We pay taxes to destroy our own Constitution.

[Serpentine]

We pay taxes to support domestic enemies of our Constitution. Why?

Socialized Medicine - a debacle like we've never seen before. Starts in six months. Invasion of privacy and absurd in its design. The Affordable Care Act flies in the face of sound actuarial and underwriting principles, does not take into consideration the cost to the tax payers, adverse selection, over utilization, cost shifting, or the increased negative immigration this will cause. The statement "sign it and then we'll tell you ....... how much your taxes will increase to cover the enormous, yet unknown costs. That's a truthful analysis.

2A - protects us against foreign and domestic enemies- how? . "Shall not be infringed?" What? This "civil right" has been infringed upon in just about every way imaginable. We the people pay to support it's destruction by paying taxes to people that "swear to uphold the Constitution." Is the universe about to split?

Illegal immigration amnesty. Such an oxymoron. Those criminals have more rights, free benefits and protection than our own citizens. They aren't refugees - they are foreign invaders.

Just trying to stay in touch with the truth on a beautiful Sunday afternoon watching baseball with a very false since of security.

Go Giants!

[Yugo]

stop paying

[Liberty Belle]

Starve the Beast. Hell, they can't find 12 million (actually, closer to 40 million) illegal aliens, how are they going to arrest 150 million non-tax payers...much less prosecute them all??

[Doheny]

Starve the Beast. Hell, they can't find 12 million (actually, closer to 40 million) illegal aliens, how are they going to arrest 150 million non-tax payers...much less prosecute them all??

That sounds like a nice idea until you notice a large amount missing from your paycheck in the form of garnished back taxes.

[Stewdabaker23]

^^^ Exactly...I would love to not pay taxes but wouldn't have the slightest clue how to do that. The IRS are like leeches who will never go away until they take all that they can.

[mud99]

^^^ Exactly...I would love to not pay taxes but wouldn't have the slightest clue how to do that. The IRS are like leeches who will never go away until they take all that they can.

It's really easy.

Don't use the government toilet paper. Hide in the woods, grow your own food. Build a house somewhere remote and inaccessible. Once you live there, the government will not easily be able to kick you out.

Or did you mean that you wanted to live a luxurious debt ridden american lifestyle while not paying taxes?

I don't hate taxes, I hate the worthless social programs they fund, and the government dependency they create which ruins lives. I also hate that they are levied unjustly.

[Cypriss32]

I hate taxes. It's like working 60% of the time for no reason. It sounds like most people are okay with working for free now days.......

[Drew Eckhardt]

We pay taxes to support domestic enemies of our Constitution. Why?

Socialized Medicine - a debacle like we've never seen before.

You mean

Socialized Medicine - a debacle like we've never seen and won't.

While lots of offensive things end in "ism" - Socialism, Communism, Corporatism, they are _very_ different.

Socialism implies social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy. Socialist medicine would be like they have in the UK where the government provides the insurance, owns the hospitals, and hires the doctors.

In America private companies provide insurance (except to the 40 million old people covered by Medicare who wouldn't be profitable to insure, and 40 million covered by Medicaid who can't afford insurance but would otherwise get treatment under EMTLA and not pay leading to losses to for -profit companies), private companies own hospitals (except for the VA), and doctors negotiate deals for themselves with those companies.

Many people think that's capitalism but are also wrong.

With capitalist medicine when you got an intollerable sore throat you'd see a nurse, pay him $25 for 15 minutes of his time like your mechanic, and walk out the door with a prescription for a generic drug ($12/500 pills) which you'd fill yourself from the drugstore shelves which were stocked by whatever companies won the bid. In the unlikely event something was wrong he couldn't make sense of you'd get a referal to a specialist you paid $300/hour like your lawyer.

Obviously that does not happen. Only doctors are licensed to write prescriptions (it keeps profits up), drugs can only be dispensed by licensed pharmacists (it keeps profits up), and you're likely to get something still covered by patent (it keeps profits up) even where that just means they've omitted the less bioactive chiral form of their last patented drug.

This is because we have corporatist medicine, where (citing wikipedia) corporatism

may refer to political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.

We write our laws to favor those interests (do the math - being a senator pays $174K/year. Winning a senate seate costs $10.5M which is $1.7M for each year in a six-year term or approximately 10X that amount. The arithmetic works because other people pay for the election since they get a little quid pro quo in return). The insurance industry is exempt from anti-trust legislation and their products can be purchased with pre-tax dollars (that let people spend up to twice as much for the same change in what's left over) with those policies getting consumers more expensive plans than they'd purchase for themselves. We protect the doctors union's (aka AMA) interests by not letting any one they don't approve of practice medicine. Etc.

That's because America has corporatist health care brought to you by both Democrats and Republicans who are two sides of the same counterfeit coin that disagree on but a few significant details.

Medicare Part D is a trillion dollar per ten year tax funnel to the pharmaceutical industry with votes and signatures from Republicans. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) their lobbying organization was so happy with Billy Tauzin the bill's sponsor they made him their president with a seven figure salary. As a side effect senior citizens got some help buying their medications.

