MGK, thanks for once again showing how the Dems live in a static environment. The tax rates you posted, and the conclusions you draw, are bogus. There are dozens of factors besides tax rates that effect things like health care, education, and crime rates. For example, Singapore has one of the best education systems in the world and a very low crime rate. But the low crime rate is far more a result of a very liberal use of a death penalty and other harsh physical penalties than education. And it's easy to have national healthcare when you're leveraging most of your healthcare costs off of the United States.
And speaking as someone who's spent time in 17 of the 24 countries listed, I can tell you that you're comparing apples and oranges when you compare them to the United States. For example:
1. Most sewer systems in Japan are open-air gutters running along the streets and draining into rivers and lakes. Polution is abysmal.
2. Most security and police functions in Italy are carried out my private contractors called Vigilantes.
3. The Netherlands reduced drug criminals by legalizing drugs. Now their healthcare costs for treating addicts is eating up their budgets.
4. The United Kingdom's national healthcare system is the worst in the G-7.
5. Iceland's government provides little service, no national defense, and alcoholism is at epidemic proportions.
6. Turkey has a military where you are drafted and given nothing but room, board, and a cigarette ration for four years. You don't get paid until year five. Plus sanitation is as bad as in Japan.
Yes, some of these countries may exceed the US in one or two areas, but on the whole they are all way behind us in regards to what the government does and how the people live. Not that that's a bad thing though.
As for well paid cops, firemen, teachers, and military... forget it. You just can't afford to pay a lot for something you need a lot of. No matter how well designed a paperclip is, you're not going to pay $5 a piece for them. Anything that you need a lot of you're going to need to pay less for, or, you'll have to generate a lot of revenue to afford it. How much money does it take to have a well paid teacher? $50,000? $75,000? $100,000? Teachers in SMC start at about $32k (and that's just salary... benefits and taxes add about 50% to that cost), and a livable wage in this area is about $60k, so if they are to be well paid, let's take them up to that minimal level. So that's a bump of about 47%. Now, since you bumped the starting salary up to $60k, new teachers will be making far more than a lot of established teachers, so how do you think that will effect morale? Now, you've got to jack their salaries up as well or the teacher's unions will cause all sorts of mayhem (remember that the teacher union people make their money based on how much teachers are paid, so they're going to be real interested in this.) Next, how long do you think the PhD principals, who have been in the system for decades, are going to take the fact that teachers are making more than they are? Guess what? Time to bump their salaries too. And don't forget the janitors and secretaries, they'll want a cut as well.
So... where are we at? The salaries for St. Mary's County educators in 2003 were about $3 million for administration, $8.6 million for support folks, and $43 million for teachers. An increase of just ten percent would mean a need to find an additional $5.5 million dollars. To get teachers up to a well-paid status, and keep the other screamers happy, you're looking at finding about $25 million dollars.... and that's just for teachers. Cops start at about $27k, so they'll need even more of a bump than the teachers (but thankfully there are less of them.) But it really doesn't matter as you'll never find the money for just the teachers yet alone anyone else.
Are teachers, cops, firemen, and the military underpaid? Yes, without a doubt. Do they render valuable services? Yes, without a doubt. But the sad fact is that these folks, while valuable, generate expenditures and not revenues (traffic tickets aside), so they are not self-supporting positions like someone working in a revenue generating position like you find in the private sector. These people have to make due on what revenues are available from the tax base, and unless you want to drastically increase the tax revenues, their salaries are going to be well lower than those in the private sector. That's why I chose to hang up my uniform after ten years and become a defense contractor. I think it's great to want teachers, cops, and firemen being paid what they're worth, but they'll always be paid based on funds available and that'll never be enough.
I don't mean to "rip to shreds" an argument from a liberal, but most of the entitlement mess we're in right now was caused by Liberals trying to get votes and has developed an entire class of people who rely on the government to get by. No one wants to see underpaid teachers or children starving in the streets, but the fact is that these two conditions have been brought about by entitlement spending. If we didn't have so many people feeding at the government entitlement trough we would have more money to pay teachers, cops, and firemen. Maybe they wouldn't be "well paid" but they would be better off than they are now.
