Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
Globalisation was suppose to constrain government – instead it has increased it powers. Governments have now created 'clients' not citizens. Each little group, income level, union, vested interest, failing business, angry citizen, minority and cry-baby organisation demands public money as a 'right'. Program spending is out of control and only getting wilder. We need some transparency to halt the tide of government.
One way to educate citizens about the ineffectiveness of government is by having quarterly invoices sent to each taxpayer. This would immediately increase transparency and responsibility. On this government invoice will be your estimated income; what you paid in tax by area; and what you consumed by area. Suddenly all the 'black' holes of government spending would have some light shed on them. You might be amazed for instance to discover that you paid $4000 for 'free' health care this quarter and consumed exactly zero resources. Wouldn't that stimulate a reaction ?
An example could be the following:
Invoice from your 3 levels of Government
Sent by: The office of Government Accountability
To: Mr. Slave Knave
Estimated Taxable Income for Quarter 1, Year 1984: $15.000
Paid to government through:
-Payroll taxes: $6.000
-Sales taxes: $2.000
-Gas and Eco taxes: $1.000
-Income tax: $4.000
-Health tax: $1.000
-Other 'Fees': $1.000
Your tax money was spent in the following main categories [this includes all levels of government]:
-State/Provincial Socialised Health Care: $2.000
-Regional and local transport services: $1.000
-Regional and local education services: $1.000
-Pensions: $1.000
-Welfare: $1.000
-Corporate Subsidies: $500
-Agricultural Subsidies: $500
-Police, Fire and Safety: $1.000
-Poverty and income transfers: $1.500
-Environmental management: $1.000
-Debt reduction [national and state]: $1.500
-Interest payments on debt: $1.000
-Military: $500
-General Government services [other]: $1.500
Total: $15.000
You could then assess usage by identifying those services such as welfare, subsidies, education and health care, which were consumed by each individual. You might find out for instance that you gave caring, compassionate government $2.000 for health care but consumed nothing. This might change your ideas about the 'free' nature of such a service and start a search for reasonable alternatives including private care, a parallel public-private partnership or a system where costs are contained while better and price competitive access is ensured.
You might also get annoyed at the amount of money being sent out of your bank account to fund poverty and pension programs when you know that your own meager pension will barely keep you out of poverty. Why are you funding other people when you are struggling yourself?
Detailed government produced invoices would quickly disabuse people that unionized big brother is their friend.
In the private sector, and real world, when you work for someone you must send them an invoice. The invoice has to detail what you did, for how long and the costs in labor and material. The payor or client has to agree. If they do, you get paid. If they don't you sort out the problem and reach an agreement which is fair. Government is apparently working for taxpayers is it not?
In reality governments work for themselves. They can do what they like. They can change laws, raise taxes, call massive spending 'moral', and socialised whole sectors of the economy like health care to 'protect' people because they love and care for their citizens. But there are costs to government interventionism and the costs are rarely calculated down to the individual level by category. In fact there are perhaps only 2 or 3 private institutes which try to identify what each tax payer, in each income level, in each region or state, pays government for government funded and controlled services.
This is astonishing.
For most people about 50% of their income is consumed by government. Yet these so-called 'citizens' have no idea what their benevolent government did with such a sum. What part of it went to subsidized agriculture, corporate welfare, health care, transportation, debt reduction, public libraries, new sidewalks, union pay cheques, or that wonderful anti-Western museum of human rights that no one visits? No one has a clue.
The same holds true of course for corporate and business taxes including income, payroll, regulation 'fees' and value added taxes. As a business do you know where your tax money goes to? You certainly know where your expense money goes to – your wages, your marketing budget, your rent and overheads and your capital spending. Why not with taxes? Taxes are a huge cost input for businesses yet all we hear from the chattering marxists and TV 'experts' is that business must pay its fair [ie higher] share. It is pathetic.
Government publishes of course high level overviews of where tax money is allocated, with a certain % of all taxes going to interest, debt reduction, welfare programs, the military and other areas of concern, but this is just a simple reckoning of meta-level obligations. While useful this overview is severely limited and goes largely unnoticed by the general tax paying public. It also does not include local and state tax payments. How many people know what local government spends their money on? How many citizens have read one single federal report on where government spends tax money by area?
Companies and people will only react to government when the transfers become personal and include all levels of government. It would be far better for a business or an individual to receive a detailed invoice identifying taxes paid, and services provided. Taxes are after all a large cost. If you pay taxes you expect services including transport, protection, energy, utilities, waste removal, and security. You probably don't desire to pay for higher union costs, vanity projects, corruption, agro-subsidies, corporate welfare or massive pensions and ineffective health care.
Taxpayers should be demanding an invoice from their governments in order to assess where money goes and what projects and programs are being pushed by a unionized elite. The costs to do this would not be that expensive and could easily be funded by other unnecessary program spending cuts.
But we know that government is largely a bloated, inefficient and unruly mess.
Since governments don't have the skills, or incentives to provide such an invoice, the private sector should do so. It is not that difficult to merge local, state or nationally available statistics to calculate average payments based on after tax information on what each individual spends by category both local and national. A private sector invoice, generated to show each household, business and taxpayer what they paid versus what they consumed would create a revolution in attitudes towards government.
It would be a great business idea and most people would happily pay a few dollars to receive such a notice in their mailbox outlining where exactly their hard earned tax money has gone.
As time wore on the invoice could become more and more detailed and include such esoteric but never reported on tax programs such as government support for gay and lesbian organisations, regional programs of choice or institutions designed to crush free speech such as Human Rights Councils. People would then be confronted by the way in which governments manipulate money, the media and push their own programs using tax payer dollars. The link would be obvious for all to see.
Until there is transparency at the individual level government will continue to grow. It has to become personal. Otherwise there is no stopping the state. Who after all is going to argue that a 25 cent user fee on all peanut butter sold in retail outlets, allocated to save the polar bears and protect the 9 toed lungless frog from extinction is not a noble and moral ideal?
More taxes, sur-taxes, fees, 'investments', and 'temporary measures' simply get lost in the avalanche of program spending and a complicated tax code. Until people start to view government as THEIR client and demand an invoice for services rendered to THEM, the madness will never stop. Personalise government. Such an idea seems to work rather well in the real world.
