You are hereby informed that someone has used your imputed financial value to borrow money for their own use. It has been spent and is not recoverable. This may have been immoral, but was nevertheless quite legal because those that borrowed the money said so (made the laws). Payment on this debt will require your lifetime of labor. There is no way that you can escape this servitude. You have been, thusly, taxed without representation since you failed to vote before you were born or achieved legal age with wisdom. Try to bear your lot with its ever-present pain with the knowledge that the "Greatest Generation" that left you with this dire financial legacy did do some admirable things. Those may have been necessary for their own survival and welfare but do redound to your benefit. Keep in mind that they had a really good time with your money.
Some of it was used by the obviously futile goal of living forever. Learn from that and accept the official reality of "quality-adjusted years of life expectancy" as your guide. This will be determined by a government that has your entire electronic medical record and control over the delivery of what medical care they decide you warrant. Who better to know your worth? Study the authorized course in thanatology and end of life decisions early so that you will have perfected the psychological mechanisms of coping with death. Death will be the easier frustration with which to cope. You will be prevented from using your own assets to obtain existing medical services to fight it. After all, communal egalitarianism is the new foundation and must be honored, avoiding the greediness of self reliance and the quest to excel for yourself and your family. What medical care the government has deemed it can't afford for the masses, should be foregone with quiet acquiescence.
The example of consideration by the state of Oregon in denying a patient a cancer drug under the state's program of care with the compassionate touch of assuring the patient in the same letter that doctor-assisted suicide, however, is a covered benefit is a forerunner of the coming era.
Government officials will not be part of this program because of the ethically sensitive need to maintain an arms-length distance from it which will enhance objective management of it.
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I believe that what we mean here by borrow money for our own use is refering to borrowing form the Social Security Insurance surplus or the selling of government bonds that we consider "borrowing money".
ReplyDeleteRegarding the SSI surplus, and I should coroborate this, it is my understanding that it was always meant to be a pay as we go plan and never intended to have a surplus. For whatever reason, the surplus kind of ended up there. There was no legal reason that it couldn't be "borrowed" from. Our legislatures don't really live in a moral vs not moral world. They live in a legal vs not legal world. If it's not illegal, it's legal.
They depend on taxes for their salary, to start, and in order to do what they do. Legislation doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The biggest problem is we insist on voting for the guy that says, "No new taxes". We start out by hiring the guy most likely to be lying. We have created a system of our own design where legilatures, however honest, have to lie if they want to get elected. Even the honest ones must know that they won't be elected if they don't. The most altruistic will lie (a white one) so that we don't end up with the least altruistic. And where do we think there going to get the money from? From the most legal place they can.
Taxes have continued to go down since around 1953. The difference between the top margin and the bottom margin (think rich vs poor) has hardly ever been lower since 1913.
The economist, Dr. Arthur Laffer, presented what economist refer to as the Laffer Curve. He proposed it in 1940. It became more popular in economics in 1980. It has been around since as early as 1377.
To understand the concept, we must first understand that government spending does stimulate the economy to a degree. At least in enforcing contract rights. Also because government workers turn around and buy stuff. If we put people to work building bridges and interstate highways, they buy consumer goods and the free market has excellent roads for shipping goods. These all stimulate the free market economy.
If the tax rate is 0% then there is no government. If the tax rate is 100%, no one has any reason to bother working and 100% of nothing is nothing. So somewhere in between 0% and 100%, government revenue and free market revenue increases until it peaks and comes back down to zero. This is not a concept that requires some empirical test. It's a "duh" concept. We just haven't had good reason or opportunity to use it.
No one knows where the peak is. But we know it's probably less than 73% for the top bracket. And there is some reason to believe that it is more than 24%. But it's going to depend on alot of factors like what the government is investing in and what they invested in earlier. And a billion other little things in the balance of the economy.
Another point is that it is fairly well understood that companies will do better if they are leveraged. Alot of people got rich in hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. But there is a limit. Alot of people also, later, ruined companies by over leveraging them.
So it is clear that there is an optimal tax rate and an optimal level of debt. I think were at the point now that the tax rate is to low and the debt is pushing the limit. I think China does too.
My point is this.If we expect the government to be less leveraged then were going to have to expect our legislatures to increase taxes. We have to vote for the one that champions the best tax level, not the lowest tax level. We have to vote for the one that champions the optimal level of government debt, not the one that champions the lowest. If we want honest politicians, we have to vote for honest politicians.