ex•tor•tion [ik-stawr-shuh n] –noun
1. An act or instance of extorting.
2. The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
3. Oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
4. Anything extorted.

Early in our industrial infancy, the cheapest labor was often recent immigrants, indentured for their trip from the old world. Like many nubies, they were mocked as unsophisticated or slow witted by some in pop culture for their low socio-economic standing and lack of understanding of local norms. They were employed at a slower rate than assimilated workers. Unscrupulous business owners, and I might add, political parties, took unfair advantage of their ignorance. Workers were hired under misleading arrangements specifically worded to entice these workers into unfair contracts. The workers did what all workers in a free market do when treated dishonestly, the walked out. This wiped the gotcha-smile right off the bosses faces. The bosses could not infringe upon one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the principles essential to the right to pursue happiness is the ability to keep the fruits of one’s pursuits, the protection of private property. The bosses wanted to get the production from the worker, and keep much of the remuneration as well.

To infringe upon this right required collusion with government.

Fraudulent employers got bigger, helped elect business friendly politicians who then enacted laws allowing employment contract skippers to be arrested and to allow local police to enforce the terms of the contracts. Railroads, coal mines, steel, were industries notorious for taking advantage of workers, enforced with the help of local and state police. They paid in script only accepted at the over priced company store. This is the part of the story we have all heard. The employees banded together and stopped working. Without production, the bosses could not buy the government they needed to keep the employees working. Such collusion only works to the advantage of the privileged few. We elect our government and the majority of Americans do not appreciate fraud and corruption, even now. Once the lights were turned on, the roaches scurried.

For most of the rest of our country’s history, unions could strike and business owners could fold. Pay and benefits were negotiated somewhere in the middle. All agreements were subject to either party simply walking away, at least temporarily. If the business folded, no amount of picketing would create money from thin air. If the employees walked, no amount of retained profit would produce. Soon equilibrium was reached whereby the employees felt favorably compensated, the business owner had labor he could count on and little changed year to year. Employees questioned the relevancy of the unions and hesitated to pay the dues for no change year to year. But politicians, as they are prone to do, followed the politically expedient source of money and grew to be on the “side” of unions, for a price. The unions used the means at their disposal to enact favorable legislation of their own. So was born the closed shop. If you wanted a job in a union shop, you had to join the union, often before applying for the job. Anyone who was not pro-union would not be allowed to join and therefore could not get the job. Friends and family were the only ones allowed to join and dissention in union matters was scarce. Even with this arrangement, employees were less and less interested in joining unions and paying the extorted dues. Non-union shops could pay less and charge less and fire people more easily, at the same time, they hired more easily and sometimes the take home pay was higher as no one was supporting a union infrastructure. This was especially true for other countries. Soon, a new generation of workers grew up only hearing stories of the labor movement. Their union loyalty faded as the union looked less and less like the savior of mistreated employees, and more and more like the bloated bureaucracies that had enslaved their grandfathers. Unions needed a better way of growing members in order to survive.

One option, the hard way, was to insist on minimum standards for members for training, ethics, dependability, etc. They could insist on eliminating poor performers from their ranks. This would give unions a reputation for the best employees for the money and guarantee a steady supply of employees wanting to join and a steady supply of employers wanting to hire them. The downside, the dues would have to be really low to keep newly employed members from leaving once they got the job. And, there is the downside of having to produce something in return for the dues after years of getting closed shop dues for relatively little. But if they could find another option, a new steel industry or a new coal industry, where the businesses hardly had any competition for employees, it would be much easier. Such a business would be staffed by employees with little choice but to work for the union. What would be even better is if they could do so in an industry with considerable profit margin from which to negotiate. The search was on for an industry with unlimited funds, relatively high tolerance of favoritism and nepotism, and a favorable political climate.

The perfect industry exists. However it was illegal to organize until the late 1950’s. Then a New York City mayor wanted to secure a few city worker votes and the public sector union was born. Democrat politicians across the country rushed to add public sector union members to their roster of campaign contributors. The unions could push the entitlement form of pay and benefits, and get the government to pull their closed shop union dues straight from the employee’s paychecks. The union could then use those dues to help elect pro-union politicians with which to negotiate those entitlements. The position normally held by the business that could go out of business was now filled by the tax payer. The tax paying public can not cease to exist due to unprofitable employment arrangements. Moreover, the union employee gets to vote for their representative on the government side of the table, same as any other tax payer. They then also get to send a second negotiator on the union side. The first places to adopt such laws were those states where a large portion of the state’s employees worked for big, heavy industries which were already union supporters. The rust belt fell first along with steel and dockworkers heavy states. More would follow as right-to-work states had uprisings to get the “right” to extort higher pay from their taxpayers as well. All went as planned, at first.

