{"id":1221,"date":"2009-05-05T21:49:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T05:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2009-05-06T16:57:23","modified_gmt":"2009-05-07T00:57:23","slug":"how-many-layers-of-people-do-you-need-to-spend-your-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/how-many-layers-of-people-do-you-need-to-spend-your-money\/","title":{"rendered":"How many layers of government do you need to spend your money?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.<\/em><\/p>\n

– Alexis de Toqueville<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We have seen how effective it is for people running for office to promise goodies to “the people” while pretending that it would be paid for by other<\/em> people.\u00a0 This fakery works <\/a>perfectly well with one layer of democracy.\u00a0 How much better can this corrupting mechanism work when you add a second layer of democracy?<\/p>\n

Well, for the first time, the biggest source of state tax revenue is…federal tax dollars<\/a>.\u00a0 Here is how it works:\u00a0 After the state has taxed your sales, income, and property, and spent that money on police, schools, and medicaid fraud<\/a>, they still have a huge gap to fill<\/a>.\u00a0 The federal government, financed largely by your income taxes, steps in to fill it.\u00a0 Yes, the tax dollars that you sent to Washington, D.C. gets rerouted via some incomprehensibly complicated, and very costly bureaucratic maze to your state capital, to be spent on whatever your (relatively) local politicians say is good for you.<\/p>\n

It’s one thing to accept your local politicians telling you that you can’t figure out for yourself what your money should be spent on, that you can’t be expected to act as responsibly or charitably as your assemblyman or senator.\u00a0 It’s quite another thing for the federal government to say, in essence, that your state is not taxing and spending enough of your money, and so they (the feds) will tax you more and give your state more to spend.<\/p>\n

Of course, the federal government is in fact shifting tax dollars from one state to another.\u00a0 The responsible (and largely Republican) citizens of Montana and Texas are paying for the profligacy of (largely Democratic) California and New York.\u00a0 Because that is the new American Way!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. – Alexis de Toqueville We have seen how effective it is for people running for office to promise goodies to “the people” while pretending that it would be paid for by other people.\u00a0 This fakery works perfectly well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectivist-instinct","category-invisible-trade-offs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1235,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}