Government costs money. The protections that society provides, as agreed upon by “We the People” aren’t free. The Army isn’t free, public roads aren’t free, emergency services aren’t free, schools aren’t free. To pay for these things, government has been given the authority (once again, by “We the people”) to levy taxes.
Under this structure, the question is not whether or not we pay taxes, but how much, and for what services.
The United States, given the size of it’s population and economy has one of the lowest individual tax rates in the industrialized world.
Of course, that doesn’t stop us from spending more money than all of these countries. Perhaps you’ve heard, but the national debt is up to 10 TRILLION dollars. In the last 8 years, our administration has done two things (among others)
- Lowered the highest marginal income tax rate to 35%
- Gone from a budget surplus to nearly a 1 trillion dollar per year deficit.
Do I need to draw you a freakin’ map?
To the argument of “It’s our money! We deserve to keep it!”
Yes, you earned the money. Of course, we paid for the roads that you take to work, the infrastructure that allows your to enjoy electricity and clean water without having to produce it yourself, and the police that keep you safe at night. We also chipped in 700 BILLION dollars recently to keep your investments from going in the tank.
If you think you can do it all on your own, you’re wrong.
If you don’t like the things that government spends it’s money on, you get a say-so. You get to vote on the folks who are going to spend those tax dollars. You get to help decide where the money goes. Stop acting like “Government is THEM”. Government is YOU, it’s all of us.
But if that won’t persuade you, then how about this?
Using numbers from 2007
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending)
- Education: 90 billion
- Unemployment and Welfare: 290 billion
- Community Development: 27 billion
Total: 407 billion
- Government Bailout of Wall Street: 700 billion.
Tell me again about “redistribution”? In fact, the bailout was more than any individual budgetary category in the Federal budget including Social Security and National Defense. You could even throw in the budgets for the Justice Department (43 billion), Environmental activities (EPA, etc… 33 billion), Foreign Affairs (32 Billion), Agriculture (27 Billion), Science and Technology (25 Billion), Energy (20 Billion) and General Government Activities (20 Billion) and STILL not add up to the size of the Wall Street bailout.
Government is not “Robin Hood”. Government exists to perform functions in a scale that is typically more efficient and effective than if that function was performed in the private sector. We may disagree on what those functions are, but it is indisputable that we must pay for the functions that government performs whether or not we agree with how they perform them. As long as there is government, there will be taxes. A 10 trillion dollar debt means that we have not paid our collective tab.
Or that our government is acting like a teenager with a new credit card while it’s parents are away in the Bahamas, and tossing money that it doesn’t have away. Probably a fair amount of both.
Post a Comment