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Taxes pave roads, build hospitals and schools, keep shipping lanes free of pirates, and provide weather-monitoring radar and satellite systems. Taxes keep fami

Taxes pave roads, build hospitals and schools, keep shipping lanes free of pirates, and provide weather-monitoring radar and satellite systems. Taxes keep famine, war, and pestilence at bay. Also, not paying your taxes is an easy way to ruin your life, and paying your taxes is an easy way to improve it, assuming you live in a country with a competent government. I can't tell you how much I love not having to hike down to the river for water, or not having to smell heaps of garbage at neighbors houses because we have trucks pick it up roadside. No one ever tries to hijack my car either, mostly due to tax-funded stable, secure society. Taxes make life great, even if we don't spend them optimally. edit: you only need open a history book to find out how miserable life was before

MonkeyClub 4y ago
I agree with you that taxes are a necessary and in one way a good thing as well. Just a note, though, that there was taxation even before we had social contracts that funneled taxes to public interest projects.
pakwa 4y ago
Excellent post imo. Wish more people would be ready to pay more than always wanting to pay less. Especially the 0.1%.
- drstewart 4y ago
  [flagged]
unixbotnuke 4y ago
Taxes buy stealth bombers, M1 tanks, drones to bomb people that the United States does not like, and also the overthrow of many different governments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.... Taxes also pay rich politicans like Rick Scott to defraud medicare. Taxes pay for different political parties to push their agendas both left and right. This is government not by the consent of the governed, the governemnt does not represent me at all, but I pay my taxes becuse men with guns will ultimately come and put me in jail by force if I do not.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  American military might is arguably the sole reason we live in a stable, peaceful world. Yes, terrible things happen, but the alternative might be even more terrible. I think of this often. Vietnam was a terrible war, maybe a senseless one, but then again, maybe the war on communism was right -- after all, no ex-communist state is a paradise of civil liberty today, and none of them are even particularly prosperous. With no counter to Russia or China, we could be living in a communist world. How far into Europe would Russia march if America could not write the check for Ukraine? What would Europe look like had America not funded the victors in the world wars? What would Asia look like had Japan not been castrated? I would like to live in a world of global peace, liberty, and cooperative prosperity, but if I can't have that, American hegemony is preferable to some other hegemony, at least so far as we know or can infer. If men with guns didn't force you to pay taxes, would we have interstate highways or weather satellites or top-notch hospitals, public schools, sewer systems, or a covid vaccine? In fact, I pay taxes so they can buy guns for the men who make you pay taxes. In return, I get to live in this beautiful, modern, prosperous, scientifically breathtaking world. It is imperfect, I admit, but it is much better than anything else we have had historically. So much better that it's hard to even understand. Not long ago our president was in a wheelchair and our nation starved; Americans no longer starve nor does polio cripple them. Would those things be true without federal taxes? It seems likely that less taxes would only harm us. There is still room to improve what we spend on but... We just achieved fusion, thanks again to taxes.
  - unixbotnuke 4y ago
    You are brainwashed by the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex into thinking that the USA has some sort of moral imperative to be the world police, were the only duty of the government is to serve the people which it is currenly not doing and instead serving the interests of the elite and corporations. I don't care about Ukraine/Tiwan/Vietnam, and the government should not either, it aint our problem. We can literally nuke Russia or China or DPRK if they try to invade or nuke us. We should put troops on the border to defend it, but that would also deprive USA agribusiness of cheap labor [illegals] or noncitizens whatever the Biden speach police wants you to call them these days. What we need to care about is income inequality, healthcare, and that most people are either overweight or obese. This is the real national security threat that noone can talk about. Making systemic interventions into healthcare to prevent chronic illnes from overweight + obesity would give a ROI that is....insane. But we don't want to do that and instead give money to arms manufacturers to then give them to Ukraine, which is stupid. We literally have people who are overdosing from drugs in the street, and the gov does not care about them. Instead it ostensibly cares about people on the other side of the world to boost some geopolitical agenda. What we need to do is get rid of income taxes and git rid of the military. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world": it was George Washington's Farewell Address to us. The inaugural pledge of Thomas Jefferson was no less clear: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."

MonkeyClub 4y ago

I agree with you that taxes are a necessary and in one way a good thing as well. Just a note, though, that there was taxation even before we had social contracts that funneled taxes to public interest projects.

pakwa 4y ago

Excellent post imo. Wish more people would be ready to pay more than always wanting to pay less. Especially the 0.1%.

drstewart 4y ago
[flagged]

unixbotnuke 4y ago

Taxes buy stealth bombers, M1 tanks, drones to bomb people that the United States does not like, and also the overthrow of many different governments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.... Taxes also pay rich politicans like Rick Scott to defraud medicare. Taxes pay for different political parties to push their agendas both left and right. This is government not by the consent of the governed, the governemnt does not represent me at all, but I pay my taxes becuse men with guns will ultimately come and put me in jail by force if I do not.

PostOnce 4y ago
American military might is arguably the sole reason we live in a stable, peaceful world. Yes, terrible things happen, but the alternative might be even more terrible. I think of this often. Vietnam was a terrible war, maybe a senseless one, but then again, maybe the war on communism was right -- after all, no ex-communist state is a paradise of civil liberty today, and none of them are even particularly prosperous. With no counter to Russia or China, we could be living in a communist world. How far into Europe would Russia march if America could not write the check for Ukraine? What would Europe look like had America not funded the victors in the world wars? What would Asia look like had Japan not been castrated? I would like to live in a world of global peace, liberty, and cooperative prosperity, but if I can't have that, American hegemony is preferable to some other hegemony, at least so far as we know or can infer. If men with guns didn't force you to pay taxes, would we have interstate highways or weather satellites or top-notch hospitals, public schools, sewer systems, or a covid vaccine? In fact, I pay taxes so they can buy guns for the men who make you pay taxes. In return, I get to live in this beautiful, modern, prosperous, scientifically breathtaking world. It is imperfect, I admit, but it is much better than anything else we have had historically. So much better that it's hard to even understand. Not long ago our president was in a wheelchair and our nation starved; Americans no longer starve nor does polio cripple them. Would those things be true without federal taxes? It seems likely that less taxes would only harm us. There is still room to improve what we spend on but... We just achieved fusion, thanks again to taxes.
- unixbotnuke 4y ago
  You are brainwashed by the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex into thinking that the USA has some sort of moral imperative to be the world police, were the only duty of the government is to serve the people which it is currenly not doing and instead serving the interests of the elite and corporations. I don't care about Ukraine/Tiwan/Vietnam, and the government should not either, it aint our problem. We can literally nuke Russia or China or DPRK if they try to invade or nuke us. We should put troops on the border to defend it, but that would also deprive USA agribusiness of cheap labor [illegals] or noncitizens whatever the Biden speach police wants you to call them these days. What we need to care about is income inequality, healthcare, and that most people are either overweight or obese. This is the real national security threat that noone can talk about. Making systemic interventions into healthcare to prevent chronic illnes from overweight + obesity would give a ROI that is....insane. But we don't want to do that and instead give money to arms manufacturers to then give them to Ukraine, which is stupid. We literally have people who are overdosing from drugs in the street, and the gov does not care about them. Instead it ostensibly cares about people on the other side of the world to boost some geopolitical agenda. What we need to do is get rid of income taxes and git rid of the military. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world": it was George Washington's Farewell Address to us. The inaugural pledge of Thomas Jefferson was no less clear: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."