The arrangement in Wisconsin threatens the golden egg laying goose for two simple reasons: Greed and incompetence. Pay is peanuts; the big money is in pensions. A public sector worker can work for 30 years as a teacher, from 25 to 55 years old, retire with a pension, live to be 85 years old, and draw more in pension in those 30 years than they were paid to actually work 30 years. Each time a teacher in Wisconsin retires, the cost of their replacement is double, one for the replacement, one for the pensioner. In a private sector business, where pensions have long gone the way of the dinosaur, the money for the pension would be set aside each year the teacher worked. The cost would be obvious as the $52,000 teacher also had $52,000 set aside for her pension in hopes that she only lived 30 years following retirement. Retired teachers who live to be 90 could see 5 years when the cost is triple. The number of retirees, who do so, increases every generation, as does the base pay, all of which is renegotiated each year. The public sector union employee in Wisconsin grew up seeing their parents get this pension, without paying into it themselves, and now expect the same. They see it as a right. They feel entitled. Public sector pay and benefits outweigh the private sector employee packages from which the public sector pensions are paid, and the private sector employee also paid for a significant portion of their own retirement. Private sector pensions are all but nonexistent because no one can predict how long a new 25 year old employee will live after retirement. No business decision can be made 30 years in advance with any security. Private sector employees must live off of the retirement they helped pay for as well as continuing to pay for the public sector pension for a retiree who did not. The cost of a public sector union employee far exceeds that of the private sector employee’s pay and benefits. Which would be OK, if the electorate feels they are getting their money’s worth. The downside of favoritism and nepotism in an environment of employees motivated by belief in entitlement to the job, is that performance will always be lackluster at best, and never approach the performance where continued employment and promotion require it. Indeed, the union can be counted on to talk higher performers into slowing down or performing less to prevent bringing undue attention to the overall lackluster performance. But the internet allows parents to realize that their students are more likely than other similar students to perform poorly, despite spending much more per capita on education. As teacher pay increased, public school student performance decreased. We understand child learning better now than in previous generations, we have computers and other teaching tools available to us like never before, and a large portion of Wisconsin public school 8th graders cannot read proficiently.

But the death knell for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and the rest of the U. S. sounded when they took a stand on the ability to renegotiate their position, on the promise of accepting pay and benefit cuts now. They got the nation’s attention when they stated flatly, that cutting pay and benefits for union members instead of raising taxes on everyone was solving a money mismanagement problem on the backs of the unions.

Really? The collective scowl from the country was palpable.

Although they were correct about the mismanagement, it was at the hands of the union-elected miss-managers. Taxes had already been raised 60% to pay for the existing packages as businesses left the state. Fewer students to educate could not be accepted as a sound reason to lay off unneeded teachers. The teacher’s union wants everyone to pay even higher taxes, following an election upset run and won on the promise of cutting spending and taxes,  The union promises that union members will take a small hit now, so long as they get the opportunity to negotiate themselves raises and increases in the future, (when they can get more union friendly politicians elected). What I heard was, “We will keep the roaches out of the kitchen so long as the light is on.” Such negotiations in the past have often been accompanied with back pay for those cut years. In other words, “Write us an IOU for the “pay cuts” we are borrowing from the next generation of workers we are under-educating, or we will shut down the underperforming school system we took an oath not to abandon. Really, we promise.” To put it in terms some of you might appreciate, they said, “Nice school system you have here. Be a shame if something bad were to happen to it. A threat?!! Heavens no, it is illegal for teachers in Wisconsin to strike! I’m just sayin’ if something were to happen, organically without our community organizers community-organizing it . . .”

We are at a crossroads in this country on so many levels, but this is ground zero for the entitlement culture war. (Wisconsin is also seen by many as the beginning, ground zero, for union solidarity of past unions. I find this ironic, but perhaps fitting that the attempt to skew the political processes in favor of the privileged few, on the backs of the many, would be exposed there and defeated there.) If Wisconsin folds, so folds the country.

