Taxpayer Jubilee?

Fat chance.

Democrats never met a tax they didn’t like.

Hello Glen

I found you’re Blog about a year ago when I was looking for info on the Issues ect Controversy. I stayed because I found your idiosyncratic Lutheran take on culture (both high and low) to be refreshing and informative. I have however noticed that in the last few months I have been visiting your blog less and less. I think it has to do with the recent shift away from culture and theology to more conventional politics. You are of course free to blog about what ever you want but I miss your cultural commentary. The web is full of right wing political blogs we don’t need another one.

God Bless

Steve in Toronto

Bike Bubba @ 4: I think the point was that it’s a better idea than blowing $1.2 trillion on bailouts, as we are presently doing. In that context, if the choice is either A or B, then B (tax holiday) is a much better option than A (bailouts). The nicest thing about it is that it stimulates the economy by rebating the producers, rather than taking money from the producers (or rather, from the producers’ children, grandchildren, etc.) and giving it to the deadbeats (Wall Street brokerage firms, banks holding subprime mortgages, etc.)

Of course, in a vacuum, a tax holiday without offsetting spending cuts is an awful idea, as you suggest. My solution — bring on the spending cuts!

Is this post supposed to be serious? I know, why doesn’t the government just print a whole lot of new money and mail $1000 in cash to every man, woman and child in America. That’s a promise we haven’t heard, since, well, Jesse Ventura. I guess our military will continue to run free of charge like it always has.

Sorry for the sarcastic tone, but I’m still kind of reeling from the sheer half-bakedness of this idea. I had thought this blog was a cut above.

I agree – this is a horrible idea. Now, I prefer this to bailout checks, but our deficit is HUGE.

It’s plainly irresponsible to do such a thing – our government’s budget is 90% devoted to things that no one wants to cut.

Printing money is not a solution.

“our government’s budget is 90% devoted to things no one wants to cut.”

Will @ 9:

Right, and they should ALL be cut anyway. Simply freezing compensation for Government employees (yes, even the military) for 2 years, and I mean EVERYBODY, would do wonders. Plus, reduce the compensation of all federal employees making over $150,000.00 by 5%, all making over $200,000.00 by 7.5% All making over 250,000.00 by 10%, and so on. OOOOOHHHH, but a lot of “quality people would quit their govt. jobs :~(. So the hell what! 1) I don’t believe that that many would leave, and 2) somebody would take those jobs and do them just as well, trust me. And of course, we could freeze hiring for a year or two. Cut Govt. employee’s vacation time (e.g. nobody working for the taxpayers gets more than 3 weeks vacation; why should we pay these people for not working?), and eliminate a couple of holidays. Get rid of all that vacation time and holiday time, and more could get done with fewer people.

Freezing all entitlements at current levels for 2 years (no COLAs, we are in a recession, so the cost of living is going down) would help alot too.

Government waste is alot easier to find than you think, too. People say earmarks are not much of the budget, but I think there may be more than is aknowledged. In Milwaukee, we recently passed a measure to spend over $600,000.00 (95% of which was federal highway money) to buy bike racks for our busses. The theory being that cyclists will ride their bikes to the bus stop, hook their bikes to the bike rack, ride the bus for a while, remove their bikes, and pedal away. The chances of anybody doing this are very slim, but we spent the money anyway. It came out that many smaller transit systems in Wisconsin have already done this (and [SURPRISE!!] nobody is using them). So here’s what’s happening. Somebody who manufactures bike racks has contributed to the campaign of a congressman. And that congressman has made highway funds available to every county transit system from Maine to San Diego to buy these things. The local counties think they’re getting a great deal because they only have to put 5% of the cost into it, and presto! Hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of tax dollars disappear into the pocket of a guy who makes useless objects. And this kind of thing is all over the federal budget. It’s not just obvious things like “bridges to nowhere”.

Brilliant! You’re illustrating absurdity by being absurd!

Kerner (@14), I’m sorry that you have only encountered lousy private-sector jobs and/or lazy government workers.

But your broad smear of an entire class of vocation doesn’t exactly ring of love in the 8th commandment sense.

My mom’s a government worker, and I doubt you’d make the same claim about how much she works to my face.

I was a government (federal) worker for 8 years, and at the time, I would have said it to my own face. 🙂 Government unions discourage productivity, and discourage any one employee from standing out. They hate merit-based compensation. We started with 13 days of paid vacation, and received 20 days (4 weeks) of paid vacation after only three years of service. The maximum was 26 days, which I believe was earned with 10 years of service. We also received 13 sick days each year, and 10 paid holidays.

The real problem with the government is that everything they do is either a monopoly or coercive. I laugh when they call their constituents “customers”. Do you feel like a “customer” in the DMV? Would you choose to utilize the services of the DMV if you had a choice? How about the IRS? Because the people they work for are very unexcited to be “customers”, government workers tend to be very unexcited to serve them. Sometimes it feels backwards (the customer is “serving” the employee).

Kerner, I was replying to your saying (@14) “If there exists an OVERworked government worker in this country, I have not encountered him/her.” In defending that comment, you said (@16), “I didn’t say government workers were lazy.” I suppose that’s technically true.

But if I met your family and later remarked to you that “If there is an attractive woman in your family, I didn’t meet her,” defending that remark by saying, “Hey, I didn’t say your wife was ugly,” I think you’d still have reason to be upset. The obvious reading of your statement (@14) was that government workers do not work hard. Even if I assume, as you insist, that you meant only that they all work the exact right amount (neither “OVERworked”, nor “lazy”), it still sounds like you’re calling most of them lazy.

You also said (@16) “Nor did I say that private sector jobs are ‘lousy’.” Indeed, what you said (@14) was that “Government workers are treated better than private industry workers.” Period. No qualifiers. Which means that you have never encountered any private sector employee with better benefits than any government worker. Which caused me to infer (@15), logically, that you had “only encountered lousy private-sector jobs”.

“Nobody EVER pays me for not working.” Depends how honest you are in billing. I’ll assume you’re fine, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that the self-employed don’t get paid for not working. The IT contractor we pay gets billed in increments sometimes much longer than the actual work he does, which is a style of getting paid for not working. And as anyone with an internet connection knows, those in the private sector are very adept at getting paid for not working.

“Any government worker is likely to produce more if he gets 3 weeks of paid vacation instead of 5.” By that logic, the most productive person would get no vacation whatsoever.

Do you think that there is no value in vacation? What are the three most productive countries in terms of value added per hour worked? In order, they are Norway, the U.S., and France (the latter two being close). Are those the three countries that work the most per year? No. Respectively, they are the #22, #7, and #21 countries in terms of annual work hours. Longest-working does not mean most productive or most efficient.

Sarah’s comment #12 illustrates well why this is a bad idea. In one year of being tax-free, things might look pretty good.

Now, consider a church looking to hire her for a sculpture wondering what next year’s re-imposition of taxes is going to do to offering revenues. The uncertainty of what will happen with taxes would wreak havoc on discretionary spending.

Like offerings, purchases of art, and so on. It would be a huge blow to our cultural institutions, to put it mildly.

Kerner, every man and woman in uniform killed since the Revolutionary War was a government worker. Were they overworked?