Evident Truths

I've been studying the fiscal realities of our country since I retired. I've been writing about them for more than a year (letters to the editor before this blog). Here are the top 50 truths I've found along the way.

1. Social liberalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism) is good except where it interferes with fiscal conservatism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_conservatism). It has interfered too much in the last 20 years.
2. If you ignore the dumb statements made by some (as I do for many liberals), the Tea Party-ers are the first group in Congress to show any backbone in 30 years. They'll cave as they always do since they still want to rule the bloat.
3. We spend about $1.6 trillion (10% of GDP) on public education every year. Hong Kong, South Korea and Finland spend half as much and get twice the results. We can clearly spend much less and do much better.
4. Let's try one of Einstein's thought experiments;
   
   • Imagine the best and worst schools in the country. 
   • Imagine transplanting the students of both schools, one to the other.
   • What happens?
   To my knowledge this experiment has never been tried but the result should not surprise anybody except for the fools who proclaim money to be the answer; the students who excelled will continue to excel and those who failed will continue to fail.
5. Government should set high educational standards and get out of the way.
6. Healthcare is simply too expensive and having taxpayers foot the bill is not the solution. This only causes prices to rise like Medicare did in 1965.
7. Our governments (fed, state and local) spend too much and get too little in return. We need to get back to the limited government of Washington and Lincoln; Justice, State, Defense and Treasury.
8. Excepting the non-civilian military, government pensions (fed, state and local) and Social Security must be converted to private investment accounts beyond the reach of thieving politicos.
9. It is stupid to burn stuff for energy when sunlight is free and can meet our demands cleanly.
10. Financial meltdowns are getting closer together; 1929, 1973, 1987, 1989, 2001, 2008...this is not a good progression! Either our regulators are not as clever as the crooks or they are in cahoots. 
11. We are becoming a socialist nation but socialism is a well known failure of policy.
12. Socialists argue that the general welfare clause of the constitution puts them on firm ground; the referenced clause is about promoting the general welfare, not providing it. It is unconscionable to confiscate one person's earnings because other people felt they could rely on a peer-provided safety net instead of earning for themselves. What is one man's fair share of another man's earnings?
13. As Cicero said in 55 BC: "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance." This is not a new problem.
14. The Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Having reviewed the budget proposals from the White House, the (republican) house and (democrat) senate, it occurred to me that this must be the principle at work in our nation's capital. Only an incompetent group could look at what's happening here and around the world and produce a set of budget documents so blind to reality.
15. The notion of a general government spending fund should be done away with to prevent our spendthrift state legislators from diverting resources to projects intended to boost reelection chances or fill campaign coffers. The same should go for local governments and the federal government.
16. The current cost of the federal government is about $3.8 trillion. It should cost less than $600 billion. 
    Want the economy to pick up? Imagine how much better off we'd all be with 30% more of our own earnings back in our own pockets.
17. Even at this ridiculous level of spending and debt, not even a dent has been made in poverty; I believe this categorically proves that government spending is not the answer.
18. Liberals always whine that reducing or leveling government spending puts a drag on GDP growth. Well, duh! Government spending is 40% of GDP!
19. It is quite feasible to balance government budgets, fulfill all existing promises and pay off the debt (excluding the $50 trillion theft from Social Security) within 40 years.
20. It is quite possible for liberals to pay the full cost of Welfare and Medicaid and still pay less than they currently pay for them.
21. Prisons are stupidly expensive. Maybe we should consider air-dropping all of our violent prisoners on Riyadh, Tehran and Pyongyang with explosive vests (with remote triggers).
22. Illegal immigrants cost us $155 billion/year. A mass deportation would finance Obamacare but no liberal would suggest that; they'd seemingly rather let them vote.
23. It appears as though the highest student loan default rates correlate to art schools, schools in tropical locales and community colleges suggesting that defaults correlate with a lack of seriousness regarding higher education.
