What's wrong with this picture?
Honesty turns out to be the best policy
The big lie of British politics has been that we can have low taxes and brilliant public services. At last, New Labour confronts the truth
How much money should government confiscate? Why does it seem that the only ones better off are polticians and their crony capitalists/socialists/globalists/bankers?
I have indeed been arguing for a long time that the Big Lie of British politics is that we can somehow have American-style low taxes and best-in-Europe public services. Even such a skilled master of the smoke and mirrors as Mr Brown could not indefinitely postpone the moment of truth. For one thing, it has become too painful to ignore anymore. The Chancellor made a great flourish of the report into the resourcing of the health service that he commissioned from Derek Wanless. The former banker devotes more than 200 pages to telling us the bleeding obvious. If you employ far fewer doctors and nurses, and invest far less in equipment and technology than your European counterparts, then you will have a much inferior health service. It isn't brain surgery. A half-decent NHS, never mind a world-class one, will demand seriously large sums of money over a long period of time.
How that money is gathered is a fascinating, but slightly distracting, argument. Compulsory social insurance is a tax by another method. National Insurance is a tax by another name. A tax especially earmarked for health - about which there is a lively quarrel at the top of the Government - is still a tax. Call it what you like, it still adds up to money.
What is Obamacare? A series of fees, taxes, and ever digging deeper into the pockets of Main Street?
Why should anyone be forced to pay for Obama's blank check to the medical industry? Those ever increasing number of treatments, therapies, and pills? Think up a treatment and Obamacare will pay folks?
The influential study by the Fabian Society, which has been consistently on the cutting edge of this debate, correctly concluded that much of the hostility to paying tax arises from 'a deep and fundamental suspicion of government'. Voters have very little idea how their money is spent, and are terribly unconvinced that most of it is spent well.
The use of stealth imposts, not least by Mr Brown himself, have fed the idea that there is something fundamentally shameful about tax. The misleading hyping of previous spending - all that phoney triple accounting - has further contributed to public scepticism that politicians can ever be trusted with their money.
How many government agencies are being turned into welfare departments? First there is Homeland Security - now giving away money to community organizations to help folks pay for rent and other welfare things.
Don't we already pay for that elsewhere in the budget? Maybe through programs folks have to apply for? Who's on the receiving end of this money/grants? Illegal aliens? Folks connected through 'community' organizations that serve a limited population and don't advertise the grants to everyone?
Are miracles happening for some folks but not Main Street? Miracles like - somehow the rent/mortgage got paid? Someone left money for food or clothing?
Where does all this Obamacash go? Who's on the receiving end?
There are some very good reasons why tax and spending has not been politically fashionable since the Seventies. Many voters came to the view that too much of their money was being squandered on public services mismanaged by the politicians and dedicated to the benefit of the producers, not the customers.
more here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2001/dec/02/politics.politicalcolumnistsWho gets the plush jobs in America? Government workers? Who gets the rest of the jobs? Community organizations?
Who's working to make this a prosperous nation? Pay the light bill? Pay the debt created by Obama's Greatest Depression II?
Just my humble opinions.
