Help Us Reinvent America
Help us design a plan to rebuild the governments of the United States. The following is an analysis of the detrimental role of governments on our economic growth and development. Their confiscation of an inordinate portion of our incomes in their self interest is a drag on our personal and national well being. Here,we offer a suggested blueprint for redesigning our country. Be a participant. Submit your reform suggestions by responding to the OUTRAGE feedback mailbox.
TAX CONSUMING MONSTERS AND THEIR EATING HABITS
Taxes imposed by the governments of the United States consume over 50% of the incomes of the average households in this country. How did this happen? Is it necessary? Can it be reversed?
1) Causes:
A) Greed and government employees. Contrary to the impression created by the term "public servant", government workers and elected officials are quite self serving and monetarily motivated. There is one major difference between government and the private sector. Governments produce nothing. They get their resources by taking money from the private sector capitalists and workers like us. And do they ever take it! Governments seem to spend money like it belongs to someone else. Two books written by Martin Gross, "Washington Waste From A to Z" and "A Call For Revolution" document the alarming reality of government excesses and waste. Government workers enjoy average incomes of over $80,000 per year while the average private sector income is about $26,000.
People in the private sector are rewarded for producing products or services that can be sold. The more we produce the more we earn. Government workers don't produce wealth, so they fulfill their needs by building bureaucracies. The more people they can hire and manage, the greater their incomes. They are literally rewarded for spending our money. The more they spend, the more they are rewarded. To compound the problem they lobby elected politicians to give them large pensions as a reward for a lifetime of taxing and spending. What a deal!
It is pretty easy to see how governments get so big and bloated and out of control.
B) Greed and elected officials. Elected officials are driven by greed for money and power. What greater power can one get than to have the right to pass laws to tax other people while passing still other laws to reward themselves.
As if this weren't enough, the high cost of getting elected creates so many unholy alliances between ambitious politicians and those who hope to profit handsomely from government awards and handouts that the average taxpayer is reduced to being the life support source for candidates and their sponsors. We pay they profit. Campaign contributions are seldom given without the expectation of a handsome return on investment. The cliché that we have the best governments that money can buy is sadly true.
We have elected officials operating in their self-interest who have gained office by selling their soles to the highest bidding campaign contributors.
The present system of running for elective office prohibits elective officials from making legislative initiatives, which promote the "general welfare" of the citizenry.
Getting elected and getting re-elected under the present system causes the selection of candidates who run in their self-interest and legislate for their special interest sponsors. And we pay the price. Do we ever pay the price!
C) Central governments allow politicians to fraternize away from the public's scrutiny. They are holed up in Springfield, Sacramento, or Washington D.C.- sequestered, and insulated from the voters from their respective districts. Politicians only rarely come out to meet with their constituency-and that's usually around election time. The voters cannot get to their elected officials while in session but the paid lobbyists can get to all of the elected officials in one convenient location. How convenient for special interest groups and opportunists!
D) The E words are Evil and Experience in government. Experience is laudable and desirable in virtually every human endeavor. Experience in government is undesirable and ultimately evil. The longer one is in government, whether elected or appointed, the further removed he becomes from his electors. They legislate for themselves , their bureaus and their campaign contributors. There is only one party in the United States with two separate branches. Where do you fit into the present government dynamic? We are simply the life support system for their ambitions.
E) Welfare funding. Welfare agencies have every motive to increase their caseloads and no incentives to reduce welfare recipients. The greater the number of recipients, the greater the compensation for the Bureau Chiefs and the managers.
F) Graft. Because government employees are limited to the handsome salaries and pensions that they enjoy, some decide to increase their earning power by accepting bribes from those upon who special favors are then conveyed who are bribing. These actions raise the cost of government by inflating the purchasing price of government goods and services through circumvention of the competitive bidding process.
G) Grant programs. These are vehicles to establish new bureaucracies. Each time a new government grant program is established, an accompanying bureau is created to administer the program. In many cases, grants are made on a matching basis, which means the governments receiving the grants must spend money they probably would not have spent in the absence of the grant. A new grant program causes increased expenditures from the Federal and State governments, increased and usually permanent overhead to pay for administration of the grants and finally increased local government spending required to receive the grant. How can the taxpayer win?