I call for the formation of a new union, one representing the over 80% of all workers who are not currently represented. I suggest that membership be open to all taxpayers not belonging to a union and that membership can be begun and ended year by year, with a prorated refund of dues anytime a politician you don’t want to support is supported. I suggest that we vote ourselves the “right” to bargain and the “right” to have union members pay OUR retirement and healthcare. In fairness, the unions will likely loose the ability to negotiate pension and healthcare soon either way. Perhaps we should only reserve the one right we truly do have; the right to the pursuit of happiness; the right to keep our property. I suggest we organize a taxpayers union and strike to end the extortion of our property on the threat of public employee sickouts. I want the right to strike and put the golden egg laying goose out of the egg laying business. I want to strike to end the practice of borrowing from our children without their informed consent, to send from balanced-budget/right-to-work states like Virginia, to states like Wisconsin.

We can survive without public sector unions. They cannot survive without us.

Eventually, the unions put up candidates of their own for government positions and the practice of government enforcement of unfair labor practices was replaced with regulatory protections against them. However, just as business used this influence to their advantage, unions worked to enact legislation favorable to themselves through their elected officials. Eventually, all truly unfair business/employment practices were eliminated by legislation. Unions were no longer relevant in matters of fairness. To remain relevant, they negotiated from a position of solidarity for better than fair pay and benefits. Pay to union employees rose above non-union pay and unions could not persist. Businesses resisted hiring union employees, knowing pay and benefits would be extorted above market price. In some areas of the country, unions were influential enough to successfully support a sufficient number of elected officials to make it legal to force businesses of a certain size to only hire union employees. The concept of a closed shop was born. Join the union, or don’t bother applying for a job. Favoritism and nepotism replaced merit and production.

Businesses that could not survive the new burdens of employee strikes and unfair legislation, did not survive. They either moved to more business friendly environments following the paths of looms past, or businesses formed by others in such friendlier locals put them out of business. This cycle of business start up, unionization of the successful ones, and their eventual demise continued until all but the large industrial employers with factories and plants too large to move easily were gone. Now, a business opens in a union state and makes a profit long enough to get the attention of a union. The union convinces the employees that they deserve a larger portion of the difference between their current pay, and the profit retained by the owner, real or imagined. This is an easy sell in union states as it is common knowledge in such states that union jobs can pay several times what non-union work pays. The owner is told that the union will supply well trained employees and the increased pay will be an advantage as the unions will not tolerate non-union shops which might open to compete with the union shop. This is an easy sell as well, since the owners often grew up in the union rich society of the union state. The owner tolerates the union and can sometimes negotiate help from the union elected government officials in the form of competition limiting regulation in return for better pay and benefits for the employees. Over time, the negotiated arrangement is re-visited and changes in favor of the employees creep in. Rarely does an economically weak company gain relief with newly negotiated employee contracts, as the union continually attempts to get as much of the profits for employees and the union as is possible, while threatening to interfere with commerce if any reduction is requested. Often, concessions in good economic periods render the business unprofitable in another. High labor costs in high skill, labor intensive fields encourage automation in competitors where such automation would prove too costly without the union bolstered pay scales. Eventually, unionized industries fail more often in union states and less often in non-union states or countries. Unions fail and disappear in direct relation to the death of the host organism they helped starve. As profits shrink in favor of high pay, even the large industrial employers are replaced by foreign competitors. Unions could have educated and trained their members to be more competitive than non-union workers, instead they worked for conditions where they would not have to compete.

There is one industry however, which can never be outsourced. There is one industry which has almost no connection between the existence of the employer and the financial feasibility of the employee pay package. There is one industry where competition for survival has no connection to the production of the workers. This industry is government. Union organized public employees can pay dues to support the election of union compliant officials, and then “negotiate” a “fair” pay and benefits package with those same officials. Since unfair business practices or unfair pay and benefits are no longer left to fight, the union must fabricate such in order to remain relevant. This is exactly what happened in Wisconsin. The “union busting” legislation proposed in the Wisconsin legislature, if passed, would only make Wisconsin state teachers’ bargaining abilities equal to those for unionized Federal employees. The proposed legislation would not however bring the teacher’s union employee’s pension or health insurance contributions in line with either non-union Wisconsin residents or in many cases, other union employees. So why would the unions and their members take an extremely hard stance on an incremental loss in abilities which are out of line with most other employees’ abilities? They are not fighting for safe working conditions. They are fighting to be able to re-negotiate when the electoral pendulum swings back in their favor and they once again choose the government negotiator. They are fighting to continue to negotiate from both sides of the table. They are trying to make the voters, their employers, regret challenging the status quo.

