|
AnimusRex -> RE: 33 states get more Fed tax $ than they pay in. (3/7/2010 12:38:24 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydawg
Good lord Animus. I know you are smart enough to follow the thread.
Aww, you say the sweetest things.
Actually, this thread only points out the silliness of how our national dialogue; as in, we frame the argument in terms of "whats in it for me" and treat as a bizarre concept, that it could be any other way.
How can you do any form of accounting, to figure out who owes what to whom? How do we figure out how to repay the debt to Washington for seizing the territories from the Natives who lived there? How do we calculate who should pay whom to compensate for the highways that allow the Alaskan oil fields to be developed? Or the electrical grid that allows Nevada to exist?
When people proudly stand and say they don't owe anything to Washington, it is a lie- they stand on land that the Federal government seized, with highways that taxpayers financed, with electrical grids publicly built, in states filled with engineers, doctors, and managers taught with public schooling, and the entire system protected by Federal Armies.
We- collectively we the voters- reward politicians who bring in pork by any means possible, and punish those who don't. So even though we like it when Sarah Palin stands and postures as a Real Merkin Rugged Individualist, who Don't Need Nuthin' From Them Damn Liburls, in reality even Alaskans know they are getting truckloads of welfare from Washington.
The idea that we should, collectively pitch in and transfer money from rich states to poor states, or states that have a surplus to states that have a deficit, is considered heresy, something Not Spoken In Polite Society.
Yet its exactly what is done, by both parties, and every political movement. Its just considered embarrassingly awkward to say it honestly.
Or worse, since we refuse to acknowledge the idea of a social obligation, a duty to help the less fortunate, the process becomes perverted, where the money gets doled out not according to who needs it, but who has the strongest lobby. We- collectively- reward cynicism and cheating, we punish honesty and candor, we reward selfishness and greed, and punish Christian charity and civic duty.
Why can't we stand up and say out loud, boldly and unapologeticaly, that we have a civic duty to help those who are less fortunate; that those who have succeeded and prospered, that a society stratified into haves and have-nots is wrong, and un-American, that we are all better off when we act as one group, one tribe, one family, instead of squabbling dogs fighting over scraps?
We celebrate our soldiers, lauding them as self-sacrificing heroes; Yet it kind of rings hollow and phony, when we celebrate self-interest as the highest good, when we smirk at those who pay their fair taxes as chumps and those who game the system to pay nothing as clever and admirable.
What is needed is a movement that says Government is Good, where we see paying a fair tax is a noble and patriotic form of civic duty, like serving on jury duty.
|
|
|
|
