure it out, all those Ivy league lawyers in Washington DC ought to be able to do it too.
I doubt there is any political will to even think about this. They are all too worried about being re-elected next time.
President Obama, Yeah, we can, but sadly, No we won't.
Thankx for reading my rant !
bigmike
Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/
I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
