True story. We had a house fire Thanksgiving weekend last year, 2022. Property valuations came out and we were assessed taxes to the tune of $145,000 for a burned out shell that was barely standing. We had other issues with both the appraisal district and the appraiser, least of which is the fact that she lives in a town 2 hours away from our property. ...but I digress. Property and income tax are a bane to our society, but a boon to the ever expanding power of the federal bureaucracy.
Not all states allow them to seize your property if you don't pay property taxes (of course you won't be able to sell the property either).
We all hate taxes, but I'd say the worse problem with taxes are that they are "too high" (government is too big). Assuming we need *some* government, how do we fund it? Where should the government get it's revenue?
If government is small, as it's supposed to be, and restrained to its purpose, it should be able to function on import taxes (make foreign companies pay to do business here - stop disadvantaging our own) and consumption taxes. I could list a litany of expenditures government makes for purposes beyond its scope - funding research, corporate subsidies, welfare (yes, welfare is beyond the scope of government), and a host of others, not to mention all of the unconstitutional agencies used to regulate us into oblivion and all of their employees.... Government could operate on FAR less if it was doing only what the founding fathers intended.
How about this - how about a $100/head annual poll tax? There are over 330 million people in the country. $100/head is over $33 billion. That should be WAY more than enough to run the government, and it's a rather reasonable level of tax, even for those on the lower end of the economic scale.
So instead of $6.3 Trillion you think the Feds will be happy with $33 billion?
So without budget cuts your annual poll tax would become $19,090 per person per year - there are people that don't even make that much money in a year.
If we were to reduce the federal government to its intended size rather than it being the largest employer in the country...
Imagine, almost 2% of working people - federal employees (almost 3 million) and another 19.23 million state and local government employees (so, over 22 million in total) in this country get paid their salary simply by taking money from the other 78% of working people.
Do you think, at the very least, the federal government could operate with fewer than 3 million employees? I do. Far fewer. I don't think the federal government needs no more than a few thousand employees. I can't say how those other 19.23 million state and local government employees are distributed, but I'd be willing to wager there are far, far more of them than need be as well.
Hmm.. Federal government... yes, a few thousand should be plenty. I'd have to give thought to it. Like does that include the entire court system. That might be where we need to most government employees. CDC, FDA, etc... just shut them down! Like the CDC could be literally like less than a half dozen people keeping statistics on diseases reported to them.
I agree, the courts would likely take the most, but then, how many federal courts are actually needed?
As for the three-letter agencies, most could be completely dissolved as they have no basis in the Constitution. The DoJ, on a MUCH smaller scale, could be justified, as the executive is charged with *enforcing* the laws that Congress passes (that's another issue - we would do well to have FAR fewer federal statutes, but that is a much longer discussion), and thus needs some employees to enact that enforcement. Otherwise, most of the alphabet agencies are unconstitutional, liberty-destroying money pits.
Well, they could keep busy for a few years just repealing 99% of all legislation. That would help a lot.
There is always a little grey area as to what is a state matter and what is a federal matter. Let's assume that there is a law that a factory can't dump mercury into a river. Now I don't think we need EPA guys running around and checking. Citizens can pretty much take care of that themselves. So if the mercury flows down stream to another state and kills all the fish, the local fishermen in the other state should be able to file a lawsuit. Is that federal now because it involves two states?
True story. We had a house fire Thanksgiving weekend last year, 2022. Property valuations came out and we were assessed taxes to the tune of $145,000 for a burned out shell that was barely standing. We had other issues with both the appraisal district and the appraiser, least of which is the fact that she lives in a town 2 hours away from our property. ...but I digress. Property and income tax are a bane to our society, but a boon to the ever expanding power of the federal bureaucracy.
Not all states allow them to seize your property if you don't pay property taxes (of course you won't be able to sell the property either).
We all hate taxes, but I'd say the worse problem with taxes are that they are "too high" (government is too big). Assuming we need *some* government, how do we fund it? Where should the government get it's revenue?
If government is small, as it's supposed to be, and restrained to its purpose, it should be able to function on import taxes (make foreign companies pay to do business here - stop disadvantaging our own) and consumption taxes. I could list a litany of expenditures government makes for purposes beyond its scope - funding research, corporate subsidies, welfare (yes, welfare is beyond the scope of government), and a host of others, not to mention all of the unconstitutional agencies used to regulate us into oblivion and all of their employees.... Government could operate on FAR less if it was doing only what the founding fathers intended.
Indeed! The key is that government needs to be small!
How about this - how about a $100/head annual poll tax? There are over 330 million people in the country. $100/head is over $33 billion. That should be WAY more than enough to run the government, and it's a rather reasonable level of tax, even for those on the lower end of the economic scale.
So instead of $6.3 Trillion you think the Feds will be happy with $33 billion?
So without budget cuts your annual poll tax would become $19,090 per person per year - there are people that don't even make that much money in a year.
My point is that any tax is "tolerable" if it is small enough.
If we were to reduce the federal government to its intended size rather than it being the largest employer in the country...
Imagine, almost 2% of working people - federal employees (almost 3 million) and another 19.23 million state and local government employees (so, over 22 million in total) in this country get paid their salary simply by taking money from the other 78% of working people.
Do you think, at the very least, the federal government could operate with fewer than 3 million employees? I do. Far fewer. I don't think the federal government needs no more than a few thousand employees. I can't say how those other 19.23 million state and local government employees are distributed, but I'd be willing to wager there are far, far more of them than need be as well.
Hmm.. Federal government... yes, a few thousand should be plenty. I'd have to give thought to it. Like does that include the entire court system. That might be where we need to most government employees. CDC, FDA, etc... just shut them down! Like the CDC could be literally like less than a half dozen people keeping statistics on diseases reported to them.
I agree, the courts would likely take the most, but then, how many federal courts are actually needed?
As for the three-letter agencies, most could be completely dissolved as they have no basis in the Constitution. The DoJ, on a MUCH smaller scale, could be justified, as the executive is charged with *enforcing* the laws that Congress passes (that's another issue - we would do well to have FAR fewer federal statutes, but that is a much longer discussion), and thus needs some employees to enact that enforcement. Otherwise, most of the alphabet agencies are unconstitutional, liberty-destroying money pits.
Well, they could keep busy for a few years just repealing 99% of all legislation. That would help a lot.
There is always a little grey area as to what is a state matter and what is a federal matter. Let's assume that there is a law that a factory can't dump mercury into a river. Now I don't think we need EPA guys running around and checking. Citizens can pretty much take care of that themselves. So if the mercury flows down stream to another state and kills all the fish, the local fishermen in the other state should be able to file a lawsuit. Is that federal now because it involves two states?