: I don't care if it is a subsidy to a multi-billion-dollar corporation, to a private owner of a Section 8 apartment complex (especially those landlords who just pocket the free money from Uncle Sam [read: we the taxpayers]), or to some lazy asshole who just refuses to look for work. If you do not need public
assistance, you shouldn't be taking it!: As for those recipients who are just content to sit on their butt instead of working to pull themselves up into the mainstream, their benefits should be cut!!!
Most of those "lazy assholes who just refuse to work" are children, or they're families with children, and there are two ways to deal with the cut in benefits they suffered under the Welfare Bill.
1) the government could get rid of truancy laws and child labor laws, and allow these children to "work to pull themselves up into the mainstream" after they turn five, the age at which they no longer qualify for welfare benefits according to the Bill,
2) the government could just deny these children the right to work, and when their families are made homeless by landlords who have a right to expect rent, the government can simply round up these new homeless and "run them out of town," or into prison camps. Sound like a solution there? How hard are you willing to work to cut out a portion of .8% of the Federal Budget, the amount it spends on welfare?
:Most taxpayers are getting pissed off about their money (and it is YOUR money, NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S!!!)
Now would money be worth anything if it weren't government-guaranteed "legal tender for all debts public and private," or more specifically, would the US Dollar have its worldwide status without the Federal Reserve System and the security it provides to the banks we keep our money in, that is if we run the businesses that keep the economy going? So you have some coins, some bills, and a bank account. So what? I have metal, paper, and cloth too, and they come together in some even more useful configurations, like my car for instance. What makes your money worth something is that the government makes it and regulates its quantity (not too much and not too little, otherwise we have inflation or depression) and that it serves to mark your status within a government-supported, socially-accepted economic system.
This notion that it's "your money not the governments" is simply a claim to more power within this government-supported status system. Which is a fine claim to make, everyone wants more power, it's just that anti-government taxpayer posturing uses "complaints about the tax bill" rather than "more informed citizen power over government" as the ticket to this power, and so posturing taxpayers can easily 1) be duped by politicians, who will then 2) make policies that make the government-endorsed status system of money worse. Only the "more informed citizen power" path will bring the real power the posturing taxpayer wants.
:just getting thrown away on these lazy people (Left-wingers [I'm not talking about you, Richard], lazy people who abuse the system DO EXIST!!!), as well as all the rich people who half-assed their way to the top, instead of working hard for it.
I can support the complaint that the government ought not to be encouraging people to do nothing -- but is it any consequence WHAT they do to acquire government subsidy, or is "working hard" a universal justification for such subsidy? How about the CIA, for instance, who "works hard" funneling cocaine into the US while destabilizing democracy in the Third World? Their total budget figure is a classified secret. Do they deserve the untold sum of welfare they extract "from the taxpayer"?
: I have to disagree with Richard's view regarding the military. Just like the local police department, state troopers, and the FBI, the military IS a necessity. Many of the countries in the Middle East hate us, and if they ever decide to unite, we could be in great danger.
So Iraq and Iran would forgive each other for the mutual genocide they practiced in the 1980s, unite with Saudi Arabia who hates them both, and invade the US? Is this a threat worth spending 52 cents of every dollar you send to the IRS to combat, as you do today? Or is this a more trivial threat, worth less of your tax dollar? And what about this talk about "our oil"? It isn't, strictly speaking, "our oil" after all. Does talk about "our oil" do more than keep big American corporations from developing alternative fuel sources for America?
:Also, I have recently heard that Russia STILL has missles pointed at us. And many of our so-called "allies" are jealous of what we have. We need to have a military strong enough to take on ALL our enemies and fair-weather friends.
So France or Germany or Russia could invade the US? Is there anyone in the world (outside of the US) who still believes that military conquest is a better bet than corporate economic conquest, as did Hitler? Won't having the world's biggest nuclear arsenal deter any of those ambitions?
:But yes, the Pentagon does need to get its costs under control. $600.00 toilet seats on ships and $1000.00 ash trays are a major gouging of the taxpayer (an understatement).
Why should the Pentagon get its costs under control? It makes lots of money being the world's biggest arms dealer, after all, so why shouldn't it throw its money around like a corporation of tycoons? And if any of these weapons fall into the wrong hands, say the FMLN (who stole most of its weapons from the Salvadoran government when Reagan was supplying it in the early 1980s), or the Islamic fundies who now control Afghanistan, or Iran, why there's another excuse for maintaining war-preparedness! Or perhaps it's a matter of CITIZENS getting the Pentagon to control ITS budget, since neither it nor the politicians seem fully willing to make the necessary cuts.
The wealthy, not the voters in general, have the most say in government
None.
