Brushfire of Freedom
The Conservative Cowboy
I want to take this opportunity to share with you what is going to happen when everyday items get taken over by the government. Just to be clear I am talking about things such as healthcare, the financial system, and big business. I am going to use an example that is prevalent in my current situation now, RTD. RTD stands for the Regional Transportation District.
Here in Colorado RTD runs the public bus system as well as the Light Rail system. This is a state run organization and gets some of its funding from the state government and some of its funding from everyone that lives in the area in which RTD is present. You see there is a certain percentage of the sales tax that you pay on everyday items that goes to the RTD. There is also a portion of your property taxes that goes to the RTD. There is also a portion of the tax paid to the sate on your wages that goes to the RTD. I could keep going but I think that you get the point, your tax dollars multiple times.
But wait, isn’t public transportation a good thing? Don’t they provide a service that takes more drivers off of the road? Don’t they limit our carbon footprint? The answer to these questions is yes, well sort of, the light rail runs of electricity instead of clean coal so there are some carbon footprint issues there. But back to the point at hand and why the Regional Transportation District is my perfect example of why government run programs don’t work.
The very simple reason the people of Denver are taxed at so many levels for the RTD is that the businesses revenues do not even cover their operating expenses. Now please remember that since they are a Government entity they do not pay any taxes so having an income from operations should not be too difficult. Many companies use income before taxes as an indicator of how well they are doing because the tax rate is so high in this country that it can sway the actual amount of income a company makes in a given period of time. So the RTD cannot even cover their operating income, we call this running at a loss. Companies that run at a loss for a long period of time have pretty much two options. First they will fail, go out of business, file bankruptcy, or second, (this is a new development) get a bailout from the Government.
So how then does the RTD continue to operate their trains and buses, they will increase taxes and fares. A typical, privately owned business would find a way to cut costs, especially since we are in a recession now. Now I am not going to put all the blame on the RTD for their high operating costs because it is not all their fault, there is of course the Union drivers that they employ. That is an issue for another day, and back to the horrible management of the Government. Now why does every Government program fail?
To put that very simply the Government doesn’t have a vested interest in whether the program is a success or a failure. Sure they care about re-election but ultimately the programs that are instituted well have to be dealt with by another set of Government officials down the road (see social security and Medicare thanks FDR and LBJ) If your still not getting it the Government can’t run a program because it doesn’t hit their own pockets if that program fails. I don’t care if you’re a not-for profit company or not money does matter to the organization because without money you cannot push you agenda, if you are a for profit company as we all know the bottom line is everything. Now let look at the Government, oh this program is not working let’s just raise taxes, take from this other program, or the vary scary idea that we can just print more money. The scariest thing about having government run programs is the fact that the government controls the money, money is of no object to them (see the US government Deficit).
So how does this all tie back to the RTD in Denver Colorado? It is just one of the many Government run programs that are running at a loss. The cost to pick up and take one passenger is almost double the amount that that single person pays to get on the bus or train. This is the future that is down the road with Obama, his Czars, and his goons in the Congress. His is strengthening the role of Government on your everyday life and thus creating more government programs that will run at a loss. If I can follow my own logic that means that we will have more programs hemorrhaging money, and the money to make up the difference must come from you and me.
The people in Denver have the benefit to look on your property taxes, or look at the actual state sales tax rate and see that the 7-8% you pay at the convenience store is actually double that. This is just one of the many reasons that Socialism does not work. We the people still have our voices (for now) it is time to make them heard.
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