Friday, April 16, 2010
A Tax Day Rant
I am willing to pay to live in a modern, peaceful, compassionate society. It would be counterproductive to raise my taxes so much that I end up needing the social services my taxes are paying for, but I could easily pay a few percent more than I'm paying now. I'm willing to do so because I recognize that most of the people on the bottom are put there by circumstance, not by laziness--I'm but a long run of bad luck away from being there myself--and that providing a basic level of comfort and security to those people makes my life better. Of course, raising taxes by a few percent would mean socialism and socialism means that we would all live bleak, horrible lives like everyone in Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada.
11 comments:
If you like the notion of being told how long your kitchen knives can be, keep wishing for European-style "socialism".
I outgrew the need for my mommy to keep me safe some years ago. I'd really not like a goverment to step forward and fill the gap.
oh i get it now. satire, right?
Here in Canada we call S*****ism 'Dead Puppies', because if we utter the actual word S*****ism we put ourselves in danger of being murdered in our sleep by a polarized American. Besides, we're nothing like those commie bastards in Sweden and the like.
Hey, Dave.
Yeah, Coop, we don't need to hear that word on our continent--and it is OUR continent! And remember, we have unmanned drones and our pilots, who are great patriots, not faceless cowards as the bolsheviks at your government-controlled CBC love to report, can strike you anywhere at any time. Sleep tight, commie! Because no, we don't want your Swedish--I'll say it--your SOCIALISM around these parts. Next thing you know, you Canadian subversives will start planting your Marxist ideas in the heads of all those left-coast Elitists in California like the idea that poor people, even black poor people, should have access to health care when they are sick. Everyone knows that our model of American exceptionalism has at its cornerstone the basic tenet that health care is the exclusive privelidge of the well-to-do! Poor people in this country will remain poor as long as they have no incentive to improve their lives as long as we keep our tit in their face! Furthermore...
Carl, stop me when this no longer sounds like satire.
Hey Carl, Cooper, hope you can forgive this little rant. It hasn't rained in weeks so the creeks are all dry.
DMG, seriously, you've gone out of your head. You buy all this big-government-will-make-everything-fair-and-save-us-all claptrap? Winners make their own luck, dude.
Wow, this politics thing really is fun! Let me know when you want to do religion, because I've got some really saucy pope jokes.
Seth, kid yet? (That's you, yes?)
And Coop, we'll hammer the Pope during the next dry spell. All I'm saying is that a certain amount of government is worth having and therefore worth paying for. I don't want Stalinist Russia but I don't want Somalia either. Limited government has its own problems. That, and I just took my son to the magnificent new visitor center at Hobbs State Park before hiking on some of the thousand or so miles of trail on state land in Arkansas which are all made available through the 1/8 percent conservation fund sales tax we have here. I was thinking what an amazing bargain that was.
Some rain? Please?
DMG, I'm in agreement that there is a balance between "no rules" and "too many rules".
But here's the problem- we passed "too many rules" in about 1934.
As a "rule enforcer", believe me when I say we have TOO FREAKING MANY.
Additional food for thought: If I take money from someone by force and give it to another person who deserves it, it's called "theft".
Dave, you say it all so well. As for me and limited government, I'm a believer. Insofar as I don't believe government has any right to tell me what I can put in my body or do with my body, or any right to torture other people's bodies. What I don't mind my government doing is helping people in need. And like you, Dave, I'm willing to help pay for that with my taxes.
What strikes me as weird is that these tea partiers don't mind the police state aspects of the Patriot Act and its like. That doesn't strike them as dangerous and undemocratic. But health care for all--that's TOTALITARIANISM!
UF Mike
Dave this is by far the most subversive, divisive, and vitriolic post you have done since illuminaing the faqct that your neihbors were confused by indoor plumbing and I'm stealing it for my facebook page because I got some real idiot friends that will verbally flog me for this one.
thanks Buddy.
The King is Dead! long live the King!
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