Your post made me thing of that old TV show the west wing. It included more than a bit of how politics worked. Sure made me think twice about voting for a congressman based on their statements of passing tax breaks. Made me ask who was the tax break for and what got cut from the government budget.
I would love to do away with property tax and sales tax. It seems to me that those are the taxes that the poorest end up paying.
Still taxes aren't the only thing wrong. When our college graduates can't get a job paying more than minimum wage, that is a problem. The cost of college is a problem too. I know more than a few people that after spending over $100,000 on a college education, they are not able to get a job that pays enough to support their family or even pay back loans at a reasonable rate. Still their college send them requests for more money as alumni are expected to donate.
So y'all can blame this mini-lecture on Sally. ;-)
We're a great big country with lots and lots of different issues. I'm a college-level teacher, and my wife was an inner-city middle school teacher, so I'm very familiar with the problems in education. I don't have answers for a lot of them. However, what I know with absolute certainty is that the first step in solving education problems is to dissolve the federal Department of Education, and severely restrict the power of the state's DoE. The DoE has utterly failed to make one single improvement in education since it's first day.
This principal applies to almost everything that the Federal government gets involved in. You can find example after example in our history. There is no problem that can't be made worse by involving the federal government. Because it's not their job. None of it is.
The Fed has three jobs.
1. Maintain a National Defense. This does not mean getting us involved in every war that breaks out on the globe. It does not mean defending the foreign interests of private business. I means defending our soil against invasion. Period.
2. Negotiate Treaties with Foreign Nations. This is almost the only thing they get mostly right, except that this power was never intended to extend into regulating foreign trade. Our government's interference in the global free market has had severe consequences for every nation on earth.
3. Regulate Trade Between the States. Which doesn't mean price fixing and subsidizing every industry that goes through a normal market fluctuation. Again, regulation a free market is never good for the growth of an economy, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
That's it. Those three.
Everything else the federal government does is unconstitutional.
Yes, that means Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, that means the minimum wage. Yes, that means whatever pet political cause you feel really strongly about.
It's not the government's job to make you happy or guarantee the quality of your life! Any attempt to do so leads to a downward spiral into corruption, insolvency, and a weak and easily enslaved population.
Do those sound like hard words? They are. They are also a call to a decision. How would you have it? Difficult Freedom or Easy Slavery? I can tell you what our ancestors chose. What will you choose?
