User Fees v. Active Traffic

[DaV8or]

Quote: M20F

So in the end the only real answer is some exceptionally drastic cuts to social security/medicare/military which until we do descend to Greece are not going to be possible at which point we will be Greece and doomed.  Hopefully the Germans will bail us out as well.

[scottfromiowa]

I have not been shown that fuel tax (vs. user fee) is NOT the way to continue.  Agree with much that has been written here, but feel "the market" would/will provide reduced costs for equipment (next gen) if the government would meet a budget and get Next Gen implemented.  Kind of like my local utility wanting to increase user rates...to pay for a nuke plant they wish to build...

[scottfromiowa]

Quote: DaV8or

In addition to cuts to entitlement programs, we really need to cut military spending. Foreign adventures and outposts have to come to an end. Why does Germany have so much money in Europe? Partly because they don't have to spend very much for their own defense and they don't go globe trotting and posting people all over the world.

Let the South Koreans and Japanese take care of the North Koreans. They can also spend some of the money they're making off of Toyotas and Samsung TVs to keep the Chinese in check. The Russians aren't invading Europe any time soon, we don't need so many people posted there. There are lots of places we could be cutting back on staff or eliminating all together.

The Germans won't have enough money to bail us out. We'd have to ask the Chinese. How ugly would that be??

[Piloto]

Quote: DaV8or

[Piloto]

Quote: DaV8or

In addition to cuts to entitlement programs, we really need to cut military spending. Foreign adventures and outposts have to come to an end. Why does Germany have so much money in Europe? Partly because they don't have to spend very much for their own defense and they don't go globe trotting and posting people all over the world.

Let the South Koreans and Japanese take care of the North Koreans. They can also spend some of the money they're making off of Toyotas and Samsung TVs to keep the Chinese in check. The Russians aren't invading Europe any time soon, we don't need so many people posted there. There are lots of places we could be cutting back on staff or eliminating all together.

The Germans won't have enough money to bail us out. We'd have to ask the Chinese. How ugly would that be??

[DaV8or]

Quote: jetdriven

Any specific examples of this slippery slide into the abyss of socialism?

[DaV8or]

As for user fees and aviation, I believe the sky belongs to the people and should be free of charge. However, the public airports and ATC does require money to opererate. For decades, fuel and ticket taxes took care of ATC and ran a surplus. The use of ATC has never been free. We've been paying every time we fill up. Part of the issue is scychology. A fuel tax is hidden, a bill in the mail, is in our face. The hidden approach works better.

The national highway system is a model of how to opperate our aviation infrastructure. Toll roads are not the best solution, fuel taxes are. Again, if the fees are more invisible, we pay the fees and use the system. If the fees are in your face, we avoid the system or try to cheat ways around. For the safety of aviation as a whole, we want to encourage people to use the system and hitting then with a bill is not the way to do that. More people using the system, the better the system is.

I'm starting to think that this is the reason we don't see MOGAS in wide spread useage in the GA fleet. Without a special airplane fuel that you can only get at the airport, the taxes don't get to the right place. Your fuel taxes go to fix bridges and pot holes instead of fund ATC.

Does this mean I'd like to see higher fuel prices? No! What I'd like to see is a no lead replacement for 100LL that reduces refining costs. Some modification of MOGAS that works for everyone. It's not rocket science! Come on people! Then I'd like to see a temporary increase in taxes to pay for NEXTGEN. At the same time, I'd like to see the FAA cutting spending and trimming the fat. Do we really need all those folks at the FSDO? Do we really need all the NDBs? Do we really need all the control towers? Do we really need all the ILS approaches? I'm sure there are lots of ways to cut and also to raise revenues in a positive way. I think a combination of these techniques would be realized in a fuel cost about what we have now and eventually, a reduction in the future.

[1964-M20E]

Taxes never go away and raely get reduced.

Yes the system needs funds to operate.  The FAA and the entire Fed gov't need to reduce spending and the FAA need to reduce the reglations espically on Part 91 aircraft.  The only way to get out of the mess we are in is to reduce spending.  It works just like at home. I just cannot increase my pay when i spend more than I make.

There are plenty of airports that do not need towers 24 hours and more that do not need towers at all.

[jetdriven]

And how would reducing regulations lower costs for ga aircraft? Most of them were codified in 1958.

[M20F]

Quote: Cruiser

Starting April 1, (Fools Day) the United States will officially have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.

[1964-M20E]

Yes you may have 30,000 federal employees not working for the Federal Gov't but it takes many more americans working in the private sector to support and pay the Feds.  I do not know what the ratio is but I imagine it has to be 10 to 1 or greater.  Federal Employees do not contirbute to the wealth of the country.  Most (my wild ass guess [WAG] about 50%) do a necessary job but do not create wealth the other 50% we most likely we could get rid of and most of us would not even miss them.

