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Goodbye IRS...?
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Good idea?
Yes.
35%
 35%  [ 7 ]
No.
15%
 15%  [ 3 ]
Maybe.
30%
 30%  [ 6 ]
Didn't bother to read the bill.
20%
 20%  [ 4 ]
Total Votes : 20

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Sigurd Volsung
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 11:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What irks me is the amount of money were spending on maintaining a nuclear arsenal large enough to carpet bomb the earth a few dozen times over. $17.6 BILLION a year, think of what that could do for our school and healthcare systems
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Kyrin
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 7:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's just it, we don't get many benefits from our taxes. Our schools are falling apart, no one is really getting properly educated, I don't know about your roads, but ours aren't being maintained, and affordable medical care is impossible. Most jobs don't offer it, and few people can afford private insurance, and there are no programs to help middle class get health care if they need it. Only lower classes and the rich get to have medical insurance and care. If you are in the middle income range, keep dreaming, not gonna happen. And it is a proven fact that the middle classes pay the most in taxes.

I wouldn't mind paying my taxes if I got something useful out of them, but so far nada.

As for the taxes on clothes, tolietries, etc...we already pay taxes on those things. 8.25% sales tax here, so I'm not sure what your point is. Besides, perhaps people would become less wasteful if they had to consider cost more. There are some great bargains to be had at thrift stores you know.

And dollar stores are great sources of shampoo and the like. Even with a slight increase in taxes it wouldn't really make that much of a change. Especially if you aren't having taxes taken out of your paychecks.

But it really doesn't matter. The IRS isn't going anywhere soon, and while some of you folks get refunds, I haven't for the last 2 years...so I for one would really like to see it go away.

Kyrin
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Shoobie
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ask any person if they would like to have more money, and they'll say yes. Tell them that you'll decrease their taxes (thus giving them more spending money) and they'll love you. This is the American condition that has both plagued our tax system, as well as our democratic system. (The guy who promises to lower taxes, gets more votes.)

Other countries spend heaps of their pop's paychecks on the country. Last time I checked, the UK's average tax rate was nearly 70% of a workers's paycheck. However, that citizen can walk into any hospital and recieve free healthcare (just to name one example).

Here in America, we not only have an enormous population, but we have a country with the most diverse ecosystems found in a single nation. We need to be able to take care of both. We also need to defend both, and we need to advance ourself into the future.

We don't need new taxes.

We don't need to lower taxes.

We need to fix the taxes we've got, so that they do what they were originally intended to do.

In a side note:
I have no problems with the government buying more planes, tanks, naval ships, etc. This is one of the biggest economic misnomers of the public. The more planes (etc) the government buys, the more money goes into our economy by way of the companies and workforces which produce those planes (etc).
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mrblanche
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 10:32 pm    Post subject: Too little taxes? Reply with quote

Actually, we are no longer one of the lowest taxed developed countries in the world. And because we have a very pernicious hidden tax, our tax rate is actually a lot higher than it appears.

How's that, you ask?

We have a corporated income tax, diesel fuel taxes, excise taxes on commercial vehicles and tires, etc. All those taxes are business expenses, and are ultimately paid by the consumer. How to do away with that would be the real question!

But, it wouldn't be too hard to work off a sales tax. The real problem is making sure the income tax goes away and stays away, which would be the reason to abolish the IRS.

But, as several people have said, this isn't a high priority for any politician. After all, money is power, and taxes are the source of the government's money.

There were good reasons, however, why our founding fathers opposed an income tax. One reason, of course, is that most of them were wealthy and would have had to pay it. But another reason is that it skews the behavior of the payers, making them behave in a way that may not make economic sense in order to reduce their taxes.

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Joshua Fox
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shoobie wrote:


We don't need new taxes.

We don't need to lower taxes.

We need to fix the taxes we've got, so that they do what they were originally intended to do.

In a side note:
I have no problems with the government buying more planes, tanks, naval ships, etc. This is one of the biggest economic misnomers of the public. The more planes (etc) the government buys, the more money goes into our economy by way of the companies and workforces which produce those planes (etc).


An excellent point, sadly one that few seem capable (or willing) to grasp. Government spending spurs the economy and allows for further growth and evelopment that would otherwise be slow in coming or may not even show up at all.

