The First Step in Solving our Financial Crisis

The President says that we need to get a grip on healthcare costs if we're going to get a grip on the economy.

I understand his point, but I disagree with him. Health care is only a sixth of our economy - our government itself represents a much larger portion of our economy, and the way we fund it is designed to confuse and subjugate the American taxpayer, taking power from the people and settling it on the Congress in a way I doubt our founders intended.  I think the most important thing we need to do is get a grip on how we fund our government, and I think we can do it in a way that significantly returns power from lobbyists and an increasingly elitist Congress to the people in whose name our government supposedly operates.

As currently structured, our tax code is highly complex and terribly confusing.  The Congress is able to reward or punish Americans in groups large or small, depending on how they tinker with the Code, and they can isolate groups of Americans from each other by disparate treatment in the Code. Thus, changes to the Tax Code made by Congress often are designed to affect small groups so as not to raise the ire of the population as a whole.

American industry and commercial interests employ literally thousands of lobbyists to monitor Congress and influence its actions with respect to the Tax Code.  These lobbyists, handsomely compensated by the many interests that employ them, ae far more powerful than any individual citizen and sometimes wield more power than even individual Representatives or Senators, with respect to their ability to influence Tax Code legislation favorable to the interests they represent.

Thus, the Congress can make significant changes to the Tax Code that have very little impact on the overall opoulation but can make or break small groups.  In the last administration, tax cuts were passed that gave huge amounts of money to a small group of taxpayers, while most taxpayers got a relative pittance.  By contract, the current Congress seems hellbent not only on reversing those decisions, but on saddling the wealthy with even greater tax burdens.

The FairTax would change all this.

The FairTax is a single tax.  It's designed to replace ALL current federal taxes.  If the FairTax were enacted, there'd be one single thing that the Congress could change - the FairTax rate.  There'd be no more tinkering with the Tax Code to reward or punish small groups of taxpayers, and no more stealth legislation on taxes ignored by most of us because they don't affect our taxes.  When the FairTax is in place and the Congress wants to change it, that decision will be something that affects each American equally, and so will attract a great deal of attention.  Never again will we wait until tax time to find out how the rules and rates have changed - with the FairTax, we can be confident that every attempt to change the rate will be eagerly watched by an alert public.

And make no mistake about it - the ability to tinker with the Tax Code is one of the single greatest sources of Congressional power - a power they guard jealously.  The FairTax would remove that power from the Congress and return it to the people in a way I'll point out in a later post.

Now, the FairTax has generated a good amount of controversy, and it's got a lot more to recommend it than simply ridding our Capital of the thousands of parasitic lobbyists who advance the cause of special interests over the people.  It's also got a  lot to recommend it in terms of reducing the cost (currently estimated in the billions of dollars annually) of complying with the dizzying array of tax laws.  It'll make much more visible the actual sums we're paying to government for its operations, eliminating the current crazy quilt of income taxes, payroll taxes, excise taxes, fees, and the like - which serve the interests of the status quo by making it almost impossible for each of us to determine exactly how much of our resources actually goes to government.

But all these things cannot be pointed out in a single post.  The FairTax has been developed carefully and thoroughly by teams of economists and other experts who spent much time and millions of dollars in the process.  I'll point out some of the main reasons I support the FairTax in future posts, and I hope I can contribute not only to a more enhanced understanding of the FairTax, but also by improving understanding and perhaps clearing up some misunderstandings, I can help persuade those who aren'tyet sure of its benefit to our great nation.

For those who can't wait, and want to get a headstart, here are a couple of interesting links:

Americans for Fair Taxation: www.fairtax.org

Neal Boortz (one of the FairTax's most well-known proponents): www.boortz.com

 Thanks so much for your time.  Please leave a comment, and may God bless us all!

Welcome! And what shall we discuss today . . .?

Just a short note to say hello and welcome you to this little corner of the Internet.

I love to read, and I love to write.  I seem to live for sensory input - why, I can't even go sit down in Dunkin' Donuts and enjoy a cuppa without having something to read - thank goodness for newspaper machines!

Actually, I usually carry a sudoku book in my car so that I can work on a puzzle while eating.  I'm getting most of my news nowadays from the internet, with a smattering from more traditional outlets, primarily radio.  I try to keep the television turned off because even if it's just tuned to the news, it winds up attracting and distracting me, and I'm learning that life's far too short to lose any of it tied to the idiot box.

I never understood why it was a curse, "May you live in interesting times."  I think all times have been interesting at least since the discovery and colonization of the New World.  Our times today are intensely interesting, and here in the United States, the changes we're going through while we struggle to maintain our position as leader of the free world ensure that life is never boring!

Living in the Atlanta metro area, I hear a great deal of the regional Big Four: Neal Boortz, Clark Howard, Sean Hannity and Herman Cain.  Sometimes I'll listen to Michael Savage in the evenings - he's a smart and clever man, but when he goes off on politics and political issues, he sometimes gets to be too full of himself and I'll turn him off.

Don't misunderstand - there's no way you could call me a conservative, although I have a number of libertarian beliefs.  I just think it's important to hear what the other side (the cons) are saying.  And I've got a friend who listens to Sean Hannity on the ride home because, as he puts it, "the man makes my blood boil, but at least I won't fall asleep driving home!"

There are a number of things I want to share here.  Obviously, the pressing issues that face our nation demand comment because it's our responsibility as citizens to participate, and vigorously, in the ongoing national debate.  But there are many other things about life that make it worth living and those things deserve attention as well, things like cooking and eating, reading, fishing and canoeing . . . and trying to shape the world while raising children in it.

I love life, and I love where we're living, even as much as I love the town I grewup in for a while (New York City).  I love Pennsylvania, where I went to high school, and Connecticut, where I attended college.  I've been blessed to visit more than forty states in the course of my life, to see their sights and meet their people, and I know that there's more than enough beauty and greatness there to keep a sould busy without ever setting foot beyond our nation's borders.

Thanks for your kind attention.  I hope that over time I can provide a thought-provoking blog here that'll encourage you to visit often and share your thoughts.