Inherent Necessary Inefficiencies.

Since I have been of the mind to pay attention to politics, and I am certain long before, I have heard from politicians and politicians-to-be that government should be run like a business.  I have heard that government needs to be more efficient, it needs to treat money like we who have to live and work do.

Why?

We are inherently different than the system of government.  Business is inherently different than government.

Think of it like a system with a purpose. 

A business is a system whose purpose is to generate money.  What other purpose does it have at its core?  Sure, some businesses and organizations have other purposes but by far, the vast majority of businesses exist to make money, for the owners, for the shareholders, or perhaps as tax dodges so that someone doesn’t have to pay out money on the other side.

A household is a system with a purpose.  Its purpose is to provide basic needs for people who work to earn money, and use that money to pay to maintain the household.  It serves the householders who are part of the same system.  A household would not work if it were maintained with the purpose of generating money.  I don’t even know how that would work.

A government is a system with a purpose.  Government’s purpose is to serve the people.  It serves them by building them infrastructure so that they can carry on business and householding.  It sets policies for imports and exports and regulates how businesses can treat workers.  It regulates what persons can do to each other with the purpose of creating a civil society in which everyone can carry on business and householding.  It prevents overreach of many aspects of society, and necessarily so, it serves humans.

Government to a degree facilitates everything that happens in a society.  Government can’t go bankrupt like a corporation and be dissolved and assets sold to pay debts.  Government can’t be sold like a business or a house.  Government can’t buy other governments. A government cannot be run like a business because it doesn’t create wealth or serve to generate money, it distributes it by its very nature.  It collects money via taxes and fees and provides services based on what needs to be accomplished to move the society forward.

Unlike a business, government serves the people.  Unlike money, the best needs met for people do not lie in what makes the most money.  There are inherent and necessary inefficiencies.  Because government controls so much, it needs inherent drogues to keep it from commanding everything in its path.  It needs to apply drogues to businesses and householders so that they may not overstep their bounds also.

Consider the Senate of the United States of America.  According to James Madison, "The use of the Senate is to consist in proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch."  The Senate was necessarily less efficient than the House, more deliberative, less apt to act with haste, a necessary and inherent inefficiency.  At this point in time, progress in the senate has slowed to a crawl because some senators value the business of money more than they value the business of serving the people.  While this is a seriously annoying hang-up, it is an inherent necessary inefficiency to keep the government from overreaching in faster times.

Inefficiency in government prevents great evils from coming to pass if they work right.  As a price for this, great goods are also slowed.

The justice system works similarly.  In order that the minimum number of innocent people are dealt with unjustly, sometimes a known criminal must be released because he was not read his rights when he was arrested or because proper procedure was not followed in some other aspect.  We complain about these miscarriages of justice because we know a guilty party got away with something.  How much more would we complain if we the innocent party were unjustly prosecuted for the same crime?  It is a necessary and inherent inefficiency that keeps the system from running amuck. 

Democracy itself is likewise inherently inefficient.  Why spend so much time debating and arguing and legislating in one direction and then another when we could have some glorious all powerful leader who could make changes to our society en masse?  Because though that kind of government is far more efficient at getting things done, it is also inherently unjust, or so history would tell us.  Democracy, when it works correctly, allows people to govern themselves and move in a direction that generally has the best interests of the society as a whole.

As an aside, let me cut you libertarians, corporatists, plutocrats, autocrats, and republicans off at the pass before you try to tell me that democracies are inherently evil and that the majority will eventually confiscate rights and freedom from the minority.  I have done my best to test that assertion, and I have found it to be categorically false.  I even had a libertarian try to tell me that Hitler was democratically elected.  It’s simply false.  I can’t find an example where a democracy has confiscated rights from a minority.  If you can provide me one, I’d be happy to consider it, but expect to defend your assertion.

Yes, we all know government is inefficient.  We try to make it more efficient.  We want it to work for the benefit of all citizens.  But to do that, there are some things it can’t do efficiently and we need to accept that.  It shouldn’t be wasteful, but some waste is inherent in a system that serves people.  A system that serves money is allowed to be far more ruthless. 

When government becomes ruthless and cold, you know it is serving money and not the people.  When moneyed interests make plans for government, you know they are seeking to change government so that it serves money and not the people. 

But it needs to be inefficient.  It requires, and was designed with, a certain necessary inherent level of inefficiency so that it would fulfill its purpose in serving the people and not the money.

I eventually plan to start a business where one of the stated purposes is to provide jobs, to serve people.  To do that, there will have to be a necessary inherent inefficiency introduced fundamentally into the system so that the sole purpose of the business is not simply to make money, but to serve the people working there.

This post serves to further one of my overall messages that catchphrases, soundbites, and litmus tests are truly useless to our representative democracy.  The truth lies in in-depth study, discussion, understanding, and reason.  The truth and the best good for the society and our nation lies in seeing every side of an issue, in not yelling, not offering incendiary arguments, and not offering catchphrases in place of reasoned discussions and compromises.  Nuance is as important as progress.  Depth of understanding is as important as passing a bill. It’s an inherent necessary inefficiency, that we have to slow down and think about what we are doing.

“We Want Another Reagan Conservative! What? No We Don’t." A Treatment on Taxes and Other Money Stuff.

Ignore political and conservative biases for a minute, we are gonna try to work this out using simple logic. The Facts as I see them are these.

The United States is neck deep in national debt. None of our thinking citizens wants this.

Many conservatives favor stuff called supply side economics, or Reaganomics, or basically tax cuts for the rich to make more money.

The gap between rich and poor widens.

Celebrity worship and greed fueled a now bursting housing bubble.

