Saturday, February 14, 2009

Should we drain brains or drain the swamp?

Former Bluegrass Institute staffer Caleb Brown recently received a letter requesting his support for a Kentucky state government program. He didn't just say no. He said this:

"I no longer live in Kentucky. Most of the people I went to GSP with no longer live in Kentucky. They found opportunities elsewhere. Why? Because Kentucky is not competitive. Kentucky has a bloated government, a punitive tax system, looming pension crises that threaten to crowd out future state infrastructure spending and a regimented, bureaucratic education system that - at every turn - has chosen to serve the needs of its employees over the needs of students and parents."

The rest of his thoughts are worth reading and can be found here.

It would helpful if some of our politically powerful citizens could take time away from congratulating themselves for their bravery in raising taxes and raiding pension funds to notice what their handiwork is accomplishing.

3 comments:

Hempy said...

Why not implement the economic policies our founders advocated? Why no effort to develop a proportional tax system that taxes the movement of money? As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 12:

"The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates."

Claiming that government is "bloated" does not establish the fact. "Bloated" from what perspective?

The Fletcher (R) administration cutting back on the availability to make SCHIP more readily available to more people, doesn't sound like "bloated" government. It sounds like government that doesn't want to do what it's supposed to do, that is, take care of the needs of the people.

Apparently "former Bluegrass Institute staffer Caleb Brown" is as clueless as the rest of the Bluegrass Institute when it comes to suggesting solutions other than "cut taxes, and downsize government."

That's just some more conservative, anti-capitalistic propaganda, and promoting feudalism, the economic philosophy of Republicans.

David Adams said...

Kentucky government is bloated in the sense that it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to benefit a tiny minority of the population. The evidence is the people voting with the their feet.

Hempy said...

That "tiny minority" then would evidently be the wealthiest few.

For example, Toyota of Georgetown, the horse racing industry race tracks, and other large corporations that receive unjust reductions in their taxes.