Highland Beach Condos, Boca Raton Homes, Boca Raton Real Estate Advice and Opinions

I saw this email circulating around and I had to share.

How many zeros in a billion?
This is too true to be funny.
The next time you hear a politician use the
word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the 'politicians' spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it's releases.

A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B..
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C..
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age...

D.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E.
A billion dollars ago was only
8 hours and 20 minutes,
at the rate our government
is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain...
let's take a look at New Orleans ..
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D)
is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...
what does it mean?
A.
Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans  
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.

B..
Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.

C..
Or... if you are a family of four...
your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D. C
HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??

Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax  
State Income Tax  
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax  
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration T ax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'

And I still have to
press '1'
for English.
I hope this goes around the
U S A at least 100 times
What the heck happened????? 

With the torrid pace of the financial crisis looming, and the real estate market continuing to depreciate who are we better off with running the country when it comes to our economy?  I do believe that the war, health care, foreign policy, and other issues are important, but for me this has to be our #1 priority.

Everyone likes to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to regulating the financial system.  I do not believe that the financial system failed.  It is the people running the large financial institiutions that failed us.  Many of them as recently as December of 2007 received end of the year bonuses of 3 and 4 million when they were losing billions of dollars.  I thought you receive bonuses based on performance not based on just being employed.  How do we fix this?  I am not sure, but I know that banks, insurance companies have to not be regulated, but be accountable.  They or their employees are not held accountable.  Their should be guidelines, but I would not want our government to run our banks indefinitely.  It looks as though they may do so for a little while, but indefinitely this would not be good for our economy.  I do favor McCain's plan on boosting the economy.  McCain is cutting the revenue to the country while passing that savings on to you so you, and businesses can go ahead and spend more.  He is also increasing the revenue to more then make up the difference of lost revenue by being able to tax the extra revenue that businesses receive. 

In business there are 2 ways to increase your net income.  One is to cut expenses, and the other is to increase your revenue.  I would prefer to increase my revenue then to cut expenses.  I do this in my real estate career, and it works.  Look at who actually is making the money in this market.  It is those people who are spending the money that is making the money. 

I absolutely love Obama's appearance of intelligence and charisma, but I do not like the way Obama wants to eliminate the capital gains exemption for primary residences and the inheritance tax exemption which provides currently for tax only after 2 million.  We need to increase jobs, and increase revenue by lowering taxes so that we can spend more so that the businesses will start to thrive to employ more people, and make more money.  It does not make sense to me to lower taxes on the middle class, while raising taxes to people who make over $250,000, investors and businesses.  What kind of effect is that going to have on our normal consumer.  A huge one.  Like ROnald Reagan's trickle down economy.  It will trickle down to the everyday consumer in the form of higher costs for food, and consumer products.  You will also see a decrease in customer service becauase businesses will be forced to reduce their employees, and their wages. 

What do you think?   Please shed some light on this.