Posted on 09/10/2001 8:03:28 PM PDT by EveningStar
Ponzi schemes are bad enough, the worst and best-known of which is the present Social Security system, where today's retirement funds are used to pay today's retirees, leaving a large IOU from the government to today's workers.
But the idea of a government "surplus" is quite puzzling. How can a government that levies taxes to pay for current expenses ever have a legitimate surplus? Each year's levies are supposed to support that year's budget, and if there is more money than is required to cover those expenses, it seems that the government cannot appropriate it as a surplus. Those funds belong to the people from whom they were taken.
Aside from the fact that the constitutionality of the 16th Amendment that creates the income tax is still being challenged for legality, the idea of taxing incomes of individuals and businesses is to generate enough revenue to pay for the legitimate functions of government. The insertion of the word "legitimate" into the previous sentence is enough to create great ire at the present size and cost of the United States government and its operations.
However, if a business bills a customer for a certain amount, then discovers it is too much, that business owes the customer a refund. The government, however, doesn't operate by the same rules it imposes on others. If government collects more than it needs, it declares that it has a surplus.
Indeed ... it has a surplus of the people's money!
However, if the so-called surplus exists only because the federal government has IOU's where it should have none, then there is no surplus. There are only funds over and above current operating expenses.
Every business is required to file an annual report of its operations, including its profit or loss, otherwise known as "the bottom line." Government doesn't feel any obligation to send out a summary sheet annually to all taxpayers, stating how it spent the funds it took from workers and businesses. Instead, it sends out tax forms.
The American government, particularly under the reign of Democratic party members in the Congress and in the White House, has devised one scheme after another for redistributing the wealth generated by the workers of this nation under various entitlements or other programs such as grants for studying the effects of alcohol on goldfish. And the American people, upon whose complacency and lack of organized protest the government depends, go along with this scheme year after year, tax increase after tax increase.
Along comes a tax cut, which the president tried to explain was a refund of over-collection of revenues from the people, and it's the Democrats who are bawling about the loss of the "tax surplus." No, no, no, that is not how the government is supposed to be run. If there is a "surplus" in any one year, it must be refunded. If there is a shortfall, then government should do exactly what businesses are being forced to do in the present recessionary economy: downsize!
The government does not have the right to keep an overcollection of tax monies any more than a business has a right to keep overpayments from customers. A business that does that is a thief, as is an individual who does that. Only the government can have a surplus without being labeled a thief. Why?
What principles of right and wrong, of proper handling of money collected from the people, allows government to appropriate to itself the money paid by the people for the day to day expenses of the government, and that without accountability?
How much do your congressmen spend on trips? How much is spent on them for perks? How much government waste actually exists? All the excesses of which we know, plus much more of which we do not know, and the government has a surplus?
All this excess, and the people of the United States are being frightened by the liberal socialist Democrats and their media buddies about the diminishing or vanishing surplus? And they have nerve enough to cry out that the president gave too large a tax cut to the people who pay their bills? They yell that Social Security is in jeopardy?
It's time for America's citizens to realize that they are the ones paying the bills, the government makes no money on its own, it spends the money made by others. That in itself sounds very illegal. But arguendo, let us say that taxes are legal if they cover legitimate government expenses. Then how much government spending is legitimate? And if, after spending on dubious causes, entitlements, bureaus, perks and the like, there is still a surplus, why aren't the people crying out for more refunds?
Why aren't businesses lobbying for cuts in capital gains taxes?
Why don't socialist Democrats stop lying to their constituents via the media and their endless press conferences and demonstrations?
And the final answer is: PUBLIC APATHY and MEDIA HYPE.
Frankly, too many American citizens have no idea how the government is run or what it is legally supposed to do, so they buy into every propaganda speech delivered, particularly if that speech scares the daylights out of them.
That, my fellow citzens, is how you are being robbed and begging the burglar to help himself to more! Now, don't you feel kind of dumb? If not, invite the burglar back for what's left while you cut your budget for your kids and forget about buying that new vehicle you need for the family's safety. You asked for a cut ... you got one. Your own budget, not the government's.
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