Ag951

<applauds txhedg>

Don't forget that Texas has more miles of highways and regular roads than any other state, all with a 0% income tax rate, and a moderate sales tax.
Coincidentally, Texas has one of the best economies in the US.
Tax is the ultimate economic killer. The great depression was caused by tax hikes (hikes made in an attempt to combat the recession caused by the market crash).
The best way to fix the economy of any state or the country is abolish income tax (and the wasteful IRS), and cut the budget to less than the tax revenue.

Bill

I also agree with the right to disagree and the right to change, it is the corner stone of our great country.

I see by your statement above that you also agree when by law, taxes should be paid. Certainly you must have failed to read the topic of this post. Perhaps a bit contrarian?

By cheating on the DMV fees? I fail to see the difference. Look up the term "Fraudulent"

Highways are paid for with Federal funds collected from all states. Perhaps all the other states have paid a disproportionate amount of tax to the benefit of Texas. So applaud, txhedg appears to be appreciative.

I am just an average joe. I have a lovely wife and family. A nice house. Six figure job. My profile should match that of Republican, as I have a lot that warrants holding onto. I am a Democrat. I BELIEVE in giving back. I donate blood, I have 4 foster girls that their unspeakable parents failed, and I proudly pay my taxes. Just that simple.

One of my better friends owns Intel. His dads achievements, well they changed the world. He was rewarded. At last count his dad was worth 38 billion. My friend is a Republican. He went to work every day until he turned 45. Now his sole job is to head up the family foundation. He gives back to worthy causes, from his families wealth. I am very proud to call him my friend. Oh, and he pays his taxes.

If I do not believe in something regarding our countries policies, I vote my conscience. I have not felt passionate enough yet, to attempt to shoulder a change in a public affair myself. But it is not beyond me. Cheating below the surface, undermines what our society is all about .

Ag951

No, states get matching funds to pay for interstate highways. A significant portion still comes out of the state's treasury. State highways and local roads are funded entirely by the state.
The difference between Texas and California is Texas doesn't waste money on massive bureaucracy, it doesn't punish success by taking money from the people who earn it, and it doesn't reward failure by giving money to people who don't earn it.
More than a century ago, Pavlov discovered that rewarding a behavior increases it, while punishing one decreases it. Taxes and the transfer payments they fund are an excellent example of those principles.
That's why businesses are fleeing California. It's too expensive. You can run your business in CA, and barely get by, or run it in TX and park a brand new 996Turbo in your mansion's garage...tough choice.
Because of corporate taxes, higher cost of living (due to high income, property, sales, etc. taxes), higher employer contributions to income tax, retirement taxes, and workmen's comp funds, higher costs of real estate, shipping, services, and equipment (due to all these taxes), it's just too expensive to operate in CA.

Why exactly does "giving back" require forcing people to share their money? Taking money, at gunpoint, from somebody who earns it and giving it to somebody who doesn't deserve it isn't giving back, it's socialism. Any policy that forces people to act against their own wills (unless they're a threat to others) is wrong. And that doesn't even get into the other negative issues (business failures, unemployment, cyclic poverty, etc.) that are caused by socialism. Maybe it's been so long that people have forgotten, but socialism was a miserable failure in Eastern Europe during the 20th century.

And why does giving back equate to being a Democrat? Republicans actually donate more money to charity than Democrats.

Legoland951

Most of the DMV fees do not go to the roadways. There is a breakdown and lots of the money goes to city, county, and state government which has nothing to do with the roadways. We do tax too heavily on the hard working people of this state. I am a financial planner and I can tell you ways the ultra wealthy can pay no tax on their income by using $500k/yr of their income and deduct it from their taxes to fill their retirement accounts. Can you do that with your 401k if you were an employee instead of an employer? I am a Californian and proud to be one. I just don't like the way the government is spending our money. No one in their right mind wants to pay more tax than they should. I love this country, but still don't agree with some of what the federal government is doing. The only thing we can do is VOTE. This is why we have the recall because people wants change. I don't give a sh*t if its a midget running the state as long as he or she KNOWS HOW TO RUN A STATE PROPERLY AND MAKE THINGS WORK.

Legoland951

Damn AG951, I just read your post. I got to meet you. You just read my mind.

Ag951

Given what you said about the Iraqi war a while back, I think we'd get along well.
Too bad you're not a 25-year old babe.

