🚀 go-pugleaf

I recently attended one of Congressman David Price's town meetings.
When I asked him about issues in this area, he just replied that
they at congress were just giving the American people the things
they demanded and that the American people just needed to be
convinced that all these things that they were demanding from
their government were going to have to be paid for by them.

Now, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm not one
to be going up to Washington demanding anything from my government.
If anything, I wish they would trim down a little.  It seems to
me that somehow these politicians are convinced that the lobbiests
who are paid by special interest groups to come to their door each
day are somehow representatives of the people.  Sorry, that's the job
of the Congressman, not the lobbiest (sp?).

I have another, much stronger question.  What do these guys feel is
the absolute maximum that they should be allowed to tax the 
American people?  When the income tax was first voted into law,
it was 1% (can you believe it?) and when it was introduced, an 
amendment was killed which would have limited the tax to 2%. 
Why was the amendment killed?  Because the congressmen of that
day thought that the government would never impose that great
a burden on the american people.   The mere mention of it was
an offense.  My how times have changed...  We ought to put them
on the spot in the next election.. "Candidate ______, what do 
you thing the absolute upper limit of taxation should be?"
Perhaps we as a nation should ask ourselves if there are some
government benefits we are using which we could possibly live
without, then write our congressman and suggest it be cut.

For example,  I could go the rest of my life without visiting the
Lawrence Welk museum.  Perhaps they should look for private funding...
Even though I worked under a Federal Research grant while in college,
I know darn well that Joe Taxpayer could have survived without my
research... What about yours?

This here internet is a good example.  This should be paid for by
industry, yet how much government funding goes into supporting the
hardware for this network.  I think it's a crime what we have convinced
ourseles is a vital necessity at the expense of the truly needy in
our country.  How many of these things could be paid for by the private
sector so the government could simply be in the business of governing
and providing for defense and social welfare.  What an opportunity
for the development of more efficient, para-governmental agencies!

                   -----------------------

In another statement, he said that basically the American form of 
government was flawed and could not work.  (Too much gridlock) and
that he thought a much better form of government was the Parlimentary
system.  (Don't know what happened to the oath of supporting and
defending the Constitution...)

Well, off the soapbox for now....  Happy voting!


-- 
-John Price                    OS/2 Maintenance Czar/Source Manager
 Systems Developer             Host Systems R&D
 PC-Host Group                 SAS Institute, Inc.
 sasjzp@unx.sas.com            (919)677-8000 x6976

In article <BwyBvB.1wt@unx.sas.com>, sasjzp@stjohn.unx.sas.com (John Asa Price) writes:
|>I have another, much stronger question.  What do these guys feel is
|>the absolute maximum that they should be allowed to tax the 
|>American people?
[...]
|> We ought to put them
|>on the spot in the next election.. "Candidate ______, what do 
|>you thing the absolute upper limit of taxation should be?"

You've missed the real beauty of a progressive tax system
(from a politician's point of view).  Since not everyone
pays the same rate, it's always possible to say "taxes
on group X are (too high, at their upper limit) the problem
is that group Y doesn't pay enough" or as the saying goes
"don't tax me, don't thee, tax that man behind the tree".


|>Perhaps we as a nation should ask ourselves if there are some
|>government benefits we are using which we could possibly live
|>without,

I think that's the critical insight.  For some reason there
is a great reluctance in this country to admit that the government
will never have the resources to fund programs to pursue all worthy
goals, and that without strict guidelines to control what can be
spent, congress will always allow programs to grow out of control
sooner or later.  So what's basic?  I would say that funding a
reasonable number of people for judicial, legislative and executive
branch functions, a level of national defense that is appropriate for
the threats the nation faces and police are the real basics.  In addition,
possibly entitlements for the POOR, education and basic research
may be defensible.

|>This here internet is a good example.  This should be paid for by
|>industry, yet how much government funding goes into supporting the
|>hardware for this network.  I think it's a crime what we have convinced
|>ourseles is a vital necessity at the expense of the truly needy in
|>our country.

while I might agree with that on a philisophical basis, the fact is that
programs that fund things like the internet don't amount to a hill of
beans in comparison with the spending on entitlements that doesn't go
to the needy (which for the purposes of this discussion I'll say
includes all those whose incomes are at or below the poverty line).
For example, in FY92 the "big four" entitlement programs were
funded at (estimates are from early in FY92, so they're not exact):

Social Security: 290 billion
Medicare:        118 billion
Medicaid:         72 billion
"other income
security, incl.
welfare"          45 billion

Total:          525 billion

(Source: "The Budget for Fiscal Year 1993", which is the budget
proposal document for FY93, published in 1992)

The overwhelming majority of social security and medicare money
goes to the elderly.  If you don't count noncash transfer
payments into income (meaning that food stamps, housing assistance
and the like doesn't count), about 20% of the elderly are poor.
Practically all of the elderly get SS and medicare, so 80% of
the people on these programs are NOT poor.  Because the rate of
SS payments is based to some extent on the income of the payee
before retirement, more than 80% of SS money goes to people who
are not poor, but if we take the 80% figure for the purposed of
calculation and assume that medicaid and welfare money always
goes only to the poor, we find that of the 525 billion,
at least .8 * (290 + 118) = 326.4 billion (62%) of the total goes to
people who are not poor.

If you do count noncash transfer payments into income, then the rate
of poverty among the elderly is about 5%, and the corresponding
numbers are 387.6 billion (73.8%) going to people who are not poor.

Either of these numbers easily overshadows money spent for the internet,
research, federal money for education, and any excess for national defense
combined. If you want to have fairer government, this is the place to start.