So our masters in Trenton have ordered us to increase the pay for our police by 15% over five years. As Mayor Pringle pointed out in Wednesday night’s council meeting, that will use up the lion’s share of the 2% property tax increase allowed by the state. There will have to be cutbacks and possibly layoffs to make up the difference. I would like to see cutbacks and possibly layoffs anyway, but I wanted them so we could maybe cut our taxes or at least have no increase. Instead all that money will be handed over to the police. We in the private sector, who are struggling in the train wreck of an economy that Washington and Trenton have produced for us, will be asked to sacrifice even more to add to the comfort of the government worker.
It’s going to get worse. Our federal taxes will be going up to pay for Washington’s spending orgy. Our state taxes will be going up to pay for Trenton’s spending orgy. Our property taxes will be going up too, almost totally because of Trenton’s interference in our affairs. Our pay will not be going up We’ll be lucky just to keep our jobs.
There is no economic recovery. There will not be one. Government has completely smothered the economy. Any GDP growth is due to the growth in money supply. The economy is stagnant and will continue to be so until we return to a free market economy and limit the power of government and public worker unions. The money spent on fancy new street lights, sidewalks and a fancy new marina will be wasted because nobody except government workers will have any money to spend.
Mayor Pringle could not have been more clear about the difficulty Belmar faces with next year’s budget. I fear it will get much worse in the years to come. The Fed is recklessly inflating the money supply to prop up real estate prices so they can pretend their bailed-out banks are solvent. House prices are either going to drop anyway, triggering a rush of reassessment demands, or they are going to stay about the same while the price of everything else rises dramatically due to the Fed’s debasement of the dollar. High gold prices are the canary in the coal mine for price inflation. As of this writing gold stands at a record $1280/ounce. Imagine trying to put together a budget with 10% or even 20% inflation and falling house values.
I don’t know what I’ll be able to do as a councilman to save us from this potential disaster. At least I recognize the severity of the problems that we face.
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