Reframing The Whole Tax Argument – Who’s Money Is It Exactly?
The higher taxes debate ever rages on as government never seems to have just quite enough money to implement one more “we can help you” policy and an agency to go along with it. And heaven forbid, somewhere down the road after the policy has been fully implemented, a fiscally responsible legislator looks at this new bureaucracy and determines it is a huge waste of money. Suddenly, out of the woodwork emerges an instant group of disenfranchised individuals now claiming they will be deprived of receiving whatever government handout this new agency is offering, when for a few centuries we somehow managed without it. We will be told however, without it, people will be dying.
While once again the evil, exploiting rich will be blamed for wanting to take money out of the hands of people who desperately need it, and conservatives will be accused of “giving tax breaks to the rich,” it seems like no one ever stops to ask the question, or emphatically makes it known, exactly who’s money is it that has funded these new entitlements and additional bureaucracies? And who funds the current ones that are bleeding the country dry? Besides just printing money as the government pleases, the money spent on these entitlement programs must come from somewhere. Why is it that the argument over taxes and out of control government spending almost never focuses on where the money comes from? Why is there not a single politician making that the center of their mission?
If anyone were to think about the argument for less time that it takes you to read this, it is obvious where the money comes from, that would be taxes. And where exactly do those taxes come from? Your pocket and my pocket and the deep pockets of businesses that actually produce a product or provide a service and hire people. Taxes come from the pockets of productive people. They do not come from those that are non productive or from the government. The government does not produce, it only loots and when it need more, it simply demands it or prints it out of thin air. Government does not hire a single person, implement a single program, hand out a single $1 food stamp, sign a single welfare check or give out a single slice of yellow processed American cheese food that is not paid for by a source of revenue from productive people. And let’s get one thing straight, every cent a corporation pays in taxes, finds its way back to you or I in the form of higher prices. Companies are in business to make a profit and will pass everything back to the consumer in some way.
The businesses that supply our jobs in this nation all originate from individuals who at some point in their lives decide that they want to do something different than most of us. Some make huge sacrifices of time and money to further their education, take enormous personal risks, do endless hours of research, deal with endless government red tape and do a multitude of other tasks to get their businesses off the ground and make them successful. Those businesses then give jobs to qualified people who can help those companies be more productive and earn more money. Without profits, businesses do not survive and without the businesses that sell products and provide services to people and the visionaries behind those businesses, products and services, there would be no jobs to go to.
The government then steps into the middle of all this and demands at the point of a gun (try not paying taxes for any length of time and see if armed government agents don’t pay you a visit) what amounts to extortion payments from both the business owners and the workers they have hired. All businesses offer their products or services for sale first to consumers who look over what is for sale, make the best choice and then pay for what they need or want. Government on the other hand, simply demands the money up front and then tells you what they may or may not do with it. Much of the time, they don’t even know what they do with it. The only difference between looters that rob stores or homes after a natural disaster and the United States Government, is that the looters at least have the courtesy to wait until after the disaster happens, government creates the disaster by its ever expanding looting practices.
Exactly why does the government think they are entitled to our money? Exactly what gives them the right to demand an ever larger portion of our earnings? What exactly are we getting these days for this government sanctioned extortion?
Who’s money it is again?
Gold Investment : The Reasons Behind The Sudden Hype
Gold has become the most crucial part of a balanced investment portfolio. According to most investors, gold is considered to be a safe haven as against the fluctuations in the stock market. Most financial planners recommend gold as long term financial planning and gold also has the capability of acting as a hedge against currency uncertainties or inflation. There are many debtors in the US who are looking for ways to get out of debt and earn extra money through investment. Such consumers may try out gold investment as there are multiple reasons to plunge into this particular type of investment. If you’re unaware of the various good reasons to invest in gold, read on to know about them.
1. Gold is used as a reserve for currencies: Since history gold has got its own value and this value has kept increasing since time. This is the reason why a certain percentage of gold is always used as a reserve for all the paper currencies issued by most of the countries. Thus, it takes the biggest role of playing the reserve for most currencies of the world.
