So yes in that sense everyone pays taxes on goods, cell phone taxes, cable TV taxes and those on car registration and so on!!! Problem is a large % pay those USE TAXES with money taxed via INCOME TAX from ME and the other 50% as I pay close to 10k a year in state and fed INCOME TAX and tend to still have to write a check for just a little more, while the entitlement bunch does not pay hardly any in, if not 0 and they still get $2-4K returns.
I never said anything about those not being taxed enough and you are right there; the stinking rich should have a higher bracket then the middle class. But the problem with running the business of the USA is not too little income, it's too much $$ going out to support people who don't want to work, are too high to work or feel they are entitled to a free ride because their "SICK" or can't keep their legs shut long enough to stop spitting out babies!
Keep on hatin' the poor...
You have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to "entitlements," why don't you try getting them yourself... the social workers act like parole agents, you get no free healthcare unless you're a pregnant mother and even then it's very limited... the average person with food stamps gets around $10-20 per month, and the maximum is $150/month... there's a four year lifetime limit on receiving welfare money, and that money is very limited, barely enough to pay rent...
if you see someone with food stamps flashing out huge wads of cash they're probably a fuckin' drug dealer (unreported income), come on man you're on RIU, you can't possibly be this blind...
When I made minimum wage, which at the time was $5.15, I got about $3/hour after taxes. 40% of my income went to the government. I was eating off less than a dollar a day, literally starving, and when I applied for food stamps, I was told I could get maybe $10 a month because my income was "too high." I was denied Medicaid. Welfare is only available for 4 years total for life, and only when you have kids, and it's not much. You can make a lot more off a minimum wage job. Welfare is just barely enough to keep you from going homeless. You know why it exists in the first place? Because there aren't enough jobs to keep everyone employed. If they just left this unemployed segment of the population to its own devices, they would rise up and kill the rich. But now they're axing all those programs... I look forward to the fireworks.
Everyone pays from 30-40% of their income in taxes, except for the rich, who pay around 15%. The rich are the only ones who get a "return" on their "investment," as most of that tax money is spent to benefit them - war expenditures which boost sales and profits for companies they invest in or own and conquer resources for them to exploit (such as oil, or the trillions in rare earth metals in Afghanistan), subsidies for their businesses, trillions in bailouts for the banks, police that stop the masses from rising up and killing them, etc.
It's absurd to suggest the poor are the reason we are bankrupt. By definition, poor people use very few resources. How could someone who gets $10/month of "free food" (a small percentage of what they pay per month in taxes) be the one that's bankrupting us, when there's rich people who drink $5000 bottles of wine every night, drive yachts that burn thousands of gallons of gas in a day, and live in mansions with hundreds of servants? They are the ones wasting economic output.... again, the top 1% of Americans own over 40% of the wealth, the bottom 40% of Americans own less than 1% of the wealth.
Blaming the poor for our economic problems is like blaming your inability to pay the mortgage on your wife's purchase of a single candy bar that month, when you spent thousands on an expensive vacation...
And something I'd think people would remember... these budget crises started in 2008. What happened in 2008? Did unions get all their wages and benefits tripled, killing the economy? Did welfare spending get boosted by 10x? No... there was a huge banking crisis caused by terminal greed, and in order to protect the profits of those banks, who donated huge amounts of money to the campaigns of every politician in congress, the government gave them TRILLIONS of dollars...
Sometimes one just needs to put the ganja away for while, clear your head, grab a lawn mower and start going door to door, before long your working all day, all week and then your actually making it on your own; at the very least your putting food on the table.
What happens when millions start walking around with lawn mowers? That's what's happening now. People are desperately looking for work and finding none.
In my area there was a job opening as a janitor for $10/hour plus meager health benefits. Over 10,000 people applied, including laid off attorneys. Our economic problems cannot be solved by working harder or blaming the poor. Our economic system is broken and needs to rethought entirely.
do a bong and pass it along!
