I often hear about how we 'need' to be taxed, or else we wouldn't be able to go on with our daily lives, because the Government needs our tax dollars to maintain our infrastructure. Sure, that sounds like a good argument, but it has little bearing on reality. The American Civil Society of Engineers, gave our overall infrastructure system an average of 'D'. We had a bridge collapse in August of 2007. Hurricane Katrina was only possible because of a failing levee system, and the engineers down there had tried to get more funding for the levees, but could never get it. More than 70,000 bridges in this country are rated as 'structurally deficient'. Texas has 7 dam inspectors, to inspect 7,603 dams. Alabama doesn't even have a dam inspector. 80% of Wisconsin dams don't get inspected, or don't have a plan in case of emergency. Alabama doesn't even have a dam inspector. If a private enterprise were responsible for these failures, people would say it was the free market that failed to protect us. Well, this time you can't blame the free market, because we've been taxed to hell and back, and we still have absolutely abysmal roadways, bridges, sewers and runoffs, levees, etc. Our Governments (State and Federal) have failed to protect us from these disasters, and by the looks of it, they will continue to ignore this looming problem. I'll give you a funny example, I live in a fairly rich town in my state (No, I'm not rich) and for the past few months, they've been tearing up our entire downtown system of streets to put in BELGIAN blocks, meanwhile the roads down the mountain to the urban areas, are crumbling. There's a road that leads from the hill I'm on, down to Route 22, that's about a 20 degree incline, and the road is about a mile long, and winds dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, and from there it's a steep fall down to the ground. The edges of the roadway are crumbling away, and the guardrail is rotting. But the Government insists on installing a useless, and annoying road upgrade throughout my town, meanwhile the biggest artery from my town, to the major highway, is in desperate need of repair. People are free to believe what they want, but justifying us getting taxed out of prosperity and saying 'It's OK, it goes to infrastructure!', simply doesn't fly. As I said earlier, if a private enterprise were responsible for these shortcomings, you people would go nuts, claiming the free market had failed. Next time someone suggests privatizing a road or a bridge, realize that the Government has failed in their duty to maintain these system, arguably their biggest and most 'important' job. When someone suggests that it would be impossible, or a bad idea, to privatize these projects, just keep in mind that the Government isn't so great at it. Gov Also, I suggest you watch The History Channel's Documentary on our crumbling infrastructure to get a better idea of what is going on in our country. Most of the facts cited I got from watching this documentary. Check the link for programming in your area. It's definitely worth the watch.
The belgian blocks are likely going up in a shopping district to increase the allure of the area and make it more pedestrian friendly. Who doesn't like walking around historic-esque areas and buying crap? Another example of government serving the interests of business before meeting the needs of civilians. The problem with government failures is people have been taught to think the solution lies in reform rather than reduction. It's a shame they don't read history, otherwise they would know these flaws are systemic.
That's the thing--the belgian blocks aren't even in a pedestrian friendly area. They're being installed in a place that's stuck between a vertical mountain rock wall, and a river, there's not even a sidewalk. It's purely ornamental, and if anything, it's wasting road space. It's so fucking stupid. Oh, and this forum is so predictable, all the liberals are absent from threads where they are incapable of making a counter-point, but in other threads they relentlessly spew misinformation. Threads on aspirin become 6-page discussions. This, I bet won't make it past one page.
But what would the solution be? I mean do we not need roads? Oh, and those Belgian blocks must be beautiful. but a waste.
