More California Towns Face Bankruptcy
The County can't help. The State can't help. They're all learning the same hard lesson, and on a much larger scale. Let me say it boldly:IT'S REALLY FUCKING STUPID TO BUILD A BIG-ASS GOVERNMENT ON TAXATION OF BUSINESS INCOME
Simple answer why: Business cycles, income, and tax revenue go down as readily as they go up. Big-ass government assembled by nanny-state do-gooders who think free-for-all government programs are the solution to Mankind's problems cannot be shrunk once it is grown without throwing all the worthless good-for-nothing(meant with the greatest affection) citizens and others who have come to depend on it out into the freezing cold street. Where, the so-called liberal defenders of free-for-all government programs warn, they will turn to crime.
This highlights the difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Liberals think the poor are criminals in waiting if we don't pay them off with bogus programs to set them on their feet that no one ever follows up on anyway. Conservatives think the poor are middle-class people in waiting who simply need all those goddamn regulations that make employment, housing and food so hard to get swept out of the way. (All right, Conservatives also think of the poor as human resources that could be more affordable, i.e. slave labor that would be turning the cranks as soon as all minimum wage laws were set aside but hey, what do you want? Criminals in waiting, or workers that can compete with China?)Rio Vista I haven't been to much. It's generally on the way to somewhere else, and often as not across the river from the route I'm taking anyway. But Isleton is very cool. Small, but cool. Some abandoned buildings on the main drag that date back to the 1800s, a few bars and general stores that thrive during the Crawdad Festival, streets that are most picturesque when lined with large American motorcycles, a few lawns and fine old london plane and sycamore trees and of course the not-so-mighty Rio Sacramento drifting by across the levee (and occasionally over it).
I don't know what they have in expenses such that a downturn in business has to drive them to bankruptcy, but I bet it's a bunch of social niceness crap imposed by laws written by the usual cabal of nanny-state do-gooders up in the state capitol building. Some of whom might actually be Republicans, who knows.But anyway, it's clear the time is coming for self-sufficiency. Depending on gov'ment (or anyone) to feed, clothe, house, educate, or protect you is a ba-a-ad idea. It's great when we can afford to take care of everyone. But this economic downturn is either going to
A) Provide the painful lesson that the gifts of government can easily be taken away;
or,
B) Provide the painful lesson that government that can't shrink into its income is destined to become less than worthless.
Are those the same thing? I'm forgetting the new taxes our RINO governor has in mind. What kind of IDIOT would ever think it's possible to tax your way to prosperity? Seriously. 'Splain that one to me. 'Splain to me how taking MORE money from the people who create wealth and dividing it up in programs to protect the people who don't from the consequences of not producing wealth will result in MORE prosperity. That makes sense to a point -- don't get me wrong -- if the money goes effectively to schools, kindy to university, because schools are underfunded (or administered so badly as to be effectively underfunded, whichever). But bah. That's about it. Welfare? Cut it. Prisons? End the drug war, establish drug rehab and interventionist self-esteem programs at a fraction of the cost, problem solved.
Oh, and another thing. Why the FUCK do we have people streaming illegally over the border to work out in the fields, while at the same time we have countless young people in the cities hanging about doing nothing but mutually masturbate in their little gang wars? Maybe if we killed off the welfare state, allowed licensed pharmacies to sell cannabis and coca derivatives at competitive prices, and started sending farm-work recruitment buses into 'hoods full of now-hungry people, we could solve THREE problems for the price of NONE. Just a thought.Next: Suffrage for property owners only. (Just kidding.)
6 comments:
Don't tell Zen, but I liked this post. See, I am liberal-hearted in many aspects, but I hate leaving things to the government to do. I'd rather believe in the goodness of people at a community level to take care of each other and do what's right.
At the same time, I do think that our healthcare system needs to be revamped and a way made for everyone to be able to receive basic care at least, and for drug prices to be regulated so that they aren't so prohibitively expensive.
Zen's wandered way too far down the desert road for me to worry about him. He'll decry my crypto-fascist libertarian "I got mine fuck you jack" outlook and call me a cunt three times. He simply doesn't grasp that results don't come from good intentions alone and I'm long done with the argument.
He's hardly alone. Most people seem to think it's enough to have good intentions, i.e. set up various welfare programs paid for by the productive elements. But it isn't enough. You have to be willing to scale them back again when the productive elements get tripped up, or they'll never recover. Ultimately, though, it's all about control of society. He and his ilk either want it or are convinced someone must have it. And that's just wrong.
I agree with a baseline level of support: Basic medical care and quality education for everyone. Pay if you want extra. But let's not pretend these are rights. They are not. Hopefully the distinction will never matter, but in times of real deep economic stress, even the basics have to scale back. Making the mistake of considering them rights means either that you can't scale them back, or you must deny people their rights when times are particularly bad. Obviously that's not WHY they aren't rights but it's important to keep in mind. My opinion. Yet another long unedited essay.
