I am a liberal and I pay taxes. When listening to conservatives complain, you would think they are the only ones who pay any taxes. I can hear them now - “I don’t want my tax money going to Planned Parenthood, Welfare programs, “Obamacare”, NPR, the Department of Education, the EPA”.
Well I say fine. Use MY liberal tax money to pay for those things. Conservatives can use their tax money to pay for the programs they've wanted over the years - the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Department of the Defense, Big Oil subsidies, Big Agriculture subsidies, the Department of Homeland Security, the Medicare Part D BigPharma subsidy among others. They want to shrink the government because they don't want to pay for it? Absolutely. Let’s make the Pentagon so small it can be “drowned in a bathtub”. Fine by me - let’s do it.
Back to my taxes. Not only do I pay taxes, but my salary is also less than $50K per year. Stop telling me I don’t pay any income taxes because I do, and have the documents to prove it. I've paid every year since 1978. For me it's primarily because I don’t have many deductions (single, with no children, and renting an apartment rather than owning a house). I always end up taking the “standard deduction” on my taxes. For some reason I thought most other people did too. I could go into a rant about how single people are discriminated against, but that’s another story. Anyway I digress.
The way I see it, a major problem in this whole debate on taxes and government is that Republicans (particularly the Tea Party types) do not understand the purpose of money. They talk about money as if it were some natural resource that will be "used-up" when it's spent. They seem to think that the money in the form of taxes just disappears and is gone permanently after it the government spends it. Money is just a means of exchanging goods. The government takes in the taxes, and then gives the money back to the people again - to pay for infrastructure, to pay Social Security recipients, soldiers, contractors, doctors, teachers, lawyers, police, scientists, - the complete list is quite long I'm sure.
That money that the government pays out doesn’t just vanish into thin air forever. It’s not consumed like food or burned up like fuel. It's not put into a paper shredder. People and businesses receive the money, and transfer or exchange it for goods and services. Those people then buy materials to build highways or help tornado and flood victims, or educate children. They shovel the snow off the streets, and maintain drinking water and sewage systems. They keep us safe from fires and crime. With their salaries they buy food and clothes, pay their mortgages and rent, and help keep private business "in-business". There are a lot of private companies that receive money directly from the government in the form of contracts.
Even then, the money is not "used-up" like the gasoline in your car. The money continues to go to other people in other businesses, who use that same money to pay other people for services and goods, who then pay other people, who pay other people. Some of that money even ends up going back to the government in taxes to be re-distributed again.
The problem we have now is that too little money is not circulating like it’s supposed to be. It's like the country is having "money clots" in it's middle-class "legs". The majority of the money is now being held buy a small number of ultra-wealthy people and corporations, with the GOP members of Congress (and some Democrats) believing in the old “Reaganomics” Theory that eventually the rich will get around to "trickling" the jobs down to the rest of us. As we've seen in the past, it doesn't work. The Rich are not creating jobs (at least not American jobs). They say they are "afraid" to create new jobs, because the economy is so bad. Well who made the economy bad in the first place? Instead, of circulating the money, they are hoarding it, moving it overseas, gambling with it on Wall Street, and just generally ignoring the plight of those who truly need it.
Infrastructure is crumbling around us, we have no plans in the works for a sustainable energy future, people are losing their jobs; those who do have jobs are losing their pensions and benefits, and yet the Big Plan in Congress is to gut the social services, reduce and cut the federal government, which will then lose more jobs and at the same time give more tax breaks (and profits) to the people who need it the least. It's like feeding fat to a heart attack patient.
I realize I'm just ranting to the choir here. I don't really know what else to do. I'm grateful I still have a job and I'm sorry for those who don't. When the Iraq War started back in 2003, I knew it was going to be a disaster, but I don't feel any better now saying "I told you so" to conservative acquaintances that I know supported the war. This Deficit Hysteria has that same tone as the Iraq War build-up. "OMG-The-Sky-Is-Falling-If-We-Don't-Lower-The Deficit-Immediately". No, the REAL crisis is the numbers of unemployed people that will continue to grow if we stay on this path. We need an FDR-type stimulus plan for jobs and new infrastructure (emphasis on renewable energy), and to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan completely (most other overseas bases too). The Rich need to cough up a lot of jobs - or be subject to a lot higher taxes. I really don't want to have to say "I told you so" again.