okay, so it’s a touch socialist. what’s wrong with that?
aren’t we grown up past the point where we can just say “socialism/whatever-ism isn’t capitalism” is bad and should be eradicated without looking at it and arguing about it?
i’m not necessarily implying that you ARE doing this…just making a point.
I was thinking about this again. This statement is out of control. I assume you didn’t really think this through or at least I hope you didn’t.
I appears like you don’t care about conservation at all. Communized power and water means that you take away any incentive for people to minimize resources. Why should they? They don’t have to pay extra for it. There is also no incentive to keep innovating and making power cheaper and more efficient.
People wouldn’t worry about extra insulation in their house. Turn that oil furnace off too. We are switching to nice and free electric heat.
I know, governments have a grand ways of attempting to deal with that type of abuse. They will just pile restriction after restriction on until you can no longer build the house you want. More likely, the old standbys of rationing and rolling blackouts would be implemented.
The internet is socialized to some degree. They are called libraries. Can you imagine the nightmare associated with wiring every house in America with the same line? You can’t very well socialize thing without making them fairly equal across the board. I suppose everyone would get a government issue computer every 8 years as well.
Trunk pretty well nails my views. Waste is rampant all over, not just in government. It’s also VERY easy to point a finger at the gov’ts mistakes, but turn a blind eye to the positive things it’s done.
(I think I mentioned this before) In Colorado, we had the Tabor bill passed. The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights amendment stated that all unspent taxes at the end of the year MUST be returned to the taxpayers as a refund.
Sounds good, right? Well, when it was passed, things were good. As a telecom state during a telecom boom, we had more people moving in and giving us tax revenue than we knew what to do with. The the bottom dropped out and folks were bitching when only two of the six DMV windows were open. When we had the money, we had to give it back, when we DIDN’T have the money, we couldn’t provide service to our constituents.
The year we got our Tabor refund, it amounted to $113. I dunno what I did with that money, but I sure know it could have been put to better use or saved for a rainy day…
Which brings one of the biggest problems with the way money is handed out. Spend all you can or it’s taken away. Man that’s wrong. Business (even government) is cyclic, you should be able to have years where you give budgeted money back without being penalized for it.
see, i agree with the conservation. that is the one aspect of it that i DON’T like one bit…but i suppose that if it actually worked in the real world, they’d treat it like the water bill. your service doesn’t get shut off because it’s a basic requirement of life, but you do still get charged for it on your taxes (even though there’s a separate water bill). so it’s not like you’d just leave the lights, the water, and the heat on all day/night just because it’s free.
as for the internet, i’d have every house wired up to the internet. whether or not they wnated to to buy a computer and use the service is completely up to them. it’s also up to them if they wish to pay money for aol’s services…i’d think that private service providers would have to work extra hard to keep cutting edge with “free” internet chasing them around.
once again, a clarification. it’s not that i want there to be uniforms for everyone…and communistic living. i’m not down with that one bit. after all, water comes through the tap, and people still (incredulously) pay for bottled water.
that’s about the best analogy i could come up with , at least for now.
My state (PA) has a program where low-income families can get a certain amount of credit to put towards their heating and electricity bills. So they’re still driven to consume less (since they have to pay whatever’s over the grant), but nobody is freezing. I’d rather see those kinds of programs utilized than total socialization of energy. As for the Internet, all I can say is… not a necessity. There are public terminals at the library to check your email and news sites, and you can get along fine without an Internet connection in your house. The Internet is by and large a source of entertainment with only some “education.” The government should be in the business of providing the Internet just as much as they should be in the business of providing free Xboxes to everyone. Seriously I am down with socializing a lot of things but I don’t see any reason why we should give everyone free Internet in their homes.
As for the OP, I don’t mind the process of paying taxes itself (society, yeah), but I hate that by paying taxes I am explicitly supporting a government I fundamentally disagree with. And I don’t mean just the Bushocracy–I’m opposed to government in general and imperialist governments that would not exist without invasion and colonization even more. But until my perfect world with a radically altered definition of economy, community, and work exists, I am obligated to financially support this one, so I do.
I know you’re not the only person saying they don’t like the way the government spends tax dollars.
I don’t mind paying taxes even though I think a good deal of it is not spent the way I would like it.
When I attended a private (Catholic) high school, we were discussing the issue of paying taxes and several of my classmates argued, or repeated their parents argument, that their families should not have to pay taxes bercause they were not using the public school system. I pointed out how if you look at a pie chart of how tax dollars are spent, the education slice is almost always the smallest slice and that our lives would suck without public schools. If out of all the 18 year-olds in the state, our 68 classmates would be the best and the brightest, I was going to say literate but I don’t think some of fellow students would qualify, then our state would be screwed.
When I was 14, I asked my dad what social security was for, was it a retirement fund or what? He told me that it was just another tax, and that I should not ever expect to see any of the money that I would someday be paying into it. He then explained how our family was planning for retirement, and how social security didn’t figure into those plans at all.
Nowadays, of course, dad looks eerily prescient. But ever since then, I’ve resented paying social security taxes. The rest I have no beef with.
then that’s fine. then it’d be a nationwide grant…that seems like a decent enough compromise. that makes it so you get heating and light and such, nobody makes money off of it, and you’re still held responsible for it.
and, like i said before, the internet seems a tad frivolous right now…but give it 15 or 20 years, and the net will be even more integrated with our lifestyles, it proabably won’t even be a question that the internet would be a necessity to life and learning. after all, if they’re getting public education, why not get public internet? nationalizing the internets now would just be ahead of the time.
…yes, “internets”
While I don’t object to taxes in theory, I am greatly bugged by the fact that, in addition to paying taxes in Japan, I have to file an income tax return the US even though I don’t live there, don’t work work there, and receive no more services from there than anyone else in Japan.
If my income were about 10% higher, I’d be over the exemption limit, which means I’d have to pay taxes to both countries. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the US income tax would be based on my entire income, not just the amount over the exemption, which means my net income would probably go down. Great incentive.
Capital gains taxes on investments in the US are a different story. I accept those.
This is not true. Perhaps it is true in your case, but that doesn’t mean it is true for all. Perhaps you meant that it would take away the only incentive you personally recognize as important?
I’ve heard this argument trotted out in regards to nationalized health care too: such a health care system would lead to more sickness and injury because there’s no incentive to remain healthy. I don’t fathom why anyone would recklessly endanger themselves just because repairs are free, and I don’t fathom why anyone would needlessly waste resources solely because doing so doesn’t represent a personal financial burden: pain still hurts, being ill is still a drag, and brown air still smells. There are other motivating factors besides money.
I do not mind paying taxes in the slightest.
I do.
No.