taxes and trust and our government

It is all about trust... generally and always in all things. Do you trust your friends, do you trust your partner, do you trust yourself... AND has their trust been tested? Has your trust been tested? Can you be trusted? How far?

Well -- trust in our government is low. Perhaps an all time low. Whatever the level of trust my point is government reflects us. If we trust in general then in general we can trust our government and what is that trust? That trust is our government will act honorably and honestly and practically and efficiently and charitably and inexpensively and sensitively and warmly and intelligently. Our government will be just like us. As far as we can be trusted that far is how far our government can be trusted. We are our government OR AT LEAST WE CAN BE! With voting turnout at seriously low levels (a terrible DROUGHT of voters) the question may be is the level of trust we have in our government a reflection of the voters or the non-voters? INTERESTING? don't you think?

The government has income and expenses. They are generally called taxes and expenditures. IF we all get what we are entitled to earn... then is the government able to earn some more money? To earn more money the government would have to earn more of our trust. One way to earn our trust is to spend wisely and once upon a time... there were terrible scandals about government spending and I think one beginning of the tax revolt (and it has been a revolution!) originated as a reaction to those scandals which I think are now well corrected.

There are other reasons for the tax revolt including poorly considering their individual self-interests. It seems that if I am a law abiding citizen why do I spend so much on police and prisons and if those expenses are very high then let me see something tangible for my money and those prisons certainly are visiable, tangible. Education and job opportunities are not tangible ways to make the individual safe in the same way prisons are tangible and immediate. And, relative to schools and education too many people may want a certain kind of education for their kids for a few years and then why should they continue to pay for the education of others? Community is very, very local in some people's minds even as the world becomes more globally linked and connected.

There are many projects which need doing as global warming is fought against and it is big government which can do this big job. We need to know what government can and will do and how it will be done so we may trust government. We need to understand how what government does will create jobs and wealth for people so that what gets spent now will eventually be paid back. The government needs to demonstrate how it will invest so it will later earn that which it spent.

While this sounds a lot like a business enterprise it is bigger than a mere business. This work is for our country and our world. It is for our towns and cities. It is for all people's everywhere. It is for the greatest community that we can imagine. It is inclusive and productive and meaningful and good. It is to help lift up all ... and it is an ideal which I think can be made real if we can trust ourselves and others.

getting things right....???

Local vs. global.... Think globally and act locally. Be mindful of the moment. The past is prelude. The future is the place of hope. The past cannot be changed. The future is uncertain. The present is a gift. The present is transient. Here and now is all we have. Learn from history. They who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat the past. Ah.... the good old days. IF I were to look up some quotes I could add more CONFUSION... or if it is not confusing then the many "sayings" are often! contradicting each other and yet someone, somewhere said the thing with a feeling of profundity, truthfullness, irony, silliness, angst, hope, despair, etc... etc... etc...

Perhaps the best word/set-of-letters said above is "etc" - or as (I did look this up to get it right) - Robert Frost said; "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

And it IS life and its meaning and its trials and tribulations that we all struggle, deal with, ignore, work on, etc. etc... Until we come to death. And so it goes and goes and goes. It is good, bad, ugly, strong, weak, kind, mean, real, fantastic, ideal, etc. etc.. etc..

And that is all for TODAY! Life goes on. Thanks.

HELP - with these preliminary thoughts on TAXES

I think it IS a revenue problem rather then a spending problem. I think we get what we pay for... and a lot of what we are now paying for is our armed forces including police and an overly large prison system.

I have been around for a while and the beginning of the tax-revolution was not Prop 13 in California but was the reports of great waste in government spending specifically in the Armed Forces where rather regular hammers were bought for hundreds of dollars, etc. This was outrageous.... truly... but reforms put in place were quantitative spending controls rather then quality assurances.

I think the taxes we in the USA pay by any statistical measures is less today then it was in the 1960's.

I think we target spending because it is:

1. easier
2. as individuals we think we need to take care of only ourselves... rather than take care of the greater (GREAT) community.
3. we don't want to help the poor (which often can mean we don't want to help THE "other" - by race or gender, etc)
4. the future will take care of itself... or scientists (who we don't trust?) will take care of the future and in any case I won't be there to suffer and/or I don't have children/family who will suffer... or I just don't care
5. other?

And so on and so on...

THIS is just preliminary. I REALLY do BELIEVE it is, now, more a revenue problem then a spending problem and I wonder if my "facts" are right and are the reasons reasonable/true. The reasons DO have a certain rationality. So do opposite reasons which would suggest doing things differently. FOR INSTANCE -- more revenue that is spent on infrastructures which fixes/upgrades/makes-efficient our transportation systems while also creating jobs to do those fixes which then brings in more revenue from working people. 

And so on and so on.....