So where does the money come from?

As usual someone mentioned to me that the government ought to do soething about some dopey thing or another and my reply was "Cool! You figure out where the money comes from and I'll support it!"

And as usual, he said the money ought to come fro the government and as usual I pointed out that the government doesn't have any money only to be treated to an incredulous look.

It is the truth. The United States government does not have one single dime of its own. It gets its money from the peope that go to work and pay taxes. It is not their money, it is our money and the damned governnment is doing a terrible job of mismanaging it. This country is in hock up to our ears and still people are trying to dream up social programs that will drive us deeper into debt.

The other day I read where about half of the families in this country are getting some sort of relief from the government in one form or another. It is unsustainable. I also read where close to half of the population pays no income tax.

This means that less than half the population is putting into the common pot and that about half that are not are taking out.

Do the math. This obviously doesn't work very well. It doesn't take a whole long time before a system like that implodes.

Truth is, I suppose it already has and we just haven't received the fallout yet. I'm sure it won't be long. 

Of course, the obvious answer to this is simply to raise taxes, which are pretty high already. Back in late '09 I bought a new pickup and figure it'll last me about 10 years. It isn't much of a truck, it's a 4 cylinder, 5 speed manual transmission and is as close to stripped because no truely stripped models were available due to the fact that the cash for clunkers (another gazillion dollar governmental failure) was going on and stripped, 4 cylinder models were unavailable.

Now I am driving a semi- basic truck that I bought for myself out of my wages which is all well and good but when I look at what I have paid in taxes over the past decade or more I have bought the government a brand new truck every single year, and one that is a whole lot better than the one I drive.

What's wrong with this picture?

Of course, there are those that think that maybe we ought to start taxing the various businesses in his nation of ours and that will solve the problem.

Fat chance. A number of them have already moved out of the country because other nations have offered them a lower tax rate. In addition to the corporate taxes that they now no longer pay to this country they have taken a boatload of jobs with them which compounds the problem because it puts more and more people on the already overworked system.

When you think about the face that the CEOs have a responsibility to the shareholders to return a profit, these moves make damned good financial sense. This has been common practice in the country for years. Corporations have headquartered themselves in states with the lowest corporate taxes for years. For quite a while the majority of tugboats hailed out of Wilmington, Delaware to escape taxation, but I guess now either Delaware has either started taxing them or their home ports have reduced taxes to bring them back.

Taxation kills things off, yet the people that insist that our social programs MUST be left in place have not realized that the more they tax the more of the tax base they kill off and the more they press  the fewer and fewer of us that are still remaining to cough up every April 15th.

At this rate it won't be long before the remaining few that are contributing are simply going to be told to turn their paychecks over, sign them and hand them in.

Right now a shipmate tells me that he has a neighbor that was working a pair of under the table jobs and just started collecting both food stamps and welfare. The guy is in his thirties and is in good health. When my shipmate heard about this he asked the guy if he was going to start saving a few bucks and get ahead.

Nope. The guy immediately quit both his jobs and headed right to the beer store.

Guess who is paying for him to sit on his ass by busting his? And when he pickles his liver, guess who will pay to have the doctors give him a new one?

You guessed it, guys like me. We're going to foot his bill, too because the poor guy drank himself silly and now can't take care of himself. Poor him.

Where does the money come from? Some damned fool has to get up and go to work and pay his taxes.

Anyone that pays their bills knows what a budget is and they know what happens when they go over budget for any length of time. Anyone that has ever had a checking account knows what happens when the money is no longer there in the bank and they continue to write checks.

Still, our beloved government has continued for an awful long time to write checks even though there is no money there to cover them. It looks like there is no end in sight.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY