"George M. Middius" wrote in message
...


I took a spin over to some of the overtly political Usenet groups. Amid
the usual namecalling, baseless generalizing, chest-thumping, and
exultations of stupidity, I educed a common theme among the retrograde
claque. They all think taxes are unjust, unnecessary, immoral, etc.
Similar to the braying we see on RAO from certain people whom I don't
need to name because we all know who you are.

One thought that keeps surfacing is that the government "takes" money
from people who "earned" it, and these citizens hate that. I've seen this
thought expressed so many times that I almost becamse numb to its
inherent stuipdity. After all, we (the U.S. electorate) re-elected our
worst President in my lifetime, and possibly in the whole country's
lifetime. And why did most of us vote for him? Fear, that's why. Not real
fear, but fear of imaginary evils. Boy, are we stupid!

But even against that backdrop, the foolishness about taxes is
extraordinarily stupid. The main point is that our taxes are among the
lowest in countries with standard of living that's similar to ours. A few
are a tiny bit lower, such as Switzerland and Finland. But I don't think
it's wise to compare the U.S. to those countries, for a variety of
reasons.

My point about taxes is that people are able to earn good livings in this
country because of our infrastructure, which was built with tax money and
is maintained through tax money and will be improved through tax money.
If you run a business, do you really think the amount you pay your
employees represents the true cost of the value of their work? It does
not. The transportation network was not free, you know. Nor is education.
Do you want to hire people who can't read at high school level? Do you
want to have to train people to use computers? Do you want to build your
own roads? Do you want to build your own power lines to connect to the
electric company, and your own sewer lines so you can have indoor
plumbing? Remember, our taxes are among the lowest for industrialized
countries.

The real problem is government waste. Is it worse than in large
companies? The biggest money pit in the government is the military. But
you "conservatives" love the guns and battleships and fighter jets. It's
just that you don't want to pay for them.



I, for one, have consistently supported the concept of taxation. However,
I feel that the collection system is corrupted by political considerations
form
both the right and left. I despise it when tax policies are created for the
purpose
of political and social behavioral stimulus. This perverts the primary goal
of taxation, which is to collect an equitable amount of a families income,
with respect to relative level of income. No lower income person should pay
too
much or too little taxes, the same for mid income and high income people.
And it should be progessive, as it is, and non confiscatory at the high end,
as it is.
However, every income producing person should pay some minimum percentage
of income tax. Worling poor people should pay at least somepercentage, but
not
as high a prcentage as those earning more money. Those earning lots of money
should not be allowed to wheedle out of taxes through loopholes and should
pay
some minimum percentage, but a higher minimum percentage
than for the poor or middle earners. But no one should be paying any more
than a marginal
25% rate.