TED Conversations

Jimmy Strobl

TEDCRED 50+
TED Translator

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

What are the best and worst laws and practices of your region/state/country

Answer as many as you'd like.

Topics: law
+4
Share:

Closing Statement from Jimmy Strobl

Many great thoughts in this conversation, I wish that they still had open-ended Conversations...

I had fun, learned much!

Anyway, It's "impossible" to summarize it, sorry about that.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • Harro Penk

    • +4
    Sep 24 2012: I just thought of one that comes up every now and again in my personal discussions with others. One of the worst practices in the US of A: Allowing taxes which are collected for specific programs to end up in the collective tax fund of various municipalities, state, and federal entities. For example, I live in NY. We have one of the highest tax burdens in the US- usually #1 or #2 every year for at least a decade now. Plus there are additional fees and taxes thrown into our lives all day long. Take, for instance, bridge tolls: Down in NY City the tolls for bridges are over $8.00 now (approaching $9, I believe). For that kind of money, and given the 24/7 rediculous amount of traffic, one might be tempted to believe that NY City's bridges are the best maintained bridges on the planet. We should be able to eat off of the bridges' roads, and they should be painted in 24k gold by now?! But no, potholes, rust, broken lights, delipetated toll booths. Usually at least one lane is broken down all year around. How come? Easy - our political machine takes the vast majority of the tolls and applies them to various pet projects outside of anything to do with road maintenance.
    Every penny of every tax should be directly allocated to a particular program, a particular cause. This way, if they wanted to raise taxes or - just by chance - lower them, we would all know what's going on. It's a very basic, vital idea. Taxpayers should know exactly what happens to every cent, not just get graph of TAX IN >> TAX OUT like we do every year. Statements should be simple to follow, and politicians should stop playing with our taxes like it's fake Monopoly (c) money. I think this would go a long way towards fixing financial problems, especially in my state, plus - it would finally let politician do what they're supposed to do. Fix crisis and look out for our taxes. Stop playing board games with taxes.
    • thumb

      chen xin

      • +1
      Sep 25 2012: we are the same .the government just charge too much from us citizens .i think we should let the government open .that is my idea

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.