First, I think we need to understand what infrastructure is. An infrastructure is not just "roads and bridges". Our infrastructure is the basic framework- the building blocks- of what keeps our society running. It allows people to be able to live where they want to, to have the freedom to go from Point A to Point B, to get to your job, to bring your kids to the doctors, to go buy a bag, or whatever. The infrastructure is what ensures that our power grid remains stable, even if one of the private power providers goes bankrupt and can't provide service. A private infrastructure is an oxymoron. Of course private businesses will be more efficient then then a public infrastructure. That's a no-brainer. Look at how private businesses DO business. They operate in a way that will best benefit their bottom line. An infrastructure needs to work in a way that gives as many people access to it as possible. Because, again, that is the entire point of an infrastructure in the first place. Let's talk about rural areas of the country. Let's say you live in a rural area where there may only be 2 houses on a 10 mile stretch of road. If you aren't on a major trucking route, who pays for maintaining that road? Obviously, the end user- you and the other people who live and travel on it (which is not a lot of people). Suddenly, your property taxes just went up a whoooooole lot. Except, now it's not a "property tax". It's a fee that you would have to pay (voluntarily, of course) if you ever want to use your road again. The most basic of economic principals (supply and demand) means that people living in more populated areas with more roads will pay less, and people living in rural areas will pay much higher fees because they are sharing the roads with far fewer people. And we are a large and predominantly rural country. Many of our rural areas are in the north, where the cost of maintaining roads is especially high. The result will be more people will move to our cities because it will be cheaper, and as that happens the cost of using/maintaining those rural roads will eventually become too high for average people to use them. Who benefits from that scenario? Certainly not me. Large corporations and the wealthy benefit from this scenario. Is that really what you want to see in America? More crowded cities and rural areas that are off limits to the average person? One last point: How can roads be part of the free market?? If I don't want to do business with a company, I don't do business with them. I boycott Nike and Walmart, because I do not like their business practices. THAT'S a free market. What if I live on a road owned by a corporation, and I find out in tomorrow's newspaper they are treating their workers unfairly. How would I boycott my own road? Am I supposed to move? How could I do that without using the road? Helicopter my stuff out? Not leave my house again ever? How exactly is that a free market?
I'm not surprised we were rated a D, but I don't think this is a legitamite argument for zero taxation, it means we don't have our priorities straight. And we are not that heavily taxed compared to Europe, and they have much better infrastructure than we do.
Exactly. 10 years ago, our infrastructure was in a much better place. It wasn't liberals who spent all of our money on an ill-conceived war. Well, not mostly anyway.
We need a return to limited government, where they can't tax through inflation to pay for wars and run up debt. That way we will only support taxes that benefit us, it will prioritize spending. The more power you give the state the more doors to abuse you open. And which country in Europe manages a global empire? Oh... right...
Truth. You have all of our major orginizations being gutted and then overrun with cronyism and everyone is shoked things went to shit.
would you consider the war in Afghanistan "ill conceived?" or just the one in Iraq.. that shows no signs of ending. these neo-con presidents are starting to get on my nerves,.
Close to 30% of our $3 trillion national budget is allocated to defense spending. Not to mention the state money that should be going towards infrastructure as well. The problem isn't using taxation for infrastructure, the problem is the misallocation of tax money to the wrong causes. Not to mention all the money that will be freed up if/when government healthcare tax dollars stop going towards expensive ER visits and more towards cheap medication for a healthier populace.
I never supported any of the wars George Bush started. And I still don't support them. I agree that we need a limited government, but there are a million other areas we could cut spending in before we hand over our infrastructure to profiteers. With a "private infrastructure" , your freedom to step out the door and walk or drive to where ever you want to go has just become a commodity. Something someone can make a profit from. What about our water? Why would WE ("the people") want to be in charge of our water? THAT'S CRAZY! Let's hand our water supply over to a private company, so they can turn around and charge us for it. And they will do it much more efficiently too! I'm sure that big business has been waiting for ages to get their hands on our water supply. OP- in your "free market" infrastructure what happens if someone can't afford to buy water? Libraries? There's no profit to be made in loaning out books, so of course those would be a thing of the past. Poor people don't need books anyway, they should be out working when they are 10. And let's ask California how deregulating their power grid has gone...
Roads are a service and services can be sold on the market for a lower cost than what the government can provide. With private roads you pay only for the roads you use. I have a theory that if government didn't subsidize the automotive industry (the most heavily subsidized industry in the world) our means of transportation would have taken on a different form. We would still be moving fast today but if private companies had built our infrastructure (and no, government isn't the only entity that builds infrastructure) I don't think we'd all be driving inefficient two ton mechanical mechanism to transport groceries. Well, when I lived out in the country I bought water from a private company. It was cleaner and cheaper than the city water I have now. So, I guess you're wrong...again. No, you're right. There probably isn't much profit in libraries. Which is why libraries, if people wanted them, would likely be supported via private donations. One of the most basic rules of economics is supply and demand. That is, if there is demand then there will be a supply. If a library cannot exist in a free market then it's because no one wants to use it. That means there is no demand for one, and if there is supply, then it will get shut down. The world will not come to an end if libraries disappeared if that is what the market is telling us. The library in my town runs a deficit every year. Why? Because no one goes to the library. Yes, let's ask them. Oh wait...I can't! Because they never actually deregulated anything! First, the government of California placed price caps on the cost of energy generating higher demand for power. And since it's nearly impossible, thanks to the regulations of the California State government, to build new power plants in that state, you saw rolling blackouts as the cost to produce energy exceeded the revenue generated thanks to price caps set by the government. Second, no deregulation occurred. All they did was force power producers to sell to non-power producers at retardedly low rates. Nothing during that whole thing had anything to do with deregulation or the free market. A free market in energy prices wouldn't have produce rolling blackouts. After government imposed artificial price caps were done away with the cost of energy would have gone up to fair market price. This would have forced Californians to conserve energy. Eventually the price of energy would have stabilized. In the short term Californians would have paid more but the long term effect of real deregulation would result in much lower prices as new plants were built and existing plants expanded.
