It depends on what those taxes are used to purchase. If they are used to purchase a cleaner environment, better, cheaper education and greater access to it, safer streets, more stable and better paying jobs, I would consider it money well spent. If they were used to transfer money from the poor and middle classes to the wealth class, then they would certainly be oppressive.Quote:
You don't feel that higher taxes are oppressive? That putting the government in control of your access to health care is oppressive? That having to count on the Government to be in charge of the bulk of your retirement savings is oppressive?
When Bush first took office in 2001, and that year we got our rebate checks, which was a paltry $300, I said to my wife that I would gladly have let the government keep that money and would even pay twice that amount if it meant that I, and everybody else, could walk into a doctor's office, a hospital or a dentist and get a physical or treatment for an illness or disease or teeth cleaning or cavity filling without having to scratch together the cash to pay for it out of my own pocket. And the amount of money that was doled out in that refund was more than enough to pay medical coverage for every man, woman and child in this country twice over for the next 5 years. Having government in control of my access to healthcare isn't oppressive if it means I and 40 million other people who lack insurance can actually have access to healthcare without consigning themselves to a lifetime of indebtedness and poverty.
And Social Security Insurance is not retirement savings, it is retirement insurance. There's a difference. A 401k is retirement savings. SSI is meant to prevent the elderly who have had the misfortune to not be able to save for their retirement, or who have lost their savings, from dying in the streets, bereft of dignity. What would be oppressive would be abolishing that system, or privatizing its assets and funneling them into the coffers of the richest 5%.
But it is perfectly ok for you to make demands upon all the rest of us in order to continue to make that money, but seemingly illegitimate for us to contest your demand. I sense a double standard. But perhaps you are not aware of how much you absolutely depend upon the cooperation and sacrifice of countless others you will never meet in order to live the life you want to live. It is not illegitimate for the rest of us to demand some cooperation and sacrifice from you so that others may have that same privilege as well.Quote:
When the government begins making demands upon my money and through it my self which I can neither contest nor with hold it does become a THEM in all caps.
