Posted on 07/01/2003 3:49:49 PM PDT by Principled
Its July 1st. The First of July. A rather major (and increasingly meaningless) holiday is just three days away.
Today marks the anniversary of withholding taxes from your paycheck. Withholding started on July 1, 1943. Thats 60 years ago. The politicial class needed an excuse to move to the withholding, and World War II served that purpose nicely. We were told it was all about cash flow. The government didnt have the luxury of waiting to get its share of your income. Dont worry, though. We will all go back to the normal routine of paying our taxes yearly when the war is over. Again that was 60 years ago, and about 58 years since the end of World War II.
Why is withholding so bad? Because is effectively masks the amount of income taxes American workers pay. Tax withholding introduced a new phrase into the American lexicon: Take home pay.
Today the average American has no idea how much they actually make, let alone how much they pay in income taxes. Ask them what they make and they will tell you what they take home. Ask them what they paid in taxes last year and they will tell you only what they had to pay, or how much they got back on April 15th.
The only time the average American is ever really aware of the impact of income taxes on their actual wages is when they are given a bonus. The boss will tell them Youre going to get a $10,000 bonus on your next paycheck. Instantly the employee creates this image of $10,000. Thats 100 C-Notes! Wow! This euphoria lasts right up until the magic moment that bonus check is pulled out of the envelope. Suddenly, reality sets in. The check isnt for $10,000. Its for about $5,200! You get about one-half of what you thought was coming! TAXES! Social Security, Medicare, Federal income, state taxes!
This is an outrage that is simply not felt when those bi-weekly paychecks arrive. Thats because youre conditioned conditioned by withholding to think only in terms of your take home. Its as if the rest of that paycheck, that portion seized by government, never existed at all.
How wonderful this all is for the political class! They manage to plunder your paycheck to fund their grand vote-buying schemes, and you barely notice.
Todays the day, folks. The day that led to the dumbing-down of the American wage earner.
IMO, changing the way we collect tax CAN have a significant effect.
I always do... After all, tuna have a face...
:^(
'
Rinos and democrats, that's how. People have discovered that they can vote themselves shares, that they don't deserve, from the common treasury. It's a process by which we will impoverish ourselves.
Good for you! I used to have an office right across from some townhouses. There was one fat guy who sat around all day without a shirt who was on disability. Course that didn't stop him from fixing up cars part time and selling them!
That still leaves Social Security, and it will require some bureau to collect it.
SS is still paid - via revenues from the sales tax. So sales tax will fund SS.
While I slog off to work at grueling manual labor jobs, I notice that many of my able-bodied neighbors don't seem to have jobs or families to support them. They're on SS 'disability' though the only disability they have is the disability of self-indulgence in addiction to illegal drugs. So that's where the other three-quarters of my tax revenues go . . . .
But it's all good. It's a good life . . . I have to say that, so the government doesn't turn me into a jack-in-the-box and bury me in the cornfield.
The losers across the street only come out at night to talk loud so noone can get any sleep... and they don't do anything at all, I've ever noticed. What a country.
Be a bum, we'll pay you.
Get out and VOTE DEMOCRATIC.
We need to make taxes visible whenever possible.
True.
Personally, I would vote for an amendment that would require that ALL taxes in ALL jurisdictions take the form of a retail sales tax. No more income tax. No more property tax. No more inheritance tax. Just sales taxes, at every level. That way, the taxpayers would be forced to realize, every time the cash register rings, just how much of their money the various levels of government are extracting from them.
I know that I won't see it in my time. But, it is a way that would make all taxes visible.
I've had to live around the parasites before. They sleep until 2 pm, start their drugging and drinking about 8pm and go all night. Every day is the same thing for them, never any reason to get up in the morning, never a reason to do much of anything. You always knew when their checks and food stamps would be arriving, they go out and hang at the mailboxes for hours waiting for the mailman to show.
The government gives them way too much for one --- it's very common to see the stupidest people figure out where every handout program is. I know a couple here ---they had disability, Medicaid, food stamps, government housing, WIC, Head Start which gave the kids free breakfast and lunch ---allowing them to sell many of the food stamps for beer and shopping trips to the mall, Project Bravo would come and repair their home, free cheese, milk, and formula. Plus even though they were on welfare and the father was collecting disability, he'd really do odd jobs on the side and not report that income.
For starters, the government should roll all the welfare and handout programs into one big program to eliminate the duplication, triplication etc.
Well, this is good. My main difficulty with the income tax is the degree of intrusion it places on the individual by the Federal government (we're gonna pay the taxes one way or the other, I just prefer the other). I've advocated NRST since my early twenties, over 30 years, since before it was even on the edges of the political screen. I've now seen it go from something that I kind of felt like I was the only one promoting (and getting a reputation for being some kind of hippie political freak for doing so) to being proposed in Congress.
I know a lot of people are afraid of it(the NRST), but I can't see our current system doing anything but becoming unmanageable over the next two decades with total chaos resulting. I don't see the flat tax as any kind of real reform, and it still leaves the intrusiviness of the IRS in place.
And Oliver Wendell Holmes be damned!
And this is just on payroll taxes, which is generally not even half of most people's total tax burden, the rest of it being hidden in the form of higher prices (including higher interest rates) and lower return on investment thanks to corporate (and self-employment) income taxes, "employer's share" payroll taxes, exise taxes, fees, etc.
NOW, the Clintons, Rainbow Coalition, PETA, PBS.
All of these scumbags receive the benefit of your voluntary tax dollars.
Work hard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.