The unions have drawn the line in the sand. The risk is that voters will not regret challenging the unions, but regret allowing them to exist at all. If the proposed Wisconsin legislation passes, I believe this will be the first time that public sector employee unions have lost any significant gains for their employees. There have been some temporary decreases in benefits, or temporary freezes on pay raises, or temporary freezes in hiring. I assert that this is the first permanent setback in the slow progression of pay and benefit improvements. I assert that this is the first setback that will not be re-negotiated with the elected official of their construction. If this legislation passes, the unions will have to negotiate in the open venue of public elections directly with their employer, the voters, instead of behind closed doors with someone who owes them for their job. They will have to stand in the public square and convince them that union members are entitled to pay raises when everyone else is taking cuts. They will have to convince the public that higher union pay will lead to better educated students, . . . this time. They will have to convince the voting public that tax increases best balance a bloated education budget, coincident with rising teacher pay. If the proposed legislation passes it could indicate a realization by the public that unions are obsolete, to be replaced by automation or at least, lower paid labor. I first suspected they recognize this too when I noticed the unprecedented pressure being brought to bare on Madison Wisconsin by the union friendly, union elected power players outside of Wisconsin. The unions are calling in their chips and the union elected officials are doing what they promised to do, knowing this will not go unnoticed by the voting public. President Obama publically put his support behind the unions. I assert that he does this as a knee jerk reaction resulting from his coming through the union rich political machinery of Chicago somewhat oblivious that his actions caused most of the rest of the country to pause at their own jobs and look up to see what he has done. The DNC sent their chairman, Tim Kaine to help with organizing protests, knowing(?) the people in the right to work state of Virginia will not understand his support for a union fight against negotiating directly with the tax payer over tax payer supplied pensions, and may not vote him into office again. President Obama put his left-over campaign resources into the fight via his campaign organization, Organizing for America. Solidarity. President Obama’s oath is to the Constitution. He is an employee of the very tax payers he has sided against. It seems lost on him that the fact he cannot represent “US” and “THEM” at the same time and that he chose to move to this side of the table. It seems lost on him that the fact the taxpayers have realized this is the very basis for the November upset in Wisconsin, and the new support for union restraint there. Is it more likely that such support for a union is because teachers are barely being fairly compensated in union negotiated contracts, or that the union contracts are so lucrative that the union members will pay dearly to keep them?

Consider this: If the school system took bids for teaching jobs, union and otherwise, would the low bids from out of work teachers be the same as the current teacher pay? Or, could current teachers be replaced from the free market for a price much lower?

So long as there are out of work teachers, the pay is too high. We expect the highest moral character in our teachers. We want them to be attracted to teaching because of a heartfelt desire to be in the profession. We want teachers driven with a desire to encourage such character in our children through example. What I see in Madison are teachers apparently attracted to teaching by a strong union, lying to their employers the taxpayers, saying they are sick and cannot work. I see them doing so in public, in front of their students, in front of an electorate not stupid enough to believe them. I see them doing so, knowing that no one believes the obvious lie, yet they persist. I see doctors lying on camera, writing notes to the very teachers who would not accept a bogus doctor’s note from their students. I see the kind of lying and cheating that money buys. I see teachers claiming that an education is a right while interfering with said education. I see them causing a stop to education activities and claiming without the union, education of the children will cease. I see teachers willing to teach children that lying for money is acceptable. I see teachers deliberately confusing the difference between rights and privileges, for their personal monetary gain. I see teachers using school yard bully tactics against legitimately elected officials with whom they disagree, for the purpose of interfering with the sworn duties of teacher and Congressman alike. I am not alone when I plainly see what an entrenched union will do when challenged.

What the union members do not realize is that much of the country is watching. Most of us did not grow up believing that such poor behavior is acceptable in the protection of the union interest. What they do not realize is how disgusted I am with the thought of my personal friends who are teachers, being forced to support and pay dues to such an organization as a condition of their being allowed to teach my children. I find it particularly unsavory that one of my teacher friends would be required to pay to support the election of a particular candidate as a condition of employment. I am not alone. The line has been drawn. Tremendous force is being applied in Madison in the protection of the unions. I find it a little ironic that their “fight for the freedom to negotiate” as unions could lead to Wisconsin’s freedom from them. All that stands between union survival and union oblivion is freedom to work without paying the union for the privilege. Simply allowing a teacher to work as a non-union teacher for the same pay as a union teacher will mark the end of teacher’s unions. The teacher’s union could have simply allowed this proposed bill to pass, quietly, then wait a couple of years and have the union supported Congress that would one day return, “fix it,” and get back to negotiating ever increasing benefits. Instead, they want to end challenges to public employee unions by their employers, and punish those who dare to do so. I wholeheartedly hope they succeed in doing just that. I hope that freedom ends this debate once and for all. What a fitting place for the progressive movement to have gained an early foothold, and ultimately the place where it shot itself in the foot, marking the end of the belief in the long term sustainability of socialist tenants. What a fitting end to public sector union conflict-of-interest, at the hands of voter solidarity.

