I really enjoy watching the Daily Show and also the Colbert Report because their extremely funny and being funny about such depressing topics is absolutely my goal. It is difficult when discussing things that are, in my opinion, so fucking important to the future of this country. On the Daily Show the other day I watched a topic about saving money that caught my attention. There was a case where someone questioned a process that was used to save money and the government hired/assigned someone to investigate and a 3-400+ page report was written up to show how much money was saved showing it's effectiveness. How much damn money do we spend on this frivolous bullshit that taxpayers are paying for.
There are many discussions I hear about various topics on raising us out of "poverty" and putting the United States back on the right path. One person says we need to cut spending and it always seems to target Military personnel and systems. While another person tries to raise taxes, lately specifically on the wealthy. I think that both of these offer their own pitfalls along with their advantages. Former president Clinton is saying we need to get manufacturing back to the US. That's very true but there are other aspects that need cleaning up before that truly becomes feasible.
Is there a simple solution? Of course not. There are too many fucking people with their hands in the cookie jar for their to be a simple solution. If a solution would actually do great then someone loses out on a cut of what they've been taken advantage of for a long time. For example, in the taxes arena, I believe that we have a system that is much too confusing and has too many loopholes and variables. Why else would the IRS need 150,000 plus employees to run. Not to mention the amount of money businesses are spending on personnel just simply to understand all realms of taxes as to avoid paying taxes as much as possible. How much money do we budget to IRS? BILLIONS!! And then add to that the amount of money everyone spends on professional tax service. And then there's the fact that most people at my level (poor) have a large portion of their check taken out for taxes which becomes more of a loan to our government because they get a portion of that back at the end of the year. I don't know about you but I'm not comfortable with being a bank and if that's what I'm forced to be then where is my "bailout"?
Simplify the tax system and reduce how much money we have to spend on personnel to run just that and you get something that can be better understood as well as reducing spending without effecting the military which has fought for our freedom as well as the freedoms of other countries as well. If there were a flat tax without complicated deductions and other variables I would personally feel more comfortable with it and would know in a much clearer way what I have to pay. I like that. There are a few politicians with ideas in this direction. My favorite is Mike Huckabee, who's idea is a "Fair Tax". Read his blog and specifically Tax Reform Post to form your own thoughts and ideas on the topic.
Back to the topic of that very large report. How much many do we spend on silly reports on irrelevant topics. Sure, we need lots of research to occur and there needs to be large reports on many topics for managing the research. But how many things that our government spends millions of dollars on should be turned over to special interest groups. I am unaware of the numbers but I can assure you that there are many things that the majority of us have no interest in or would consider a good use of the money we are pouring into these things.
So, along with some very specific ideas I have there needs to be a lot of changes but the key is to start making it happen not just talk about it. To me, Common Sense needs to become a bigger role in everything we do as people and also in what our government does. Just because it can be made to look good on paper doesn't mean it is good. Use your common sense. It's not always easy to make common sense sound right but often times it's exactly what needs to happen or at least be strongly considered against the options that will probably feed a bunch of money into pockets that are already overfilled.
Thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Hope it makes some sense and is written at least half-ass well. :)
James
WE CANNOT REGULATE THE POOR INTO WEALTH
