Last week, at the Klueless Kos Kids’ Klubhouse, diarist ‘TheBookPolice’ opined about how he wants, nay, DEMANDS, that he pay higher taxes.
I Want Higher Taxes: A Deconstruction
Let me just say it straight out: I WANT HIGHER TAXES.
What I do not want is government corruption and misuse of my tax dollars. When money is given to the government, the intent is that services are rendered on the taxpayer’s behalf. It’s a financial transaction, not protection money.
If I pay $5 per gallon of gasoline, and $3 of that is tax, and I get a free college education in return, that’s cool with me.
If I pay 7% sales tax, but my state gives me free health care, I’m not going to complain.
Obviously the guy is delusional. He has been convinced that if he gives a dollar to the government, he is going to get a dollar (or more) back. He wants the government to act as his investment banker. “I give you thousands of dollars of tax money and then you give me ‘free’ healthcare.”
What a maroon!
He goes on to say that because the Dems have to preface every one of the statements on taxes with “nobody wants higher taxes” that the Repubs have “Hijacked” the tax debate. in fact, if you follow this link, you’ll see that he even put up a poll on the topic and that all but 12 of the 499 voters agree with him.
Once again, his over-inflated self-esteem has shown him, and them, to be idiots.
The real answer to his poll question, one that he didn’t offer to those answering is that, really, nobody wants higher taxes.
Of course, if you’re a Democrat, that is simply preposterous and it just goes to show how stupid most of the people are and how badly they need your leadership to show them that that they DO want higher taxes.
Government is not an investment. Up actually is up, not down.
Deal with it, lefties. If you want to pay higher taxes, the IRS will not turn you down. But leave me the hell out of your insipid plans.
I think maybe he would like to have his wealth “redistributed.” I hear you can get a loaf of bread and a fine bowl of gruel for that in some places. And great job security as you and your comerades walk through 10 feet of snow with picks in hand under the friendly and polite gaze of a Commissar.
So let me get this straight, he wants higher taxes if he can be assured the government won’t waste it and it won’t be corrupt. Talk about an unobtainable pre-conditions.
Of course, I am sure if the Democrats were in control, there would be not problem we cause we know the Democrats are completely trustworthy and they can make the US Government waste free. (I almost got that out without spewing Dr. Pepper on my computer screen. dang.)
Maintaining your current level of cynicism must be exhausting. Do you even remember when you lost faith in the American Ideal?
Thanks for padding my hitcount. If you think I have any actual power in this situation, and that you would have to ask to be “counted out,” then boy are you overestimating my importance. I’m just a person with a keyboard and an opinion. I make no claims of having a brain, because the commenters preceding me prove that it’s not a requirement to post on the Internets.
Well, Mr. BP, your snark aside, I would have to say that your willingness to believe that if you gave more of your money to the gov’t in return for services you deem as ‘rights’ shows that you haven’t a clue as to what your money can buy on the free market.
Which also seems to show your admitted lack of a brain, or at least your naivete towards the history of government.
Do you know that all one must do to sustain the status of a ‘charitable organization’ is show that 10% of your donations go out to those you claim to be helping.
Ten cents on the dollar, Mr. BP. That is all.
And do you know why it is only $.10? Because if you can give out one penny for every dime you bring in, you are beating the government’s distribution ability.
The best the government has been able to turn out in the last 40 years is $.09 for every dollar taken, and that is by Nixon, Clinton and Bush II. Carter only managed $.07 and Reagan/Bush I $.08.
Like the title of the post says, put your money in a better place. You can do no worse than your own pocket.
A great woman once said that (if I may paraphrase), “To take money from one man and give it to another through the power of the arsenal of government is to enslave the man who has his money taken.”
I thought ‘progressives’ were against slavery, but I have been wrong before.
I like America. Taxes must be paid. To try to shirk that responsibility is to demonstrate little faith in our system of government. To say that we should give as little as possible to our government, and expect little good in return, is to give in a cynicism that Grover Norquist-types have been fomenting for years, if not decades.
“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Think about that flag you righties wave ad nauseum. Think about the military you parade at every chance. Think about all the symbols of patriotism you use to make the American public feel alternately guilty and afraid, and tell me how a mindset that wants to destroy our federal government is in any way protecting America.