It is worth noting that the Fiscal budget for this year was the highest ever. The government's projected to take in $2,036,000,000,000 (That's $2.036 Trillion for those of you with bad eyesight). Actual spending is supposed to amount to $2.4 Trillion, leaving a deficit of roughly $364 Billion dollars. As horrifying as it seems to regular folks when budget time rolls around, a couple billion is literally a drop in the bucket. That figure includes about $322 Billion on interest payments on the National Debt, $15 Billion for NASA, $61 Billion for Education (aid to individial state Education programs), and $56 Billion for the department of Transportation. The highest is Health and Human Services, roughly at $560 Billion.

And a note on maintaining the Nuclear Arsenal: Yes, it does cost roughly $17.6 Billion to maintain the arsenal, but to properly dispose of them would cost ten times as much, and that's assuming that all safety precautions are taken. Not exactly fiscally wise when you're running 9-figure deficits. Then there's the very real worry about leaving nukes potentially exposed while getting rid of them. Russia started to 'properly dipose of' its nuclear materials years ago, and it's been a bloody disaster. Nuclear technicioans have gone missing, scientists put out of work have been spotted in places ranging from North Korea to Iran to Pakistan and Syria, and enormous amounts of spent fuel rods just 'went missing' while they were supposedly being safely removed. Considering the explicit, stated goal of Al Queda and similar organizations is to acquire nuclear weapons to strike the U.S., it would be suicidal to even contemplate putting them anywhere but in the safest, most heavily-guarded facilities there are.

And another thing that most people don't seem to know; the U.S. actually pays Russia to maintain their arsenal. It was quietly added to Russian Foreign Aid about eight years back when it became clear the Ruskies couldn't handle disarmament. So in fact the U.S. pays to maintain two nuclear arsenals: both its own, and its former enemy.

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Shoobie
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 11:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Agreed. Keep the nukes where they're at.

Besides, I keep a very Roman outlook on foreign policy myself.
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Henry_Hound
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2005 11:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kyrin: The middle class has always paid more taxes than the upper class, when you look at each as a whole. Individually though a middle class person pays less than an upper class person. And If something likes this ever passes I'd be looking for the sales tax to double at least.

Instead of abolishing income tax I'd rather see a complete audit of the entire government and find out where money is being wasted and fix that.

Also I love the fact that the congress as a whole can vote to raise their own paychecks. Our representatives work for us, we should be the ones that set thier paychecks. That way if they want a raise they'd have to justify it and then us voters could say wether they get it or not. We could also decide to lower their paychecks if we feel the don't deserve what they're getting now.
This would also be a very useful tool to make sure they do what their voters want them to do and not their own agenda.

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Thane
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 11:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Henry: You mean setting Congressional salaries via referendum? Put it to a vote of the people, in other words? Sounds good.

And on the matter of the tax system, I'd rather something even simpler than the proposed sales tax - a flat tax. We (some of us, that is) tithe to our churches; originally, a "tithe" was a tenth of the income. Church gets a tenth, government gets a tenth, and the remaining eighty percent is what we live off of. Ninety percent, rather, since tithing to one's church is a voluntary affair.
No loopholes, credits, special allowances, etc. Just a basic 10% tax.
As a sop to the "compassionate" folks, we can even set a minimum yearly earnings limit; make below a certain amount per year, and you don't pay at all.
The way things are at the moment, most folks (including myself) have no way of knowing exactly how much tax we pay. Tax on gasoline, tax on cigarettes, tax on booze, import taxes on foreign-made stuff, taxes to pay for subsidies on domestic-made stuff, property tax, state sales tax, income tax, social security tax, etc, ad infinitum. Add it all up, and the government ends up looking more and more like a giant leech.

Okay, so we kinda committed ourselves to Social Security. So, let's get that system working properly.
Government programs that are deemed as necessary... roads, law enforcement, military, for transportation, and keeping order, both from within and without.
Farm out some of the law enforcement, though... as demonstrated in Arizona recently, private citizens can, and often do, run things more efficiently. Deputize these honest folks.
Get the government totally out of schools. I have attended both private and public schools, and can testify to the inefficiency of the public school system. The public school I attended was one of the better ones, and it was still horrible. The private school I started out in got far better results with far less money. And studies have shown that this is the norm. The public schools are incompetant at best, and oftentimes actively subversive of society. Cut them loose, base their survival on results, not leeching off taxpayers with mandatory fees.

