337,000 New Jobs

20041105.001

Over twice the number of new jobs expected were added to the rolls. Damn, I wish the economy would turn around.

"It looks like the job situation is improving and that this will support consumer spending going into the holidays and offset some of the drag caused by high oil prices this year," said economist Gary Thayer of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St, Louis, Missouri.

I mean 5.5% unemployment, why if only we could be more like Europe:

Unemployment Rates of Europe:
Germany 10.7%
France: 8.9%
Russia: 8.6%
Spain: 10.6 %
Poland: 18.7%
Slovakia 18%
Lithuania 10.4%
Italy: 8.4%

John Edwards was right, we should work on the economy.

We should simplify the US Tax Code.

According to Congressman George Radanovich of California’s 19th congressional District states on his website:

There are approximately 700 separate sections of the Tax Code that apply to individuals. There are over 1,500 separate provisions that apply to businesses. As of May 2000, before passage of the last two tax bills, the Tax Code contained 1,395,028 words – nearly 319 times the number of words in the Constitution. IRS Regulations contain over 8,551,444 words – over 11 times the number of words in the King James Bible. The IRS produces 649 separate forms, schedules, and instructions with approximately 16,100 lines. Publications providing guidance to taxpayers alone total about 13,400 pages.

Ten years ago, the IRS said it took the average person 9 ½ hours to complete the 1040. Today, it takes 13 hours – time enough to complete at least 4 baseball games. This year, Americans will spend an estimated 5.8 billion hours complying with the tax code – 5.8 billion hours ago was 660,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

It will cost taxpayers an estimated $194 billion this year just to comply with the tax code – that is enough money to buy 4.7 million brand new Cadillac DeVille 4-Door Sedans at retail price. The IRS’s budget is $10 billion a year – equal to the size of the budgets for the FBI, the DEA, and INS Border Enforcement combined.

As of last March, the IRS employed 104,900 people – four times as many people as work for the FBI. Yet, with all these resources, last year the IRS answered less than 60% of the phone calls they received requesting information or assistance. When they did answer, one out of every four answers they provided was either incomplete or incorrect.

How is a person to understand all of this? They are not meant to. They have to hire accountants and CPA’s to help them, creating a whole new industry.

I advocate a flat tax rate. It has worked in Russian, Hong Kong and every where else it has tried. No money and effort is spent to hide money as there are no loop holes to exploit as Theresa Heinz-Kerry does, paying 12% on her millions while I pay 20% on my thousands that I make a year. Some claim it’s un fair that the rich should pay more. They would.

At 10% Flat tax person making $50,000 a year would pay $5,000 in taxes. A person making $5,000,000 would pay $500,000 a year at 10%. I’m no math wiz but
500,000-5,000= 495,000 and that would be MORE than the poor would pay.

It is the same rate, but the poor would be paying less, and some proposals even have those making less than 35,000 a year totally exempt from paying.

If the people with the money to invest take that money and expand their businesses they will hire more people. Those people will have money to spend on goods and services, allowing the business to re-invest. When you stifle the owners the whole economy will suffer.

The 337,000 new jobs is a great start, but we need to continue to make strides to help the businesses employ and empower the consumer-workers of our nation.

Vulture 6