Taxes...

Just had my taxes done and I feel sick! I have to pay another few grand to support this type of non-sense - Joe Biden's Paris Hotel Cost $585,000 For One-Night Vice Presidential Stay

 

I only had to pay in $1107. However my neice and her boyfriend are going to Mexico. They got over $5K from the earned income tax credit, plus another $1K for each kid (3 children from two different Mom's, classy). Grand total? Over $5K of Randell's money. I'm here to tell you, they (my loser family members) do not deserve it!

Randell, I'm surprised you're mentioning the dreaded "T" word! You should know better. About the only thing you can talk about right now is Gay Marriage. Everything else is an plot by evil rich white guys like you to take money from poor starving minority children.

Enjoy your privilege!

 

I had to pay $2735 this year. I try to manage my taxes so I pay $2000.
Why?
Because I earn interest on that amount (about $123 in 2012).

 

Well, you read way too much into that one. Without going into gory details, this is not a story to be emulated....trust me.

 

I like taxes. Taxes pay for our governments at all levels. They fund education. They pay for infrastructure. They make our skies, highways, parks, neighborhoods, food, purchases, and many other things safe. Taxes provide one of America's greatest strengths: public education. They also help ensure our senior citizens are financially and medically supported. They pay for the defense of our nation. They also help move wealth from the hands of the very rich into the rest of society. Taxes are the basis for building the middle class. Without taxes, the rich would retain all the wealth and the rest of us would be forced to accept the scraps they would allow us. (Read your history.)

I pay a considerable amount in taxes, and I do it willingly. I also live in an amazing country, the United States of America. I would ask: where on Earth is there another country that (a) has a higher standard of living, (b) has greater personal freedoms, and (c) requires lower taxes? Which country has us beat?

I consider paying my taxes a patriotic duty.

 

If it doesn't mean anything then don't bring it up

 

I'm ambivalent. I agree with all that you have said above, but I resent my taxes also going to pay for frivolous things and supporting people that leach from the system.

 

Everyone's situation is different but I work on straight salary with no side business stuff (as far as you know) so it's pretty simple to extrapolate your taxes. Even H&R Block can tell you how to increase your withholding so that you get a few bucks back at the end of the year. I know that everyone's situation is different but if you go to a decent accountant I can't understand why you'd wind up having to pay money back. Maybe it's just my sheltered lifestyle.

 

I prefer to keep my money and give it to starving minority children by choice.

 

Well without going into too many details - married, no children, no mortgage, no medical bills, made a fairly large sum of money with fluctuating adjunct income that is difficult to predict.

 

Except that in a democracy you have competing interests, so one person's frivolity might be another's essential expense. Also, with trillions of dollars being spent there will inevitably be waste. Controlling that on a large scale is important, but we tend to get bent out of shape about egregious examples of small-scale spending. The costs involved with controlling against that--really preventing it--would far outweigh the spending itself. We worry about 85 grand here while billions are being spent (wasted, possibly) over there. But as I said, the F-35 is either a boondoggle or a critical acquisition, depending on your perspective.

 

Oops. $585,000. But there's no indication that the expense isn't fair. Imagine how much higher it would have been if he'd used the minibar.

 

Biden's bill: Even if my share is only 1/5th of a penny, I am annoyed. Have they never heard of traveling incognito?

 

It means something to me and was put into the conversation to help illustrate a point I was making. Steve was offended by the phrase, but I assured him that it was not meant as a slight to anyone other than my own family...

99% of my posts don't mean anything.

 

The Vice President? That would seem to me to be impossible. But I do feel security these days has run amok. It's like that old saying, "no one ever got fired by buying IBM." Well, no one gets fired for increasing security, and no one seems to want to take the risk of reducing it. (Can you imagine the political backlash if the Administration reduced his profile and the costs of security, and then something happened to him?)

I don't know if the expenses related to this trip were extravagant or wasteful, so I'm not commenting on it. But I do miss the days when we didn't have to make everything so bullet-proof.

 

That is the philosophy of an anarchist. It would be workable if we completely abandoned government, law enforcement, public safety, public education, public health, the military, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

This nation isn't in financial trouble due to profligate spending. Even the two off-book wars Bush ran but didn't pay for aren't the real problem. The real problem is runaway health care costs combined with the wave of baby boomers becoming eligible for Medicare. Social Security isn't a problem, yet, but will be in a few decades if we do nothing.

What would you cut? Personally, I'd cut the heck out of DHS and DOD (and I've worked extensively in each). And I'd cut out the middle man (health insurance companies) that are driving up costs without market competition and move to a single-payer system.

 

I agree.

I'm surprised by many of my aerospace public company coworkers who rail against taxes, yet their salaries and benefits are all funded by government contracts.