Your complaints are based on the assumption that we can never purify our federal government. You take as given the idea that our tax dollars will always and inevitably be wasted. That’s a shame, because it would be a lot more productive and hopeful to work towards changing that reality (and yes, it is currently a reality. I regret that so much of my tax dollar is wasted by going towards killing civilians in Iraq).
It would be so much less jaded to work towards federal fiscal responsibility than to shout from swamped rooftops that this is what the federal government can do for you, New Orleans! See how feeble it is? Pay no attention to the budget cuts that the current administration has forced through to pay for its windmill-tilting endeavor in the Middle East!
And, I’d love to know which “great woman” you’re paraphrasing. I’m expecting it to be a cleaned up version of something Ann Coulter vomited, but I remain hopeful that it could have been from someone intelligent.
And lastly, don’t talk to me about a “free” market. If you think I have buying power against a massive health care conglomerate, or that my risk assessment is in any way comparable with that of a behemoth HMO, then you’re deluded. I’ll take a fair market over a “free” one any day.
Dear THEBOOKPOLICE:
Only in America is a 8 percent real year to year increase considered a “cut”.
It is obvious you have no faith in “the market” but you do in “the government”. Thanks for clearing that up, comrade.
Sincerely,
Saintknowitall
I’m glad to see that you like America BP, I love America and sincerely believe it is the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth.
I also agree that taxes must be paid. Nothing is free, especially freedom.
But you and I disagree what taxes should go towards. The very first mandate of a government is to defend its citizens. I would happily pay the taxes I currently do if they went strictly to providing for my defense, though I doubt I could guess what all that money would go to.
Welfare, medicare/Medicaid, SSI and the slew of other federal programs are a waste of money and do not fall under the clause of ‘Providing for the general welfare’. One of them is a Ponzi scheme and the rest are taking money from one person and giving it to another (aka: the redistribution of wealth). Roads could be considered as ‘general welfare’ or, as Eisenhower saw it, linked to the nation’s defense. But most everything else is a waste of my tax money and does not fall under the mandate given to the government by its citizens.
We should be giving government only as much as it needs and expecting very little of it. To make yourself dependant on government is a fool’s errand. Government is a nameless, faceless and unsympathetic entity. To lay yourself at it’s feet and hope for its good graces is suicide. Government is not a giver “A Helping Handâ€, nor should it be expected to be as such.
Maybe you haven’t studied history and seen what governments that make it’s citizenry dependant on them have done, but I have.
Do you know that when New Orleans was hit by hurricanes in the 19th century, the Army came in and only searched for the dead to try and stem the spread of disease. There was no rush to spend millions of dollars to “rebuild†anything. In fact, the Army made people pay to use the tents the Army brought down.
It is not the feds responsibility to ‘rebuild’ anything that is not theirs (ie: port facilities, military installations, etc). The concept of personal responsibility means that it is the responsibility of property owners and local governments to cover that tab. If they aren’t insured, tough. If they can’t get insurance because they’re below sea level, maybe the insurance company has a point.
If an individual or group of individuals want to get together and give those effected their own money, that is their right, but it should in no way be ‘expected’ of them.
You cannot “Purify†government without destroying it. Government is a beast that will take every inch of power you give it and never give that inch up. Everyone who has supported a successful candidate has helped that candidate take more power for government.
Lincoln and FDR are supposed to be considered ‘great Presidents’, yet both of them suspended parts of the Constitution for the benefit of government. Lincoln was a racist who thought very little of ‘freeing the slaves’ and considered it as somewhat of an afterthought of the conflict. FDR threatened to expand the SCOTUS so that he could push through his agenda of national socialism if the batch sitting at the time didn’t.
Are either of these men truly great? Only if you forget a couple details.
While I tend to think of Norquist (and Coulter) as a flamethrower, he has the concept down: The government that governs best, governs least.
If I had my way, I would only hear from the government in three instances: When they protect the nation or the nation’s interests, when they rebate me money that I gave them but they haven’t used, and when they ask my opinion on election day. That was the way it was for the first 75 to 100 years of this country and it could be so again today.
I’m glad you let your pride shine through when you stated that you “regret that so much of my tax dollar (sic) is wasted by going towards killing civilians in Iraqâ€. Since you mentioned nothing else of the mission in Iraq, I am left to take it that that is truly what you think we are doing there and nothing else.
