and his "Champagne for Everybody"
.....by Richard Koss
I read everything Kimit Muston writes but some of his essays get my attention more than others. I won't quibble with his take on the evolution of capitalism, although it is a bit oversimplified. However, there are a couple of things I would like to point out.
If you haven't used theI've been to California only a few times in my life. But that was enough to discourage me from ever living there. I saw the wacko environmentalists in action. This is not to say that California doesn't have some environmental problems, but it's obvious that the politicians down there are terrified of the power of these groups and their lobbyists. Kimit failed to mention that there hasn't been a power plant built in California in years, thanks again to the environmentalists. This is why most of the dollars paid for electricity go to out of state producers.
As for his opinion that government controlled utilities and other government controlled services, are cheaper for the people, I'd say it depends on what kind of government you have. Remember, it's taxpayer dollars making the investment in these utilities and service providers, so how much cheaper is it really? People who pay no taxes would like to see the government control everything. This means that someone else is paying for them. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Then there's the little micro-analogy Kimit uses as he talks about infrastructure created by government; the paragraph about choosing a town that refunded 50 bucks vs. one that invested in its sewers, streets, etc. This appears to be a subtle dig at the proponents of a big federal tax cut. This is really one of my pet peeves because the media generally confuses the public with their pop culture version semantics when it comes to tax reform and tax cuts.
A tax cut, in the form of a reduction in rates, credits, or the repealing of inequities in tax law, does not and will not, result in an immediate refund to taxpayers, to be taken directly from the surplus, as is implied every day by mis-informed journalists, news readers, and yes, some Democratic members of congress (probably some Republicans too).
The surplus (by now everyone is convinced there was one) is a result of the overtaxation of people who pay taxes. A tax cut simply means that everyone who pays taxes will pay less in the future - period. There will still be plenty of money available for spending, something congress likes to do. There is still so much waste in the spending programs, our surplus would be even greater if we would eliminate even some of this waste. But it's unlikely this will happen because members of congress are afraid to cut out programs, even if they don't work. The General Accounting Office has been so screwed up for years, it can't even account for a major portion of revenues appropriated for these programs, let alone measure the effectiveness of the programs themselves. I'll tell you this though, most of the spending in these programs sure as hell ain't for infrastructure.
The bureaucrats in the department of education, when challenged that their programs weren't working, said simply, "we need more money," which reminds me of the two brothers who decided to sell Christmas trees one year. They bought a truck and filled it with trees which cost them $10 each. After they sold all the trees for $10 each, one brother said, "we sold all the trees, but we still lost money." The other brother shook his head and said, "we need a bigger truck." See more about this topic in Vox Pop
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