I fully expect millions of Americans to be in a rather foul mood today. Yesterday, after all, was “tax day” — the deadline for filing our taxes with the IRS this year.
Though millions got refunds, tens of millions of others didn’t (including me, by the way), and there is no better time during the year to drive home the point that Americans of all ethnic, political, social, cultural and economic stripes simply pay too damned much in taxes.
How much? Glad you asked. I did some poking around over the weekend and found some rather startling facts:
- The 2001 budget was nearly $1.9 trillion, according to the CIA World FactBook.
- The U.S. Gross Domestic Product in all of 1999 was $9.255 trillion — the largest in the world.
- So, in essence, the government is taxing and spending over one-fifth of the economic output of our country, or more than 20 percent.
And that’s just federal taxes. In every sense, Americans are being taxed more now than at any other time during peacetime in our history, when you count all federal, state and local taxes. It takes five of 12 months a year to earn enough money just to pay our tax burden.
Folks, that’s too much. It’s way too much.
Here’s more.
The FactBook says U.S. GDP is growing at an annual rate (on average) of about 4 percent, but federal budgets throughout the 1990s have grown between 5 and 8 percent. Inflation rates for consumers, meanwhile, have only grown about 2.5 percent annually throughout the 1990s — about half of the federal government’s budget growth.
So, federal (and state) budgets have grown faster than inflation would have forced them to grow; and they’ve grown faster than our earning ability to feed them.
Meanwhile, lawmakers continue to stump for increased spending on all sorts of government programs that haven’t worked in the past and won’t work in the future because too many Americans seem to want them — or so they say.
Call that the “California Plan for Energy Disaster.” Citizens want all the goodies we can get but we don’t want to pay anything for them — which is so nonsensical as to defy belief.
The same goes for federal and state handouts — too many of us seem to want them, but far too many believe such programs are really “free.” They’re not; every single dime federal and state governments spend comes from you and me — workers who pay taxes. There is no such thing as “government money”; if we don’t pay, it doesn’t receive. Governments are not private, for-profit entities that raise money by creating profitable enterprises; they thrive solely on the backs of taxpayers.
Why is that so hard for people to grasp? All they have to do to figure it out is look at their paychecks every week.
Worse, we’re on a fiscal collision course that cannot be legislated away, wished away, or ignored. Our population is aging; our rate of population growth (future workers) is declining. And federal and state budgets continue to rise every year.
Couple these facts with the fact that our lawmakers aren’t doing anything to decrease the amount, cost or number of federal benefits and programs. In fact, rarely does a budget year go by that these line items aren’t increased, making it even more difficult for workers to work long enough and hard enough to pay the ever-increasing tax burden.
If current trends continue, in a decade or so there will be fewer workers supporting a larger federal budget. Do your math — that means less workers will have to contribute more money to feed the federal budget and all of Washington’s lavish spending programs.
So if you think having to work until May of each year to pay your tax burden is bad, how will you feel about working until August or September to pay your taxes?
I realize that most of these programs cannot be eliminated overnight because for far too long far too many Americans have become “hooked” on them. But I’ll tell you this, we can sure eliminate them over a number of years — perhaps no more than eight or 10 years — and we’d better if we want to keep any decent amount of what we earn by then.
And, we can eliminate a number of government-funded programs right now — such as the National Endowment for the Arts; Defense Department programs that fund private sector research; and lots of expensive perks given to lawmakers and government agencies.
In the meantime, we can and should cut tens of thousands of government jobs. Americans ought to be ashamed of the fact that government (combined state and federal employees) is the single largest employer in a nation that was built by private industry.
Are there tax-funded things that government can and should do to assist its citizens? Of course; we also pride ourselves on our compassion, and there is no reason that shouldn’t continue.
But clearly government spending is, by and large, some of the most wasteful and inefficient spending there is, mostly because there is no system of accountability inherent in government-funded programs, and little in the way of punishing abusers. So there is no reason why government spending should be rational, efficient or even effective.
Private industry can do most of government’s jobs much better and more pragmatically, as it has proven time and again over the years. When you have to turn a certain amount of money into a high degree of productivity, waste, fraud, abuse and poor performers don’t last long.
For Americans to have to pay more than 20 percent of the nation’s total economic output to Washington and various statehouses each year is an abomination. We’re not supposed to be living in a socialist republic but rather an American republic built on freedom and personal liberty.
Being forced to pay such a heavy tax burden is anything but freedom-minded and liberating.
