I know I've been very music - and in particular, guitar - centric lately, but this is a general-topic blog, and it's almost time for the NH Primary, so I'm going to talk a little politics. Hope you don't mind. Tough cookies if you do.
Got to confess to being a semi-reformed political junky, and living in New Hampshire kinda shoves me off the wagon every four years. It's a very frustrating year, too, as there's nobody out there that particularly lights my candle. There's usually somebody, even if they don't have a prayer. Unfortunately, this year the most interesting candidate is Dennis Kusinich. Scary. Allan Keyes, where have you gone? Anybody seen Jerry Brown around? Or maybe Pete DuPont? Dear God, anybody but Hillary!!
A lot of people complain about the New Hampshire primary, but I think it's the perfect place to get right down to brass tacks about some basic prinicples. It's a good place to discuss the differences between Liberal and Conservative, because NH is a state full of eccentrics. Extreme is the norm here. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is one of the most basic.
One thing that everybody agrees on is that it takes money to run a government. Gotta pay the army, support foreign dictatorships, etc. One side (I'll let you guess which one) says we gotta raise taxes, especially on rich people. I'll grant you that there's a lot of people in the world, and in this country, that have more money than brains. Or class. But before we start reaching into their pockets, let's consider a little history.
Remember the George Harrison song, Taxman? One for you, nineteen for me? Believe it or not, that was the tax rate in Great Britain at the time. 95%. Guess Old Blighty showed those rich so-and-so's.
So consider the tale of one Robert Plant, lead singer for Led Zeppelin. Back about '74 he was in a bad car accident in Greece. He returned to England where he received the best of care. Then, one night, against his Doctor's orders, he checked out of the hospital and was put on board a helicopter to continue his recuperation in Switzerland. Why? Because if he'd stayed one more day in England he'd have been subject to their income taxes.
So, instead of 95% of what he made that year, the Crown got . . . nothing.
So go ahead. Raise the taxes on the rich. That's what the Caymans are for. Instead of 36% of whatever they make, the country can have the pre-Reagan rate of 78% of . . . NOTHING!!
My father once had an idea that I still think would be a good one to try. Pay everybody in cash. Have all the employees line up and somebody from the company count out what they earned straight into their hand in cash. Then, you walk down a line and FICA takes so much, and Social Security takes so much, and so on. And when you're peeling off those bills from that wad that you worked for, smile. I think it would take about one of those paydays for there to be a major tax revolt in this country. We would start asking those people we handed OUR money to just what they planned to do with it.
I've worked for the Government. I served a hitch in the Navy, and I've seen where a lot of our tax dollars go. I've been made to carry 75-pound boxes of pork chops off the ship and into the trunk of a Chief's car. I've sat on those $8000 toilet seats and used those $500 screwdrivers. Just from the abuses I've personally seen, I would bet that a good 1/3 of the money the Federal Government gets are stolen. And that doesn't even get to the assinine things that we throw buckets of money at.
Conservatives like to argue that tax cuts, like the ones that President Bush gave, actually INCREASE revenues. Liberals act like they don't hear that, and say the gov't needs more money, so let's raise taxes. I wish one side or the other would actually publish figures. In such-and-such a year, the tax rate was X and XX dollars came in. Compare it with year YY, rate of Y%, intake of YYY dollars. Bush Jr, Reagan, and Kennedy all cut taxes to raise money. Bush I let a tax hike go through, and we had a minor recession. Could we see some damned figures, please?
I think it was Ron Paul (who I do NOT like, and who I think is a complete banana) who recently said that the biggest problem with the Bush tax cuts is they weren't deep enough. They should have been cut enough to actually make less money come in. Ron Paul may be a nut, but he's right about that!!
So that's my thoughts on taxes. Don't get me started about Iraq.
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