Category: Money

When I was young I gazed through a little telescope at the moon for hours many nights. Looking at that orb scared me quite a bit. At my young age it was hard to fathom the logistics of something so far away now being so close I could discern the details of its surface.

I soon discovered that looking through the wrong end of that telescope yielded a wildly different perspective.

It got me thinking.

If you have a problem and the solution you have conjectured causes way more problems, perhaps you are looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope.

For instance, today we seem to think that our government is overspending and is bloated. We have a huge debt problem. The solution? We’ll cut the programs and employees and thus cut the expenditure.

Hmmm.

So now we increase poverty by leaps and bounds. We double the amount of people not earning money and cut back on the programs that help the needy survive and provides things that gives everyone a better quality of life (like healthcare, education). Don’t you think this might be more of a problem? And exactly where is this money we are going to save coming from? And where do you think it will go? To the national debt? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Now flip the telescope around.

What we have is not an expense problem. We have a revenue problem.

If we increase the money coming in to fund our worthwhile government programs, it benefits everyone. We employ more people. We can improve our infrastructures, healthcare, social programs, upgrade our schools, provide less expensive higher education. We can maintain the laws that protect us, the codes that ensure buildings don’t fall down, cars are safe to drive, restaurants are clean enough to eat at, medications don’t kill us. I think we need a clear definition and understanding what a democratic government is. The government is not a business, it is a system designed for the people. The money that comes in goes back to society. (Yeah, we sort of need to make sure the bucks don’t fall into greedy politicians hands too.)

So where does that money come from?

A lot of it from taxes.

When I started working and hated paying taxes, my Dad explained to me what they are for and how I benefit, and to rip off the government is to rip off myself. I had a pretty smart Dad.

It is kind of sick for society to praise tax dodgers and emulate their ways. There is nothing wrong with being rich, even filthy rich. But there is everything wrong if you are just taking and not giving back. You are expecting others to support you and your lavish lifestyle with nothing in return.

We currently have a situation where the rich do not pay their share of taxes, and the burden falls on the poor. How shameful is it that companies like Amazon pay zero taxes and some poor fellow flipping hamburgers contributes a third of his income to taxes? I think this, just maybe, causes some problems.

Me, personally, don’t care how big the government is. It means many people are employed. These people are contributing to society. They are paying taxes. They are buying things. Money is flowing. There are more programs and help we can provide. Sure, we could make the programs easier to access and use, but that usually takes more people to implement. That is fine.

We need to increase the money coming into the government. Fund the programs that benefit everyone. And that money needs to come from those people and companies who can afford it the most.

They need to pay taxes. Big taxes. Way more than the guy at the hamburger joint.

Why are we so against the institution designed to help us? Why do we worship greed?

To destroy a democratic government leaves a country wide open to be ruled by a few rich individuals.

That should be a lot more scary than looking at the moon with a telescope.

Or paying taxes.