I’m quite positive that the vast majority of the men and women serving there are quite thankful that they do not have your support, if that is your attitude. I’m quite surprised that you felt so comfortable in saying that, but then I guess I only need look at those whom you consider compatriots to see where you get that from.
Our ‘Windmill Tilting Adventure in the Middle East†will cease in the not too distant future when the job is done, and guess what, if we get a real fiscally responsible person elected in 08, those budget cuts you cried about will stay gone. With the increased revenue from the tax cuts (yes, BP, if you cut taxes, the incoming amounts magically do increase, despite your failed economical thinking), the war spending lowered and those cuts staying cut, the deficit will be going bye-bye faster than you can write a diary post about it at Kos Kiddie Playland.
The woman I quoted was not Coulter, though you seem to wish it was her so that you can discount the statement in total just on the author; the woman was Ayn Rand. Rand, like Norquist and unlike you, was skeptical of government, and for good reason: she, unlike yourself, actually grew up under the thumb of an all encompassing government, which, like all governments given too much power, became tyrannical.
Do you truly think that the same entity that encompasses the IRS could run your healthcare, your physical well being, any better than they run the other departments of the government.
Think about this for a moment, please: your fellows at Kos railed against the fed holding back certification the pill that could stop unwanted pregnancies, yet you are willing to give this same entity the power over whether or not you will get the dialysis you need.
Do you read any of the socialized medicine horror stories from Canada or across the pond? If government takes over healthcare, those exact same stories will replay here. Your idea of a ‘fair market’ is nothing of the sort and you are deluded to think of it as such.
Making someone pay more because they have more is no more ‘fair’ than denying someone care because they cannot pay. All you are doing is switching the party being injured.
Let me fill you in a little known secret: America is still, though just barely, the land of opportunity. I grew up in a middle class household that could probably be considered on the lower end of the ‘middle’ scale. At 17, I was bored with school and home life and up and left. I became was what is nowadays called a ‘homeless youth’. I lived on the streets for three years, traveling mostly between Seattle and San Francisco. I took no handouts and expected no help with my chosen lifestyle. After getting tired of that lifestyle, and especially the people, I picked myself up, got a steady job and worked my way into where I am now, living better than I did as a child.
I am now considered to be in the top 10% of the field I work in, which I like to call “Map Geeksâ€. I command a decent wage and benefits package for my work and have a well-respected resume that says as such.
I did this in seven years.
Could I be the only one able to have done this? Absolutely not.
Why doesn’t everyone do this? Because they expect to be helped.
The entitlement attitude that encompasses the majority of folks who think as you do in this country kills initiative. They want a loan to go to an institution whose certificates are more often than not, not worth the paper they’re written on. They want free/subsidized everything and some of them even question why it takes so long to earn their place.
It is not government’s job to hand out loans for schooling or housing. It is nowhere in the Constitution. That was the mandate and it is not being followed.
I’d make mention of personal responsibility again, but I’m pretty sure you rolled your eyes the last time I did so.
Have fun in your ‘reality-based community’. I’ll be in the real world, making the best of what I can and dealing with the rest.
This is an argument that has little hope for resolution in this forum.
To be honest, I only found your critique of my post in a slightly vain Google search of my online handle.
I couldn’t disagree with you (analogkid) more on the main philosophical points you put forward. I agree with some, if not many, of your tangential claims (like Lincoln’s initial disinterest in emancipation), or the value of skepticism in government, or that I rolled my eyes at your exhortation of personal responsibility (it’s a banner that’s easy to waive and difficult to challenge).
Your initial post was pretty demeaning, and I responded in kind–perhaps not the best way to get the ball rolling. But you responded to my subsequent posts with an Internet-respectable amount of insult/”snark”, whereas your followers relied merely on attempted insults (like calling me comrade) or implied threats of internment.
Good luck with your endeavors. Don’t expect any further posts from me here; I’m not the kind of liberal that trolls the right wing looking to pick fights. The extent of my future involvement here will probably be to see what kind of bilious rage is visited upon me.
Let me leave, then, with this last comment. I think skepticism and pessimism are not very far apart; one encourages the examined life, the other encourages isolation and mistrust. Choose wisely.
And by the way, I worked all the way through college, which supplemented the federal aid I did receive, and now work for my state. Lest you think I sat on my couch and waited for aid, or that I’m not doing my part now.
Thanks for reading.