2. Gold can save you from deflation: When there is deflation, we often see the prices and business activities slowing down. The same had happened during the recent global economic recession. However, though you will see price of all commodities fall down sharply, the price of gold will only be affected the least. Therefore if you have already invested in gold, you can save yourself against the ill-effects of deflation.
3. Gold can save you against political insecurity: No type of political insecurity can affect the price of gold. When there is political unrest in a nation,most people tend to move to other countries and this has a staggering impact on the price of the financial products and real estate. Despite all such changes, the value of gold will never see an adverse result. The extreme convenience of handling gold helps sustain its value during uncertainties.
4. Gold has high liquidity: Liquidity is measured by the capability of an asset to be turned into cash. Just like the forex market, gold also has high liquidity and you can turn it into cash whenever you want. Any gold dealer or a bank can give you cash in exchange of gold. As the price of gold is increasing with time, you can gain a huge amount of money.
Successful investing is all about diversifying your portfolio in a manner that will ensure minimum risks and maximum gains. Donít have all your eggs in the same basket as this may make you more prone to future losses. Invest in gold and save yourself against all the negative effects of the market. Use the proceeds to get out of debt and lead a debt free life.
The Price of Gas Is Only 10 Cents A Gallon, What’s The Problem?
You may be shocked to find out that you can get a gallon of gas anywhere in the United States for only 10 cents a gallon. That’s right, just one thin dime. Unfortunately, you can’t use just any dime in your pocket or change purse, it has to be a pre-1965 silver dime that actually contains something of value (of course, you do have to sell the dime and get $5 for it because your local gas station probably won’t take a hand full of dimes for your next fill-up).
This is a good illustration of how the government at the hands of the Federal Reserve has devalued our money. Back in the early to mid 1960′s you could get a gallon of gas for 20 to 30 cents. Later, I remember some time in either 1967 or 1968 my dad pulling into a Zayre’s gas station in Melbourne Florida and the price on the sign in front of the station was 24 cents a gallon. So, for a little over a couple of dimes you could get yourself one gallon of gas back in the 1960′s in some places.
Obviously that is not the case today as gas is getting close to $4 a gallon in most locations around the country and in some places in California it is even over $5 a gallon. Gas is no longer 20 cents a gallon, but if you have a dime minted around that time before 1965, your dime contains about $5 worth of silver, just enough to get you about 1 gallon of gas. The dimes face value is worth about 2.5 liquid ounces of gas but, the precious metal in that silver dime in its coin form is worth about 1 gallon of gas today.
If you want to see the approximate value of a 1964 and before dime, head over to eBay and have a look at the number of silver Roosevelt dimes priced between $4 and $6 for sale. At the time of this post there were 884 auctions that fit those criteria. So, in 46 years a dime has gone from being able to buy you a half a gallon of gas to buying you 2.5 ounces of gas. This has all happened because of currency devaluation caused by inflation. Inflation is a scheme cooked up by the Fed to subtly take your money and spend wildly on social programs in an increasingly wasteful manner. Once we went off the gold standard in 1973 gold started to skyrocket in price, but so did government spending.
Our money used to be based on a tangible asset, gold, but when we went off the gold standard, that allowed unrestrained credit expansion by the government to pay for it’s social and welfare schemes. The payment for those schemes came from taxation only partially, the majority of the deficit spending came from the sale of government bonds, in effect borrowing the money from bond holders.
If you want to understand the way the scheme of deficit spending works, read a fascinating article written back in 1966 where the author states:
But the opposition to the gold standard in any form-from a growing number of welfare-state advocates-was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.
It might interest you to know that the article was written by former Fed Charmian Alan Greenspan.
When money is based on a tangible asset it’s value remains nearly the same and inflation has a much harder time taking hold in an economy. Back in the early 1900′s when we used to use the $20 gold piece as legal tender, it would buy you a really nice suit and today as the price of gold hovers around $1,500 an ounce, that same gold piece with one ounce of gold in it will still buy you a really nice suit. And the same dime, or two of them, you used in 1965 that bought you a gallon of gas will still buy you a gallon of gas today.
And we’re supposed to trust that he government is doing right with our money today?