Americans want EVERYTHING, but they want it FREE

I simply cannot understand the downright PANIC at the thought of paying taxes..

Do most people live in a house ..for free??
Do they give the food away at the grocery??
Do gas stations give gasoline away??
Is College free??
Do construction people just build bridges & roads because it's fun??
Do you just pick a new car from the dealer's lot and drive it away..for free??
When you go to a restaurant, do they serve you steak & lobster, just because they like the way you look??


Stuff that's important COSTS MONEY..

The problem is not how MUCH we pay..It's how they WASTE it.

One would think, that by the time a country has been around as long as we have, that the folks that run things would have figured out a few things.

The "government" only has the money that WE send in as taxes, and the tariffs that they levy.

There is a finite pile o'cash.

There are things that a country "owes" to its citizens, and there are things that the citizens owe to their country.

We need the government to do the things that we cannot do individually.

Those things cost money, and we should be willing to pay for them.

We need a priority system for the national budget, just like we do in our family budget.

Every citizen in the country should have:

food
decent shelter
a job (or means of support for their family)
health care
education for their young
a reliable transportation system
a secure old age (free from poverty)


If those were the FIRST things we tackled as a country, we would have far less money to waste on making mischief with other countries.

We are the UNITED states of America, and when all the money is pooled, the government then portions it out to the states, as needed..

Right now Wyoming is getting a disproportionate amount of Homeland Security money...(more than New York )according to population).. That's not exactly fair, but that's the way it IS..

Florida got the Lion's share of FEMA money this year, but in other years, it might be another state, so we pool OUR tax money for Florida this year..and another place next time..

The people we pay to divide up the tax money WORK FOR US. They need to start being accountable to US for a change..

I can sense a change in the country. To some it may look like fear, but I see it as a seething anger..

Anger for NOT protecting us, when they have had all that money ..year after year..and they wasted it.

Anger for oversimplification of the dangerous issues that we face as a nation...

Anger for ignoring OUR needs, in favor of handouts for their rich pals..

It's been many years since I have seen this much unrest, and the public may have just reached the limit of their patience..

Time will tell..

we need to change the way we look at taxes, they are SERVICE FEES...

I am serioous

I've said much the same thing to others. I called into a radio show once when a caller was whining about healthcare and the "cost" and how he didn't want his taxes supporting anything but himself.

I made the point, and they read it over the air, that WE ALL POOL OUR TAXES. Taxes are what pays for all sorts of services. Police, fire depts, forestry, schools, teachers, hospitals, roads (used to :eyes:), coast guard, bail outs, research and development, postal service, judges/courts, parks services,military, NASA, CIA, FBI, politicians, government, social services, etc etc...

It's the WASTE that is the problem, along with the entrenched burearacracies.

All this whining about taxes is a smokescreen the repugs put out there to jerk everyone's chain. Of course if you start talking about cutting back the WAY government uses our taxes..the RW starts cutting the programs that hurt people first...instead of cutting out pork and general waste. It galls me to think of all the money we spent on the Intelligence agencies over the years and this last four years shows just how inept they really are. They can find a dope dealer but they can't (or won't) find the person with the goddamned Anthrax!


"IT'S THE GOV. WASTE not the taxes, stupid." New Slogan :)

You want to stun a no-tax ranter? Ask them what service they will give up to reduce taxes. With them it is always the other person whose services need to be cut.
No-taxers are usually the first to call the city, state or feds when their services are slow.

America has been brainwashed to resent all taxes since Reagan.
Why they don't resent corporate fraud and waste is a mystery to me.

Except that Welfare and other programs for the needy take up about 8% of the budget.

A third goes to Social Security. A third goes to Defense. The rest goes to those programs for non-poor people, like college aid and highway building.

And some non-trivial part of it went to build the Internet.

--bkl

After the debate, I asked my SO....WHY do Americans have such an aversion to tax? (While bitching about bad services....)

:shrug:

DemEx

For years, people have been brainwashed into associating taxes as bad. The word alone causes most people to cringe. Look at all the bs media coverage around April 15th. As if we don't pay taxes year round.

I also don't think most people understand the relation of taxes to services, ie they will relish their bogus tax cut, but be the first to bitch when DMV fees go up or college tuitions increase.

could fulfill all our needs.

"One would think, that by the time a country has been around as long as we have, that the folks that run things would have figured out a few things."

Even though we have been around, as a society, for a while, we are still a society in its adolescence at best. Also, since we simply refuse to learn about history and other cultures (that would be beneath us), we ignore the fact that many of the older cultures (European and Asian) went through their growing pains a very long time ago, in terms of the kind of rabid ethnocentrism that leads inevitably to war and injustice. We thumb our collective noses at those whose experience would be valuable to us, and laugh while we are doing it.
We are the errant child of the international community, and sadly enough, we are proud of it. Such children simply love the basic tenets of social Darwinism, so it is no surprise that we are so loathe to surrender any of our 'hard earned' dollars to support the programs that provide social safety nets to those who are on the periphery.

a spoiled teenaged nation ...and it shows.. we are selfish and shortsighted.

The sad thing is that we waste so much money "hiring" people who pretend to know how to administrate, and they almost always let us all down:(