You can't mix Fed - State - Local taxes in the same lumps, and have an intelligent discussion. That insults everyone else's intelligence.
Pretending they're not all the same thing, actually is more insulting.
Name a local government that doesn't operate a significant percentage of their operating budget with grants from higher level government. Those aren't free money, much as the locals would like to pretend.
You talk a good talk about it being locally voted and controlled but once the slime bags are in office they happily go hunting for "matching funds" from higher level government entities and pretend that their constituents don't also pay for that money and the interest.
It's a Ponzi scheme if you step back and look at it. All based on loans. Big loans. Loans big enough that other nations can leverage us with them.
Anyone see what the Saudis recently did in response to possible legislation to allow them to be tried in US court for monetary/Civil damages as a result of 9/11? They said if our Congress even tries it, they'd immediately sell off their positions in our Treasury. Roughly 20% of issues are controlled in one fashion or another by the Saudi government.
Talk about "too big to fail". Who's going to bail out the Fed when another nation state threatens to crash their little loan party they're maintaining to keep the fake standard of living up for those who continually vote to spend on debt?
You should have assumed by now that they do not want to have an intelligent conversation. Just a lot of bluster and poorly thought out replys. Much like watching the current front runner for president.
From the King of the sound byte, cut and pasted from a Party website, this was pretty darn funny to read.
We'd better get serious about the fact that we've created entitled brats throughout our society at all ages and levels with our broken political system pushing two giant debt-spending organizations that only want to grow themselves and their power and aren't in the slightest about efficient service of the People. That's not partisan, that's just fact.
People actually believe that because they live here they deserve things now. That's the root of the problems we face. Had a lovely dinner party with about 100 Russian immigrants last night for a giant birthday party. They all think, and I do mean every one of them we talked to, that allowing government more power is an extremely bad idea. Gosh, I wonder why.
They all want to be here for the opportunities afforded them here but they all felt our idiots are going to ask for and get all the government they deserve, and it reminds them of how the worst decades of their lives began.
I'd be fine with
@JoseCuervo 's idea that local government is truly disconnected from levels above it, and we were voting on truly local things only and thus, had some reins to pull in when the locals get out of control with spending and won't tell the truth that they simply can't afford some things. Problem is, that's not how it really works.
My County paid $600,000/mile to pave 4 miles of dirt road nobody needed paved, and when pressed as to why it was so expensive or how that matched the fake "conservative" principals of the politicians who did it, they did two things: Pretended they were "insulted", and screamed "But but but we got half of it paid for with a State grant!" Yeah, jerks... I also pay State taxes and on the interest on State bonds, and the State pension plans are virtually bankrupt and are going to cost orders of magnitude more than anyone is admitting. So was that "grant" really the "free" money you make it out to be to save your jobs? Not a chance in Hades.
Think about the price tag, too. Anyone paving road privately isn't going to pay $600,000 a mile. Not even close. That's the "we know we can charge more when government wants a road paved" price and that's AFTER a bid process. The corruption is tangible and real across the board because people know government money is backed by nothing.
There's nobody saying the account is empty and can't support those prices. They just issue another bond or mill levy and keep spending spending spending. It's fake and unsustainable and folks don't want to see it. Especially folks that want government bigger and someone to take care of them, who are not very good at this who "adult" thing.
Normal non partisan people aren't interested in supporting the Parties and their excess anymore but we get little real opportunity to tell either group of big spenders living on everyone else's bucks and loans we'll be paying for generations, to shove off. "We didn't need the road paved" falls on deaf ears at the bureaucracy.
The system even convinces politicians who claim not to be spenders (they're in denial) that they didn't spend it. $2.3M flushed straight down the toilet for a road we all called "the summer shortcut".
Pretending all the taxation districts and multiple levels of bureaucracy are not a part of a whole is just the result of a very deep and ingrained indoctrination that harkens back to when these levels of government weren't hopeless intertwined, on purpose, as a design technique to hide the total cost.
Net bottom line divided by services rendered is the ONLY way to measure it. Ratcheting up taxes incrementally at each level to make it look politically correct and small, is not just disingenuous. It's a lie. Propagated to allow politicians to maintain power. Social engineering at its finest.
"But half of the road was FREE!" exclaims the stupid shortsighted County Commissioner. Because he honestly believes that crap.
Nobody sane believes there shouldn't be taxes and government services in society. What the issue is, is the overall all-in price vs value received. Four miles of dirt road paved that didn't need to be paved for $2.3M isn't a good value for anyone unless you can prove it saved $2.3M elsewhere in the budget.
Basic budgeting 101. There's nothing particularly difficult about it until you add two power-mad political parties to the mix who control the media and the loan money and always vote the debt higher to maintain their fallacy that they're doing their jobs.
