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Is The Fixer Broken
Mendham:
SILVER BRIGADE:
Is The Fixer Broken
     By . . on Friday, November 11, 2005 - 6:10 pm: |
How do you fix-it when the process used to fix-it is broken?
In my opinion, the issue of property taxes reveals the flaws in our "we the people" democracy. There seems a virtual consensus that change is required yet there is no required agreement regarding what changes to make. The fact that any realistic plan must gain the support of a least one side of the two-party system, in my opinion, pretty much guarantees that no viable plan is worth implementing because it will be compromised into uselessness.
The debate needs to be focused on the fundamental issues which in my opinion are: Who should pay for socially provided services, and are services being provided at the best economic efficiency. Unfortunately, special interests that both parties need to placate to win majority elections won't allow a serious debate of those issues to rise to the surface. In simple truth we fill our legislatures with the same compromised candidates that reflect the opinion of the same nonexistent lowest common denominator American. In simpler truth our individuality is robbed of an opportunity for representation by unnecessarily melting us all into one of two pots before the election even begins. A Legislature should "logically" be a reflection of our diversity and only through the heat of real honest battle should our diverse ideology be melted into majority or preferably consensus action.
It may be hard for some to accept but our democracy has a major flaw. Assigning people representation based on their geography rather than their ideology is now an obvious mistake that is merely a holdover concession to the practical circumstances/limitations imposed in a primitive and long past age. To leave our democracy in this state, is as foolish as it would have been to prevent evolution past the wooden wheel. (details here). Providing a fair battleground for ideas (competing interests) should be a universally agreeable first priority of well-designed government.... As our government is not doing that, I think fixing that needs to be our first priority in achieving any real change in any government policy.
The current you are where you live, not what you think, system leaves virtually everyone with a compromised ideal, and the majority of people feeling under represented and unenthusiastic. Voting for a lesser evil, and losing most of the time, isn't a democracy that is working at its best efficiency and it certainly isn't going to encourage people to think they have any real control over the formation of their government. If we want people to become involved they've got to have hope that involvement can work or at minimum get them a "representative" voice consistent with what they voted for.
Regarding government waste or the inefficiency of government provided services:
Unfortunately waste always has a constituency-- parasites don't like being starved out of existence and too often they have the power in position or numbers to prevent any antibiotic cure. Schools, or the education (information, knowledge, wisdom) distribution system, is 80% of the property tax story and is probably 95% of the story regarding property-tax relevant waste imposed by inefficiency. (more details here and here)
Regarding who should pay:
Ideally those who want, should pay the price for their satisfaction and there should not be exemption from feeling a proportional pinch when "we" choose to incur/impose the price. Unfortunately, in the real world, there is the nuisance of poverty and the practical fact that we must share (and collectively maintain) some substantial infrastructure (including the environment for example). In principal, educating children seems a very logical piece of social infrastructure... In practice, we are taxing people out of their homes to irrationally provide that every child has a publicly financed right to learn how to hit a baseball. In principle our obligation to nurture children knows no geographic borders or boundaries. In practice we are publicly feeding some children filet mignon why we oblige others to eat low-income tax base garbage. In principle, (and considering the danger of overpopulation) people who choose to have children should feel a personal burden consistent with the social burden they create. In practice, people who have chosen not to have children, are in all likelihood paying more in taxes, for services devoted to the welfare of children, than people who chose to have children. ... etc.
Defining fairness in taxation first requires you to define economic fairness. In principal all wealth should be earned. In practice most wealth is inherited. In principle, the sacrifice of time, sweat, physical risk, and intellectual capital is the value behind every dollar and productive work should be compensated relative to the sacrifice. In practice, people who sacrifice nothing wear adorning jewelry other people died to dig out of the ground. In principal 10 minutes of smart scheming is not more "work" than someone else's lifetime of hard labor. In practice, compensation is not directly relevant to how productively or how hard you work, as the "system" isn't designed to be fair or to function at its best efficiency. In principle, every individual should have practical incentive to make as productive a contribution to the social economy as possible. In practice, we allow capitalism to exploit desperation and force many to work in dead-end jobs for survival wages while we waste trillions paying the big winners billions when they would have worked just as hard for millions....etc.
Our legislatures should be arguing, and attempting to resolve, the differences in our core values and personal interests, instead they waste time debating relative irrelevancies like how tall flagpoles should be. |
| By 12... . . . . on Monday, November 14, 2005 - 9:47 am: |
quote:In practice, we are taxing people out of their homes to irrationally provide that every child has a publicly financed right to learn how to hit a baseball. In principle our obligation to nurture children knows no geographic borders or boundaries. In practice we are publicly feeding some children filet mignon why we oblige others to eat low-income tax base garbage. In principle, (and considering the danger of overpopulation) people who choose to have children should feel a personal burden consistent with the social burden they create. In practice, people who have chosen not to have children, are in all likelihood paying more in taxes, for services devoted to the welfare of children, than people who chose to have children. ... etc.
Guess who? Nice to have you back.
Do me favor? Save all the crap and just say you don't want to pay for kids to go to school. Then you can say, since you don't drive on Route 80, you're not paying for roads, and since you don't drive tanks or drop nuclear bombs, no sense in you paying for those. And how about the doctors taking care of our wounded in Iraq. They didn't treat your crotch rot, so why should you be footing the bill?
You should teach civics classes. You're real smart. Oh that's right. Classes are not necessary. See, I knew you were smart. |
| By 2....... . on Monday, November 14, 2005 - 1:55 pm: |
quote:Save all the crap and just say you don't want to pay for kids to go to school.
Funny how you chose to begin your quote right AFTER this sentence "In principal, educating children seems a very logical piece of social infrastructure..." it seems to me that you are the one playing the crap word games. I wrote about what I see as the two problems... how much we pay for education and who pays. I've explain how I think the money can be better spent maximizing the efficiencies of technology to not only better educate children but to help everyone become more informed, intelligent, and wise. Using a simple analogy I support a hoover dam made out of cement not one made out of mashed potatoes. My only opposition to education spending is the bad combination of wasteful spending and unfair taxation. I think, I pretty clearly implied that I don't think people of modest means should be required to sacrifice the comfort of staying in a neighborhood or house they love to publicly subsidized the involvement of children in organized sports-- which in many case only teaches children the wrong lessons regarding achieving a healthy psychological perspective regarding competition. Clearly we have attached a lot of reasonably perceived as an "elective nonsense" to a lot of social spending-- your silly terrorism wars are good example, in my opinion such recklessness is threatening our national security not preserving it, and wasting a 100 billion dollars a year to boot. My point is, just as copays kind of harmlessly do a lot to encourage people to be responsible in their use of the health-care system... I think it would be wise if people advocating for spending were required to pay a little extra for imposing the burden of paying for it on others who must compromise basic "comforts" to meet that burden.
quote:You should teach civics classes. You're real smart. Oh that's right. Classes are not necessary. See, I knew you were smart.
Smart enough to know that most basic human knowledge hasn't changed much in the last decade or even in the last century-- and that class's by the best instructors on DVD have a inexpensive and efficient cement like durability, and very expensive redundant live classroom instruction by the merely competent has a mashed potato like [logical] mushyness. |
| By 12... . . . on Monday, November 14, 2005 - 2:22 pm: |
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