Generally speaking, what is your opinion of taxes?

Everyone else is fair game.

except for direct regressive taxes like well gas tax and sales tax.

those are there for a reason...

But also I am sure you knew that.

To pay for anything.

As I'm sure everyone else on this site is.

We are taxed for everything we buy, so there is no way around them.

Even defense?

So no education funding, no police or fire, no infrastructure, no libraries - nothing? Just shut it all down and wait for the "free market" to pick up the slack?

Unless you have other means of funding government, you are nothing but an anarchist.

you like driving on highways and you expect your waitstaff to understand your order and if you were in trouble and called the cops you'd expect them to show up and if your house was burning you would not mind firemen putting it out

Please explain how a country, state, city, could function without taxes..........

When a man and his third young pregnant wife (the first died in childbirth, the second of exhaustion) and his nine children could just pull up stakes by selling off the failing family farm he ran into the ground with his poor land management. He would be cheated by the first cut-rate dry-goods shop that would sell them poor quality pioneer equipage, not buy enough food and water containers, sold mules and a horse from someone who would later be hanged for a livestock thief, and hard-headedly off for the California Gold Fields with the next speculator sponsored, chronic-drunk led, cut-rate wagon train from Independence at the wrong time of the year because he couldn't afford to over-winter his family in some semblance of civilization before he set out "make a fortune".
Whereby his lemon of a wagon would break down not fifty miles out and continue to need repairs, his food will be found to be mealy and spoiling, his water run out, and a month later somewhere just into the passes over the Rockies, he'd have lost his wife and half his kids to stillbirth, accidents, and sickness. His wagon would finally completely break down while the doomed wagon train ("Donner, party of 12") would go on to leave him and his remaining four children to try and make it through the winter somewhere in the wilds of the New Mexico Territory. Within two weeks, he and three more children would be dead from the elements, and his remaining child would be found by the Cheyenne, hopefully to be raised by someone compassionate and not killed by the tribe, or later either other natives or whites at war with the tribe, or the elements.


And he would be lucky enough to live as long as he did.

Yes, those were the good old days, without taxes and government and regulations and all that sort of thing.

Haele

I've known more than one smart liberal arts major pay the bills writing for romance novel mills or soft-core porn novels...

If I didn't keep falling down on the floor giggling whenever I tried writing a sex or seduction scene, I'd be making a lot more than I am now...
Just logical plot structure and believable characters aren't enough to sell stories any more. And since I can spell and my grammar is fairly good, I can't make my money writing GOP talking points.

Haele

I like it!

Kind of interested in how some of you thought I was serious.

it actually didn't surprise me.

Why would anyone assume anything other than you are just another one.

Nuff said.

They are actually collect more in taxes as a percentage of their GDP than we do (EL in the chart below):



Try again.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/07/11/110711ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz1uPEt42My

- Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr.

"rec" feature. Great quote

Asking to live in one without them is like asking

for a free lunch or a free house. It's completely

contrary to the Right's "personal responsibility",

meme, but then again, I believe they think personal responsibility

is really only something for the 99% Peasantry.

That is pretty much the attitude people have. And that includes liberals and conservatives.

to pay my taxes. I do worry about the increasing reliance on regressive taxes here in SC, though.

they are necessary to pay for the better things in life, like yes, a fire department, a police department, schools and the rest that goes with it. Most of it is invisible for most citizens. Roads are there, and damn it we still have schools to send kids to, and when you call 911 you STILL get something coming to you.

Paying for defense, I am fine with it. What I object to, is paying for Empire, which is no longer affordable for starters, not bringing it the dividends it used to. In fact, the sun is starting to set on the Empire... and that will be ugly. But on principle paying for defense no issue...I know, more nuanced than you were probably expecting,

Part of the problem is that the link between your taxes and the services you get have ideologically been severed by 30 years of propaganda. I hope some of your neighbors are realizing that many, if not most, of the fire fighters on the line, with good reason, are Federal Personnel (No, no city could have that many)... and that high level coordination has been transferred from local to really federal... they got the satellites after all... I hope a bulb is going on and they are realizing that yes, when they paid their taxes by April 15, part of that money went to staff, train and fund those firefighters.

I would add food stamps and heating for the poor and elderly to the good things to use taxes on. War and a bloated military budget I would rather not use my taxes on.

Our priorities on where the money is spent is a different conversation though.

If we spent a fraction on education and infrastructure as we do in blowing up and then rebuilding other countries, we could be a MUCH different nation. Maybe we need to start blowing ourselves up - if thats what it takes to get some damn bridges fixed...

although I don't object to the necessity of taxes to provide for the common defence and for public safety (military, police, fire services).

to live in civil society.

as long as the money is used properly and goes towards the right projects.

I am against some taxes: sales tax, "sin" taxes, but I don't mind paying to make improvements to roads, schools, etc..

I don't have a problem with taxes as long as everyone pays their fair share.

themselves.

