Another dumb financial statement

[daveon]

I don't really have the energy for this: Seattle 2.0 Guest Blogger on Proposed Tax Changes

If there's a weaker argument about not paying taxes than "It's my money, I earned it" then I've yet to hear it. 

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The most charitable thing I can think of is that many people have completely lost the connection between "taxes I pay" and "services the government supplies me" like roads, police, fire, etc. Those things "just happen" to them and as far as they know, they don't actually cost anything at all because they don't hand over money to use them at the point of service. Only things paid at the point of service are real to them.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough as I was driving back from an errand, I saw a vehicle with a NO! I1098 (the tax changing bill) on the back of their car.

It was a guy in his 50s driving a 15 year old car.

There's doing things on principle and there's stupid.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

A whole lot of what we have in America today is here because we're living off of capital investments made by my grandparents. (Sometimes literally: My grandfather was one of the construction workers on Interstate 5 through the Cascades in Northern California, something I think about every time I drive through there like I will be next weekend.) I think a whole lot of people have come complete disconnected from why we pay taxes.

Of course I'd rather have more money in my pocket come payday. But I also like having all of those services. I guess the loony-type Libertarians assume that Private Industry would provide all of those services (more efficiently and cheaply) than the Government. Well, among other things, a completely-private postal service would stop making deliveries to anything other than the largest cities, and a private road network would have toll booths every few miles, while your local roads would be returned to gravel. (As is happening now, according to an article I saw recently.) The streetlights would go out unless you wanted to pay personally for the one in front of your house. (I'm in a rural town right now where that's exactly how it works, as it's unincorporated and if you want a streetlight, you go put it up yourself and pay the electric bill yourself.)

But some of them probably think that's a Good Thing.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I had an argument with somebody about the postal thing a couple of days ago. He was of the opinion that things would be better if only he had a choice about 1st Class mail providers...

The funny thing is, my older brother used to work for DHL and did a lot of studies on taking over various 1st Class mail services and they just didn't want it.

They wanted block contracts where they could deliver all of GIANT_BANK's statements every month and the ability to bid for and cherry pick those services.

The probability that they'd offer a nationwide single cost mail service for $0.50 is approximately zero.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Right. Oh, I reckon people from rural small towns like the one I'm from wouldn't lose all their mail service. A private operator might possibly manage to do one run per week, and you'd have to pay to both send a letter and to receive it, and it would cost $5/item, or possibly you might pay for an annual subscription to receive mail from the contractor. Otherwise, there's no reason to do the work.

Some people might say, "Good!" but that makes the implicit assumption that there is no social value in supporting rural life and that only Big Cities matter. IMO down that path leads madness.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

On your point about what things cost. Hal O'Brien makes a good point that a lot of Libertarians (with a big L) act like teenagers behave when presented with the true cost of running a household by their parents.

I used to have arguments with the apprentices in the engineering company I was a graduate at about this. They'd earn similar amounts to me but pay their mothers 20 quid a week for rent, over lunch one day I explained to one of them what the difference between paying mum 20 which included meals, washing, ironing, cleaning, utilities, phone etc... was and paying 20 in rent which didn't include property tax, meals, washing, ironing, cleaning, utilities, phone etc...

They'd really struggle to get that what they were paying their parents was a fraction of the actual cost of living.

The other thing I've noticed is that people on lower incomes, like somebody starting their own business, either haven't ever or have forgotten what the disposable income from, say, $200,000 a year feels like.

There's a point you cross where you do stop thinking about buying something because you know that the money is in the bank. It's not the same as rich, you're not going to buy a yacht. But there is a degree of comfort in finding you need to get a car repaired, a new PC, a gadget and just doing it without checking the bank account.

Losing a couple of percent of that "fuck off" money really isn't something most people will notice unless they're continuing to live WAYYYYY beyond their means.