Our government spends too much, and taxes the people too much

April 7, 2024

Several weeks ago, as the April tax filing deadline neared, Facebook featured some comments about how Americans feel about taxes.

Among those comments were these: 

** The biggest scam in life: Paying taxes on money you make; taxes on money you spend; and taxes on things you own that you already paid taxes on with already taxed money.

** Paying taxes in the USA is like having a never-ending car payment on a car that won't run.

** If your country has enough money to give to illegals, your taxes are too high.

** If they can pay all these student loans, they can stop taxes on seniors!

Clearly, taxes are not popular with the American people, despite the need for the government to collect taxes to pay its bills.

Founder Benjamin Franklin in the very early days of the republic said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. But he wasn't talking about income taxes, because they did not exist then.

In order to help pay for the Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861. Tax rates were 3 percent on income exceeding $600 and less than $10,000, and 5 percent on income exceeding $10,000. But this tax didn’t last very long. There were other income taxes of short duration.

The income tax we pay today came into existence in 1913 when the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. It was a tax on incomes of both individuals and corporations. 

As much as people dislike the taxes they must pay, they generally understand that taxes are necessary for governments at the federal, state, and local levels to operate. And here in America, with our commitment to personal freedom, those governments are expected to be lean, efficient, not overbearing, and not overly expensive.

On the federal level, those characteristics are not being followed as our Founders expected.

USA Facts tells us that the “federal government collected nearly $4.5 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 (FY2023). About half was collected through individual income taxes, while 37 percent was through payroll taxes. Other revenue sources included corporate income taxes, customs duties, and sales taxes.”

However, the report continues, the “federal government spent almost $6.2 trillion in FY 2023, including funds distributed to states, Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, interest on the debt, and aid to individuals such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and refundable tax credits accounted for 90 percent of spending.”

Worldometer online said that “the current population of the United States of America is 341,531,428 as of Sunday, May 5, 2024.” That’s about $13,000 in federal income collected per person. Spending, however, ran up to more than $18,000 per person.

Today, the National Debt stands at roughly $34 trillion. In 2006 the National Debt was around $8 trillion. A steady increase put it at about $23 trillion in 2020. And then the government stepped on the gas and the National Debt soared by $11 trillion in just 4 years to today’s $34 trillion. As a result, the per person amount to clear the National Debt today is more than $99,500.

The federal government is not as designed: small and limited in function. Today, it is too big, too expensive, not very efficient, and often quite over-bearing.

There are 15 executive departments and hundreds of federal agencies and commissions, employing approximately 1,427,700 federal employees, not including the military. Given the limited government philosophy of the Founders, many/most of these are not appropriate.

Which ones are needed? Here are a few of those executive branch departments that are sensible and needed: Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury. While others may function well and sometimes provide positive guidance, are they really appropriate under the founding principles?

Why do we need a federal Department of Education to tell states how to educate the young? Why do we need the Environmental Protection Agency to tell private land owners what they can and cannot do with their own property? Why do we need a Department of Labor to tell businesses how they must operate? Under our system of federalism, these and other functions should be under control of the states, not the federal government.

In many of these departments, agencies or commissions unelected bureaucrats set rules in place with the force of law, complete with penalties. However, they are not approved by Congress, the law-making body. These bureaucrats tell the people that they work for, and who pay their salaries, what they can and cannot do, and can render punishment for them if they do not comply.

Over the decades the limited government philosophy of the Founders has fattened up and grown far beyond what it was designed to be, and what is needed and appropriate.

With every such step, the freedom of Americans becomes a little bit more limited. And if this concept continues much longer, America will no longer be the Land of the Free.

The fundamental transformation of the country just keeps coming

March 19, 2024

Being fed up with most everything that has made America the very special place that it is, those on the left want to change how our system of employment works. We have fairly recently seen efforts to replace people getting promotions and raises due to the level of their performance with a focus on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). With DEI, getting a particular job or a raise is based upon who they are, their race, gender, etc., not their level of skills and knowledge.

One aspect of this desire for change was posted in a meme on Facebook that said: “Every single job should pay a living wage. If the work matters enough to hire someone to do it, that worker should be able to afford a safe, comfy home; fresh, nutritious food; and fun vacation sometimes, and enough left to save. Yes, every single job, including yours.” 

First, there is the question what a living wage is, and who gets to decide that? A living wage in some cities and areas of the country is very different from a living wage in towns and cities in other places.

This idea ignores the different levels and requirements of jobs.  Some have high demands and greater needs, and higher pay. Others have low requirements, with lower pay. Then there is the background and level of performance of the worker. Under this theory, a high school or college student working a very basic job should earn a wage high enough to satisfy the details of the Facebook meme. Or someone in an apprenticeship learning the basics of a new job should earn a living wage from day one.

The job/pay situation is complicated.

Support for reducing the standard 40-hour, five-day workweek to a 32-hour, four-day workweek has recently gained momentum. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, has introduced a bill to do just that. Under his bill, people will work a four-day week, but be paid for what they would earn working a five-day week.

The 40-hour workweek has been the standard for some 80 years, being brought into effect by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1940. It has worked very well, for the most part. But, Sanders says that due to advances in automation and other aspects of production, companies can afford to give employees more time off, but keep their pay and benefits the same.

He told a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the economic gains that have resulted from automation and other factors have benefitted CEOs, while workers have still made the same amount of money.

