Simple Home Finances

If you are reading this then you were not born yesterday! The old saying that two things in life are guaranteed Death and Taxes is going to come to haunt us all soon! Why? The Bush Tax cuts, if we are honest, were very balanced Tax cuts  from the lowest incomes to the highest incomes, but those Tax Cuts are going to silently disappear if Congress does not take action to keep them or some of them in place.

What does this really mean to You? Well sadly it means the economy will take a very large hit. Economic Growth may all but stop and you will have much less money to cover you expenses each month. Now if this does not bother you then please stop reading now and thanks for visiting this site and blog.

For those of you still here letting these tax cuts expire is a threat to our jobs, our economy but more importantly our country. Our political leaders have rung up such a large debt that they feel they must take more from us to pay for it, how does that make you feel? If you are like me I want them to stop spending and start listening to the people! But I am convinced our politicians have all but stopped listening to the citizens of this country.

So what can you do? Well you could go to work for the Federal government which provides better pay and benefits than the private sector these days and there are government jobs  available. After all since the Federal government no longer works for the peope, why don’t we all work for the Federal government? Yeah and who then pays for the government? Who then invests in our economy? That is at the heart of this issue, do we work for the government or do they work for us? According to the constitution the government is for and of the people….in other words the buck stops with the us, the people, we exert our will by how we vote.

So how did our country get where we are then? A country divided cannot stand and we are by many measures a country divided. We are divided by race, religion, economic status, where we live….well by an almost unlimited number of things. All a politician has to do is use these natural divisions against us. So how do we overcome this? We decide as citizens to Unite behind common causes and we collectively vote accordingly. It seems simple but politicians are well versed in how to keep us divided.

So back to those expiring Tax Cuts how do or will they divide us? The Rich verse the Poor, of course, we hear it all the time lets tax the rich. The problem with that is it makes financial success more difficult for those who aspire to advance their standing in life. It seems so easy to make someone else pay especially when we are not the one paying! But I believe most citizens would be for a Flat Tax which is fair to everyone and does not punish success. Which gets me to the real point, the corruption of our government began with and will end with the Tax Code. We should argue for the Tax Cuts to be kept but, we should vote for a Flat Tax or a Fair Tax both of which would help our economy grow, bring money and business back to our shores and simplify the Tax Code with the goal of minimize if not eliminating corruption.

So are New Taxes Coming Your Way? The short answer is yes, the long answer is be prepared to vote for changes to the tax code that make those taxes fair to all.

I don’t know about you but I for one am tired of hearing higher taxes are the only answer to reducing the federal deficit, the elephant in the room is the size and cost of the federal government itself! There are three things that can work together to resolve our financial crisis; 1) Start shrinking the size and cost of the federal government and make it a continuous process. 2) Provide incentives to small business in America through deregulation and strategic tax cuts. 3) Move the country to a true flat tax policy or a national sales tax policy either would be better than what we have today.

This seems just like commons sense, the jobs engine in this country is small business but the small business owners are the very people who are being taxed more. More regulation means a higher cost of doing business and the more a government inserts itself in the free market process the more difficult it is for small business to succeed.

What we want is a sound dollar and what we need for a sound dollar is more capital. Moving to a flat tax will cause money to move into our economy. Moving to national sales tax could cause many trillions of dollars to be put to work in our economy again. Tax policy is the most powerful motivator when it comes to attracting investments. Today American businesses are among the most highly taxed in the world, is it any wonder more and more of these businesses move out of this country? Better Tax policies can bring much of that back and put people here back to work!

Even with a lower tax rate, tax revenues will grow right along with the economy as new jobs are created. True sustained economic growth will increase the amount of money available for Social Security and Medicare and can buy the time needed to reform those entitlement programs!

Remember, each government job added puts a higher amount of  expense on the people and requires more tax revenue to pay for it. These jobs only guarantee an increased cost of government, the exact opposite of what our country needs today!

In case you did not hear the government (or our non representative representatives) are looking at adding a Value Added Tax on top of our Income Taxes! A VAT is a tax that is hidden and it adds tax at each stage  of production which adds value! This type of tax will be the greatest private job killer this country has ever seen! Please tell your senator or congressman to vote NO on VAT taxes!!

“Keeping Financially Balanced in an Unbalanced World”

A Federal Deficit means there is no revenue to cover the expense.

Imagine if you managed your finances the same way what would that mean to you?

Well your Credit Score would go down quickly.
Your loans would generally be at a much higher interest rate.
Your mortgage lender may be foreclosing on your house.
You might even have to declare bankruptcy.

So what do huge deficits mean to the Federal Government?

Well their lenders may very well stop lending to them (Think China),
absent large lenders they would have to print more money. If they print more money the value of the dollar will continue to fall. If the value of  the dollar continues to fall then inflation and possibly hyper inflation will begin to occur. The end result of this is the middle class in the USA will begin to disappear unable to survive quickly rising costs on every day items, those who have excess money may use inflation to make them wealthier, but the middle class will largely join the lower class as their purchasing power drops.

But the Federal government has one thing standing in their way…That is you and I, we can and must stand up and use our vote and our voice to pull them back from the brink of spending our country into bankruptcy. They should be:

“Keeping (our country) Financially Balanced in an Unbalanced World”