If I substitute President Obama for President Mubarak, how different is the story. Does President Obama demonize revenue producing business as President Mubarak does the gift giving west, all the time relying on such funds to pay for his endeavors? Did President Obama not promise better government but deliver more government? Are the Tea Party attendees much different than the protesters in Cairo, simply without the violence? Would President Obama have attempted to physically shut down the news media and internet if such were within his power? I assert that he certainly tried to marginalize those portions of both which questioned him in the hopes that we would effectively do so. We have net neutrality, whatever that will turn out to be.  Proposals for reviving the fairness doctrine and giving the President an internet cutoff switch are ever in the Washington D.C. vernacular.

We are different from the Egyptian people in so many ways, mostly differentiating our heritage from the vision President Obama has for America. Our press will always be free as long as any of us are. We will be free to express ourselves to each other without fear of government prosecution so long as any act is without such fear. But when I saw President Mubarak arrogantly offering a 15% raise to government employees who had been told for years that the public coffers were dry, I could remember the self admitted “amused” President Obama smirking about Tea Party protests, “You would think they should be saying Thank You,” to Democrat-fundraiser applause.

Are we different from Egypt? Yes vastly. But will these differences prevail or will the vision President Obama has for us? Will we remain the shining example of what free people can do and lead Egypt by example to their new future? Or will we follow them as every socialized society before us, into the cycle of promise, tax, oppress, and collapse? We get to decide. Will we be content with borrowing a 15% raise from our kids and simply say, “Thank you President Obama”? Time will tell, but I like the odds, given the increasing size of the crowds in the streets during Tea Parties.

Oops:  In discussions about the situation in the middle east, my friends and I speculated about the state of Egypt and what affect other conditions in other countries would have if they coincided with the unrest in Cairo.  One such country that received considerable amounts of our time was Turkey.  I prepared this post well after midnight the first night, and proof read it the second and decided instead of using a generic country in the middle east, I would use the events in Egypt specifically.  I opened the document and replaced the generic language with Turkey and Turkish, instead of Egypt and Egyptian.  Those of you who know me, probably simply read in the proper language as you read, the rest of you now have a glimpse into the hell endured by the first group.  You both have my sincerest apologies.

Much political discussion involves terms and phrases used in ways contrary to their definition. The cynical call it spin. President Obama says he wants to “invest” in research, education, and infrastructure. In part, his motivation for this “investment” is to get ahead of the Chinese in the green technologies race and fabricate a “sputnik” moment. He wants us to “Win the Future.” On the surface, this sounds great, after all who would not want to “Win The Future”, which I will abbreviate WTF. Would I be a loon if I wanted to loose the future green race to the Chinese? After all, they are so interested in being green in China, they have a head start, right? They have demonstrated some technological advance on par with the Russians beating us into space to prompt a Sputnik moment, right? So what could the President possibly mean? As an attorney, he understands that words have meaning, and that reasonable people turn to the dictionary to determine the common accepted definition, so let’s start there. He obviously did not intend for us to understand a meaning different from the common accepted definition. Did he? He would not count on us reacting to our feelings about the word instead of critically checking to see if he used it properly. Would he?

