Having given it a lot of thought lately and thinking about the current state of affairs in this country (the U.S.) I have come to some conclusions. The government does not owe you.... A job A roof over your head. Food in your belly. Healthcare in any form. Rebuilding your home after a disaster. Money for your business large or small. Loans or loan guarantees of any kind. Aid for foreign governments. And these are just a few things the government does not owe any of us.
The poster above me not deleted has a point tax funds are used now at the discretion of the government they can run any programs they like not just those limited to the four corners of the US Constitution but no person or state generally has to take the money. You don't want to be part of a jobs program, get a Federally backed student loan, get a business loan, join a Federal Exchange for health care, get social security money, take Medicare, take disaster relief funds then don't. States can turn down any money they want anytime they want offered many did for Medicaid Expansion for example. But if you do then you accept every string that comes with it and must still pay into some programs since the government has the right under the Constitution to tax for them or in case of the ACA just penalize your tax returns. The Federal Courts under many precedents have supported this power and neither party regardless of rhetoric wants smaller government and less intrusion as a Communist I support adding more social programs and big government power to do more and level the society off more between the poor, working class and wealthy under more modern models of Communism.
What does it mean to owe somebody? Do you think the government owes it to us to uphold the Constitution? Are we owed a national defense? Why do you feel entitled to any of this when you were simply born into it?
Too many Americans are missing the point. The more you depend on the Government, the less opportunity, freedom, and self determination you have.
That's not even the point. Look here - you are the government. It's not an issue of "dependence", it's more like you're delegating away something you'd rather not concern yourself with. That's how the Nanny acquires more power than she should have, when the parents are too busy for their kids. The issue is that every time the government does something on your behalf it's taking cycles out of your life - out of your pocketbook (usually), or out of your day (especially at tax time, when it stretches into multiple days)... ultimately it's a question of efficiency, and how many disposable cycles you have in your day and how many other places besides Uncle Sam you'd like to pay some attention to during the 16 hours a day you're awake and the 8 of those hours you're not working. I pay my federal government to protect the territorial integrity of the country, and to make sure the States don't trample on my rights. That's pretty much it. I can see a few other useful roles for fedgov - for instance the FDA type inspections for the purity of foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals, that kind of thing. And, I'm not even entirely adverse to "services" if they can be delivered efficiently and if participation is voluntary. However I don't pay 'em to grab new powers behind my back, or invent new hare-brained schemes to spend my money on, or even wiretap me with my own tax money. I pay them for one thing and one thing only: to protect my rights. And in doing that they need to adhere to the highest law in the land - the same law they want me to adhere to, the one that's codified in plain simple English so even a third grader could understand it. I want my government to keep its grubby little paws off of everything except specifically what it says in the Constitution is within scope. Anything that's not in scope, they have to come back and ask the People about first, before they go off implementing any crazy (and expensive) hare brained schemes. FedGov is not allowed to increase scope on its own, that is fundamental, basic. Just like we don't give anyone in government a blank check, that's also fundamental and basic. The shifts in power are merely symptoms, the underlying causes are shifts in the checks and balances that keep our system upright and functioning smoothly. If the President has too much power it's because Congress has delegated away a great deal of its authority to the Executive Branch. And they could take it back at any given moment, if they had the spine to do so.
We are no longer the government. The beaucracy of the Executive branch has taken over thanks to a weak Congress. I will agree that Congress has delegated away its power. It's time for that to change.
If you actually stop and count up all the money you pay in taxes you may be surprised. We have a 9% sales tax on everything we buy retail. We pay taxes on our water, telephone. tires, autos, income, electricity, gas, license plates, savings, stocks, bonds, retirement...and the list goes on and on. We pay taxes on almost everything yet the government is trillions of dollars in debt. How is this possible? The reason we pay these taxes is to support government programs. Now I will admit that some programs are in line with our Constitution but most are not. Just think of the massive savings and the economic boost it would be for our society if we abolished the bloated bureaucracy. The only downside would be the loss of government jobs. If we weaned people off government programs while putting their own money in their pockets (because the poor are taxed too) we would become once again the great nation we once were. By following our Constitution we would once again enjoy our privacy and our lost liberty. And would not have to foot the bill for tyranny.
Adds up to 30-40% for middle class people and 40-50%+ on upper middle. Taxpayers spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their working lives paying for a government that may return 5% of that back in one way or another. The greedy grabbers at the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee trough squeal for moremore based on fallacious, fabricated resentment politics themes like "wealth inequality" and "social justice," use "the poor, the children, the working man, the women, the minorities" as window dressing over their obvious immoral greed and desire to pad their largely unearned paychecks. The dumb mob eats it up and allows the machine to flourish and grow. 90% of the entire LW in my opinion comes from union PR hacks and crooked edu grantee graftsters. Agree. Problem is that decades of graftgov have created a nonwelfare dependent class of people that includes not only official government employees, but millions and millions of de facto ones, contractors, grantees of government at all levels. Pulling the rug all at once would cause economic collapse. Any solution would have to be implemented over decades, and our govt has proven that it will not abide by even the most basic kind of limitations. We may be married to nannygov, like it or not.
No, the government is a vassal of the People, who are the Sovereign, and who employ said vassal to attend to such tasks as they prefer not to attend to themselves.
lol. How wrong could you be? I'm hard core Conservative and I neither want nor need any of the things mentioned. The only thing I want from the government is secure borders. - - - Updated - - - This and no more. Period.
We as citizens have two votes. One at the pole and more important and effective... our pocketbooks (whats left).
This is a supreme cop out. Taxes are money the government takes from the people. This is just silly. What you're trying to tell us is, "we took your money, and we're going to give it to people - if you're going to accept some of your money back, then you have no right to complain about us taking it and giving it to others."
True, but you don't have to even pay taxes people earning just cash and working in the underground economy are very good at that and you set-up mirror options to the main economy if you wanted to like underground banks and postal service but no one wants to. If most of the people and states don't mind the system what is the problem? I only have issue how they spend the money not their right to tax, and use that for the common good in fact I want more government so they can remove worry from my and your daily life. I just wish we had a strong one world government as H.G. Well envisioned.
I would phrase the above differently: theft does not become permissible because a consensus has been established in its favor.
The problem is the fact that we are trillions of dollars in debt and working on a worldwide economic crisis worse than the great depression. You cannot forever spend money you do not have.