You brought up a good point that I've been thinking of when I read about the two socialist CA gubernatorial candidates (bustamante and the green guy) and their plans to increase taxes on the rich.
Corporate income tax is a myth! As is upper echelon income tax.
Firstly, they have the money to bribe the law makers into writing nice loopholes for them. (Why do you think the tax code is tens of thousands of pages?)
Secondly, when the taxes on the portions of their income they can't divert increase, they pass it on to you, the consumer. Corporations set their prices higher. Doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc. start charging more for their time. So the people who end up paying are the ones who don't have the leverage to make demands on their customers or employers (who are really just labor customers).
The gap between rich and poor has gone up since the 50s (considered the peak of prosperity in the US), not because the rich get much richer, but because the poor are getting so much poorer.
Median real income has gone down consistently since the 50s. Prices have gone up consistently (even after adjustment for inflation). It now takes two incomes to live as well as our grandparents (or parents) did in the 50s one one income.
In that period taxes (of all types) have gone from a few percent of an average person's yearly income, to over 40%!
For a typical American, the work you do from January 1 to April 15 (a fitting date) goes straight to the IRS in income tax. That doesn't even count the sales tax, property tax, and other taxes you pay. Or the increase in the prices of items and services due to the higher tax rate.

txhedg

Uh, no, assuming you meant "contradictory".......I was purely speaking of your comment that if you like the way the way of life in this country, we should all just stop bitching and just pay any and all taxes asked of us.

I pay all my taxes (DMV included), quite a bit actually, and probably more total taxes than you pay, Bill (not trying to be a dick, but to make a point)......given that I pay more taxes than you, is it fair that you get as much, if not more (if you have kids in public school?) benefit as I do from the government services (roads, schools, law enforcement, national defense, etc), while paying less??



thats my point exactly.....you do the volunteer/charity work voluntarily and happily.....isn't that better than being forced into paying taxes that may be used for causes you don't support and bloated, inefficient programs that try to patch societal problems by simply throwing money at it, which typically is primarily used to fund bureaucratic organizations, not really going to fix the root of the problems?

I'm sure you are proud of Kenny (or is it Steve?).......gee, he found it in his heart to quit his job and run a family foundation. And all it took was $38billion. Think about how much more good he could have done if he had been able to EFFICIENTLY allocate all those billions of dollars he paid (or will pay) the the US and CA govt over the past 20 years to the causes he believes in.

I bet your buddy doesn't have the same "high taxes are acceptable since we have such a good quality of life" mentality. I'm sure he pays his share of taxes, and then some. And thinks about what good he could do with that money if he wasnt paying to keep the CA govt blundering along. And that doesn't make it fair that he pays 4x as much sales tax on his 996GT3 (as an example) as I did on my Suburban.

Ag951

Well said txhedg

But you forgot one thing:
When the government throws money at one of these situations, things almost always get worse.
Seniors are worse off today with their $500/month of social security than they were before social security.
Poverty has worsened since LBJ declared war on it four decades ago. And now we have families that are stuck in the cycle of welfare poverty.
Medical care has skyrocketed in price and dropped in quality as the bureaucrats stepped in to "fix" it.


I just wish there were more people like us who don't want others to force their views on us (or to force ours on others).

Bill

Ag

Regurgitated rhetoric. Perhaps someday you will have an original thought.

You should really read your own responses, It is quote laughable when you contradict yourself with your very next post.

My point here is there are givers and there are takers. I never put a blanket statement on either. If you read my post about giving, I have an example of both. Myself an average joe, and my friend the ultra rich. One Democrat, one Republican. Now as for the taker, lets look at Legoland951. 700+ posts. Do you see "Rennlist Member" under his moniker? Or how about the intent of this topic.

As for California, it will survive. You may want to ponder just how large a bureaucracy is required to run the fifth largest economy in the WORLD. I wonder what your thought process is when you have to wait in line at the DMV?

txhedg

You have valid points. In your later posts, our outlook appears to be closer than it is apart. Just do what is right and change what is wrong. I too do not like waste. But unfortunately, giving on ones own accord is not universal. Thus a government for the people, by the people is required. In the end, a society is measured on how it treats it people.