I have to believe his intentions are pure, that he thinks he is doing this for our own good. But his perspective, and belief in economic salvation through government fiat makes me skeptical that he has the usual understanding of the word investment. So consider the following, recognizing my skepticism, and decide. For example, an office manager might invest in training for the staff, invest in education. But buying everyone beer one evening after a training session is spending on a consumable expense. The training should lead to improved production, team cohesion, etc., payback in excess of the costs. The beer, leads to trips to the bathroom. Similarly, truthful investment in research would be in technologies with potential for a return on that investment. Spending on research in thousand year old technology with physical or chemical limitations that limit financial feasibility, would not be investment. Do you agree? We would not, for instance invest in research in windmills or ethanol. If we are to invest in education, like the office manager, we should choose those areas in which we expect the greatest, financial, return on our investment. Such investment might be in the form of incentives to attract medical students to increase medical professionals and lessen the shortage, especially in anticipation of all the new people expected to be on Medicaid in 2014. Investment in education would not be in subjects with no practical use, except to produce future professors. Investment in education would be in science, economics, and business management. There would be no investment in educating people in trades with no market demand as there would be no return on that investment. And any investment in infrastructure would be along the lines of the Panama Canal. We would invest in infrastructure with proven economic advantage over our current methods. We certainly would not invest in more government operated railway, for instance, high speed or otherwise. It would be easy to see the evidence of sincerity and understanding of the word investment. We should not see a line waiting outside the men’s room, or hear talk of free beer.

Simple investment is made in assets which are expected to go up in value with time. This can be raw materials which are tooled or modified so as to add value to them, or it can be real estate which can be improved to add value. Investment can be in people, by increasing their ability to do such things. In other words, investment is the act of taking wealth (capital) and using its ability to produce work to create more wealth. A factory owner might invest in more efficient tools and in the education of the workers to operate them, only if it allowed that owner to increase production value and therefore see a return on that investment. Without a return, spending is consumption, or charity, not investing. A factory owner could find busy work for his employees and call it investment, for a while. But just as beer is a fools investment, his capital would soon be flushed down the proverbial toilet, and he would not long be a factory owner.

“Green” is not relevant to this discussion.. When we spend tax money on research on such limited use technology as solar panels or windmills, we are duplicating research conducted for generations by the private sector. The areas where this method of power generation is preferable to other methods is well understood and found unfeasible outside of limited, remote situations. My family uses solar powered devises and I have seen solar powered wells provide water where it was not feasible to bring power lines. For as long as there has been written record, windmills have lifted water into elevated tanks for later use. But, whenever we must rely on such devices, we must have an alternative for days when the wind does not blow or clouds persist. Any savings in the “free’ energy is lost in redundant spending on duplicate structure. When we can tolerate intermittent failure, we put up with the inefficiency and losses for the savings. But, make no mistake, energy companies have thoroughly tested known material and aerodynamic technology and continue to do so secretly. Each is desperate to be the marketer of the next nuclear fusion plant or any other fossil fuel replacing technology. Are we likely to get that kind of fanatical zeal for discovery through government-grant-investment research? Perhaps, but will the zeal be to find something economically feasible, or something popular, or the answers which bring more congressional funding?

We know how much energy reaches the earth from the sun. There is not enough energy in sunlight to power our country if we could capture it all, with 100% efficiency. Solar panels and windmills will never be 100% efficient, nor will the energy storage arrangements they charge. Anyone who suggests we could have a breakthrough to change our understanding of physics sufficiently to overcome this fact is praying, not planning. Such a person is praying for a change in the natural, physical world, not planning for an improvement in our understanding of it. They are banking on an answer existing in the realm of what we do not know, no in the overall expansion of what we know. A cynical person might attribute such folly to spin as well.

I suggest we let the private sector spend its own money when something new is to be gleaned, instead of spending the money confiscated from all of us because we wish it were so. Following the real Sputnik moment, we didn’t beat the Russians to the moon, we ran there alone. No one was following us. The world was more than willing to let us spend the resources, and watch for the occasional discovery when we stumbled onto one. The world is doing the same now that we are in the “green race”. We performed a technological feat with no financially viable use for it. The world knew it could be done, but only government would do it without answering the question of why would we. I think it is really neat that we have been to the moon, and love the romantic images of doing so with a slide rule. But I would never condone outpacing the Russians if it meant borrowing the money from the Chinese, giving our discoveries to them, and mothballing the program a generation later to rely on Russian rockets to get our satellites into orbit and our astronauts to a space station we share with them. We went to the moon to prove that American ingenuity can solve any problem, the Russians went into space to prove to the Russian people that the Russian government was the solution to any problem. Which more closely resembles the arguments President Obama makes for, “investment”? Let us not spend money we borrow from our kids to mothball another technology without financial feasibility when we can do it now for free.

