true anti-angiogenesis on its flow of tax money.
LOL!
Great phrase !
(Would you believe I once had an auntie named Angie O'Jenesis? Ok, I didn't, but I could have ...)
You were close to the "Ignore" category, now I've got to start paying more attention.
What a different, exhuberent, boom-time economy we'd have, with fewer warlord support payments, less blood-sucking secrecy, and more actual facts, if the following happened as you suggest:
The flow of bureaucrats leaving Washington should resemble the flow of refugees streaming out of eastern Europe in 1945...
Caveat: I like the highly-educated bureaucratic think-tank upwardly-mobile, spook-types I met in DC, who can talk adroitly with great detail about their chosen subject...
I just don't like them on the public payroll.
Or their hands on gov't levers -- they should write books. Howard Hunt would have been more entertaining and less a threat to this country just as a spook-writer, rather than actual spook.
We all have our favorite whipping-boys in DC.
Your scenario makes everyone happy ... except of course the natural constituency of those dollars.
Let's see, who is that? Several million folks ...
As TJ said, once a sufficiently-large group of folks realize they can vote themselves cash from the public treasury, we're all in trouble.
That time has certainly arrived.
The truth of expenses of running a gov't goes to the heart of democracy, since gov't is becoming all-powerful, and makes trillions of dollars of difference in business enterprise worldwide, whose actions directly affects citizens. That needs to go under the microscope at extreme magnification. The majority of gov't transfer payments go to gov't, gov't pensions and corporate interests - the insiders.
Infrastructure is expensive, rightfully so.
Defense is expensive, but probably half what we're paying, even if you included MDS.
The Swiss get the protected populace involved in defense, which makes more sense than the current situation, a Royal War Dept that does whatever the Royal Executive decides.
Spooks cost $30b/yr officially, probably twice that in cash, and 10X in misbegotten adventures and blowback, not including net lives lost and Afghani generations programmed for death. (As far as lives protected, that's their mission, but not really -- their real mission like all bureaucracies is self-perpetuation, fooling the public into giving them as close to unlimited power as is possible -- even if it costs a bit of "collateral damage" unpleasantness).
Get rid of all those guys, hire a few trustworthy ones, collect the evidence, jail any criminals you can find that haven't shredded theirs yet.
I agree, Fed tax could, indeed be halved, IMO. Soc Sec made accountable, whether privatized or not, medical care made more accountable, and a national voluntary non-subsidized medical system made available, would cut the $1.3 trillion/yr medical system by 1/3 IMO, if the lawyers and insurance cos were cut back.
So, we've just saved $1 trillion/yr in taxes, $1/3 trillion in medical expenses, and released millions for gainful employement. Simplify the tax code releases millions more in the IRS and accountancy profession.
But ... here we go goring oxen by the dozen. The above multi-trillion dollar per year constituency are all fighting for federal protection, and get it because the representatives in DC do not represent the people, they represent the gov't and themselves.
An extremely profitable enterprise, as long as we taxpayer-patsies go along with it.
It would change quickly by organized voluntary action,
through the internet.
Or through some true political leadership.
Ready to run for Congress, Ken?
I wouldn't vote for you because you're too damn ornery, but I'd contribute to your campaign just to see some of your arguments in print, and the discussion that ensues. |
