Hello gfm7175,
Law and order is ensured by the federal government as well as state governments. It all depends on what law is being broken. Your taxes pay for the FBI. The federal government also defends the nation, runs the State Department, keeping things cool with other nations, and the national weather service. That's just the beginning of the long list of things the federal government does which make it nice to be an American.
Defending the nation is a Constitutional duty of the federal government... The rest of it??? ehhhhhh...
FDIC. FEMA. CIA. Interstate highways. Law making. Regulation of businesses. Supreme Court. Federal Courts. SEC. NTSA. FAA.
And many of those federal government agencies are unconstitutional...
How easy it is for people to just take all this stuff for granted and believe the federal government does nothing for them.
Many federal government agencies DO do nothing, such as the EPA... The EPA hasn't saved anything or helped the environment in any way... It's just an unconstitutional federal agency...
Border Patrol. Amazing. National park service. The Smithsonian. National monuments. USFS. NASA. FDA. Medicare. SS. Medicaide. On and on with all the stuff the federal government does. ICE. How can anybody think funding all this is stealing. It is everybody paying their share of a great nation. That's what it is.
And many of those federal government agencies and programs are unconstitutional... Funding it (through tariffs, excise taxes, and other voluntary methods) isn't stealing, but taxing incomes (and the like) is stealing...
Yeah, we didn't have an income tax in 1776. We also didn't care if immigrants came in. We were trying to build up a nation then, not keep people out. And we didn't have any of the social advancements we now enjoy. And there was no warning when a hurricane showed up. We have a great federal government and we are lucky to have it.
It, not too long ago, got (partially) shut down for about a month or so and I didn't even notice...
The places the President called S-hole countries don't have a big government like us.
They do, actually... Their governments are mostly socialist, like what ours has been slowly shifting over to, especially since the 1900s...
They have one more like what we had in 1776.
Not at all. They are not federated republics...
I like it here and now with what we have.
I don't. I don't like compulsion. I like self-governance...
Won't work. That's like trying to go back in time. First of all you'll never get any agreement on what to cut (huge impediment) and secondly, you can't cut too much because nearly all of the spending goes directly into the economy. If the government stops or slows down it's spending, the economy takes a hit. It boils down to this question: How many people do you want to put out of a job in order to balance the budget while maintaining low taxes for the super-rich?
That's why such a large bloated and powerful federal government is NOT a good thing... That's why it needs to be smaller and less powerful.
If you think any of the federal spending is unconstitutional then your recourse is to have your representative challenge it. First get enough fellow constituents to agree, then approach your representative in great numbers. That's how the TEA party got action in 2010. You could call it the Cut Big Government To Reduce The Debt So Super Rich People Can Enjoy Too Low Taxes Party. Good luck with that. You already got your tax cuts so if you try to argue that you need bigger ones now that's like saying you screwed up and didn't ask for the right amount the first time. And you will be faced with people who will say the reason the debt is out of control is because the tax cuts were too deep -Because that's the truth.
None of this has anything to do with tax cuts, or tax cuts for "the wealthy" (whatever that means)... I'm talking about expenses, not revenues. A smaller federal government would have MUCH less expenses...
Without it, we can't have the large and amazing federal government that we do.
Unconstitutional government, you mean...
Such standards as the minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor laws. These are good things that make America great.
Minimum wage (on a federal level) is unconstitutional. All those things are possible without federal government...
Because it doesn't fix the problem if they just pay extra.
Not the point (as even if ALL of them did, the problem still wouldn't be fixed)... The point is that they keep spouting off that people OUGHT to pay more, yet THEY are not doing that very same thing themselves... They OUGHT to "lead by example" if they feel so strongly for the cause... Same with the people who want illegals to be housed and taken care of... THEY ought to do the housing and taking care of. Trump exposed those people quite well just recently, when he said he'd send illegals into THEIR neighborhood and they instantly changed their tune about it (see Cher's comments, for example).
All the rich must pay more.
Okay... The people spouting off that they oughta do something can start the movement off then... They can donate their riches to the government first...
And yes, they do want their tax rates to be raised - because they know it will force everyone who makes that much to pay more, thus fixing the problem of insufficient revenue.
No, they don't want THEIR taxes to be raised. If they did, they'd already be overpaying their taxes to the federal government. They are quite able to do so right now at this very moment, but they choose not to... Why is that?
