By Tom Kiser
IN THE BEGINNING…..WE, THE PEOPLE …..BUT THEN WE PLACED TOO MUCH TRUST IN TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROVEN TO BE UNTRUSTWORTHY

Something to always keep in mind: All of a nation’s governments must stand on the shoulders of the working people whose efforts and energy is keeping the nation’s economy operating and producing whatever prosperity that a nation may have: Working people whose feet are on the ground. Despite the illusion that has been created and widely accepted in our nation, prosperity cannot really be elevated and provided sustainably by an economy that is suspended from a hot air balloon that is being kept aloft using borrowed money.

All wealth was created. Prosperity must be produced if prosperity is to exist. It if it applies to squirrels than it applies to human beings. It’s just that most of the time most squirrels are smart enough to know that prosperity has to be produced and earned by way of continuous, ongoing effort, processes and systems.

Look past the money. It is all about energy: Especially the energy of working people along with the other kinds of energy from other sources that the working people are able to apply to produce, transport and sell goods and services that are of material economic value and can add value to the real lives of real human beings.

The idea that low wage workers can benefit from taxes that are being paid by their employers, their high wage bosses, is a delusion that, unfortunately for all of us, is now embedded in the nation’s “conventional wisdom”. It is the efforts and energy of everyone in the enterprise that produces the revenue streams that are used to pay all of the wages and salaries that are paid by the enterprise along with all of the taxes of all kinds that are paid to any governments using money from the enterprise income revenue streams.

That includes taxes such as property taxes, sales taxes, etc., that anyone pays using income of any kind that was received from the enterprise.

When any tax–or fee–of any kind is paid to any government, a “hidden” tax negative cost counterpart is generated to then flow through the enterprise and through the economic supply chain from whose revenue stream the money to pay the tax came. The negative cost counterpart flows through a supply chain somewhat like a ballooning snowball of cost so that when the cost of the taxes or fees arrive in the output price, the amount of tax driven cost that is embedded in the prices will be greater than the amount of the cost of the taxes and fees that are being paid. That includes the prices of all of the “stuff” that is being paid for either directly or indirectly by governments at any level of government.

Each of our governments has a financial “Achilles Heel” that is vulnerable to the tax policies of all governments: Even their own.

All taxes of all kinds are income taxes: Regardless of what a tax has been named, it is paid using money that was received as someone’s or some household’s or some enterprise’s income.
We have already reached the untenable condition in this nation where the primary political divide is between those who depend on governments for their survival and those upon whom our governments must depend if our governments–and our nation–are to be able to survive.

In tangible terms, anything that is done by or provided by any government will always have a tangible total cost to the people who are providing for governments that will be greater than it’s free market value. But then since the cost of taxes that are being paid are disconnected from the prices that governments are paying it is made easy for all concerned to entertain the delusion that governments can provide benefits without doing an amount of harm that is greater than whatever benefit is being provided. Governments, by their very nature, will and must do an amount of widespread harm that is greater than the whatever focused good they may be doing. Any good that is done by a government is focused; it is the harm that gets socialized and the harm is socialized in a manner that is blind and indiscriminate.

It is the intangibles that make governments worth having. But then, the quandary is that it is the visible tangibles that are worth the most votes on election day. Thus the insane dilemma that plays itself out continuously and loudly in our political debates and in what passes for public discourse.

When money goes to any government by any method and then comes back for any purpose, the amount of money that comes back will always be less than the amount that went. That most certainly includes money that goes to our federal government and then comes back to state and local governments as so-called “revenue sharing.” Even if the money must be “borrowed” by The Treasury to then be “shared” with states and locales, the amount that is borrowed must be greater than the amount that is “shared”. (I contend that if there is no intent to personally return something that is being “borrowed” then it is not borrowing, it is stealing. That thought goes to disgusting places.) Then to join the incurably, terminally, criminally insane in Washington, many of our state and local governments have “invested” their pension funds and their rainy day funds in the federal treasury notes and bonds that are being sold to get the money that the federal government “shares” with state and local governments. I sometimes have to laugh just to keep from crying.

Then there is the illusion and delusion of so-called “trust funds” that contain nothing but IOU’s that we the people have been obligated to underwrite and make good on by those who we elected to represent us in “our” Congress and be “our” board of directors for “our” federal government.
When cost goes to a government for any purpose and then comes back by any method, the amount of cost that comes back will always be greater than the amount that went.

There is a very fundamental problem with Obamacare that is already present with Medicaid and Medicare: For the programs to work as intended and provide the benefits as advertised at the costs that are being projected would require that either the healthcare delivery system or our governments or both be able to operate with the properties and characteristics of a perpetual motion machine and have operating efficiencies of 100% or greater.

Ain’t gonna happen!

Besides, if the only thing our governments do is to “squeeze” down on healthcare prices while continuing to dump the same amounts of costs-of-government–the costs of taxes and fees–into the healthcare delivery system then the inevitable result will be that the doctors and other healthcare professionals along with the various enterprises of various kinds and sizes that make up the healthcare delivery system will become financially insolvent and be heading for bankruptcy court filings.

If our governments want us to have more affordable healthcare than what all of our governments at all levels should be about doing is finding ways to reduce the sixty cents or so cost-of-governments that is embedded in every dollar of the prices that are currently being paid for medical treatment, healthcare and pharmaceuticals in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

One final question for you to muse on: What percentage of the typical health insurance premium payment do you reckon may just flow through and then out by being used to pay taxes of some kind to governments somewhere; local, state and federal?

And in closing, if anyone, even governments, messes around with Father Time then they risk getting their clocks stopped.

Are we there yet?