Obamacare is a trillion dollar per ten year tax funnel to the insurance and health care industries with votes and signatures from Democrats. PhRMA played an important part in that bill too, running a $150M advertising campaign to support the bill which will get them tens of millions of new consumers with $100B in drug discounts traded for concessions to keep their profit margins up. As a side effect less affluent Americans will get some help paying inflated insurance premiums to for-profit private companies 80-85% of which will be forwarded to mostly for-profit healthcare companies including the PhRMA member companies which make prescription drugs.

America is doomed if people don't wake up and realize Republican vs Democrat, Rich vs. Rest, and 53% vs 47% conflicts are distractions from the real problem which is the governments' collusion with corporatist interests to our detriment.

Even with the recent recession the median household income is 19% higher in real terms than it was in 1967 ($50K vs $42K in 2011 dollars) and matches the frothy peak in the late 1980s.

Living is harder now than then because our government has colluded with corporatist interests, causing essentials like education to skyrocket compared to inflation (college costs have gone up 4X more since the 1980s).

Illegal immigration amnesty. Such an oxymoron. Those criminals have more rights, free benefits and protection than our own citizens. They aren't refugees - they are foreign invaders.

When the last of my ancestors arrived in America everyone was welcome as long as they were healthy, not criminals, and not Chinese (the first preceded such restrictions). That was about the time America got its first income tax with a $69,782 exemption in current dollars for single people and $93,042 for married couples. The next $465,212 was taxed at 1% and only robber barons raking in $11,630,303 had to pay the 7% top rate.

The sounds pretty good to me, although as a modern guy I'd accept the Chinese too.

Personally I worry more about competition from guys in Asia who can own a villa with live-in servants cooking, cleaning, and driving for them on 1/5 the salary than ones who move down the street from me and pay $2000-$3000 a month for a 2-bedroom apartment with what's left after at least a 28% Federal marginal rate, 9.3% state rate, along with FICA/medicare/CA SDI.

Some foreigners come here on H1-B visas which effectively makes them indentured servants who can't change employers. They have a bigger effect on wages than if they could decide they were getting a bad deal and go work for another company down the street for what they're really worth.

If you want to look at this in relativistic terms Reagan gave amnesty to _all_ of the illegals, all three million of them. Obama only covered the 800,000 who showed up before they were 16 and have yet to turn 30. His Justice Department's (ever wonder what it's a department of? The answer is "the executive branch" with key officials being presidential appointees who serve "at the president's pleasure" that can be replaced any time he disagrees with them) first term prosecutions of illegal reentry essentially matched those over Bush's (43) two terms.

Just trying to stay in touch with the truth on a beautiful Sunday afternoon watching baseball with a very false since of security.

While more agreeable your propoganda still isn't the truth.

If you're not a member of the 0.4% (those making campaign contributions large enough to require FEC reporting, the majority of which for some candidates total $10,000 which is the statutory per-couple maximum for primary and general elections) you don't have much reason to feel secure.

[SonofWWIIDI]

Starve the Beast. Hell, they can't find 12 million (actually, closer to 40 million) illegal aliens, how are they going to arrest 150 million non-tax payers...much less prosecute them all??

They can find us because;

Valid, correct home addresses
Valid, correct drivers licenses
Automobile registration
Pistol registration (at least in California, and probably coming zoo to a state near you)
Valid, legal employment
Valid credit cards
Etc., etc., etc.

The list continues. Besides, the infernal revenue-er service doesn't play by the same rules as we do, or even the ones the legal system plays by (unless it suits their agenda).

[Drew Eckhardt]

Starve the Beast. Hell, they can't find 12 million (actually, closer to 40 million) illegal aliens, how are they going to arrest 150 million non-tax payers...much less prosecute them all??

Why do you think politicians want to prosecute "illegal" alliens? Ever notice that although employers can check a government database they're only required to ask for proof of ID which can be issued to illegals (like a state driver's license) that may be hard to forge but proof of employment elligibility that's easy (as far as I can tell some government employee used a typewriter to make my Social Security card a few decades ago and it wouldn't take much to forge)?

Immigration laws are about maximizing profits for the people who pay to elect the politicians. Farming corporations do better when they don't have to hire Americans to pick crops with their working condition expectations (or perhaps insistence on minimum wage). Doctors do better when their foreign competition without six figure medical school debts stays home.

In practical terms low-wage employees are free to immigrate as they please as long as they don't care about exemption from American minimum wage laws and employer-share contributions for the government benefits which don't apply to them, but high-wage employees are not.

The income tax situation is also interesting. Most people have been indoctrinated by our political elite and media organizations under their control and don't know how things work.

America has the MOST progressive (defined as the top earning decile's share of tax to share of income) income tax system out of the OECD 24 including includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, The Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom. Astute readers will note many of those have reputations for socialism.

The professional working class (the wealthy buy politicians to keep their taxes low, the lower classes aren't taxed because there's no money there, and much of the middle class gets a pass so they vote for the politicians) pays the vast majority of taxes.

If you're part of the 47 you wouldn't loose anything by not paying your non-existant (often negative due to refundable credits) income taxes and the government would loose more by making you.

OTOH, as a member of the professional working classes you're paying a lot and they would care. We're a _much_ more manageable minority.

Most of us are still wage slaves too, with the bulk of our earnings reported to the government which makes detecting significant non-compliance easy. Such wages are also easily garnished so enforcement is not a problem.