I’d like to pay about 80% of what I pay now. I figure Waste & porkbarrel crap could be cut enough to give me a 20% cut.
Just about what the pay for now, 'cept- no farm subsidies. Less pork barrel. Less waste.
It’s also time to revitalize Social Security. I’d do it by making the retirement age higher, and by making SocSec 100% taxable at 100K in gross income. I’d even have a “negative creidt” for Gross incomes over 1 million $ where you basicly have to pay back all the SS you get.
You know if we cut the salaries of Gov’t workers (including Congresscritters) that make being in government even more of a “rich mans game”. The salaries of Congress aren’t even 1 onehundreth of one %. We can cut them to zero, and it wouldn’t change your taxes at all.
They get free and extremely low cost health care here as well. I know because I benefited from it. When our daughter was 6 months old, she suddenly developed an infection so bad that she clinically died. She was revived, but the infection coursed throughout her little body, attacking first one organ and then another. To this day, we don’t know exactly what was wrong with her, but she spent several weeks in intensive care in one of the best hospitals in the region. We had no insurance and no money. Thanks to the kindness of friends and family, we were able to travel to the hospital and stay with her. After almost a month, she was released, and we had no idea how we would pay, but we hunkered down and set up a budget to scrape together enough to pay $20 a month or so. The total bill was 5 figures, a huge amount at the time and a formidable amount for us. After a couple of weeks, we received a letter from the Baptist Childrens Fund (we were Lutheran) informing us that our bill had been paid in full and wishing for us God’s blessings. I was an atheist at the time and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I snarled at the letter and cursed them for trying to buy our faith rather than appreciating their kind act. I was so damn stupid. Anway, almost every hospital has a charity ward and some hospitals are mostly charity. Clinics staffed with physicians are available to people in most cities on a pay-as-you-can basis.
That’s another one. The government is staffed by your fellow Americans, specifically professional shafters. I’ve never understood how people say that other people are too stupid/careless/heartless to do the right thing and yet they trust people whose very profession depends on skills like lying, deceit, and misleading rhetoric and who happen to come from the exact same pool of stupid/careless/heartless people who can’t be trusted. My own neighbor cannot be trusted, but a stranger who breaks promises for a living will do the right thing. I just don’t get it.
30-ish percent. Maybe I think this because NZ only has a population of 4 million and less tax would make a big dent in govt income.
Healthcare, education, social welfare, justice system, roading, power production and managment, military, etc etc. None of it grows on trees and I would rather live where these things were publicly funded.
One example in NZ. Every child till high school age has free basic dental care provided at school (does not cover braces etc but cleaning, cavity filling and check ups).
Also vaccination programmes are provided at school free of charge. New Zealand has it’s own horrific and virulant strain of meningitis…some very tragic cases have recently happened. The govt is providing a free vaccination for under 20’s. The areas where the worst impact of this diease has been felt are some of the poorest areas and that is where the first vaccines are going (vaccine has just approved in the last fortnight).
I wouldn’t want to give that up to pay a bit less in tax.
Because there are millions of people willing to vote those suckers out of office if they don’t do something approximating fair. But I have no ability to fire my neighbor if he doesn’t pay anything toward getting the snow out of the front of our homes. And I have no visibility into my neighbors actions - I really don’t know if he paid for snow removal or not. I know how my Representative votes.
Ever have a office where the candy box or coffee was done on the honor system? I used to. We were ALWAYS short. Our boss, or someone else, always had to throw in a couple bucks to cover. Since I was often the person getting pop from the grocery store (it was my first job out of college), I was often the person digging an extra $5 out of my meager paycheck to cover the shortage - for which sometimes I’d get compensated, and usually I wouldn’t.
Then I worked for a company that had free pop. But they paid crap. I think I’d have rather gotten paid more than had the access to free snacks.
Now I work for a company where bad coffee is free - part of the cost of doing business. But pop and candy comes out of a vending machine - and good coffee comes from the cafeteria and you pay for it.
The first is a Liberatarian system - wasn’t real fair to the person covering the shortage, but someone was sure getting a good deal on their coffee, pop and candy.
The second was too liberal - “free” pop and candy isn’t good for anyone - and it impacted the cash they had to do other things - so it wasn’t really free anyway.
I like the third - responsible management of resources. A decision by someone that some needs are basic and should be provided for at a minimal level (coffee) - even if it costs the company something and not everyone uses it. It still isn’t free, but it carries a reasonable cost. The remaining services are pay as you go. The person negotiating the coffee contract could give it to his brother in law at a premium - and shaft the company, but there is some oversight, process that says he needs three bids that are reviewed by committee. Not perfect, I’ve still seen the process “cooked” (not over coffee, I’m not involved in those purchasing decisions), but I don’t think there is perfection in these things. By the way, I don’t drink the free coffee - its lousy, I like better coffee. But I can support the decision to pay for free lousy coffee (and tea and cocoa, too - I do occationally take advantage of the tea).
Now I know this isn’t a great analogy. But someone has to decide that coffee is a greater good and should get paid for - and do so in a responsible manner.
I know a lot of civil servants. Most of them get paid crap and could make a lot more in the private sector. Most of them take their responsibilities very seriously. They may be mistaken in their belief that counting snails is important (but I’m not a bio-environmentalist, so I really can’t judge), but they count their snails as inexpensively as they can. The politicians I know - even the ones I have philosophical disagreements with - have generally seemed to been in it out of a desire to do good. I suspect some of them do it for the power. I resent the statement that these people - some of whom are my friends and have dedicated their lives to public service - are professional shafters. They made a decision to work in the public sector, knowing they’d never get rich doing so, running for office at personal expense and having to take time from their regular job at a paycut to be a state rep. My neighbor - the MBA stockbroker - made a decision to get a job that was going to make him wealthy - and make him wealthy by trading a lot, often at the expense of his clients. Now, who do I trust to make sure my needs are getting met, again?
In an absolutely ideal world: one in which the government were completely focused on doing right by their people; and one in which healthcare, education, state pensions & social security provisions, law enforcement, rubbish collection etc were guaranteed and adequate, I would be happy to pay up to 60pc or so.
However, back in the real world …
[slight hijack]Wasn’t there a time in Britain, maybe still so, where you could refuse to hand over 11p in the tax pound if you were anti nuclear power?