[AndyFromCB]

Quote: RJBrown

 The only answer to the budget deficit is to end SOCIALISM. This current administration is pushing SOCIALISM as far as they can. We as Americans are TOO stupid to realise that there is no pie to get a piece of. 60% of the federal budget is to support SOCIALISM. Taxes pay 150% of the cost of government. SOCIALISM steals that extra portion of the taxes and forces us to borrow 40% of what the government spends. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH. Stop the vote buying. STOP SELLING YOUR VOTE.

No socialist government has EVER not eventually gone bankrupt morally and fiscally. End the stupidity before it ends us.

[RJBrown]

Rampant inflation is at least a fair tax. Affects every one.

 Cut all socialism. The items you mention are miniscule compared to social (paid to and for individuals)programs. It is not about taxing more it is about spending less.

[jetdriven]

I think what Randy is saying is cut social socialism.  Leave the vast military industrial complex and the corporate socialism structure intact.     GE, Bank of America, exxon, why they have the highest corporate tax rate in the world!  But if you have 99 cents in your ashtray, that's more than all those companies paid. In tax last year.  Spare me the shit, they didn't pay a thing.  But lets go further and let them write off the entire cost of a gulf stream 550.   Fifty million dollars.   I'd sure love to write off my aircraft.    

 

Outrage is appropriate.  Outrage at people who make 25 grand is the real tragedy.  

 

 

 

It continues on. 

 

 

 

Everyone's solution is cut everyone else's  payment.  

[AndyFromCB]

Quote: RJBrown

Rampant inflation is at least a fair tax. Affects every one.

 Cut all socialism. The items you mention are miniscule compared to social (paid to and for individuals)programs. It is not about taxing more it is about spending less.

[1964-M20E]

Quote: jetdriven

 It continues on. 

 Everyone's solution is cut everyone else's  payment.  

[RJBrown]

Quote: jetdriven

I think what Randy is saying is cut social socialism.  Leave the vast military industrial complex and the corporate socialism structure intact.     GE, Bank of America, exxon, why they have the highest corporate tax rate in the world!  But if you have 99 cents in your ashtray, that's more than all those companies paid. In tax last year.  Spare me the shit, they didn't pay a thing.  But lets go further and let them write off the entire cost of a gulf stream 550.   Fifty million dollars.   I'd sure love to write off my aircraft.    

 

Outrage is appropriate.  Outrage at people who make 25 grand is the real tragedy.  

 

 

 

It continues on. 

 

 

 

Everyone's solution is cut everyone else's  payment.  

[AndyFromCB]

Quote: 1964-M20E

 My solution is do a true across the board 10% cut every department every program and if that does not work another 10% the following year and on and on until the deficit is gone and the debt is eliminated.  This cut is 10% less than was spent last year not 10% less of an increase.  When making these cuts cut 10% of the Fed employees as well.  In each department at each pay grade starting at the top with the President and the cabinet, congress etc.  If a particular pay grade in a particular department has 8 or fewer people all get a 10% pay cut for larger numbers round up the the nearest whole number and cut that many positions.  Follow this for a few years and soon the deficit will be gone and then we can work on eliminating the debt.

[scottfromiowa]

Quote: astelmaszek

Randy,

You are high on slogans. We spent more on air conditioning last year in Iraq, $22 billion than on NASA, 18.7 billion. Social Security, the giant red evil, brought in $819 billion, with only $695 billion paid out. How is that for a surplus. We collected a total of $1.1 billion of federal income taxes and spent most of it between the DOE (663 billion), Homeland Security (42 billion) and Justice (26 billion), three departments that really have no reason to exist other than to line up pockets of the 'socialists' like GE.

Now, in full interest of disclosure, the company I co-own currently is riding high on USDA related contracts and I'm loving it. So as far as I am concerned, the feds can all go away other than crop insurance and farm subsidies ;-) Pays for my personal Mooney Bravo, my two houses and company's King Air 350 charter. Looking forward to our next 'company meeting' in Jackson Hole.

We all have money to buy airplanes and fly them specifically because the government provides a framework and services in which to make and keep our money unlike say Haiti or Afganistan and it all costs a pretty penny. And on top of everything, they have to keep the poor from feeling like the world would be a better place if all of the sudden most of us would find ourselves about a foot shorter. There is a lot more of them than us.

Let's all be glad our poor so dumb and high on the lord, unlike let's say the greeks that nobody is burning our hangars quite yet. Nowhere else in the world do the poor vote against their interest like they do in the good old US of A country after all founded on the idea of all man are created equal other than the pesky African visitors who upon arrival felt that the work schedule and pay rates were a bit gruelling.