I am happy you pay more taxes than I. But I can lay claim to paying taxes in Texas. I own 1,200 acres in Clay County, Texas. They are exploratory drilling as we speak. Wish me luck. If it hits, I can guarantee you that my driveway will remain in California.

86944T

If you purchase the car in Oregon there will be no sales tax associated with the registration of the vehicle. Thats due to the fact that Oregon doesn't have a sales tax!!!

Yet, it seems that everyone around here claims about all of the schools closing ......hmmmmm..

If you purchase the car and register it in Oregon you usually have to wait 90 days to take the car out of Oregon and have it registered elsewhere tax free. If you can wait the three months, more power to ya!

Peter

Legoland951

Bill, its funny but my 700+ posts are 90+ percent contributing to people's question to help them with their mechanical problems. Now,I don't ask for anything other than appreciation but I guess I won't get it from you. Its the same reason maybe not many people are showing up to the timing belt party to show others how to change their timing belts for free along with bringing own tools to help these people who don't have a lot of money. What do I get? Insult from someone like you with 700+ posts. How many people did you help? How helpful are your 700+ posts? Maybe because you don't understand how a 412i plan works or how ESOPs are used to unfairly benefit only the wealthy you have to resort to insulting someone who didn't have the "members only" tag. I don't know you and didn't meant to direct any comments towards you personally and if you read my post, you will see I am only expressing my own opinions about the state's condition. I am glad you like to pay tax and will be glad you like to take more than your share because the wealthy are not and lots of people depend on your tax dollar to subsist. However, just because someone does not agree with your point of view does not mean they have something against you personally. If you take anything I said personally, I apologize. I hope you have enough generousity to let it go.

Ag951

The straw man response: beloved by those who can't win an argument on fact. You can't prove me wrong, so instead you insult my character.
Where's the contradiction? There is none, of course.
I'll say this: at least I can spell "quite" properly.
I admit I'm not the first person to have the idea of a small government and free economy. People like Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were esposing the concept before my parents were born. Have you ever noticed that a disproportionate number of genuises are libertarians? As are a disproportionate number of economists. People who actually have a clue about that of which they speak. It might not be an original idea, but I'd rather agree with a logical idea than come up with my own idiocy. Incidentally, your mindless socialist drivel isn't the least bit original, either.
I can tell you exactly how much bureaucracy it takes to ruin...I mean run...an economy. An economy requires no bureaucracy. Name one agency in CA that helps the economy. The power regulators who won't let the power companies build new facilities or raise prices to pay for repairs? The small business administration that gives out dinky loans to businesses that wouldn't need loans if they didn't pay taxes? The price fixing dairy board consortium that makes milk in CA cost twice as much as some parts of the US? The medical bureaucrats who make medicine cost several times what it does in Mexico? Well...they help the tourism industry (since seniors charter busses to go down to TJ to get their meds).


I'll give you a quick lesson in economics bill:
The value in an economy is the sum of the productivity of every worker, whether that worker extracts resources, refines resources, or turns them into a finished product. In a modern economy, most people work in support positions: guys like me design software to make the workers more productive, (good) managers increase the output rate of their workers, (good) lawyers allow companies to interact more efficiently, shipping companies help the resources move through all the stages from extraction to the final product delivery, etc.
What do bureaucrats do? Nothing. They don't make workers more efficient, and they don't directly produce anything of value. They are parasites.
The only effective government workers are emergency workers (police, fire, military). And they're more like an insurance policy (when you don't need them they seem like a waste, but the day you do need them, you're glad you paid for them).
This concept is usually represented as GNP or GDP. The flaw with the system used for them in the US is they count government money twice. Your paycheck is counted at 100%, even though you're lucky to see 60% if you're telling the truth about 6 figures. Then the money paid to the people at the social services department is counted (even though it was counted already as your income). The government handouts given to people on welfare or social security are counted again as well.

In any economic interaction there are two parties: the seller and the purchaser. Every private sector exchange of money is a purchase (or rental). You sell your time to your employer, the pest company sells its time and rents its equipment to you, etc. Both parties are driven by vested self interest. If the seller screws up, he'll lose business. If the buyer screws up, he'll pay too much or get low quality. When the government enters an exchange, it becomes a disinterested third party. It doesn't win or lose based on the outcome, so why bother to work efficiently? And government workers can't be easily fired, even for incompetence, so why try? They get the same pay for minimal work.
The end result is that government contracts are expensive, and corruption becomes common (look at the Oracle scandal in CA for an example: CA bureaucrats get massive kickbacks to purchase hundreds of millions in software the state doesn't need).
An informed consumer base, with its vested self interest, is more effective at keeping companies honest, the environment clean (the biggest messes are on Federal land, coincidence? Nope.), keeping prices down, and keeping quality up than any government in History.