Guess what fuckers, we have no infrastructure, we are post industrial, post democratic, China was planned to become the worlds producer 25 years ago, NAFTA GAT, yeah that really helped us out, we are reaping the "benefits" now. I would love Obama to start building some infrastructure that helps our economy, instead of destroying cultures overseas and continuing failed policies.
Actually, in a truly free market a private power provider going bankrupt would lead to a firesale of their assets which could be picked up by their competitors or a startup on the cheap... The only way I can understand your line of thinking here is that "If a power supplier goes bankrupt, the government can bail them out" which IMO is not a good solution... ever. I think the last 12 months have pretty clearly shown that government bailouts simply do not work but rather shift the burden of a private companies failures onto the shoulders of taxpayers. Erm, i'd like to point out the telecommunication backbone in the US which is owned and operated by the private sector, but has rules governing it that mandate it be made available at a reasonable cost for everybody to use whether you're a private citizen or a multi-national corporation using the lines to provide a competing service. I think its very hard to make a compelling arguement here, the reality is that companies stay on top because they DO THE JOB - Companies that fail to do the job go bankrupt and are replaced by someone able to do the job. The notable exception to this is government entities which are allowed to be incredibly inefficient and operate at a loss because of very poor management and strategic thinking, OR private entities who are bailed out. Besides those two categories, can you actually point out a company that provides very poor service in a major category with competition that remains successful? You're forgetting a key factor here though: If we switched to a system like this then we WOULDNT BE PAYING THE MAJORITY OF THE CURRENT TAXES. With that in mind, a system like this sounds damn fine to me. It would quite literally be a consumption tax, have people go in twice a year to get their mileage written down and charge a fee based on the number of miles you drive each year. Have that go DIRECTLY to the infrastructure, figure out exactly how much it costs to maintain and improve the existing infrastrcture then take that and divide it by the number of miles driven in total by taxpayers over the course of the year and bam, you've got your per mile infrastructure consumption tax. How you get "large corporations and the wealthy" benefiting from that situation is beyond me... A consumption tax would encourage people to live near where they work and companies (given that they're now paying less taxes) would be encouraged to give employees transportation allowances etc. [/quote] This actually already exists, if you've ever been to florida there are the very congested poorly maintained state roads and many times alongside those roads there will be private toll roads that have very little traffic and are well maintained. Sure this doesn't apply everywhere, but they're already planning to build these in California and its not an uncommon proposal for areas of major congestion with cheap space to do it. Similarly though, if you live out in the boonies many times you'll only have one option for phone, internet and cellphone service - Its the price you pay for living in a rural area (and i say this after growing up at my parents house out in the mountain boonies that had exactly this situation - For EXACTLY that reason we didn't have TV for about 5 years until Satellite became available and there was an alternative. If you truly believe in your convictions, the price can always be paid. The long and the short of it is government only really has a couple of responsibilities 1) To Maintain and Improve infrastructure 2)To Protect its citizens from threats both foreign and domestic (Military & Police) 3)To maintain and uphold the rule of law. Government is, by its very nature, buerocratic and inefficient - Taking on more responsibilities, or putting a wasteful amount of resources into any of these categories only results in waste and calamity. If 12% of our paychecks didn't go to social security, but rather to a interest bearing retirement account even someone working from age 25-65 making $22,000 a year would have $106,000 BEFORE INTEREST when they retire - Can the average person making $50,000 (more than $220,000 at retirement) a year expect to see that much in retirement? I don't think so. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but without term limits, the cost of running a political campaign and with a incumbency rate in the US congress and house of more than 85% the successful politicians forsake the causes of their constituents to support the causes of the corporations & interests that pay the bills. If you want to talk about ANYTHING that benefits big business and the wealthy its that. So thats all, I usually don't get involved with political discussions but your post was too irritating to stand.
I saw on the news last night that the Chinese people are saving on average twenty-percent of their income. Anyone out there doing that? We are boned.