Garage Sales

As I was out for my morning walk (4 miles in 1:11:12, average 17:48 per mile, 3.37 mph; hey I'm 67 years old, don't knock it!!), I was surveying the neighborhood and counted 15 garage sales. A light bulb suddenly turned on in my mind (where else you ask??); that is, your friendly Government is missing a continously lactating cash cow. Why not impose a 10 percent tax on all garage sales revenues and use it all to reduce the budget deficit? Now stay with me here. If the average garage sale brings in $500, that would be a whopping $50 generated by every garage sale toward eliminating the deficit. I would estimate that there are 10 million garage sales in the U.S. every year, thus $500 million would be raised every year through garage sales only, to reduce or ultimately eliminate the deficit imposed upon us by our always, "we have your best interests in mind" lawmakers. Our deficit is said to be somewhere around $1.5 trillion (that's $1,500,000,000,000). If you divide 1.5 trillion by 500 million, that means that in 3,000 short years that the budget deficit would be eliminated, kaput, wiped out!

The whole point of this obvious exercise in futility, is to illustrate the absurdity of having a $1.5 trillion deficit in the first place, and that garage sales, bake sales or whatever "feel good" steps we take to reduce the deficit are like spitting in the ocean. The only way that we will ever get the deficit down to a manageable figure is to stop the fiscal insanity that is going on in Washington.

Please write your Congressman and Senator to tell them to keep the Bush tax cuts, do not let them sunset.

We need to get our economy going in high gear again, and this will be a first and meaningful step.

Failure to extend the Bush tax cuts will be another step in the never ending attempt by the Liberals and Socialists in our Government to bring our Country and our Democracy toward sunset.