We all too often blame someone else for our self-inflicted itch. The bug did it or my neighbor sprayed me with a pesticide or a fungus got between my toes. Seldom do we look within ourselves to determine the cause of the itch. Our Topsy-Turvy economic turmoil is a good example worth analyzing to seek the real cause of the itch that has all of us squirming and blaming others for the endless scratching.
Those of you who live in the USA know the county in which you live. Do you know how many municipalities a located in your county? Do you know the budget of each municipality? Do you know the budget of the municipality in which you live? Do you know how many people are employed by your municipality? Do you know what they do? Do you know how many school districts there are in your county? Do you know how much you pay in property taxes? Do you know what the property taxes are spent for? Do you know how many school superintendents and administrators are employed by the school districts in your county? These types of questions could go on and on, and most of us would answer "no" to most of them, except the question about property taxes. You probably know how much you pay to the nearest penny.
The taxes we all pay are the sum total of all the costs we incur by allowing our governments do what they and we say they can do. Local government within the municipality of the county in which you live starts the base of the cost pyramid that ends at the point where the sky is the limit. If the base is ignored than all piled on top matters naught. The itch for more starts in our own back yards with local government and spreads like a wildfire to ignite the whole county, state, and federal system with uncontrollable waste. Similarly, the so-called private sectors of our economy begins with the belief that more is better and the quest for more of everything creates a senseless and avaricious oneupmanship to male more money than anyone else regardless of the harm you may do to others. The financial mess spurred by greed-motivated use of bank and investment funds proves the point better than any number of words. Waste, abuse, and indifference peppered with a dose of greed and self-interest has infected our country with a itch that defies description as it inflames tempers to blame someone else for our malady. Blame ourselves.
We allow the itch to begin in our own back yards where local government does what the elected or appointed officials decide. It spreads to each and every municipality government group in the county and to the county government and finally to the most wasteful of all, state and federal governments. Each level digs deeper into our pockets for more tax dollars. Have you ever heard a word about consolidation of municipalities and elimination of redundant costs within your county? Have you ever heard school districts within your county discuss consolidation and the elimination of wasteful duplicate costs for such administrative expenses and for school superintendents for each district? Have you asked your local chairman of your town, village, or city board of supervisors how much they are paid and what they do for the money we pay them? How many clerks and deputy clerks do they hire to do their work?
If you are really serious about stopping the waste of your tax dollars and the endless itch that is generated start looking into your own backyard where local government starts the itch pyramid as it grows to an infinite hight, adding layer upon layer of redundancy and waste.
If you are really serious about doing something about the spreading itch, start in your own backyard and ask your local town, village , county, city government officials that you elected and had appointed for copies of their budgets and actual expenditures and what exactly was done with your money and why. Do the same with each school district, and ask why they don't consolidate and eliminate waste. Ask your elected state assembly person and senate member why consolidation is not mandated to reduce costs and eliminate redundancy at all levels of government?
Our country has lasted for 213 years and most of the municipalities in which we live are much younger. The government structures that originated over 200 years ago when agricultural employment spread over vast distances required numerous local governments and distributed school districts and the redundancy that was dictated by archaic communication and horse and buggy transportation systems. Living as we do in 2009, the landscape is quite different. Electronic, instant communication is standard. Transportation is vastly different. Agriculture is no longer the dominant life style. Yet, our government systems from local, county, state, and federal are still structured as they were during the horse and buggy era. We are stuck in the past and complain about the itch as it consumes the quality of life that existed when common sense prevailed.
Our founders in 1776 were true frontier blazers. They firmly believed that the monarchy they left behind was immoral and tantamount to taxation without representation. Yet we have become the very "tail between our legs" monarchy K.A.'s that our founders left behind to create a new country. They did not believe that the change to a constitutional republic meant immutable bureaucracies would result. We allowed these bureaucracies consisting of local fiefdoms, county bureaucracies, state big wigs, and federal big shots to call the shots without asking a simple question: WHY?. Archaic, wasteful layers of government at every level must be eliminated and consolidation at all levels is mandatory. We are infected by an intolerable itch that must be cured by starting with local, and county reform that sets the framework for a new government era, that truly eliminates tax waste.
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