I strongly believe that federal government must be so ashamed of itself, right now. I mean, we keep hearing about financial cliff after cliff. Have you thought, what does this mean? Let me give you an example. If you start running out of your budgeted spending for things like grocery, clothing, housing, healthcare, education and transport, one after the other, what would be your logical conclusion and ultimate line of action? Of course, it would be that you are overspending, and you need to cut your spending. Right? Unfortunately this is not the way our federal government thinks. Their way of thinking is that these cliffs are happening because the tax payers are not funding our government, enough, and the government is not borrowing, enough.
So, their solutions to fiscal cliffs are totally opposite of the way a household or a business would solve this kind of problem. Instead of stopping overspending, they would increase taxes, and borrow more. Result? Unbelievably high taxation is killing the world’s greatest economy, and the debt and federal budget deficits are skyrocketing. It is the funniest and most disturbing thing for me when every single time, president gets on big corporate owned TV channels and says, it is the responsibility of Congress to fund.
But, he never mentions, in his glorious speeches, how? Of course, what he does not want to talk about are the only available methods of funding the overspending which by the way means, spending more than what they are getting in. The only methods to fund overspending, for government, are taxing and borrowing. Ever wonder, why do we have to pay an unending trail of taxes, everyday? Income Tax, Social Security Tax, Medicare Tax, Sales Tax, Property Tax, Car Tax, etc., and why their rates always keep getting increased?
These are the reasons. Government is extremely corrupt and inefficient, and it doesn’t care about the burden of hard earned tax money and indirect taxes in the form of debt and resulting inflation, on us, at all. So, more they get in, more they want to award to their campaigns financing government contractors. These contractors bid low to get the contracts. Once they get the contracts there are no consequences or penalties attached to overspending. Even if there is a problem, they have financed enough campaigns to be covered. Now, due to this continuously, ongoing overspending, agencies start running out of funds.
Up to this point, it was the government playing for these rich and influential contractors. It is picked up by their partner in crime, big corporate media, from here. It starts feeding people that there is a very serious crisis, and only way to avoid it is more money. It must be done and must be done now. If we do not do this right away than world will come to a screeching halt. They are also the ones who invent scary terminology like fiscal cliff, transportation cliff or financial meltdown. In the middle of all that horror created by politicians with the help of big media, the tax payers get robbed, again and again.
I am sure you are hearing a lot about transportation cliff, on big media, right now. This whole fuss is about same type of ridicule. This is like grown up kid in college calls you and tells you that he or she has spent all the money you gave, and if you do not send money, immediately, he will have to go hungry. They are telling us that Highway Trust Fund is becoming insolvent, and will run out of money in August this year. It is funded by gas tax money.
Highway Trust fund receives tax money because congress authorized itself to tax the gas. This authority is expiring in September 2014. As usual the solution proposed by politicians and big media is more money by raising gas tax. They are saying that insolvency of Highway trust Fund will be disastrous for our highway systems. What you are not hearing about is the nature of problem and why? As most government agencies do, Highway trust Fund, spends more than it gets, and this is not because the gas tax money is very little. It was established in 1956, and in 1996 Congress decided to not allow it to overspend.
The restriction on spending was removed in 1998 to the point that in 2007 Congress had to transfer 55 billion dollars from general funds to Trust. Now, it is running out of funds, again. Raising gas tax will have disastrous effects on our already ailing economy. This will cause a hike in gas prices which obviously effects the prices of almost everything because transportation is used in some form for almost every type of business. In the middle of continuously declining wages and incomes, it will become harder for people to even get to the work, hurting the economy and personal finances even more.
Beside transportation, gasoline is used extensively in manufacturing. That will be another reason for price hikes. Trust has used the tax money very inefficiently and in a very lavish way. The complaints of corruption and waste are common. Providing more tax money will simply mean encouraging these reckless practices, even more. There are other more common sense solutions to the problem. These include user based fee, instead of more generalized taxation, a government-private partnership and delegating more responsibility to state and local authorities. President Obama is proposing more money into competitive grants.
Competitive grants are in fact a very bad form of political corruption and bribery. These are usually granted on political reasons, usually right before or in the middle of tough campaigns. I believe the following must be the end note. Government should stop destroying our economy and the standards of living by growing bigger and bigger. The tax drain on this economy is already unbearable and federal debt is totally out of control. Instead of common practice of raising taxes and borrowing more money, all the time, government must learn to live in its means. Common sense free market solutions are always preferable over tax hikes and borrowing. Those benefit the economy, provide jobs and raise standards of living.
Cliff Shop
