Let's all move to Somalia!

Let’s move to Somalia!

Doesn’t sound like a good idea? How about Afghanistan or Pakistan? Want something closer to home maybe? How about we go to Tijuana? Why would I suggest such a thing? Well, these countries have exactly what everyone seems to be clamoring for, small government. Granted, they have poor healthcare, lack of basic sanitation, rampant violence, crappy education and shoddy infrastructure… but hey, they have small government!

Quite frankly, I love the services my government provides. I get to drive on nice roads, my children and I attend good schools. I can walk to the store without the slightest fear. I can take a crap and with one little push on the handle, it just magically disappears! There are no packs of wild dogs digging in my garbage; my food and drinking water are safe. I’ve got the biggest and toughest army on the Planet to keep me safe from foreign invasion. The list goes on and on the more you think about it.

Every year when I pay my taxes, I remind myself what a great bargain I am getting. And also that is why it ticks me off to high heaven to see the current attempts to gut our government in the name of a political ideology. We love all the services we get but all of a sudden everyone is screaming about paying for it.

Here is the reality folks, we no longer live in 1776 or 1950, and hopefully never will again. We live in a modern and extremely complex world. And our government has evolved over time to meet the growing challenges of this complexity. Like it or not, it grew based on need. We understand more about science than we ever did back then, computers and technology have rapidly changed almost all facets of our daily lives. We are more diverse a society than we ever have been in the past with many different subcultures. We have grown to a population of over 300 Million people, up 9.7% from 2000. Our government does more than our founding fathers ever imagined it would, but they were wise enough to see that needs would change and provided a way to make it happen. As we have evolved, we have added services and policies and programs to address the evolution.

Now, getting back to my point, imagine where we would be without these services. Take a few minutes to imagine how your life would be impacted. Some of the examples of other countries I gave might seem extreme, but they go to show how life is without a government there to do its job. Think it can’t happen here? In the last couple decades many countries that were once peaceful, modern and prosperous have degenerated into shells of their former selves. In each case citizens who were once middle class now find themselves having to come to terms with the realization that they are suddenly living in poverty ridden and violent societies. Sure, some have been due to war, but others were due to internal conflict or collapsed economies.

The current attempt to trim massive amounts off the budget in a time when our economy is unstable is the height of folly. Our country is currently at a dangerous precipice looking down into what could very likely be a permanent decline in our wealth and stability. It’s all fine and dandy to play politics under normal circumstances, but when the country is in trouble, they need to put away the campaign hats and actually govern for a change.

Here is the truth of the matter, we HAD a budget surplus 10 years ago. When George W. Bush took office we were in our 3rd year of surpluses. By the time he left office, spending had increased from 1.7 trillion to 3.5 Trillion. I’m sorry Republicans, Obama inherited most of his deficit budget. Here is the data straight from the congressional budget office. “CBO Historical Budget Data”

Bush made 2 fundamental mistakes. The first thing he did was give a massive tax cut his first year in office. That effectively wiped out the federal surplus. Next, he invaded Iraq despite widespread public sentiment it wasn’t necessary. That was a very costly war.

Now, this didn’t help at all, but our problem has another facet. A lot of the prosperity of the late 90’s was a residual effect of Clinton raising taxes and restraining spending, but some of it was due to the economic surge from technology and computing bubble that was maturing about the time Bush took office. This prosperity masked another underlying problem issue and that was the exporting of our industries overseas. Someone got it into their head that we would just drop all our trade barriers to any other country willing to sign an agreement and that we would benefit from having access to their markets. The big problem though is that many of these countries didn’t have any money to buy anything, and were so impoverished that their people would work for pennies on the dollar. This resulted in a massive exodus of our factories, equipment and technology overseas, destroying our manufacturing base. The “transition to a service economy” sounded good until you consider most service jobs pay half what a good production job pay.

This exporting of jobs has resulted in fewer “working class” jobs for Americans and an erosion of the overall tax base. Not everyone is suited for a service job and the loss of wages and corporate income not only erodes direct tax revenue but also trickle down benefits. Americans are not earning the manufacturing income so they can’t spend it here, the companies move their profits to overseas entities instead of re-spending it in the US and industries that once supported the manufacturing plants either shut down or move too. This transitions workers from taxpayers to entitlement recipients.

All this tax revenue that once went to support our way of life is now lost and the American people are forced to get by on less. Goods are imported from countries without environmental protections and with a fraction of our organization and infrastructure costs without any form of tariff or balancing factor. They are allowed to compete in our marketplace and enjoy the benefits of our economy without making the same contribution an American company would have to. Not only that, to add insult to injury, companies are allowed to deduct the cost of moving industries overseas from their taxes.

So yes, we do need to reduce how much we spend, but if we don’t fix the rest, it won’t do us any good. A lack of regulation enforcement led to Enron, the Wall Street meltdown and housing crisis, business MUST be regulated no matter who they make campaign contributions to. Free trade must be balanced trade. We must protect our jobs, industries and their associated technologies from being exported. This will bring our tax base up and help with the budget crisis. All this requires a government that is willing to govern. If we simply gut the existing government, this will never happen.

As part of the Republicans drive to “slash” the budget, they are trying to include another tax break for businesses while trying to “unfund” the EPA! They voted down a bill last year that would end the tax break for moving industries overseas… Stop it already! I like clean water and air! I want a job! Let’s stop the politics and tackle this problem. If you don’t fix “We the People” first there won’t be anyone left who can afford what the businesses are offering.

The Left must get equally real, Medicaid just proposed approving a $93,000 drug to “extend the life” of late stage, metastatic prostate cancer patients. WTF? I don’t want to sound morbid, and they do have my sympathy, but can we afford to keep spending so much on a terminal patient? Just like that patient, at some point we have to just accept the facts.

We can reduce government spending without destroying it, one example is the bi-partisan effort to identify regulatory duplication across government agencies, we can cut costs and increase efficiency while sufficiently funding departments primary roles.

Beyond that, we must be willing to accept the burden of paying for the society we made for ourselves if we expect to continue to enjoy it. If we take what we pay in taxes and look historically at the numbers, the current tax rate for both businesses and individuals are at close to historic 30 year lows. We can pay more, let’s give up our Bush tax cuts and add another point or two. “Historic Tax Receipts”

Mostly, as a people, we need to end our political stratification. We must demand our representatives focus on the real problems and govern wisely, be willing to negotiate reasonably from a realistic perspective, seek the middle ground and last but not least, take off those damn “party” hats for awhile.