Not talking about Tax fraud, im talking about using money and political influence to steer federal dollars into corporate coffers. You want proof? Here we go
[Link: cato.org]
[Link: corporations.org]

The mining industry earns nearly $300 million every year from the minerals it extracts from federal lands - royalty free. Tobacco interests receive millions of dollars to help administer their price supports program. And wealthy companies like Sunkist, Gallo Winery, Pillsbury and others share in a $100 million a year subsidy that allows them to pad their overseas advertising budgets with federal funds. Another federal program provides about $95 million annually to construct new forest roads that are built primarily to benefit private timber interests
If you need more let me know. BTW I'm not looking for anyone to take care of me. I started my first job 6 days after i graduated H.S. in '85 and havent recieved 1 dollar from any government program since. (not that i have a problem w/ that). I believe in hard work. But i also believe that government can have an important role in helping build a better society.

The best thing the government could possibly do is get the hell out of the way and let me, my friends and neighbors build a better society.

You're right that Govt. subsities are the redistribution of wealth. You're right that they are stupid. But that goes every bit as much for the welfare mom as it does for the big Co.'s

About the only thing I want my government to do is to protect me from foreign invaders (i.e. terrorists) and from criminals (including the ones that we elected).

$2,300,000,000,000.00 is a hell of a lot of money. They should be able to get by with 1/100 of that (or less)

I think that 90% of what the Fed. govt. spends money on would be better if done by individuals, or at thevery least by the States themselves.

I'm done (for now)

That is a lot of $$$$ but the federal gov't does a lot of thing that the private sector will not. Public roads, bridges, mainitaning public lands for recreation and other uses. Libraries, schools ,museums. These are all things that the private sector will not properly maintain. It is my contention that the federal government needs to invest more in infrasructure building. That builds real long term wealth for the most americans!

Our government was put in place to protect certain inaliable rights of the citizens of our country. Period. I would like someone here to name and back up one item other than sheer military size that our government does better and more efficiently than private companies do. The primary reason that tax cuts are seen as failures by liberal democrats is that during terms served by ANY democratic party President, Govenor, etc., social program spending (pure wealth redistribution) ALWAYS increases dramatically, usually during a period following Republican tax taking reductions. The democrat's version of spending cuts is as follows...Our budget was going to increase by 15% for such and such program. We are cutting that budget by 5%. We won't mention that this still means a budget increase! We'll just toot our horn about the 5% reduction (of the increase). If you keep more of the money you earn, you will likely spend or save more, increase charitable activity, and so on. No matter if you are an individual near poverty or a shareholder in a multi-billion dollar corporation. (Let's see what Libertarians could do for us in high office.) I think we all could stand to step back from HI-FI at least once a week and spend some time listening to Reality Radio...AM!!

Emdawgz,

Your points are well taken, but given what you are saying you should be in favor of tax cuts. Get the money out of government and away from the lobbyiests and get back to the basics as Brent suggests. There is more than enough money for the things you mentioned.

Governments role is far greater than protecting rights. The preamble of the constitution states that government must " Promote general welfare" of the citizens of this country. What can government do better? Here we go. Building public infrastructure. Interstate highways, Bridges, power plants, Dams and Resivoirs. These are things that bring real wealth to a larger portion of the populace. Do you trust private interest to protect your food or water sources? History proves that the private sector cares only about making money. (as it should) The public sector ,i.e. government acts as a crucial check to the power that the private sector has. We must not allow Private interests, Corporations et al, to control government powers. They will steal this country away from regular citizens like you and me!

I do agree with most of what you said. However, I don't think anybody is advocating no government. Government does have an important role to play as you pointed out. Especially doing what private individuals cannot do for themselves or protecting minority points of view from the passions of the majorities. Read Federalist Paper Number 10 if you want detail reasons why a strong government is needed.

