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An authoritarian on CNN offered his opinion on the the tax increase for the most wealthy in the Obama budget: "Well, you can punish the rich if you want to…".Note the frame: paying/not paying taxes as reward or punishment (basic to the authoritarian mind). It isn’t.
Paying taxes is a privilege. Making enough money to help pay for the services we all enjoy and the wealthy use more of than the rest of us is a privilege. Paying for the support and care for our people in uniform is a privilege. Paying to help young people get a good education, which will most likely improve their lot and the lot of most Americans is a privilege. Paying to help people meet their basic needs and to sustain them if they are disabled is a privilege. Payroll taxes help support the elderly and disabled as well as providing them with medical care. Paying them is a privilege. Paying to see that food and drugs are safe is a privilege. It benefits all Americans. Well, those that can afford food and drugs.
The next time you hear another shill for the rich trying to make you think they are being punished by paying taxes, tell them it’s a privilege and you’d happily switch places with them and pay more.
8 Comments
Indeed!
I would still love to see the results of self-directed tax contribution. What if taxpayers had a line-item veto for their tax dollars?
Wonder what our true national priorities look like?
That would be bad. People would direct the money to their pet ‘pork’ and the stuff like schools, roads, and consumer safety and the like would not get funded because people (a lot of them anyhow) don’t seem to understand where these things come from. They are just there and they don’t need to pay for them.
Likewise, VA money, Medicare, foodstamps and WIC and headstart would all disappear. Any kind of research, public safety,
I can’t think of a program that would survive except maybe defense. The country would be in a shambles – and that is precisely why they don’t do that I would guess.
Paying taxes is a good thing – it’s the price we pay for the opportunities we have simply by being born here.
You said it so well, I agree entirely.
I don’t know what palnet you came from, but if you know anything about history. One of the prinicples of our founding fathers,was “no taxation without representation”.
Why do you think tea was dumped into Boston Harbor…the tea tax. One of the reasons there was a revolution was because of taxes. The republicans were totally iresponsible
fiscally. Now the democrats are making the republicans look like choir boys. President Clinton did one heck of a job
both with the economy and and leaving a surplus. The way Obama talked this is where we were heading. Instead he has blown it with the 3.5 trillion dollar budget. Should the rich pay more sure, but everyone should pay what they can.
I’ll be D**med if this country gets sold down the road and there is no America for my kids. a huge tax bill and and
a wholly owned subsidary of China. No where elese in the world would a country borrow from one country and then double the amount of foreign aid it gives to other countries. It’s insane and if you love this country you will speak for it and our kids not for some political party,
that happens to be on a power trip right now.
I agree with you.
Taxes are our opportunity to help America and our entire nation.
Too bad our nation has become so self absorbed with money.
Thanks for writing this essay.
I have no idea where YOU get your information, or what plaent YOU came from but your information is not only incomplete, your conculusion is OPPOSITE the reasons for the boston tea party
a large contributer to king george could not compete in the thirteen colonies because of the import tax
king george LOWERED taxes on the east india import company, and the colonies went BALISTIC
THEY knew you HAD to have protectionism and THEY knew taxes HELP the economy
and THAT is why we had the boston tea party
BECAUSE THE FOUNDERS REVOLTED AGAINST LOWERING TAXES
the old, “no taxation without representation” is a cute slogan but ‘raising taxes” was not the problem, LOWERING taxes is what the founders WOULD NOT STAND FOR
bobhenry’s response reminds of that great line from the princess bride when he used the boston tea party as his example of who does and does not know history and the boston tea party;
“I do not think that means what you think it means”
quite so here
now I want to comment on the original post
obviously, in a correctly taxed economy, the more money we make the higher percentage of tax we need to pay
and obviously, the more we are taxed, the more money we’ve made and that is indeed a sign of success
however the term “tax” is decieving, the term should really be “useage fee”
we need taxes to provide vital services that we could never afford if they were private, for instance the roads and bridges, school, parks, the water go our houses, the electricity to our houses, the police the fire dept, national security, the military, etc
contrary to corporate marketing, government provided services of “the commons” is FAR less expensive then if provided privately
when a person acquires more wealth then others they have used an exonentially bigger derivitive the economy and “the commons”, they must pay that exonential differance in the services they’ve used
for example, home depot uses the local roads thousands of times more then the people that use their store, without those roads home depot would not have too many customers
the same is true for the electricity to their store and the same thing is true for the economy itself
assets are finite, when one person amasses more then others it becomes exponentially more difficult to replace those assets as well
for instance, if an undergroudn stream provides 100 gallons a day and one person wants to use 85 percent of that stream, it is exponentially more difficult for the others to get enough water and that useage must be payed for by somebody
it should obviously be payed by the company or people who are using the greater proportion of assets
these are points that need to be made, taxes should be called useage fees
in addition, I wish each and every tax had an accounting requirement, so we could see if the tax pays for it’s supposed purpose, if it pays more then is needed or if it does not pay enough
then it would be hard to over tax and harder for industry to remove those useage fees