November 22, 2007
By: Sid Riley
This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"Discourage any foolish ideas your children may have about being entrepreneurs, working for themselves, or starting new, job creating businesses. Instead, have your children prepare themselves for working for some form of government activity….that is the only occupation that assures their future."
It is time for us to face the reality of where this nation is going, what the future will hold, and what steps we can take to assure that our children and grandchildren are properly prepared to survive in the society of the future. Forget capitalism, entrepreneurship, free enterprise, freedom of choice, and the American Dream. Have the youth in your family focus on preparing for a government job of some type. Federal jobs are the most desirable, since they offer benefit packages that exceed those of other levels of government. Next most desirable would be some State job, then County, and finally Municipal. Never, never enter the private sector.
Listed below are some of the reasons that forming a new, job creating business or working in the private sector for one of these types of businesses is foolish and ill conceived.
♦ If you own a business and employ others you expose yourself to added tax liability. If there are conceived errors in any of the hundreds of tax deposits (withholding, social security, Medicare, sales tax, bed tax, unemployment tax, intangible taxes, property taxes, workman’s compensation, corporate income tax, and others), you expose yourself to perpetual harassment from the revenue bureaucracies and potential personal liability for their exorbitant charges, penalties, and interest. They will take your house, car, seize your bank accounts, and kidnap your youngest child to collect from you.
Why expose yourself to this terrifying situation when you could just perform some government function and safely draw a check each month?
♦ If you work for yourself you have very, very limited benefits. You do not get overtime pay for the 60-70 hours per week you will work, you have no health insurance, you have no unemployment compensation benefits if your business fails and you end up with no job, you have very few holidays and if you do take a holiday it is unpaid, you very seldom get to take a vacation and of course it is unpaid, and at the end of your career (if you are able to stay in business that long), you end up with no pension, no retirement benefits. The only check you will get upon retirement is your social security check. Because of this, the chances are good that you will be forced to continue to work in order to survive until you finally die.
Isn’t it smarter to get a government job where you can eventually get six or seven weeks of paid vacation, accumulate days of sick leave, have eleven or more paid holidays, be assured of a nice raise and bonus each year, have a great health benefit plan paid for with dental, vision, and other great features, have unemployment compensation if you should somehow need it, get paid for every hour you work or comp time if you want it, and when you retire after only twenty years, you can be rehired at full pay while you draw a pension check that is almost your original full salary? What a deal!!
♦ If you are in business for yourself you will have to continually closely monitor all expenditures to be sure that you are able to meet your obligations each week, especially the payroll and payroll taxes for your employees. You will have to be sure that the inflow of money from your sales is enough to cover your current expenses or your business will be forced into failure very quickly.
However, if you work in a government position, profit is not a consideration to worry about. You have an assured inflow of money every year, regardless of how good or bad the function is operated. You have almost no decisions to make since virtually every conceivable situation has been covered in your departmental operations manual. No thinking or wondering is ever necessary, If a mistake is made, is won’t be your responsibility.
♦ If you are in business for yourself you expose yourself to being sued and taken to court for violation of a multitude of potential reasons. You might be prosecuted for racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, disabilities violations, safety violations, environmental violations, sign violations, product performance violations, having a customer claim they spilt hot coffee in their lap and it was your fault, and a million other frivolous and foolish faults. You will find yourself continually harassed as a herd of bureaucratic inspectors come into your business site and check your water pipes, alarms, extinguishers, ice box, stove, beds, back flow inspection, soaps, bath rooms, payroll calculations, safety records, electrical appliances and connections, aisle markings, lighting, government notices bulletin boards, proper licenses display, and on and on. And each one of them will usually find some small violation in order to justify their existence, and then you will have forms, reports, possible fines and re-inspections to deal with. And you must never, never make one of them mad at you or it gets worse.
Isn’t it wiser to just have a government job, and enjoy the fact that governments exempt themselves from all of these requirements. I once read that the printing department at the capital in Washington was guilty of over fifty OSHA safety violations…..but was exempt from the requirements.
♦ If you are in business for yourself or work for some private sector business, there is no job security. Every type of business is subject to failure due to shifts in government policies on exports/imports, safety rules, environmental rules, market shifts, poor management, and bad luck. If the business that you are involved with fails, you usually end up with nothing. You can devote a lifetime to working somewhere and if it fails just as you reach your retirement age….you end up getting the shaft.
♦ Isn’t it wiser to work for government where job security and continuation is assured. Market shifts and bad management will not have any impact on the success and continuation of the business of government. And since governments make the rules….they will never enact a rule that causes them to lay off or fire an employee.
So parents, discourage your children from taking business management courses, industrial management, industrial engineering, carpentry, plumbing, auto repair, electrical courses, air conditioning, retail management, cosmetics, sales, human relations, transportation, or any other business related studies. Instead, have them focus on government administration, city planning, public administration, law, civil engineering, code enforcement, and any other course of study that might help them qualify for a juicy federal, state, county, or city government job.
Sadly, there is too much truth to the picture I have presented. Capitalism is on it’s way out in our American society. We are quickly evolving into a semi-communistic, socialistic Democracy.
RUDAMENTS – Odds and Ends Worthy Of Mention
♦ I was recently given this description of how our federal taxation system works. It is the best definition I have ever seen of the system:
Taxation Vs Drinking
Ten men met once a week after work for a few libations. Each time the bill came out to $100 for their drinks. Since their income levels were greatly varied they decided to pay the bar bill in the same manner they paid their taxes.
The first four paid nothing
The fifth paid $1
The sixth paid $3
The seventh paid $7
The eighth paid $12
The ninth paid $18
And the tenth (the richest) paid $59
All was well until one day the bar owner decided that since they were such good customers that he would cut their bar bill by $20.
Keeping the same system, the first four continued to drink free and were unaffected. However, if they split the $20 equally each of the remaining six would get $3.33 taken off their payment, but this would mean that the fifth and sixth men would actually be getting paid to drink their beer. So, it was suggested that each man’s bill would be reduced by the same amount. So,
The fifth man would begin to pay nothing (100% savings)
The sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings)
The seventh man now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving)
The eighth man now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving)
The ninth man now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving)
And the tenth man now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving)
Everyone was better off than before and the first four continued to drink free. But then they began to compare their savings. I only got a dollar out of the $20 declared the fifth man, It is unfair, he got 10 TIMES what I got! That’s true shouted the seventh man, why should he get $10 back when I only got $2! Wait a minute, shouted the first four in unison, we didn’t get anything! This system exploits us poor folks!
So, they surrounded the tenth man and beat him up.
The next time they met for drinks the tenth man didn’t show up. When it came time to pay the bill they found that between them they didn’t have enough money to pay the bar bill. They couldn’t even pay half of the bill!
And that journalists, bureaucrats and college professors is how the tax system works. The people who pay the most taxes should get the biggest dollar reduction in a tax decrease. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just might not show up any more. They might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving Holiday and continue to "Get It Right"!
No comments:
Post a Comment