How about frustrated?

There are some things that anger me--but it's mainly out of frustration.

Frustration that there are so many laws and regulations.

Frustration that the federal government is seeking to spend (at least) $3.1 trillion. On what? Part of my frustration stems from the fact I don't know where my money is going, or even why it is going.

Frustration that government does so little right and so much wrong.

Frustration that someone who's short on substance but great on style has a really good shot to become the next President of the United States.

I work for a living. I don't dig trenches or do anything which would be considered a hard living, but I do work. I provide for my family. I have bills and debts. I feel responsible. I feel like it's my obligation to take care of my wife and sons. I feel like no one else has the primary responsibility but myself and my wife.

So, it's hard when the federal government wants to do this or that. Be Big Brother, or the Nanny. It's frustrating when more of my tax dollars goes oversees in the way of aid to countries which later end up being our enemies, because we armed and fed them. It's frustrating when every new social or economic program gets sent out, or unfunded mandates get sent to the states.

Like the author of the article "Angry White Men" said, I want to make my own way in the world. I don't expect a handout, but I do expect a fair deal. Doesn't mean I'm guaranteed success, it just means I'm guaranteed to succeed or fail based on my own merits or lack thereof. I don't like regulations which inhibit what I want to do. I feel like I have common sense and the wherewithal to get something accomplished, and am not afraid to seek out guidance if I need it.

It frustrates me that so many of us are just letting things happen. Maybe we don't know how to stop it, but a lot of us either don't care, or somehow believe it's the role of the government to have such a say in everything we do.

It doesn't help that people aren't responsible. It's tragic when innocents are hurt because of this irresponsibility. Perhaps there are a couple of things government should jump in and take control of and do.

If businesses, for example, were self-regulating--or paid a third party perhaps to set and enforce standards, there wouldn't be others who felt government needed to keep a watchful eye. I don't buy completely the fact that the free enterprise system is infallible--but it's not because of the system itself. It's because, we, as consumers, don't do our due diligence when it comes to such things. We aren't all smart enough to be careful with the cup of coffee, and to not use products for what they were never intended to be, and we do sue over such things. Our health care system can point to all kinds of things. It happens to be the nexus for everything which can go wrong will go wrong. That said, we could have worth, and government owned health care is not the solution. Big business health care, at least for the common every day things, doesn't seem to be either.

We've been listening to the naysayers about the economy, as well as those who think things are just fine, and it's hard to know who to believe if you're not making money with your business, or you're going to be laid off or the company you've invested 10 years of your life is going out of business. There's some of that going on as always, just as there are those who are prospering despite of it all.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand we can't keep running up deficits on the federal government side, debt in our own personal lives, trade deficits, and whatever other negative growth we can think of before we'll be so far under we can't come back. There needs to be some restraint in spending on all levels. There needs to be some long term perspective and restraint, and to invest in a rampant consumption kind of system will eventually burn itself and cause even a harder crash. Resources are plentiful, but they are not infinite. Some moderation is essential.

So, there's plenty to be frustrated about. At the same time, we're the greatest country to ever exist, and continue to be the greatest country. People aren't looking anywhere else before they find out what we're doing our what our leaders think. We are the people the rest of the world turns to and depends on. If we're going to continue to be that world leader, we can't just run it into the ground, either through big government or free enterprise run amok. We've seen communism fall. We're witnessing socialism as it fails. We don't need to go that way.

We need to work on sustainable growth. We need to work on common sense and personal responsibilities, from the individual, to the family, to the community and all the way along the spectrum. If we don't, then we will fall, just as surely as other nations have fallen.

This is a choice land above all other lands, with a promise of protection and prosperity from the Divine. That promise is revoked if we don't keep our side of the promise.

So, am I frustrated? Yes, I am. I yet hold out hope, however, that we are not in a hole we cannot climb out of or a wrong course we cannot correct. It will take more than a president, or a Congress. It will take like-minded people everywhere to correct the course and keep the faith.

I ended my first post on this subject without drawing any conclusions on the Fair Tax, so I'll do that here.