Government spends too much money, much of which is wasted.

I’d like to say first of all that I am not one of those dorky single guys that live at home with their mom. I live 2200 miles from my mom. I don’t sleep between Star Wars sheets, I don’t own a video game younger than ten years old. I have two associates degrees and a job. My wife has two bachelors degrees and a job. While I work only part time, my wife and I are paid adequately for the specialties we both have. I’m not trying to brag here. I am just trying to say that I understand fully what it takes to make a life. I am not some moron whose mouth runneth over and has no idea what they are talking about.

On the other hand, guys who come up with supply side economics are guys who have degrees in Political Science. That’s right, not economics, not math, they are fully equipped to be politicians. A few definitions should follow. Supply side economics is essentially the belief that if you make incentive to produce products by lowering taxes on the producers, you will get enhanced economy as a result. It is really saying “we’ll let you keep more of your money, so you should invest it so you can make even more money which we’ll then take our share of.” The past two double term republican presidencies have been big into this, also recessions. The basic problem is this: If you give someone more money, chances are, they’ll just want more money. More money is usually gotten by laying off people, paying people less, and moving production over seas, and likely a combination of all three. If all the money moves overseas, then we don’t get any of it.

We poor people (read “middle class”) don’t understand this. Why? Because it doesn’t make any sense. If you want more money, you take more taxes. The reason why the conservatives tell us that it is working is they cut taxes in one area, then look at all revenues to see the result. Sure, the US is taking in more money than ever before, but it is not coming from the area where they cut taxes, which as you might imagine is bringing in less money. It makes sense. It’s like saying “I’ll plant less corn in the garden this year” and then taking the gross weight of the production of the whole garden and then saying “Wow, look at all the new corn we have by planting less.” You aren’t making more corn. You are making less. The difference is, you can distinguish corn from peas, dollars all look the same. So when a politician tells you there are more dollars, you automatically think, “Well, I don’t understand it, but it seems to be working!” Additionally, it doesn’t matter that we are taking in more money than ever, we are also more in debt than ever, go figure.

I have a friend in our church small group who always brings up the “punishing productivity” argument whenever we have this discussion. He says that keeping taxes high on the rich punishes them for working hard and making more money. Since we are making sense today, I’ll admit, that does make a little sense, but only a little. However, every dollar has two sides. If you lower taxes on the ones who can afford it, you punish those who cannot. What it says is “Oh, you have money, here, have some more,” and “You over there don’t have much, give me some of it.” Do you see the problem? You may be rewarding productivity, but you are punishing misfortune. Most physically hardworking families whose jobs are strenuous but not well paying are not there because they don’t work hard. They are not being supported by welfare, they are not popping out kids left and right so they can get tax rebates and welfare checks. The whole “working hard” paradigm is completely meaningless. Working hard does not equal more money. The hardest work I’ve ever done paid well less than $10 an hour, and the easiest work I’ve ever done pays more than that. What’s the difference? Education, skill, perseverance, paying dues, work ethic, opportunity, and actually enjoying the work I’m doing. I would also like to say from a spiritual perspective that giving tithe, offerings, and works of service to God makes a ton of difference as well because he is the one who makes that whole list up there possible. See the book of Malachi.

This Supply Side Economics, or Reaganomics, or Trickle Down Economics stuff is just bogus. I don’t remember who it was that said this, but it is not the rich who are owed because of their success, it is them who owe us who made them successful. You can’t get rich by yourself but you need underlings, people whose work you profit from. No one person can have the skill or more importantly time to be every employee of a multi-million dollar company. There is almost always someone profiting from someone else, and the some ones who make more money should have to pay taxes at no less a percentage rate than the person from whom they are profiting.

It is not like buying toilet paper bulk, so you actually pay less per roll. In fact it is the reverse. Let’s just assume a 10% tax because it is easy to calculate, in reality it is much higher. A person making $20,000 is not very able to pay $2,000 in taxes, while a person making $2,000,000 is very easily able to pay $200,000. In the same way, a person is more able to pay $10,000 if they make $100,000 that if they make less. It is very simple. In fact, if a person making $2,000,000 can live like a person making $100,000, which anyone can, then they can afford to pay far more. Of course, I am not suggesting that we force people who make a lot of money to live as if they don’t, but I AM suggesting that they do it themselves.

The big overriding problem above all this is the problem of people with money, oh, I mean people with our money. If the government wants to cut taxes, please do, but you must also cut spending. I don’t have any credit cards, so I really can’t spend more than I have without immediate consequences. So we live what most of us would call “within our means.” Why can’t our government do the same? All of the presidential candidates right now are proposing new spending when we already are having a deficit every year. And all the republicans are proposing tax cuts. What nonsense! All of it is nonsense!

The solution.

As far as taxation goes, I can see no better option than the Fair Tax. The more you can afford to buy, the more you can afford to pay, and there are no arbitrary percentage rates for anyone. If you buy a $20,000 car, $4,600 of that is taxes, if you want to buy a $100,000 car, $23,000 is taxes. So simple. Please, buy a $10,000,000 house, we need the $2.3 million in tax revenues. It works everywhere. If all you can afford is a $2 box of macaroni, then all the tax you’d pay is $.46, but if you want a $40 steak meal, then you pay $9.20. It is just like giving a tip, only slightly more than we would often give, but hey, it’s taxes! I know it is hard to really work out the math, but, you must stop to calculate that the value of money will be different. If you were to make $40,000 a year, right now, that is something like $28,000 after taxes. With the Fair Tax, if you were to make $40,000 a year, you would be making $40,000 a year. Wow, that was easy, and there wasn’t any stress in April.

Tax this!

WiredForStereo