When we have invested (spent) tax money on education, we got more expensive education. Don’t believe me? Why would anyone spend the tax money to educate their kids in a public school, and also spend the tuition money to educate them in a private school, (as all private school parents do), if one were not better than the other? As education spending doubled in this country, our student’s performance relative to the rest of the world did not change appreciably. When we spent tax money to help students pay for college tuition, we got a corresponding increase in tuition costs. When we use government loan guarantees, we get students studying subjects and pursuing degrees they never would on their own dime, much less if a private bank had to be convinced that demand for workers with those degrees was sufficiently high to empower the graduate to repay the loan. Only the idle rich would pay their own money for degrees in un-marketable subjects. A musician of moderate skill and disadvantaged background can get a loan and earn a music degree with no hope of being employed as such upon graduation. This is not investment, it is entitlement. We believe that this mediocre musician has a right to pursue this career path and some believe he is entitled to have the rest of us pay for it. But more importantly, is such a young musician well served in being led to believe that a music degree and loan payments provide a better future than being a brick mason, for instance?

When we spend tax money on our “crumbling infrastructure”, we are doing maintenance, not investing. Such maintenance is a consumable, not an investment. This is not to say that maintenance is not necessary, but it is not investment. I suggest a restructuring instead. I suggest that we go back to the funding scheme that built much of our crumbling infrastructure. I suggest that we use the gasoline tax for road construction and maintenance as it was originally sold to us. I suggest that we end the practice of raiding that tax to subsidize public transportation like Amtrak and city buses.

I challenge you to find any area where the government operates in even tangential competition with the private sector where the government efficiency is on the same order of magnitude as the private sector. Find any activity where the government keeps its promise of controlling costs and continuously improving customer satisfaction. There is no private concern which can survive any substantial length of time without doing just that, and paying a return on investment. There are legitimate uses for government, such as refereeing and national defense. But anytime government spending is recommended as an investment, or to control costs, or as a way to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, there has been and by the very nature of it will be, an ever increasing collection of resources and liberties in an attempt to react to the cascade of disappointments and demands. Spending tax money on beer leads to well used toilets, not return on investment. Unfortunately, it also assures votes from the brewer’s union, big toilet manufactures, and drunks.

It occurred to me that much is happening in the big-picture-philosophy world that contributes to the stress of some people. (Could it relieve the stress of some?) I recently had a discussion with one such person about their attic and property taxes. Specifically, each reassessment brings a new discussion about a storage room in the attic. It seems that the building plans show an alternate room in the attic. The alternate room was not finished when the house was built, but plywood was put down so the area could be used for storage. I’m certain many of you have space in your attic where you store stuff, (for lack of a better term.)

The situation is that each time the property is reassessed, it is based on the generic building plans, purchased from one of those plan books you can get al Lowe’s, not the actual building constructed. It would seem that this is easier that way, for the reassesser. Each time, a trip to the local tax office, a short wait in line, and the explanation that the information is already in the file, resets the floor area which establishes the amount of tax owed.

For some reason, this stuck in my craw. I can’t seem to shake it.

The tax is based purely on the assumption that the more you own, the more you are able (and obligated) to pay, every year. There is an income/wealth test for property ownership. If you cannot afford the tax then you are obligated to sell the property to someone who can. This skews property ownership towards the ones who have and against the ones who have not. The haves must take some of wealth they already have to pay for the property they intend to keep. Those who have not, must earn enough to pay income taxes and use a portion of what is left to acquire property. Then they must earn enough to pay income taxes and still have enough left to pay the property taxes. A person of moderate means often cannot inherit property and afford to pay the inheritance tax, income tax on their moderate income, and have enough to pay the recurring property taxes. There is an income/wealth test for inheritance.

How is it that the government is somehow entitled to more tax money, based simply on the wall treatment of an attic room? There is no link between that room, and any service the government provides. There is no link to the function of government. But that is not unusual; there is no link between sales taxes and the use of those taxes. So it took me a while to figure out why I could not let this one go. My conclusion is that property taxes are immoral. I believe that all confiscatory taxes are immoral.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it is easy to say such, and just as easy to discount such with the argument that there are legitimate functions of government, and that they must be funded. Even so, this is my conclusion: Just as tyranny is the opposite of freedom, the taking of a portion of a person’s property, for the simple reason that it exists, is an infringement on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bear with me, this sounds a little like a math proof. You know the ones we had to learn in high school geometry? Ok, so nearly all of you just clicked the delete key. Kudos to you.