"Force"... Hmmmm, sounds like compulsion to me... I'm not sure why you are such an ardent supporter of compulsion... ALL the rich people in the nation paying a
100% tax rate wouldn't even solve the problem of "insufficient revenue"... I don't think you realize just how much our federal government is spending, and just how big it really is... The problem is SPENDING and size/scope of government, not revenue...
So which parts of government do you deem unnecessary?
For starters, every single part of it which does not comply with Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution... This includes many agencies, such as the EPA and FDA, as well as many policies/programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, and many others...
And of course, I hope you realize that without enough people in agreement you'll never cut the things you want to cut. And if you cut much then it WILL impact the economy - and it won't be making the economy stronger. When government cuts spending - businesses which depended on it go bankrupt. People lose jobs. I hope you thought of that. Don't expect anybody who is going to lose their job or business to agree with you. Nor the stockholders of those businesses.
It would be replaced by the private sector. The company I work for has numerous government agencies as tenants, and if those agencies left, we would replace them with private sector entities... We've already done it when some of those agencies relocated or dissolved, and we can do it on a larger scale, too...
I am being a realist. The FairTax will never be instituted, for the stated reasons. Since that won't happen, realistically, the only way we can fund the federal government is with a progressive income tax.
I guess we'd need to vote out the entrenched politicians and vote in fresh people who would support these ideas...
If we tried to make it a flat tax either the poor could not pay enough or what we could collect from everybody would not be enough.
I actually agree with you here. The flat tax does have certain problems, and this is one of them... It would likely have to be doubled with a downsized government which spent quite a bit less, otherwise the flat rate would be too high and it would hurt poor people quite a bit. Like you say, too low of a rate wouldn't raise enough revenue, unless closing up the present loopholes with such a tax would make up for it, but I don't think it would. Something like the fair tax sounds better to me, since buying new things (and various services) can for the most part be controlled, and wouldn't hurt poorer people in the way that a flat tax with too high of a rate would do. The richer people who bought everything new and needed to be pampered with various luxury services would be paying the most into the system.
WE simply HAVE TO tax the rich more or we can't afford our advanced government. Make no mistake. We do have a big government. It does so much that most people can't understand it all. I know there is a tendency to assume that what you don't know about is useless. That would be wrong. It doesn't matter whether everybody understands every facet of it. That is not required.
Even WITH taxing "the rich" at a 100% effective rate, we can't afford our current government...
What is required is that everybody pays their taxes.
Except for the "47%" who don't pay any income tax?
That makes it all happen. And sadly, right now, that isn't even enough because taxes got cut too much, especially for the rich.
Taxing "the rich" at 100% won't even be enough to fix the problem. Spending needs to be cut. It's the only way...
We are approaching a trillion dollar deficit. That is so irresponsible I am aghast that the same Republicans signed off on it that were so outspoken about 'the debt!'
Agreed. I am not a fan of it. Neither party is doing a damn thing about our debt crisis. Both parties share equal blame here... Even worse than our annual trillion dollar deficit is our over 22 trillion dollar national debt and our over 123 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities (largely resulting from social welfare programs).
when President Obama was guiding us carefully and skillfully out of the scariest recession since the Great Depression. The debt to recover from the Great Recession was necessary. This one is irresponsible. You have to accept quickly rising debt to get out of recession. You are a fool if you don't pay it back down when the economy is doing well. You surely won't be able to during the next recession. President Trump was a fool when he signed that tax cut.
WhatEVER Happened To All Those Extremely Concerned Republican Deficit Hawks? Crickets!
We can't raise enough revenue to "pay it down"... Spending and size of government both need to be significantly cut in order to even begin to put a dent in the debt crisis...
Thanks. It is a crying shame. But that's what improperly regulated capitalism does. It is entirely expected. If we don't stand together and make a rule against cheap quality products then that is what we get. Capitalism does not care about quality. The goal is profits. Nothing else matters. Not people, not the environment, not quality, safety, nothing. Unless we force capitalists to do things a certain way, they will have no compunction to care about anything but profits.
Okay, so we agree about the problem, but we completely disagree about the solution. I think regulations just get in the way (they make it harder to make product and increase costs of product). I think we just need product to cost less to make, so it can be sold for less, and the more competition the better in that regard... Quality, safety, and etc. all comes along with wanting to please customers so that they keep coming back; it doesn't need to be forced through compulsion. Self-governance will take that bit over.
We shouldn't ban cheap quality products; we should instead make higher quality products more affordable and feasible to make. I think it's all the various regulations which get in the way of stuff such as this...
Moron thinks his asinine posts are interesting.