Posted on 03/03/2024 7:55:04 AM PST by bitt
IF folks don't understand that then they don't understand basic business.
I had the good fortune to attend a luncheon with Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury in 2001. A former corporate CEO, O’Neill strongly supported fiscal discipline (remember Bush inherited a balanced budget from Bill Clinton), opposed bailouts of corporations, supported increasing productivity in the economy, and was an advocate for US manufacturing and worker safety. He lasted only one year.
In American corporations the accounting books of the subsidiaries and the corporation are balanced and closed monthly about the middle of the following month. Corporate CEO”s and CEO’s are subject to strict accounting rules and can be tried and serve prison terms for fraudulent accounting practices.
At the end of his first month in office Secretary O’Neill asked a career bureaucrat for the time of the monthly closing meeting so he could attend. He was informed there is no closing meeting at the Treasury Department. The federal government never formally balances and reconciles its books. Not monthly, not annually, not ever.
O’Neill was appalled at the absence of accounting discipline and instructed the bureaucracy to put in place a formal controls and an accounting reconciliation process with monthly review meetings. He state at the luncheon I attended one of his primary goals for the American people was to implement proper accounting controls and a formal monthly review of the books. Unfortunately O’Neill was opposed by the entrenched bureaucrats a the Treasury Department and neocon war hawks in the administration, for both policy and his outspokenness. He was fired by President Bush in December 2002, having served less than two years. He did not succeed in bringing financial controls and a formal monthly accounting reconciliation process to the federal government.
O’Neill’s experience is more evidence Republican politicians have no more interest in fiscal discipline, and tight accounting controls, than Democrats. Certainly the federal bureaucracy wants no scrutiny of its spending of taxpayer money or the trillions being borrowed to fund the government.
One of the best things a second Trump administration can do for the American people is to install accounting disciplines and controls plus institute transparent reporting of spending and liabilities. Without proper accounting and reporting it is likely trillions of dollars are being wasted and stolen.
All comments I might make here, addressing other posts from people who understand things, or people who are wacko, would be pointless — because —
REPEAT THIS DAILY: Know where money comes from. It comes from nothingness. It is created from thin air by Central Banks like our Federal Reserve. It is whimsical.
There is no reason to think mathematics need apply to something created from nothingness. We do that in day to day life, because we do not think about the nothingness source in day to day life.
But it is so and it is why all analysis is pointless.
Average life expectancy for men is 77. As we Boomers move along very many (like me) won’t live long enough to get back all the money they paid in. The residual is absorbed back into the program. So what will happen is that the fund will slowly replenish. That is except for the money Congress stole for other things. And allowing benefits for people who never paid in a single dime.
Just one quick question:
How much of the money is being provided to illegals and their extended family members, the instant citizens born in a U.S. hospital, family members of women who married for citizenship and the Mexicans who live in the Mexican border towns, but scammed the government for US govt benefits and walk to a US Post Office to collect monthly checks?
Nothing wrong with the corporate tax like you say it just gets passed onto little people so why not have higher corporate taxes rather than sales taxes on little people.
Well, you’re not the next Rush….that’s obvious.
There’s a debate in our society and we have to come to a conclusion I tried to offer one.
This out of control government spending has to be dealt with its either shut down the government or raise taxes on someone or something.
Many see both as the endgame 401K’s IRA’s who knows what gets targeted in the end.
p
Illegal aliens rounded up and deported back to their country of origin.
Simplify the tax code. A 3x5 notecard. Gross income x 5%. No deductions. Everyone pays. Everyone has skin in the game.
Move OASDI to a private vehicle. This way when you die your earnings go to your family or whoever you’ve designated.
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