Medicine? Tort reform, pure and simple. That will, more than anything, cut medical fees. Yeah, it'll be a disaster to the lawyers, but a boon to everyone else.

Gas prices? For one, get rid of the gas taxes. Two, open up our own oilfields, and remove the moratorium on new refineries. In short, get the government out of it.

You get the picture.

This nation is wealthy enough that, with a government held properly in check, said government can survive on ten percent or less of our paychecks. There is simply no need for the massive bureaucracies we see today, many of which were formed to combat injustices or incompetance caused by other bureaucracies.
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Pflarrian
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 11:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

*nods* Sort of a "we need a watcher to watch the watchers" kind of thing. I don't think there is a cut-and-dried solution to all of this, however. If there was, I'd like to think someone would have thought of it years ago and done something about it.

Of course, that would probably be wishful thinking.

Cutting some of the fluff out of the government would be a good way to reduce governmental spending - how many minor branches and offices of the government are redundancies put in place for cold war worries anyway? Quite a few, unless I miss my guess. There will always be someone who tries to get around the tax issue, but I think in the long run, we would be better off trying to fix the problem NOW than wait another ten years.

Part of the problem, however, would be environmental blocks. More to the point, let's take the idea of opening local oilfields. That's a wonderful idea, except that the vast majority of those local oilfields are under state parks and offshore, under the oceans. Should we start drilling there, it could potentially cause a worldwide environmental disaster, if not two or three, within only a few years. The catch is that if you're going to open up American oilfields IN America, there would need to be some fairly stringent safeguards and regulations put into place to prevent disasters, and frequent site inspections to keep people from cutting corners.

Hmmm....

A good point was made about our tax rates, though. We may think we pay a lot in taxes, but all in all, our taxes are actually fairly low compared to what they COULD be. I also agree that unless things change, and change soon, all that will go the way of the dodo. *sigh*

A couple of important things - groceries (foodstuffs that are healthy) are not taxed, and under current laws, cannot BE taxed, unless they are specialty foodstuffs. Buy an apple at the grocery store, and it's not taxed. Buy the same apple from a speciality orchard, however, and it depends on what state you're in. Soda *IS* already taxed, as is alcohol, some sweeteners, certain cooking supplies, and most candies and "snacks." If the FDA doesn't deem it as a 'necessity for a healthy diet,' chances are pretty good that it's taxed. So chips, chocolate, soda, all would be taxed under these laws. Oddly enough, baked goods like doughnuts are NOT taxed, although sometimes things like hostess cupcakes are. (I used to work for a convenience store and had to deal with this problem on a daily basis)

The real trick will be to convince the Senate, the House, and the President of this problem.
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Thane
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 5:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re: The environment and oil drilling.

There are oil derricks currently pumping oil within the city of Houston. It doesn't bother the city none. The things are so unobtrusive that many folks don't even realize they're there.
In ANWR, the proposed drilling area is about the size of a large airport. Within that area, the only permanent structures required for drilling are small concrete platforms. Current technology allows a derrick, operating from one of those platforms, to drill for oil some miles away, without disturbing a single thing on the surface.
Offshore drilling, too, is an option that the enviro-weenies have been obstructing. Again, with the technology at our disposal, we are able to extract more oil with fewer problems, to the point where there is significantly more oil naturally oozing up from the ocean floor than leaking/spilled/etc from the oil rigs.
America is currently the master at extracting oil without disturbing the flora or fauna.
As for regulations to keep people from cutting corners... those regulations are already in place. Adding further regulations would be redundant, tie up more money in compliance and oversight fees, and increase costs, which would then be passed on to us, the consumers.
Don't let people wave the environmental flag as a means of obstructing oil drilling/refining. It's a red herring, and has no basis in fact.
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Thane
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 5:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re: Taxes.