For the rest of you, show me where my logic fails. The founding fathers wrote the constitution, in part, to protect the ownership of private property. They believed, as I do, that the ability to keep the fruits of one’s labor is the basis for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The short version, if a person raises crops, just enough to survive, and cannot keep them, that person will starve. If a person can just feed themselves and the government takes the smallest portion, that person starves. Today, if a person lives on their own land, their own property, and never leaves, takes no service from the public at large but stays on their property for their entire life, they would loose that property in the name of supporting the common good as defined by those collecting property taxes. Today, a person is not free to live of their own devices. Today, a person who raises enough food to support themselves, has to raise enough additional to sell at market to pay the property taxes or have the property confiscated to pay said taxes.

The break even condition is unsustainable for the individual. One must make enough extra, be wealthy enough, to support the programs deemed needed by the governing body (street sweeping, welcome centers, etc.) or become a ward of that body. In the example I have chosen, the person who owns enough land to feed themselves and never leaves the property or takes any service from anyone outside their property, must sell a portion of what they raise to pay the taxes, and then presumably sign up for food stamps to eat. This person would have to give up feeding themselves to support the program that would feed them. That is, of course if they could qualify for food stamps and own property. In theory, this person would have to sell a portion of the property to pay the taxes and each year, the ability to feed themselves would diminish and a portion would have to be sold to make up the difference. Eventually, the property would be gone, and the person would be a ward of the state. This additional burden on the state routinely requires increases in revenue, which makes it more unlikely that a have not could earn enough to own property.

I call this unsustainable because you must either create enough wealth in excess of what it takes to survive at the government manipulated standard of living and pay for your share of the care of those who do not, or be one of those who do not. In other words, you must either be an excessive wealth producer and support the programs of the government or be a wealth consumer and survive on those programs. You cannot survive in the middle, there can be no sustained middle class.

A person living by one’s own labor, burdening no one else, totally free from owing anyone, is in a downward spiral. They would owe a portion of their property to the government for the simple reason that they exist and own property. Someone in the past, who earned excess wealth, (more than enough to feed themselves), paid for that property with money which was taxed as income if it happened in the last 70 years. But if for any reason the excess wealth production slows enough, to less than roughly two times that needed to live, and if they ceased to produce excess wealth to be used for government programs, the government will confiscate said property and put it in the hands of someone who will. The government comes first.

This person could loose their property because the assessor classifies attic storage space as “livable” space which moves them from the just-barely-feeding-themselves and funding the government category to the soon-to-be-a-ward-of-the-state category. I could not show up on their door and insist that they support my social agenda with a portion of their property. If I showed up with an armed person and insisted at gunpoint, I would go to jail. If I organized a municipality and showed up with a uniformed tax official and insisted that they pay a portion of the official’s salary with their property, I gain the power to imprison that person and take their property. The taking of property to spend on causes not supported by the person who just had their property taken, does not become moral when more than half of us vote together to do so. Theft by proxy is still theft.

I ask this: Are you free? Can you live alone on your own property? Are you free to live your life regardless of the unrelated decisions of someone else? I suggest you are not free. You only own your own property, keep your own income, pursue happiness, so long as you are allowed to do so. Your property is only yours if you are producing tax revenue in which case the government will “allow” you to keep it.

Are we moving toward freedom or tyranny? Can you still sell it all and go bankrupt to pay for medical procedures to save yourself or a loved one? Will that freedom be lost because it is deemed “unfair” or the process too expensive for the single payer to pay? Tyranny is the opposite of freedom. Which is more moral, freedom or tyranny?

Do you do what we are encouraged to do, and pay off your balances each month? Do you not borrow more than you can pay off each month? If so, God bless you, but the following will cause your head to hurt.

When the federal government spends more than it takes in, it is called a deficit. They (we) borrow the difference. Congress wants to raise the debt ceiling, the limit on their (our) credit card, so that they can make the payments on our existing debt. They want to do this in a year the deficit has doubled. Spending is up, revenue is down, and Congress wants a credit limit increase to pay the minimum payments on the difference. What a gig!! They set their own pay, set their own credit limits, and do not have to pay the payments – ever!!! They tell us they expect tax increases on the rich to pay for all of this and more.

Want some perspective?

I have seen this, which I cannot independently confirm, so correct me if you are good with numbers: If we collect a 100% tax on the profits of ALL of the Fortune 500 companies, it would take 145 years to pay the principle.

The principle is 12 trillion dollars by the way. Heard of the rule of 72? At 3%, which is what I expect we pay on federal bonds, the principle doubles in 24 years. That means to me, we cannot tax the rich more, enough to pay off the debt before it doubles.

Do you not agree that making the minimum payments is a bad idea? Are you OK in lending them more money to make the minimum payments with no plausible explanation of how they intend to pay it back?