While reporting/keeping up with the news, budgets seem to make up a bulk of what I'm writing and reading about. Monday night I watched about the first hour or so of the GOP debate. My roommate walked in to me fast asleep and the sound of Ron Paul's voice (or one of the others) still coming from my speakers. I stayed awake long enough for them to talk about the budget, debt ceilings, and the deficit.I'm liberal and proud of it. I'm not angered about the taxes taken out of my paycheck, I'm all about government subsidized services, and I think teachers deserve so much more money than they are paid, but when I hear the numbers on our deficit, I'm baffled.
$14 trillion, seriously? That number just seems so arbitrary that it can't be possible. Can we honestly know where all of that came from to the point that it can be paid back? I doubt it.
Maybe I just didn't keep up with politics enough until the last few years, but I feel like everyone is making such a big deal about the deficit, calling this a crucial point in our nation's financial health. So at this time before the last election, when were maybe about $8 trillion in debt, that wasn't a crucial moment in our nation's financial health?
I know the government is corrupt. Politicians get a B.A. degree, get some cushy (paid) internship and then eventually work their way up and make more money than I can ever dream of making, unless I make it as a leading producer for NPR or CNN. And I don't mean to put politicians down, many have graduate degrees and worked very hard, but they definitely spend too much money on their "public service" jobs. I don't hate politicians; I promise.
What really gets me are the businesses that whine about having to pay to high of taxes. "We would keep the jobs over here, if it didn't cost so much to do so." In the words of Michelle Tanner all I have to say to that is Oh Pah leez. If businesses really cared about the state of our economy CEO's could give up a few of those "hard earned dollars" to pay their taxes, but we wouldn't want kids of the entry-level employees for those companies to actually have money for a school lunch now would we. And don't even get me started on the amount of money that isn't overseas but is buried in the back yard (here).
Today, my twitter account is all a buzz with the decision for the state to cut redevelopment funds to balance the budget. My thoughts about it: good riddance.
The argument amidst San Diego politicians is that the State is balancing their budget via the San Diego taxpayers. My thought is, there just isn't money to subsidize business, especially when they then turn and complain about having to pay taxes. More money for schools, sounds good to me.
Sure, if I ever gave that argument to someone who's pro redevelopment/big business they would just tell me, "you just don't understand." I have done this before, and the argument my politician friend had for me had something to do with barbers. If you have to start skirting around the issue so much as to bring hair dressers into the picture, you probably don't have a valid argument. Greed isn't that hard to understand.
We are all greedy by nature, so ultimately it's hard to fault anyone for it, but when businesses often times have plenty of money at the top of the companies employment, it's very hard to sympathize with them. I hear the argument all the time that it's impossible to pay high taxes because it costs so much to live in San Diego. How about part of the benefit of working in San Diego is living in one of the greatest places in the world. If you just want an overflowing bank account, move to Texas.
So, since everyone is finally worried about the budgets, let's do something about it, but also let's those with money to foot the bill with actually foot the bill.
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