Is the Fair Tax a better way to go then our current system?

Perhaps the better question would be, is it worth a try? I would have to say yes.

Trying it would be the only way to find out if it indeed does all what its proponents say it will. That's a major overhaul to bring millions of people on line with, but of the alternative tax system proposals to date, it goes the farthest in eradicating everything that is wrong with the current tax system. Anything that takes 60,000 pages to explain is sorely and woefully awry.

The vast majority of states in the union have their own sales tax. Piggybacking onto those systems would seem to be appropriate. Enforcement would seem to be easier than what it is now, where you have millions who can potentially accidentally or purposefully withhold incorrect amounts of taxes, not file returns, and spend all kinds of taxpayer money and their own time getting it corrected.

Placing the tax on retail goods and services makes more sense in a free enterprise system then taxing someone's wages or assets. It would seem to encourage more consumption then less, which would seem to be good for the economy as well as good for the government. The more the economy grows, the chances of their being more consumers with more money to spend increases. Even if they do get money to spend via a prebate, even the poorest among us get an opportunity to contribute.

It will put more of the tax burden on those who are the wealthiest. It has that as a selling point on the homepage of fairtax.org.

The wealthiest among us are the ones who have the most capital to do things. They also tend to consume more. Where we might be fortunate to have one home, they might own two or more, and ones which are more expensive. They will have other toys and gadgets, employ others to make their lives easier, etc.

What if they decided to consume less? Because they can, what would happen if they were to take themselves off the grid--revert to their own means of generating energy to power their own homes and businesses? What if they started dealing exclusively in second hand yachts and homes?

In fact, what if the entire nation emphasized buying more used things then new things?

Well, it couldn't exclusively do that. The manufacturing of new items would not come to a screeching halt, but it could conceivably slow the new product business. It wouldn't all go away because eventually used things break down and would need to be replaced. Repair shops might make a comeback.

However, we've been trained since our infancy now to consume. Most of us living don't remember the depression. While there's been periods of bumps along the way, the United States has not experienced the likes of a decade long depression. We've become accustomed to our luxuries. Many of them we would call necessities.

Personally, I'm not going to feel bad if the federal government has to suddenly start downsizing because not enough revenue is coming in.

If this Fair Tax did do all that it says it would, then we wouldn't be able to borrow from China any more because we'd be competing more aggressively with them, and putting more of their factories and companies out of business in the process, because corporations would return to the US rather than shipping overseas.

I think the economy could thrive quite well on a second hand industry. While it's outgrown it's current model, eBay has been doing pretty well for itself, and so have places like Craigslist.

What I would wonder more about is if this went the other way. I'm not an environmentalist or a conservationist, but as a realist, there is a realization that there's a finite amount of resources. You either need to renew them quicker, or you need to consume at a lesser degree than what they would naturally renew, assuming they do.

We're already accused of being a consumer culture. We're already derided for being the most wasteful. Great strides have been made over the course of the last half century to work on pollution standards, and smaller footprints for all kinds of projects. The technology and know how is there, or being put into place. However, if consumption was unleashed on even greater scale than it is right now, and we all bought into it, at some point, as the population gets larger and human expansion continues, at some point, whether it be 10 years down the road or several centuries, you do come to the end of the road.

Most likely, that's too much to read into this. Rarely does anything have such transcending effect on a nation. Of course, that might have been what people thought when the income tax amendment was ratified, or when social security and medicare were mandated.

If the highest this Fair Tax can go is 24%--if it's actually written into law as the ceiling--and if a concerted effort will still be made to shrink the size of the federal government, not just grow it, then I can see this as being the best thing that could ever happen to us. Having the cost of living decreasing while our wages potentially increase, along with our savings and our investments, would all seem to be a good thing. The amount needed to run government could go down because fewer and fewer people would rely on social security and medicare. Less people would be on welfare. And, according the website, this would also discourage illegal immigration!

As I said at the top of this blog, it's hard to tell just what drastic effects this might have on us. While there may be negatives, they don't seem to outweigh the positives. Government, business and consumer would all have to do their part.

I think it's worth a try.