NJ TAX SOLUTION: AX 14,000 STATE JOBS!
By Gordon Bishop (09/05/06)
New Jersey government is broke. So are most of New Jersey’s taxpayers.
So what to do? Downsize state government so more and more workers, families and businesses will not continue to flee from the Garden State’s most taxed state in the nation.
New Jersey’s property taxes are twice the national average. Housing costs are more than 50 percent higher. Health care, auto insurance and utility costs also are substantially higher in New Jersey.
New Jersey’s leading economist, Jim Hughes of Rutgers University, said New Jersey’s economy is in its worst condition since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
So what does New Jersey’s government do? Increase the state budget by some $2 billion, instead of cutting it by $2 billion. Add to that a 3.5 percent increase in business taxes and an 18 percent increase in the state’s sales tax and scores of other hidden taxes and state fees, and what you have is an economy and a state government on the brink of bankruptcy.
The solution? Downsize government like the private sector does every day to survive in a competitive global economy. If businesses, workers and taxpayers can downsize to survive, so must government.
As a 68-year-old born and bred native of New Jersey, I am absolutely ashamed of my home state. What is happening in our stupid, selfish government only increases the number of “Jersey Jokes” by comedians and talk show hosts on national radio and television, as well as the declining print media.
New Jersey is a classic failure in how not to run a government! Yet New Jersey’s dominate liberal party voters continue to keep their public officials in office to the bitter end.
After more than a century of liberalism in state and federal governments, you can see the results in the once great State of New Jersey. Taxpayers and businesses are leaving to neighboring states like Delaware and Pennsylvania, where they can live at half the cost in the dying Garden State.
There’s hope on the horizon. Three Jersey Shore lawmakers have proposed a logical and sensible solution to their state’s sinking ship: Eliminate some 14,000 state jobs and save cash – lots of cash, at least a half-billion dollars.
The average salary and benefits of a state employee is $ 68,427. By eliminating some 14,000 bureaucrats in all state departments, from agriculture to treasury over a four-year period, the state can reduce the oppressively heavy burden on our workers and families.
Most of the jobs in state government are political: “To the victor belongs the spoils.” Except the victors in recent years have been liberals who could care less about the taxpayers and businesses who create the state’s wealth and pays the bills of a government out of control.
The New Jersey State Employee Reduction Plan is the brainchild of the state’s Jersey Shore legislators: Senator Leonard T. Connors Jr., Assemblyman Christopher J. Connors and Brian E. Rumpf, all Republicans who represent Ocean County.
Unfortunately, New Jersey’s state government is controlled by the liberal wing of the Democrat Party. The State Legislature, the State Administration and the State Supreme Court are all in the hands of the liberal politicians.
Does anyone really believe that these liberals are going to lay off those they have hired to keep the state government under the control of liberalism?
Only a miracle or an economic disaster can make the State Employee Reduction Plan a reality in the deep blue state of New Jersey.
At the moment, the current state’s business climate is now ranked 49th in the nation, only one-step away from “dead last” in the nation’s economy!
America’s founders launched a Tax Revolution in 1776 because of taxes on tea and other taxes imposed by the King of England (remember the Boston Tea Party?). In those colonial years, there were no income taxes, sales taxes or countless other taxes feeding a fat bureaucracy. Looking back, those were the wonderful years of freedom, liberty and opportunity.
What America and New Jersey desperately need is another 1776 tax revolt that gave birth to this once great nation.
Hey, since New Jersey was the “crossroads of the American Revolution,” New Jersey can lead the next revolution by adopting the State Employee Reduction Plan. It’s a good start, voters. Go for it!
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