However, sometimes the best way to “promote general welfare” is to do nothing. In other words, the “invisible hand” of the free market, within reason, is a more efficient and fair method of distributing scarce resources than the “very visible” hand of government. The key phase here is “within reason”. The downside to this approach is that is hard to get many votes by going nothing.

There is a point were government intrusion does more harm than good. Ask anybody that used to live in the USSR or any other centralized form of government.

I’m not exactly sure were that point is but we get closer to it everytime Republicans or Democrats tells us they are going to fix the economy or “promote general welfare” with a new service or a new tax.

Point. Corporations and small businesses do not really pay taxes. They pass the tax on to consumers within the price of their products. Estimates are that approximately 25% of every dollar the "poor" people spend on products like bread and clothes ends up passed backto the government as imbeded "corporate" taxes. Taxes are applied to wealth. People rich or poor hold all wealth. People pay taxes not corporations.

I agree that the cost is passed to the consumer, but then again that is part of the production cost.


Since salaries increase in relation with the cost of living (i.e. you would not want the salary that someone got in your position 20 years ago)it can just as easily be argued that you pass your cost to the company you work for

I think you guys are finally starting to realize why tax cuts are beneficial. As you have stated taxes do have a way of ending up with the consumer. The problem is that the cost of collecting and administering these taxes is also a burden to a company, reducing it's efficiency. Not only that, but once the gov't gets its hands on it, it pays a whole lot of politicians to figure out how to waste it (be it coporate welfare or private welfare). This creates a huge inefficiciency all the way around which has the general effect of slowing down the economy. Letting people keep more of what they earn to begin with has the effect of reducing this ineffficiency. Also, don't blame corporations for taking money from the gov't. What would you do if someone handed you a pile of cash? I don't blame bums for taking welfare checks, I blame the gov't for offering them in the first place. Get the money out of gov't and it reduces their power base.

But Thon, you are mistaking A for B. Like I said before, how much a government takes in is irrelevant to how much it spends. Tax cuts with a deficit -> mean higher deficit -> Higher debt -> next generation has more to pay. On the other hand cutting costs -> no deficit/ surplus -> paying down debt -> less costs (interest payment) -> cut taxes

This is where it gets tricky. For one thing carrying debt is not always bad. You probably have a home mortgage, right? Why don't you pay it off? Because the interest rate is low. Same thing for the government. Also, to a point, reducing taxes will increase receipts to the treasury in the long run (there is overwhelming historical evidence). We have had some very unusual circumstances in the U.S. which has necessitated increasing the debt. If Congress could apply my tax dollar directly to reducing the debt I would reconsider, but they won't and never will. Bottom line is that we are simply over taxed to have a very effective system.

I agree all debt is not bad. But I do think that now that interest rates are low (and so the cost of servicing the debt is lower) is a good time to pay some of it off (that way when the interest rates go higher the government won't need to raise taxes, I think the yo-yo effect of taxes -cut today increase tommorow- is much worst)

But I will be honest, my comment was not as much as are tax cuts good or bad, but what I coinsider the mistake that tax cuts=less government spending.

You are right that tax cuts do not equate to less spending, but it does give gov't less power. Also, I heard a couple of good analogies. 1) Since gov't $ are really tax payer dollars the gov't can either pay off national debt (about a 3% loan) or allow taxpayers to pay off their consumer debt (avg about 19%) with those same $. Something to think about. The other analogy has to do with something near and dear to our hearts, flatscreen TV's. Suppose you sell a flatscreen TV for $20K, if you raised the price to $40k you'd make twice as much money, right? Probably not because a lot fewer people would pay that. What if you lowered the price to 15K, would you make less revenue? Maybe not, because you may all of sudden have a lot more people that can afford the TV. Taxes have the same non-linear effect. Arbitrarily raising taxes does not automatically increase revenue and, in fact, has historically been shown to have the opposite effect. Party on.

well i don't charge 900 to install a plasma, but i can fish all the wires down the wall power and all in easily an hour depending on the home. but usually that does not include components hookup, thats usually another hour for set up and all