How Do We Fix Our Infrastructure?

As I love to tell leftists when they go on thier “tax everyone” idiocies: raising taxes does not generate more money in the long term. When taxes are raised, people earn less money. They hunker down and weather the tax storm or they become dirt poor because of taxation. Those that can afford it, move their assets out of the USA. Taxation revenues go down as tax rates go up.

On the other hand, as tax rates go down, people invest more, make more, keep more OF THEIR OWN MONEY, and use that money to EXPAND the tax base, which increases tax revenue.

Now, if the Dems want tax money (greedy as they are), let us take a look at one cause which robs the treasury of tax revenues: The IRS. The overhead at the IRS is staggering. Some researchers put it at 25% or higher. This means that 25% of the GROSS tax revenue is LOST in the collection of taxes. 0.25$ for every 1$ earned!!!! This means that for every Billion dollars in gross taxes, the IRS absorbs $250 MILLION in overhead/collection costs!!

That is one heck of a loss when you look at the Trillions of dollars of tax revenues.

How to fix this? A flat tax would work. The IRS then becomes a collection agency where people write monthly checks to. THAT might wake the population up. We cry when we see our credit card bills or our mortgage payments. Just think how much more people would be upset writing tax bills every month?

Another solution is a “consumption tax” or sales tax. With the exception of food, you pay a national sales tax. If you buy that big yacht or personal jet, you pay a heck of a lot more than the average person buying a CD Player or regular car. The bigger the purchase, the bigger the tax. Everything becomes automated and the IRS becomes almost redundant.

But the left lives in some fantasy land where people do not understand taxes, economics, and who is paying taxes. Industry pays billions in income taxes. Add to this fines, “environmental taxes”, social security payments (government taxes these twice), 401k payments, retirement payments (also taxed), resource taxes, gas refining taxes, tariffs, excise taxes, and extra taxes for X, Y, and Z. With all of this money coming in, the question is: Where does it go.

The left will scream “Iraq”, but that is a lie and they know it. Discretionary spending is a VERY small part of the budget. Congressionally Mandated spending is the lion’s share. All of these Federal departments with huge staffs get paid no matter what, unless they are disbanded and when does that happen? All of these redundant departments which squabble over projects and their little kingdoms suck the budget down. How many of these are pork? How many hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted by these pork agencies?

In addition, there are the state funded mandates. States must pay for a lot of programs, which taxes people and companies even more. How many of these are pork and favors?

Where were the state highway agencies on this incident? Where was the already funded nondiscretionary spending? What unelected government organization allowed this to happen? It is NOT the fault of the President, and with the HUGE exception of the pork spenders on all sides, it is not really the fault of Congress. The fault lies in these unaccountable bureaucracies where the money seems to fall into a hole.

Instead of idiotically raising taxes, we need to SHRINK government. A FULL reorganization of government at all levels is needed. Wasteful “pet” programs must be ended. Money for outlandish “studies” and other wasteful frauds must be eliminated. Welfare fraud, Social Security fraud, Identity Theft, and other drains on the system must be squashed. Redundant departments mush be consolidated and disbanded. In short, the government must do what industry does all the time: Become leaner and more “productive” (governments do not actually ‘produce’ anything but a service).