death and taxes
i had a nice, civil discussion of obama's tax proposals with a mccain-supporting coworker of mine today.
she maintains that it is ridiculous to tax people more simply because they make more money. she doesn't think people should be penalized for their success, and on that point i tend to agree with her.
but then she went on and on about people on welfare and how they just have 109098203984 kids and don't work and have nicer things than she does. hard as i tried to extricate myself from that diatribe, i just couldn't manage. but neither could i convince her that, while the welfare system is seriously flawed and needs to be addressed, it really has nothing to do with tax proposals. it was her unflagging example of her tax dollars busy about the business of being wasted, her example of where the funds should come from instead of tax cuts.
i'm not sure we can pay off the national bank of china with welfare reforms, though.
anyway, the point all of this brought me to is why do people insist on choosing the programs they do not care about as examples of their tax dollars at work when there are just as many excellent programs they do support out there? it seems a little small, but it's very commonplace. are people, by nature, that petty? i'd hate to think so.
i don't make untold sums of money. i barely make enough to pay my bills. but i'm a single, childless man who doesn't own his own home and due to tax implications can't even claim rent as a deduction. i get fucked over on taxes. you'd think i'd be as mad about it as she is.
but i think about taxes as a kind of insurance policy. i pay taxes so my roads don't break down, so the police can serve eviction notices to the victims of the subprime mortgage markets, and so her kid can go to a nice school. the money has to come from somewhere, so i pay my part. i don't understand why that's a big deal to people. hell, obama's plan isn't any different than the tax rates people were paying in the 1990s, and we actually had some budget surplus a few of those years.
what good does it do me to pay insignificantly lower taxes as an individual when my country is falling apart around me? i just don't understand this thinking. but i guess taxes aren't really that important to me in general anyway, so what do i know?
she maintains that it is ridiculous to tax people more simply because they make more money. she doesn't think people should be penalized for their success, and on that point i tend to agree with her.
but then she went on and on about people on welfare and how they just have 109098203984 kids and don't work and have nicer things than she does. hard as i tried to extricate myself from that diatribe, i just couldn't manage. but neither could i convince her that, while the welfare system is seriously flawed and needs to be addressed, it really has nothing to do with tax proposals. it was her unflagging example of her tax dollars busy about the business of being wasted, her example of where the funds should come from instead of tax cuts.
i'm not sure we can pay off the national bank of china with welfare reforms, though.
anyway, the point all of this brought me to is why do people insist on choosing the programs they do not care about as examples of their tax dollars at work when there are just as many excellent programs they do support out there? it seems a little small, but it's very commonplace. are people, by nature, that petty? i'd hate to think so.
i don't make untold sums of money. i barely make enough to pay my bills. but i'm a single, childless man who doesn't own his own home and due to tax implications can't even claim rent as a deduction. i get fucked over on taxes. you'd think i'd be as mad about it as she is.
but i think about taxes as a kind of insurance policy. i pay taxes so my roads don't break down, so the police can serve eviction notices to the victims of the subprime mortgage markets, and so her kid can go to a nice school. the money has to come from somewhere, so i pay my part. i don't understand why that's a big deal to people. hell, obama's plan isn't any different than the tax rates people were paying in the 1990s, and we actually had some budget surplus a few of those years.
what good does it do me to pay insignificantly lower taxes as an individual when my country is falling apart around me? i just don't understand this thinking. but i guess taxes aren't really that important to me in general anyway, so what do i know?