And, I don't mind chipping in for things useful to society...as long as everybody pays their fair share.

taxes suck the big one, but I realize they are a necessary evil.

Taxes can be used to make the lives of every citizen better.

Currently much of that money goes to large corporations where the men at the top make billions.

I think if we were not so large then tax dollars would be sent more wisely and for the actual good of the communities.

I also know that a flat tax would put a whole lot of people out of work, both in the private sector and the IRS. Ok, maybe
I really don't want a flat tax. lol

But with my pension decreasing I don't see that happening.

Don

but I would pass on funding the wars if given the option.

babies is safe; to provide humane treatment for stray and forgotten dogs and cats (and other domestic critters); to follow environmentally sound forest practices; provide open public land - free from public destruction - for wild critters to eat and live in; to try and convict leeches like wall street crooks and maybe even politicians who lie, cheat and steal from us; to give young people a good start in life even if they're born poor; to take care of disabled people; to take care of old people.

If all this means i believe in socialism and to get there means i gotta' pay taxes, so be it.

I'd like to see an end to the regressive payroll taxes and a reduction in income taxes on most people making at or below median income to make up for stagnant and declining wages and corporate looting by senior management.

Our government does not need the revenue right now. The middle class does need this money to help pay down debts and restore demand to our economy.

Taxes well spent are taxes that contribute to the well being of a large group of people. In other words, taxes that benefit a small number of people, at the expense of a large group of people, are taxes that are not well spent.

Laws well developed are laws that benefit a large group of people. In other words, laws that benefit a small number of people, at the expense of a large number of people, are generally poor laws.

Corporate welfare appears to benefit a small number of people. A reconditioned interstate highway appears to benefit a large group of people.

This is where ethical, efficient government comes in. Poorly spent taxes will always find well founded criticism. Who here welcomes the thought of our taxes subsidizing the record profits of oil companys? To a degree, the folks that oppose new taxes have a point. Perhaps government revenue should be redirected into beneficial areas before we talk of increasing them?

Or should there be a vicious cyle of taxing the rich to subsidize the rich? I say we nail them at both ends.

and tax cuts for the top 2% would certainly qualify under the "benefit to few" clause, as would shorting funding for FICA and Medicare in order to justify extending the unfunded wars and tax cuts for the top 2%.

It is all soundbyte politics, and at the end of the day, ask any conservative - Obama "raised" middle class taxes more than any president in the history of ever.

Sound policy needs sound messaging, and we haven't really had either in a lotta years.

I think the government still needs to properly invest in infrastructure, education, energy independence, defense (albeit more limited than what we've had over the past decade), etc. We should also strengthen our social safety net.

However, our government doesn't need to tax in order to spend. A sovereign fiat currency government is never financially constrained. At the federal level, taxes serve to regulate aggregate demand, and thereby control inflation. Since our current economic environment is one of limited demand and private debt saturation, we would benefit most from lower federal taxes and sustained federal spending (i.e. a larger government deficit).

I prefer them to be progressive and engineered for efficiency, in the sense that, e.g., I'd sometimes like them to be targeted so that the true costs of activities that would otherwise burden others unfairly, e.g. pollution, get paid for by the activity from which they arose.

but have no problem paying for the rest.

Restore the pre-REAGAN top tax rates 74%. That is THE root of all our problems today-Reagan tax cuts.

and in the mean time I'd not have to worry with my loved ones health or not have to dodge the chuck holes as I drive my SUV down the street. I wouldn't have to worry with helping my son to pay off his student loan that even though we're paying monthly the balance seems to grow instead of getting less. Yes I'm a person who loves paying my taxes. If I/we paid more taxes up front I/we wouldn't have such a high property tax today, nor would we have to pay some exuberant fees to visit some of our treasures that should be pretty much free to visit such as our national parks. I could go on buy I'm sure you get the picture

Where reasonable people disagree is what to tax, and when to tax it. I'd have to say that I subscribe to the theory that whatever we tax, we tend to get less of, and what we exempt from taxation, we tend to get more of. That principle should be considered whenever we decide what to tax.

For instance, this grand compromise that shoved the day of reckoning for student loan interest down the road a few can-kicks was paid for by "taxing", if you will, pensions. I guess I don't like seeing pensions attacked with increasing taxes, but given the trend of where we are going with pensions vs. 401K's, I suppose it's inevitable that those things that are down will get beaten down even further.

Similarly, the last UC, FICA holiday and doc fix were temporarily granted a reprieve based on increasing Federally insured mortgage premiums, all while the housing market is still in the toilet. I don't think that's going to help the recovery one bit.

I know many states and the federal government seem to agree with me but I live in a state that does assess sales tax on groceries and it is evil.

Because there shouldn't be any. It's bad public policy. Besides, that much is never, never, never, ever amassed legitimately. There needs to be a maximum top just like there is a minimum bottom. Then this self-overcompensation at the top would STOP. It isn't impossible, it just takes will.