by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)
If there is one actual thing that Liberals are good at is labeling Conservatives. The whole ‘greedy’ or ‘heartless’ tag has stuck extremely well over the years. Any time you read or hear someone who knows nothing of politics there is one thing they will usually say about Conservatives:
- Conservatives are greedy and/or heartless.
I think the proper phrase should be:
- Conservatives want everyone to be fiscally responsible.
Of course that means being greedy and mean. Conservatives are greedy because they don’t want to give away the money that they earned. They don’t feel they need to be punished for being responsible. Conservatives are heartless because they don’t want the government to keep spending money it doesn’t have on programs that keep non-taxpayers comfy and well.. non-taxpaying.
This in a nutshell is where Conservatives get their stigma. It’s one of those arguments that can so easily be turned into something negative when what it really is, is tough love. If someone in your family is down on hard times are you going to:
- Take care of that person indefinitely and keep them in comfort and without want?
- Get that person out of their funk and back on the road of life?
If you are Liberal you are talking about people you don’t know you will pick #1. If that person really IS in your family you will want them to pick themselves back up and get on with life. Otherwise you are going to have them mooching off you if you don’t get them back on their feet.
When you break it down it is quite obvious which is the right answer. I think everyone would take care of those loved ones BUT only to an extent. They will want them back on their own feet making it for themselves.
Conservatives are fine with taking care of those who fall on hard times but only to an extent (until those people can get back to being taxpaying citizens). Since they are not behind taking care of people indefinitely they are marked as heartless.
I can totally relate with being a fiscal Conservative. I go to work. I pay my taxes. I don’t mind something like unemployment benefits for a short amount of time to help someone get back on their feet. What I don’t want is people living off the government. This means that I don’t want to have to pay for others who simply don’t want to make the effort to get a job and progress in life. I want to pay my reasonable due to keep this great nation running and don’t want to be taxed to support those things that are unnecessary. I don’t want more tax increases (for anyone).
The government should not punish those who are doing the right thing by working and paying their taxes by making them pay more.
Let’s look at some fact. Yes, FACTS. Not warm fuzzy feelings or any political fuzzy numbers but actual facts:
- The current US debt is 14 trillion dollars.
- The current US tax revenue is 2 trillion dollars.
- The US total debt 51 trillion dollars.
Let’s step away from the government for a moment…
If YOU have $5,100 in credit cards and are paid in $1,400 dollars from work but only have $200 to pay that debt after your other bills what happens to you? You are in big trouble. You will need to do some things to correct your balances:
- Work more to make more money to pay off the debt.
- Cut back your expenses so you have more than $200 to pay on your credit card.
Do you see where I am going here? The government needs to trim back that 12 trillion in expenses so it can put some of that revenue towards the 51 trillion it owes. It only has 2 trillion to work with. What o what can the government do? Why the SAME THING YOU HAVE DO YOU when you have debt…
- Work more to make more money. This would be the government getting more tax revenue.
- Cut back expenses.
Pretty straight forward huh? The only problem is that the government goes about fixing the issue in the wrong ways. They will just print more money or raise taxes.
The government needs to spend the day with the typical US (taxpaying) family. They need to see how you are supposed to be fiscally responsible.
One final note on taxes. I have looked at the previous years and the amount of tax revenue the government has taken in. It never seems to be much more than 1.8 trillion (somewhere around there).
Now with all the numbers I threw around earlier there is basically one taxpayer to every three non-taxpayers.
Why doesn’t the government go after those who are not paying taxes? Why continue to punish those who are doing what they are supposed to be doing just to make those who are not paying taxes more comfortable and secure?
If they can spend the money to count every person in the nation they can spend the money to determine who can work and who can’t… who should be on assistance and who should not. If we play with the tax revenue numbers we can guesstimate that the US tax revenue would be somewhere around 5 or 6 trillion if most of the people who are not paying taxes suddenly were. This would ALSO have the effect of removing the cost of supporting those people thus reducing the operating costs of the government. This is my suggestion to helping bring in more money to help pay off the debt. The next bit would be to figure out what expenses should be cut… I’ll leave that up to others.
This all makes perfect sense… or it’s just being greedy and heartless.
PS. For the Miguels out there, the facts for this where gleaned from the US Debt Clock website.