It's Time We Think About The Future

[David Colomb]

I don’t understand. How can we continue to cut taxes? How can the Republican answer to everything be to cut taxes? They seem to believe, cut taxes, the economy rises and you get more tax revenues, it sounds good and so simple, but does it really work?

The last economic slowdown that hit Japan led the Japanese government to drop their tax rate to an effective rate of zero on taxes. That move just seemed to lead to the Japanese having less tax revenue. It didn’t help to solve the problems.

Obviously, we’ve cut taxes in the past, and yes the economy has grown and improved, but the downside of that has been that our infrastructure has suffered because we haven’t had the monies to keep our highways and bridges in shape. It seems obvious that we need to do something to change the dynamic and get things moving.

The first answer is that, sure, the government spends all the money we give them, but we cut the amount of money that we give them and they still get to choose where the money is spent. Even though the infrastructure needs work, the work is deferred because the government decides that something else is more important. Government decides that they need to solve a problem that is in their face, and well, the infrastructure can wait until next year, who’ll notice the roads are a little bit worse. The schools are going to be all right, we’ll catch up later. Apparently that hasn’t worked, so far.

California has decided that we’re going to run the government based on referendums, in theory, that seems to be a great idea, but in practice, it doesn’t seem to be the way to go. Let’s face it, if we all read the referendum, we all looked at the proposed law and could see how it fit in with the other laws that have been enacted in the past it might be good. But the way that it happens, in most cases, is that the proposition is written with a misleading title, the proposition is written so that no means yes, and then the advertisements are written to further confuse the issue. The vast majority of the public doesn’t ever read the proposition, they just watch or read the advertising, and they make a decision based on that. We then get a law that may or may not be right, passed by a majority of the small minority that actually votes in the elections.

It seems everything comes back to the fact that we need to find legislators who doing what is right for the country. Legislators need to stop being committed to a party, they need to be committed to doing the right thing.

[Norm Schoenheit]

My apologies to all SAILORS. In an effort to emphasize my point, I compared drunken sailors to members of congress. I did not intend to insult any sailors, drunken or otherwise. ns

[Norm Schoenheit]

David,

With all due respect, the facts of history are these.
When Reagan cut taxes, tax revenues went up.
When G.W Bush cut taxes, tax revenues went up.
The government actually collects more money when rates are lower. Everyone does better, pays more taxes, hires more employees and so on. The answer to your first question is yes, it really does work. The problem in both the above situations is that Congress continues to spend like drunken sailors. Under Reagan, the Democratic Congress went back on their word to cut spending, doing the exact opposite. Under Bush, BOTH PARTIES went on a spending spree that was unmatched, that is until the first two weeks of the Obama, Pelosi, Reid administration.

It would be wonderful if Congress spent money on needed infrastructure and banked any overage for use on social programs, but they do the exact opposite. They spend our tax dollars on everything else (pork), then come back crying for more in the name of infrastructure, police, teachers, etc. This is by no means limited to the Feds. I live in the Golden State and our house and assembly are an absolute embarrassment. On top of all of this, during our current budget shortfall, the voters of California voted to build a $40+ Billion (to start) intercity train system.

There's plenty of blame to go around and you and I agree in the end. We need legislators that are committed to doing the right thing and smart enough to know it when they see it.
Thank you.