24. The cost to deliver a quality college education should not be not much higher than the cost to deliver at the K-12 level. The cost should be driven by the instructor's salaries since the paid delivery of an education happens in the classroom, just like K-12.
25. The sum of government education subsidies should never exceed, say, half of the total amount to make sure the students have skin in the game. Loans should not be forgiven except for hardship; tack the balance onto tax bills; that said, subsidies cause prices to rise so pick your poison.
26. Entitlements and tax-funded charity must end; both are unconstitutional.
27. Stormy weather conditions seem to have been getting more extreme lately and global warming is the odds on favorite for the cause.
• It's hard to judge what's happening since we've only witnessed a tiny portion of Earth's history.
• Ice cores show that temperatures rise before carbon dioxide.
• We pump 5 ppm of Earth's atmosphere full of carbon dioxide every year but the actual concentration only increases by 2 ppm/year.
• Water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and there's a lot more of it.
• Carbon dioxide does not appear to be the main culprit to anybody but the liberals; they even tried to reinterpret the ice core data to fit their theory so they can tax carbon emissions too.
28. I remember hearing about the collapse of the Mianus River Bridge the day after I drove over it. I am convinced that it wouldn't have happened if the politicians had been budgeting to maintain the roads and bridges instead of doing the social engineering that gets them elected.
29. The whole Middle East has become a quagmire that makes Vietnam in the 60's look like a picnic. Our efforts are not making it any better; Arab Spring, Islamic Fundamentalists in charge of Egypt, Libya (Benghazi), the Syrian Civil War, Iraq, Iran's centrifuges, the Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon again (go Hillary, woo hoo!). This doesn't even cover the fact that al Qaeda sprang from Saudi Arabia, our supposed ally and long time trading partner. Why stay?
30. The 'War on Drugs' is another total policy failure. We spend $15 billion/year to stop a $400 billion/year business. This is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. This doesn't include the $14 billion cost of imprisonment of the 325,000 people convicted of drug crimes. Legalize and tax to let the worst welfare recipients fund themselves.
31. This is what the 2nd Amendment is all about; a well-armed citizenry as a bulwark against government tyranny. Bring on the Howitzers!
32. Blindly throwing money at a problem, as liberals would have it, fixes nothing. This simple fact is borne out by the steady poverty rate of 13% after more than 50 years of social engineering failure.
33. There are lots of folks with disabilities (10 to 13% in Connecticut). It's about the same everywhere.
34. There are 11 million on Social Security Disability Insurance; 20% of all retirees. How can that be?
35. In Connecticut, it costs $9.52 billion to deliver $6.24 billion of Welfare and Medicaid benefits, a 53% overhead but only 3.8% of state GDP as compared to 9% nationwide. The real cost without overhead is 2.48% of GDP. The bottom 40% earn 3.3% of all income and income is half of GDP. Think about it.
36. Taxpayer-funded insurance must end; it is also unconstitutional.
37. Government represents nearly 14% of the entire workforce. Government is essentially management so why is it 14% when, in the private sector, it's 4.28%? Think about it.
38. We need revenue-neutral tax reform to get us on the road to lower taxes for all.
39. Nobody in the US should be exempt from taxation unless they forfeit justice and defense; making them fair game for all gun-totin' taxpayers.
40. Federal tax breaks cost as much as all income tax and payroll tax (FICA) revenue. This is 83% of all federal revenue. End the breaks and reduce income taxes.
41. The Wealth Gap is sort of like the description of God; was, is and always shall be.
42. The Wealth Gap, ironically, reaches its peak under communism/socialism; Moscow, Beijing and Havana have everything while the rest get nothing.
43. Printing money inflates the Wealth Gap, it doesn't change it.
44. Raising the minimum wage is like printing money; no impact on the Wealth Gap.
45. Redistribution efforts tend to inflate the incomes of the well-off while simultaneously reducing those same incomes by taxation. The poor get no relief at all as illustrated by history.
46. Social Security maintains poverty by disallowing inheritance in favor of theft (by government).
47. Consumption, sin, fuel and property taxes exacerbate poverty since they comprise a larger percentage of the low earners wages.
48. We should tax income or outgo but not both.
49. There has been no argument to the contrary from Congress or the White House so it must be true that the federal government has stolen at least $50 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund.
50. The real national debt is more than $66.7 trillion, not $16.7 trillion and the interest on it is nearly equal to all federal revenue.