“The question that we are asking today is a pretty simple question,” Sanders said. “Do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the people on top, or do we demand that these transformational changes benefit working people? And, one of these benefits must be a lower workweek, 32-hour workweek. This is not a radical idea.”

However, if labor and machine operation are reduced by 20 hours a week, productivity will drop by 20 percent. Employers will have the same labor costs, but will have fewer goods and services to sell. Businesses will lose income and profit.

The employer will then have to raise prices to compensate for the lost productivity, or hire more workers to take up the slack. More workers may make up the loss of productivity, but that will cause an increase in labor costs. 

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy argued that the proposal is essentially a pay increase forced upon businesses. And, he predicted that the 32-hour workweek would "destroy some employers" who would be unable to adjust to the new system.

Both of these concepts — first, that every worker should get a living wage, regardless of job demands, ability and experience; and, second, pay workers the same for working 32 hours per week as they got for 40 hours per week — are typical of liberal/socialist “reasoning.” They represent what the great economist and author Thomas Sowell so rightly termed “stage-one thinking.” 

Stage-one thinking is when an idea pops up that delights many, and they react with “Wow! What a great idea. Let’s do it!” They fail to look beyond the attractiveness of that “great idea” to see what might happen down the road. After it has been in effect for a while, the results are most often much worse than expected.

So often, liberal/socialist ideas target and negatively affect businesses, because the proponents of these ideas think businesses are just selfish entities that take advantage of their workers. But businesses provide jobs and make things we want and need. And, being able to work and earn money to live on is a good thing. Without businesses that can operate relatively freely, where would we get the things we need and want?

It is also a good thing that in America anyone can pursue any work area they choose, and so long as they can learn the trade or profession and perform it at a suitable level, they will be happy and can live a decent life.

Recklessly altering this proven system is a dangerous move that will likely produce negative effects on the country, its people and its businesses.

Increasing federal control reduces our constitutional freedoms

September 19, 2023

Actions by those in positions of authority to push the boundaries of that authority took a huge step recently when New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a public health order outlining efforts to combat gun violence in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. 

“I’m going to continue pushing to make sure that all of us are using every resource available to put an end to this public health emergency with the urgency it deserves,” she said. “I will not accept the status quo. Enough is enough.”

A provision of that public health order temporarily suspended both the open and concealed carrying of firearms in Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County by those who had been granted carry permits by the state government.

The violations would result in civil penalties, not criminal penalties, but the fines imposed could be up to $5,000 per violation.

This action attempted to suspend rights guaranteed to the people by the U.S. Constitution, and that action brought swift and harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, and resulted in law suits against the action.

In response, U.S. District Court Judge David Urias agreed with plaintiffs who pointed out the violation of constitutional rights. He granted a temporary restraining order to block the suspension of gun rights. The order will remain in place until an Oct. 3 court hearing.

The rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution cannot be suspended on the whim of a mere elected official, whether that official is the president, a governor, an attorney general or a mayor. Yet this woman believed she had that authority in order to combat a local problem, a problem that many of her constituents argue is really not that much of a problem.

Recently we have seen government mandates and restrictions on our freedoms during the Covid pandemic, and others ostensibly to save the planet from climate change due to too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

The actions taken during Covid, and currently to combat the climate change that many people believe in, may actually have been taken for the best of reasons. However, they also constitute restrictions on the personal freedoms that the United States is known for. And they frequently inconvenience people and raise prices on things they want and need.

We recently increased our level of energy independence, but it was wiped out almost as soon as President Joe Biden took office. That forced the purchasing of materials and fuels from other countries like China and Russia, raised fuel prices substantially, and put thousands out of work. 

And, by the way, American oil and natural gas are the cleanest in the world. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., noted recently that “If we replaced Russian natural gas in Europe [with American natural gas], for one year, just one year, that would lower 215 million tons of emissions because our natural gas is 41 percent cleaner than Russian natural gas.” Biden’s war on fossil fuels has negatively affected his goal of reducing CO2 emissions.

Biden’s efforts to kill fossil fuels now has him campaigning to do away with gas-burning stoves, furnaces, fireplace logs and grills; creating stricter specifications for common appliances like clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers, and others that will substantially increase the cost of those products.

There is the manic effort to decrease gas- and diesel-powered vehicles in favor of electric vehicles that cost much more, depend almost entirely upon China and other countries for the materials to build their batteries, and require fewer American employees to produce them than conventional vehicles. And then there is the needed enormous increase in our electric grid to be able to recharge these tens of thousands of EVs that Biden wants.

The Department of Justice not long ago involved itself in a local matter. When parents attended school board meetings to register their displeasure with some things that were going on in the school their children attended, the DOJ labeled them “domestic terrorists.” 

Even if the parents were behaving inappropriately, or even violently, it is not the job of the federal government to become involved in state or local matters. That is how our republic is designed.

This nation was formed by the several states that united for that purpose. They did not give up their right to control themselves in local matters by creating a federal government. The states still have a large degree of sovereignty that is protected by terms of the U.S. Constitution.

What we are seeing is an increasing effort by Democrats to empower the federal government to control virtually everything that goes on in our country. They are “fundamentally transforming” the country. 

That contradicts two of the primary goals of the Founders of the United States of America: a large degree of personal freedom, and a federal government limited in its power.

If this power-grab is allowed to continue, the once-great United States of America will some day in the future degenerate into just another Cuba or Venezuela, as the protections provided by the Constitution are gradually erased.  It will be a country whose citizens are at the mercy of autocrats who have complete control.