Yes, our tax rate could be considerably higher. That fact does not excuse our tax rate. Rather, it's a condemnation of taxes.
Look at the European countries that are having the most economic trouble. In pretty much all of them, the tax rate is higher, so as to support a larger, more socialist government. The combination of high taxes and government interference is strangling these countries' economies. Traditional economic powerhouses such as England and Germany have been experiencing significant troubles for a number of years.
It's pretty simple. Raise taxes and grow the government, you shrink the economy. Lower taxes and reduce government interference, and the economy grows.
A government does not produce profit, the necessary ingredient for economic growth. It does not rely on efficiency for survival, nor does it depend on it to pay its employees. Whenever a government is short of money, it takes it from the people, from the economy, who must then work even harder to make up the difference.
Reduce the government's drain on the economy, and people have more money to spend, more money to pay their employees, and do not have to charge quite as much to break even.
So when you compare our tax rate to other those of other nations, you are not pointing out how good we have it, but how bad it could be. We may indeed have it better than other nations, but that's not good enough. We can still improve what we have, and set an example of how things should be, not how things are.
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Thane
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 5:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re: "Watching the watchers."

As originally designed, there is already a system in place to "watch the watchers," so to speak. We, the voters, are that system. The problem is, we have not been diligent in our watching.
When we gave over control of our schools to the government, we gave those in power the means to potentially perpetuate that power. We let the fox into the chicken coop.
By allowing those in power to determine what is taught to our children, we gave them the opportunity to shape our children's education, not to what we would want, but to support those in power. The Constitution is no longer taught; what is taught is this "living, breathing document" nonsense that basically declares that the courts have whatever power the courts decide they have. And if the courts, appointed by the same people teaching this nonsense to our children, decide to grant more power to those people, our kids wouldn't know any better.
And we have been complacent, apathetic, and allowed this to happen. It didn't happen overnight; the kinds of power maneuvering and political games necessary to achieve this require decades of indoctrination. It could have been nipped in the bud.

And now, now that people have finally begun to realize what's happened, those in power have rather firmly entrenched themselves. If we decide to take back our fate, take back our children's minds, we can do it, but it won't be easy. Power once granted is not easily rescinded. But it's doable.
Who will watch the watchers? Well, that's our job. But will we have the courage to do it?
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Shoobie
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 11:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thane wrote:
Re: "Watching the watchers."

As originally designed, there is already a system in place to "watch the watchers," so to speak. We, the voters, are that system. The problem is, we have not been diligent in our watching.

Doesn't matter, really. American voting is not done on a high-percentage (over 75%), and of those who do vote, most of them don't do any of the research or thinking required to make an intelligent vote.
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Thane
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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2005 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You kinda made my point and missed it at the same time.

We ARE too complacent. Until we decide to actually act on our own behalf and make informed, responsible decisions, the corruption and problems within our government will continue. Sure, if we elect someone as a watchdog, if we create a new agency to oversee the others for the purpose of stopping and preventing corruption, we will see a decline in visible corruption - until that elected official is either ousted or corrupted himself, until the overseer agency is infiltrated and taken over by corrupt people. Then we're right back where we started.

"Get out the vote" programs are great and all, but they're political tools.
"Educate the vote" programs are far more productive, especially so when those programs are not set deals arranged by government officials and campaign administrators, but by people like you and me. A grassroots program, if you will.

Government is set up to defend the people from those who would do harm to their neighbors. Unfortunately, both those within government and those who would do harm are also people, and frequently those two fields overlap. Additionally, even the most well-intentioned people are very capable of making honest mistakes. Government, the agency given power to protect us, is also pervertable, able to destroy us. Our recourse is to maintain control over the government equal or greater to that which the government holds over us. Government is the servant of the people, not vice versa.

Discussion, debate, the exchange of ideas and the willingness to discard ideas found to be faulty, combined with a set of morals and standards, absolute and seperated from any outside influence - these are what we need, not some delegated oversight committee that is itself corruptible.
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Shoobie
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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2005 1:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just wanna say two things before I hit the nest.

1. Even when there is an effort to "educate the vote," hardly anyone pays attention to it then, either. When a political commercial comes on the TV or inbetween songs on the radio, do you say "I need to get up and research this"? No. You grab another chip and flick to the next channel.

The closest I've come to a modestly effective approach to educating me directly about bills and laws, is either when they show up in the newspaper when problems occur, or when they're discussed on NPR.

2. A lot of people forget the simple truth about politicians. That is, they're people. They're the same human beings, and thus have the same potential to be one of those idiots who can't use their turn signals, can't park, talks on their cell in movies, etc. Just because they're on the House, doesn't mean they are a great person, nor an intelligent person.
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