Smeagol
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2012
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One of the contentious issues with respect to the direction the nation is going surrounds government spending. On the local level my city has confronted the issue and the result has been:
-Placing public libraries on a rotating schedule where branches are open some days and closed others.
-Pay cuts for police officers.
-Ending school bus service for magnet schools where our best and brightest are on their own in getting to the schools that offer the best education the challenges their highest potential. One college preparatory school recognized as in the to 10 of all high schools in America saw a sharp decline in enrollment as lower income families opted to send their kids to neighborhood schools.
-Closing of fire stations.
-Debate on whether or not to shut down the rape crisis center as a cost cutting measure.
According to the advocates of keeping spending at higher levels, none of the cuts would have been necessary if homeowners would accept about a $150.00 to $200.00 increase in our annual property taxes or coughing up an extra $15 a month per household. Curiously, the same people opposed to increasing property taxes to pay for city operational expenses are also opposed to new federal banking regulations that ended tactics to help themselves to roughly $200 per year in what some consider unfair gotcha fees and arbitrary interest rate hikes on existing credit card balances, but that's another topic.
My question is what do you think we can do without and what do you think we cannot do without in order to save taxpayer money?
1. I think prisons can turn down the heat in the winter and the air-conditioning in the summer. In warmer weather prisons can make use of less expensive to operate fans to supplement higher air-conditioning settings.
2. For centuries human beings did just fine with no hot water. I support turning off the hot water in all government buildings with the exception of domiciles like military housing units and US Embassies but not prisons.
3. I think there are way too much road improvement projects, at least in my city. In the middle of all the cuts we were facing, perfectly good streets were constantly being ripped up and repaved. I say wait for the streets to actually need repaving before doing it.
4. Welfare recipients IMHO have no business buying alcohol or tobacco. Younger drivers in my state get a special color coded drivers license that tells merchants this person is underage and may not buy adult beverages or tobacco. Extend that restricted license to welfare recipients. I also say add recent DUI/DWI violators and anyone voluntarily wanting lower health, life and auto insurance premiums.
5. Through attrition stop hiring civilian federal employees and replace them with National Guardsmen and Military Reservists who agree to remain in the Guard or Reserves as a condition of continued employment, thus reducing the need for as many active duty military personnel. It might be necessary to increase the frequency of training weekends, etc. since they'd be ultimately replacing some of the active duty force.
6. Set traffic and other court fines on scales that are commensurate with the violators' income and assets. A multi-millionaire shouldn't have the same $80.00 speeding ticket as a guy working a 9 to 5 making $50,000 a year for a variety of reasons including the fact that their level of wealth means average income fines have no financial incentive for the wealthy to obey the law. Plus, we'd have more resources to fund things.
7. Create an automatic compliance tax system similar to gas taxes. We automatically pay gas taxes without thinking about it because they're rolled into the price of gas. Not only would we be freeing up all kinds of time and hassle from keeping receipts to completing complicated accounting reports every year, we've eliminated a huge bureaucracy of the federal government who's present job is to examine and manage our annual personal accounting reports.
8. Cutting college and university funding, especially in science, math and other high income professions of the future is a bad idea in an era where we are and will continue to compete with the third world for jobs. I do however support incentivising more online classes where feasible.
-Placing public libraries on a rotating schedule where branches are open some days and closed others.
-Pay cuts for police officers.
-Ending school bus service for magnet schools where our best and brightest are on their own in getting to the schools that offer the best education the challenges their highest potential. One college preparatory school recognized as in the to 10 of all high schools in America saw a sharp decline in enrollment as lower income families opted to send their kids to neighborhood schools.
-Closing of fire stations.
-Debate on whether or not to shut down the rape crisis center as a cost cutting measure.
According to the advocates of keeping spending at higher levels, none of the cuts would have been necessary if homeowners would accept about a $150.00 to $200.00 increase in our annual property taxes or coughing up an extra $15 a month per household. Curiously, the same people opposed to increasing property taxes to pay for city operational expenses are also opposed to new federal banking regulations that ended tactics to help themselves to roughly $200 per year in what some consider unfair gotcha fees and arbitrary interest rate hikes on existing credit card balances, but that's another topic.
My question is what do you think we can do without and what do you think we cannot do without in order to save taxpayer money?
1. I think prisons can turn down the heat in the winter and the air-conditioning in the summer. In warmer weather prisons can make use of less expensive to operate fans to supplement higher air-conditioning settings.
2. For centuries human beings did just fine with no hot water. I support turning off the hot water in all government buildings with the exception of domiciles like military housing units and US Embassies but not prisons.
3. I think there are way too much road improvement projects, at least in my city. In the middle of all the cuts we were facing, perfectly good streets were constantly being ripped up and repaved. I say wait for the streets to actually need repaving before doing it.
4. Welfare recipients IMHO have no business buying alcohol or tobacco. Younger drivers in my state get a special color coded drivers license that tells merchants this person is underage and may not buy adult beverages or tobacco. Extend that restricted license to welfare recipients. I also say add recent DUI/DWI violators and anyone voluntarily wanting lower health, life and auto insurance premiums.
5. Through attrition stop hiring civilian federal employees and replace them with National Guardsmen and Military Reservists who agree to remain in the Guard or Reserves as a condition of continued employment, thus reducing the need for as many active duty military personnel. It might be necessary to increase the frequency of training weekends, etc. since they'd be ultimately replacing some of the active duty force.
6. Set traffic and other court fines on scales that are commensurate with the violators' income and assets. A multi-millionaire shouldn't have the same $80.00 speeding ticket as a guy working a 9 to 5 making $50,000 a year for a variety of reasons including the fact that their level of wealth means average income fines have no financial incentive for the wealthy to obey the law. Plus, we'd have more resources to fund things.
7. Create an automatic compliance tax system similar to gas taxes. We automatically pay gas taxes without thinking about it because they're rolled into the price of gas. Not only would we be freeing up all kinds of time and hassle from keeping receipts to completing complicated accounting reports every year, we've eliminated a huge bureaucracy of the federal government who's present job is to examine and manage our annual personal accounting reports.
8. Cutting college and university funding, especially in science, math and other high income professions of the future is a bad idea in an era where we are and will continue to compete with the third world for jobs. I do however support incentivising more online classes where feasible.