H) Government is a monopoly. Monopolies are notoriously inefficient because they have no competition forcing them to operate more cost effectively. If they aren't cost effective they can't compete and they go out of business. Think of what competition has done for the computer industry. We can buy computers for about a thousand dollars, which sit on our desktops and have power equal to that of old mainframe computers which occupied entire rooms and cost millions of dollars. Innovation and cost cutting are the keystones of competition. The bulwarks of monopolies are bloated bureaus, lethargy, inefficiencies and waste. There is only one political party with two branches. Therefore there is no political competition to improve governments.
TAME THE MONSTERS WITH GREED. MAKE GREED WORK FOR US.
Is this terrible tax burden necessary to finance necessary and desirable governmental functions? Absolutely not! Study after study cites the horrendous waste in government at all levels.
There are many other factors propelling the growth of our
governments but those cited are some of the major ones. Can these problems
be fixed? Yes-but it will take time because the practitioners of the present
system have entrenched themselves in layers of bureaus. Elected politicians
will not easily surrender their incumbency. Neither will surrender their
fat pensions without a struggle. They will not easily surrender their
culture. Nonetheless, here is a sound plan for revolutionizing government.
The plan, if adopted, will dramatically reduce government waste and harness
greed to work for the taxpayers. There are many other creative
ideas out there for reinventing the governments of the U.S. After you
read our plan. Give us your ideas.
2) THE FIX
1) How can we remove greed from
government employees?
We can't, however, we can make their greed work for us. We put government
employees on very low base salaries and provide them hefty incentive programs
for cutting expenses. Their incomes will rise very sharply while government
costs will plummet. Government employees pension programs should be converted
to the social security system.
2) How can we eliminate EXPERIENCE
from government?
Simply limit elected officials to one term. Privatize government agencies
and seek semi annual competitive bids from competing firms for the operation
of the agencies.
3) How do we make welfare programs
more effective?
Privatize them. Have private firms, institutions etc., administer welfare
programs. Make case load awards to those who have demonstrated the most
cost effective programs for handling welfare recipients including the
ability to get recipients off the dole and keep them off. Make long range
payments to the firms for each welfare to work conversion. Let them share
in the productive workers tax payments to government. Finance welfare
by extending tax credits of $1.25 for each dollar donated to an approved
welfare vendor.
4) How do we eliminate graft in
government?
Simply make cost cutting more profitable to employees and elected officials
than they can gain through graft.
5) How do we eliminate the formation
of new bureaus from grant programs?
Eliminate grant programs. If federal and state taxes are cut
by large amounts money will be available locally to finance local projects..
Establish tax credit eligible local funds for financing projects. Allow
a $1.25 tax credit for each dollar contributed to eligible local project
or program funds.
6) How do we eliminate monopolistic
concepts from governments?
Privatize the bureaus and make their administration subject to competitive
bids. Reward companies who can justify the elimination of entire bureaus
or departments with large cash awards from the savings achieved. Give
them large awards for simply cutting the costs of administering ongoing
bureaus. Privatization will eliminate all government employee pensions.
7) How can we eliminate central
governments?
Very easily! Central governments were formed in the absence of modern
electronic communications. There is no longer any reason to have central
meeting places convenient for lobbyists but isolated from voters. Elected
officials should stay in offices in their elected districts. All debate
and voting can be carried on via electronic communications in the presence
of local voters. Even the few secret debates can be carried out over encrypted
transmissions. All lobbying efforts must be done in public meetings at
each elected officials office. Secret lobbying shall be outlawed and if
the representative is caught in a secret lobbying situation, the punishment
will be removal from office. The lobbyist should face automatic imprisonment
if convicted of undercover lobbying.
8) How do we choose and elect
elected officials under these reforms?
Anyone may run who wishes to run. Each candidate will be given a limited
government stipend for running a campaign. Candidates will be prohibited
from spending any funds beyond the government stipend. Periodically during
shortened campaigns the government will pay for media days during which
local papers, radio stations and television stations will carry the platforms
of each candidate. All candidate platforms will be presented on campaign
web sites.
This is a start! Send us your suggestions for reforming our governments.
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