"Big-ass government assembled by nanny-state do-gooders who think free-for-all government programs are the solution to Mankind's problems cannot be shrunk once it is grown without throwing all the worthless good-for-nothing(meant with the greatest affection) citizens and others who have come to depend on it out into the freezing cold street."
What about that bloated, useless bureaucracy created a few years ago to keep us safer than we were before? Does that get a pass? Or the fact that private jobs were eliminated in the airport security industry in favor of government jobs that do the exact same thing when all that was really needed was an updated set of guidelines?
Your tirade really goes after the liberals, but it seems to ignore the pertinent, I think, fact that neither the Bushes nor Reagan helped the government get any smaller. Neither did the Republican controlled "contract with America" Congress. They may not have wanted to help people, but they sure had their pet projects to fund, such as Bushie Jr.'s research into the effectiveness of healing prayer. We taxpayers spent millions in a vain attempt to give insurance companies a legal way to fuck us on treatments and insist on prayer instead. This, of course, is just one of millions of possible examples, such as the auto bailout. So while tirades like this certainly seem cathartic, they miss the point that our economic woes are not solely caused by the fact that we actually try to help our countrymen out a little. Also, such a tirade seems to enjoy the belief that all people on welfare or food stamps are there because they are just too lazy to get a job or an education, even when the speaker shies away from actually saying so. We all know that a lot of the people on these rolls HAD jobs until this past year or so. Conversely, we also see a lot of these tirades do exactly what you did - assume that "highest earner" automatically means "greatest creator of wealth." You do me, the reader, a disservice when you assume that I'm not smart enough to see the all too frequent distinction between the two. That's disappointing, Don, because our past conversations have shown you to be much more thoughtful than that. Again, I'm sure it was cathartic.
I think it should be obvious at your age that neither the liberal way or the conservative way has all the answers. You've been alive long enough to see both sides have the lion's share of power and fuck it up. Please don't try to tell me that TODAY'S "conservatives" have all the answers, because they just had their shot and are trying to pretend the last eight years didn't happen so they can blame every possible woe on Clinton (whose administration actually DID see a drop in welfare rolls, if you remember). No, we'd be better off to forget this partisan bullshit and look for real answers in both (and outside of) the liberal and conservative philosophies, not just try to shove our ideologies at a problem and hope that this time, they will show the world who has all the answers. I'm glad our next prez seems to understand that, even if the majority of the people don't. As I said elsewhere, the fact that he has the far left bleating and drooling as much as the far right pleases me.
Amyway, there obviously needs to be a restructuring of government spending, but let's look at the whole picture. There is undoubtedly a lot more spending that we don't know about, and undoubtedly a lot of it does no damn good to anyone at all. We can let private interests study prayer if they want. As much as it pains my science-loving heart to say it, we can scrap those plans to get to Mars for now. We can make these billionaires that I assure you didn't vote for Obama pay back what both parties are currently handing them. We can eliminate, no doubt, a lot of useless spending before going after anything that might help someone because they aren't as worthy as you. We can stop blaming the poor for causing all the problems when they aren't making any of the decisions, and are the least likely to vote. Unless, of course, we're doing okay but just feel the need for a little catharsis.
"I don't know what they have in expenses such that a downturn in business has to drive them to bankruptcy, but I bet it's a bunch of social niceness crap imposed by laws written by the usual cabal of nanny-state do-gooders up in the state capitol building. Some of whom might actually be Republicans, who knows."
So you don't even KNOW? Eek. But yeah, if money is LOST, it must be the handiwork of Democrats. We don't need to look it up. We know that Republicans are always unfailingly good with financial stuff.
I do agree about bankrupting the gangs by cutting off their main source of funding, though. When we did that before with alcohol, the gangs had to go into other vices and create front companies to hide behind - that's right, very few gave up their criminal ways in favor of a career in avocado harvesting, and this was before there was a "welfare mentality" to grow up with. These fronts, however, doubtlessly created some private sector jobs and kicked in their share of taxes (not to mention campaign donations.)
Hi Joe. No, I did not mean to give a pass to the creators of that Nazi-sounding "Homeland Security" monstrosity nor to the Republicans who are simply the flip side of the same crooked coin as the Democrats. I was actually thinking more about California politics, which are hopelessly riven by the gap between Democrats and Republicans and though, as I hinted, I don't really know who votes for what down there in Sacramento (the capital I was referring to) the op eds I see produced by politicians generally give me the impression that the Republicans (except for their social conservatism) are more interested in responsible governance while the Democrats are opportunistic and cynical populists. Maybe the bias I've developed over the years crimps my impressions, I dono.