Socialism has two fundamental flaws. It assumes people will produce the same value with reduced rewards. Any person of reasonable intelligence knows that contradicts human nature, so I won't even bother proving it. The result is less productive work or shoddy products. I did a report on farming in the former USSR vs. the US in the late '80s for my AP Economics class in HS. A Soviet farm produced about half per acre of what an American one did...considering only the Soviet collectives. On the small personal plots of land that Soviet farmers were allowed, they were almost 50% more productive than Americans. They were allowed to sell the products of their private land on their own, the collective results didn't benefit them in the least.

Socialism also assumes there is a finite amount of wealth in an economy. Most people believe that to be true. So they think transfer payments will make everything fairer. (Although I don't see how taking money from the person who earns it and giving it to somebody who doesn't is "fair". Theft is theft, even with an IRS badge.) But it doesn't: half that money gets locked up in bureaucratic waste and corruption. So there is less money in the economy than before. And that's only half the problem. Money makes more money. Investments of time, effort, and capital improve the efficiency of existing processes, or make newer, better ones. So the more money that an economy has (tax dollars sucked out are no longer in the economy), the better it grows, and the more wealth there is. When a millionaire buys a yacht, you might think it's a waste of money that could go into a welfare project or subsidized art, but think about where that money goes. Most goes to skilled laborers who build the yacht. Some goes to miners, steel workers, plastic workers, etc. who extract and refine the components. Some goes to the truckers who haul it all around. And of course a small amount goes to the corporations, banks, and capitalists who invested in the yacht company, the steel mill, and the trucking company. Most of it goes to blue collar labor though. I'd rather have a $25/hr. electrician job at a shipyard than a $500/month welfare check...

As for the idea of a bureaucracy "running" an economy, do you have god-like intelligence? No?, neither do I. That's what it would take to centralize economic control. There are too many factors to consider, especially in a larger economy, like CA. The Soviets had five year plans, as did the Red Chinese: millions starved to death. Every national scale planned economy in History has failed. Period. No exceptions. The only successful planned economies have been hippie communes, and the like, where all of the contributors are on a first name basis. There the sense of family keeps productivity up and corruption down. But as the communes grow, they collapse.
I could go on about centralized control versus a free economy, but if you'd like a much better explanation, I suggest you read some books by Milton Friedman, Nobel winning Economist, and one of the founders of the "Chicago" school of economic thought.

Since the 50s:
Taxes have gone up.
Real income has gone down.
Prosperity has gone down.
Poverty and homelessness have gone up.

If it's not socialism, what is it?

txhedg

Well put Ag

Especially good point on the Power situation in CA....a subject near and dear to my heart, but where everyone just assumes I am biased (since I am a Texan in the energy business). I experienced much of the CA rhetoric and lies first-hand, and it is amazing the spin that came out on that whole issue.

Bill, for something a bit lighter (not a lot, but a little), you should read Atlas Shrugged. Even though it is fiction, after reading it I would be interested to hear if you still cling to your views, and if you do, explain what part of Atlas you thought was inaccurate (the economic theory, not the symbolic never-never land)

I guess we've kinda hijacked this thread from the original intent, huh???

Ag951

I'd suggest reading The Fountainhead before Atlas Shrugged. It's shorter, and it has the same philosophy, but with an emphasis on a personal and social aspects, not the economic ones. Atlas Shrugged is almost a sequel to The Fountainhead.

Try to get an older copy though. I bought a new copy of both a few years ago, and they were loaded with typos, while the originals were not. If I was more of a conspiricy nut, I'd say somebody at the publisher added all the typos to discredit the work.

txhedg

I agree on ease of reading, sequel, etc, but I thought Atlas did a better job of illustrating the impact of government intervention on the efficiency of an economy.......and closer to the debate we have on this thread.

I noticed the same typos in Fountainhead, but don't have an older version to compare against. I'm no Oliver Stone, but your theory is not too far fetched imho