Day 11 Advice from MUD

This morning, the paper mentioned that the City of Topeka was putting in a water and sewer service to an industrial park. That led us to another one of our famous discussions on the responsibility of Government. I tend to see things from the side of helping businesses make money, pay taxes and provide jobs so I tend to see providing infrastructure to a Business park a part of what Government should do. Barb, See's it the job of Government to provide the requirements and social services and little else. My words of advice for today are, "Be careful what you ask for!"

There is a group of people that feel that everyone should pay their fair share of the cost of Government. The Flat tax guys want every dollar of income from any source to be taxed at a flat amount with no provisions for exemption. Get a dollar from Social Security, pay the flat rate. Get a dollar from a lottery ticket, pay the flat rate. The focus by the Internal Revenue Service would be at the source of dollars not at the end. This is every dollar not just some dollars. Our sales tax is nearing 10% here in the heartland and I don't see things getting "Mo' Better." The audits would be at the source of money not at the Taxpayer level.

The other end of the spectrum is the people that want to apply the Tax with the ability to shield the bottom people from the effects. This has resulted in 20% of the people paying about 80% of the taxes and nearly 50% paying almost none. Both have problems and we should really try to understand what is the right level of income tax and spending at the same time.

If you look at the different types of Government and how they failed, you don't have to look much further than the old Soviet Union. There, the amount of Government needed to control everything became a burden to the cost that finally put them out of business. Cuba never got anywhere that level of Government and there people are nearly starving because they can't eat just sugar and Cigars. Have no government and you wind up like Somalia where the War Loards run almost everything and people starve.

Turn to the United States and look at where we are on the Global List. Our students are performing poorly in spite of a lot of spending. Our Government is borrowing money from China like there is no tomorrow and we have tried to spend our way out of debt.

I wish I had all the answers but heck, I'm not sure we know what the questions are. Government is like the practice of medicine. We provide a medicine and then watch for the results. If we get lucky, the patient gets better. In some cases, the patient gets better with a placebo just like they would with no meds. In other cases, people die from the effects of the medicine.

It has taken us nearly 250 years to get into the shape we are in, it might take us a while to fix it. Just be careful what you ask for.

MUD