Where did I assume the highest earner creates the more wealth? I know puh-lenty of them do not. But the more productive elements do tend to make more money at some point, and I'm all opposed to additional burdens on them that will alter their calculations as to where they choose to do business. Note that I'll never be one of those. I'm just keenly aware that my continued employment depends on them seeing CA as a productive place to do business. Unfortunately, the trend in favor of (1st) Arizona and (2nd) East and South Asia shows no sign of slowing down. I'm too far along to NEED to learn pu tong hua Chinese, but my fellow Americans will have to, or end up in the shit, unless they just quit with so much of the damned wealth redistribution that cuts into our international competitiveness.
Gross oversimplification but we don't need to go the evident way of Europe, do we?
Yes, this was really just a rant. I'm not serious for ex about starving the poor people of the inner city into a willingness to work the fields. I do though wonder if it's a good thing that we got to this point where unhappy Americans aren't wiling to do something about it but instead expect Gov'ment to help them out. We can't do the bread and circuses act forever but the mob that demands them seems to be getting larger and louder and yes, out beyond the borders there is increasing restlessness.
Never a complete answer from me. Got to switch gears now. Even tho' it's nine p.m. here, it's Monday afternoon in Japan and thus I am on the clock. So to speak. Dammit.
Now that I read it again, those
nanny-state do-gooders who think free-for-all government programs are the solution to Mankind's problems cannot be shrunk once it is grown without throwing all the worthless good-for-nothing
TSA employees et al.
who have come to depend on it out into the freezing cold street
IS an expression of my disgust with the bloated-government Republicans who panicked and tried to turn these ridiculous recent developments into a "War on Terrorism", which I assure you, I now do NOT believe is a tag with any useful meaning at all. We can't defeat "terrorism" any more than we can deafeat "drugs". It's just another big-government obfuscation that usefully directs the public debate such that a truly meaningful discourse (say, trying to understand why "they" supposedly "hate" us) is more easily dismissed as unpatriotic rambling. They're ALL fuckwads.
Don -
I was responding to this statement:
"'Splain to me how taking MORE money from the people who create wealth and dividing it up in programs to protect the people who don't from the consequences of not producing wealth will result in MORE prosperity."
which seems to equate high earnings with high production. I've seen that equation in many arguments similar to yours, so perhaps I extrapolated a bit. Anyway, we've seen over and over that high earnings don't point to the highest producer, but all too frequently to the craftiest thief or the provider of many jobs in south Asia.
As to going the way of Europe, would that be so entirely undesirable? People point to the higher taxes, but I've yet to see anyone prove that we have better education here. Or better healthcare and access to it. I also don't see their bridges and levees collapsing unless someone lobs rockets at them. They take more vacations and have fewer stress related illnesses than we have, but that's just the cost of being lazy, I suppose. According to Dr. Lane, whose regional geography class I just finished, Western Europe is still the most developed region in the world. The Eastern nations are still iffy, but that's Russia's fault, mainly.
In many ways, I think we could stand to be a lot more European. We could have the good stuff without going broke, too, if we curbed some of our lavish spending elsewhere. Like I said - we could easily maintain military dominance without our current spending levels, yet every time someone suggests a cut of 1 or 2% we see the black suits on the TV crying that the socialist doves are "gutting" the military. That's just one example.
I find it hard to believe that taxes are why companies move overseas. Besides the loopholes that they enjoy taxwise, wouldn't a company owned in one country but operated in another be vulnerable to TWO tax debts? (Not actually sure, that is sincerely a question)(Upon re-reading, a lot of countries use low taxation as an incentive for investment.) I tend to think that the low wages that companies can get for manufacturing and call center jobs are what does it. I should think that neocolonialist opportunities like that would far overshadow most tax issues.
"I do though wonder if it's a good thing that we got to this point where unhappy Americans aren't wiling to do something about it but instead expect Gov'ment to help them out. We can't do the bread and circuses act forever but the mob that demands them seems to be getting larger and louder and yes, out beyond the borders there is increasing restlessness."
I hear these masses most clearly in political arguments, I'm afraid. Once again, the welfare rolls went down in the 90s, then came up again in the 20-naughts. Did people get lazier? Did the Republican controlled congress raise the benefits so that it became more lucrative to NOT work? I doubt these things. Every society has it's lazy element for certain, but the stats show that a lot of these folks will work when opportunities are available. Many of the people getting food stamps right now are, like I said, people who lost jobs in the past year (like me, but since I'm a student I don't qualify. Go figure.) They aren't the problem, they are a symptom of our problems. Making their kids hungrier won't help anything, will it? Would you commit a crime to feed your kids if all other options have failed?
Of course, I don't think that scenario describes all or most people on welfare but the situation does exist. Likewise, the lazy person who won't work because there is welfare exists also, buy isn't the majority, I don't think.
I forget where I was going with this. Maybe I'm done. :-)
Post a Comment