Andy

[Cruiser]

Quote: jetdriven

snip....     GE, Bank of America, exxon, why they have the highest corporate tax rate in the world!  But if you have 99 cents in your ashtray, that's more than all those companies paid. In tax last year.  Spare me the shit, they didn't pay a thing.  But lets go further and let them write off the entire cost of a gulf stream 550.   Fifty million dollars.   I'd sure love to write off my aircraft.    

 .....snip

 

 

There are about 6,000,000 companies in the USA that pay taxes, you point out three that didn't. What about the rest of them? It is political Bull$hit qouting this stuff that is implying something that is not at all true.

Just like this crap about Warren Buffett's taxes. Warren Buffett pays the same 15% capital gains tax that you and I pay on our capital gains. And the same 15% HIS SECRATARY pays on her capital gains. Unless he is cheating on taxes per the IRS rules what is wrong with that? Why is following the rules somehow made to seem wrong? 

[msmos]

Quote: scottfromiowa

Randy,

You are high on slogans. We spent more on air conditioning last year in Iraq, $22 billion than on NASA, 18.7 billion. Social Security, the giant red evil, brought in $819 billion, with only $695 billion paid out. How is that for a surplus. We collected a total of $1.1 billion of federal income taxes and spent most of it between the DOE (663 billion), Homeland Security (42 billion) and Justice (26 billion), three departments that really have no reason to exist other than to line up pockets of the 'socialists' like GE.

Now, in full interest of disclosure, the company I co-own currently is riding high on USDA related contracts and I'm loving it. So as far as I am concerned, the feds can all go away other than crop insurance and farm subsidies ;-) Pays for my personal Mooney Bravo, my two houses and company's King Air 350 charter. Looking forward to our next 'company meeting' in Jackson Hole.

We all have money to buy airplanes and fly them specifically because the government provides a framework and services in which to make and keep our money unlike say Haiti or Afganistan and it all costs a pretty penny. And on top of everything, they have to keep the poor from feeling like the world would be a better place if all of the sudden most of us would find ourselves about a foot shorter. There is a lot more of them than us.

Let's all be glad our poor so dumb and high on the lord, unlike let's say the greeks that nobody is burning our hangars quite yet. Nowhere else in the world do the poor vote against their interest like they do in the good old US of A country after all founded on the idea of all man are created equal other than the pesky African visitors who upon arrival felt that the work schedule and pay rates were a bit gruelling.

Andy

[DaV8or]

Quote: msmos

Oh he's sober Mr. Iowa, and he's flyin' a Bravo.  From what I've seen of your posting on this list you're obviously one of the dumbshits he's referring to here, and since you're one who worships hard working money accumulators ... maybe you should listen to him.  So stash yer bible and yer gun and keep on your hard work to keep us (and I mean the royal 'us' not the 'we the people' us) great!

"Good grief" indeed.  Charley Brown for chief philosopher!  Charley tells me this list isn't worth the time!!

[scottfromiowa]

Quote: msmos

Are you F%$#ing sober?  I have no words for this other than...No thank you to my Citabria ride.  Good grief.

[DaV8or]

Quote: M20F

Getting rid of all foreign aid (along with anything that wasn't defense/entitlement related) would have zero impact on the federal budget.  In addition the beneficiary of a lot of foreign aid are US companies that sell stuff to the US government to give away.  Same the the military adventures, if we didn't have troops in Korea we would have them someplace else or we would have 30,000 people unemployed.  You can figure out how to balance the federal budget on the back of a napkin over a cup of coffee, figuring that out though and it actually being done are two different things.  Greece is a good example of that.

Similarly when you cut military spending then you lay off 10,000 workers at Boeing, who then leave the tax pool, and then the revenues go down.  Really is a complicated problem, good luck to those trying to figure it out.  I just keep buying bottled water and gas masks until then :-)

 

 

[scottfromiowa]

Just to be clear I worship no man.  I read, but rarely the bible.  I have been called a dumbshit before, but NEVER to my face.  Yes, I do keep my guns stashed, but "handy".  I respect all that are independent, work for a living whether they have achieved success in the monetary sense is unimportant to me...that they (like I wish the government would) live within their means and don't tread on me is golden...

I patently reject the notion that taxes are O.K. if they don't impact me.  I believe that Aviation IS BEING TARGETED by the current administration and personal freedom to express your beliefs and be PC is ruinous to individual freedom.  Class warefare is nothing new...unfortunate for the current administration is that their desire to rid the US of affordable fossil fuels is about 150-200 years early and as most vote with their pocketbooks they are doomed.  Just remember "an @$$hole with a small carbon footprint is STILL an @$$hole.  I envy no man and certainly bare no anamosity toward one based on his/her success or lack there-of.  One of my best friends is of modest means, but works hard and provides for his family...he and I are BOTH living the American Dream.