No, they're not. If they were, we wouldn't have this system.
I'm sick and tired of people complaining while supporting the people in office who perpetuate the things they're complaining about.
Couldn’t say it any better, Dahoser!
No kidding! People complain about the loss of power, they complain that Bush is wiretapping and listening in on their phone conversations yet they have no problem jumping through hoops, telling the IRS all kinds of personal information and wading through pages and pages of BS all in the hopes that they’ll get some of their own money backs. Messed up.
The Americans facing this burden directly are overwhelmingly outnumbered by those who aren't. The lowest 50% of tax returns have an average tax rate under 3%. They take their 1040 to H&R and get it done in an afternoon.
That isn't even touching the millions of Americans who don't file at all.
And these people all vote. Around election time, they're a lot more receptive to talking about new government handouts for themselves than about tax complexity faced by other people.
We have exactly the system you would expect unqualified democracy to produce.
No, they're not. If they were, we wouldn't have this system.
Yes they are sick of it, but they have no fire in their belly and take a Prozac instead. Well, plus they caper like mad fools in triumph when they "win" by getting a nickel of their taxes back here and there from Uncle Sam Santa. Americans are becoming as sheepish as Canadians, the British, et al. Self-defeatists. People give up when they no longer realize what they've lost.
Withholding makes it too painless. Make everybody write big checks four times a year, and change would come quickly.
But it's the voters fault?
So all those elected a$$holes who promise one thing and yet never seem to deliver are not culpable at all? They aren't committing fraud after all?
It isn't the voting that is the problem. It's a lack of a mechanism like the old Greek Ostracism that allows unprincipled, back-stabbing, anti-Freedom, Constitution ignoring sh*tbags in BOTH Parties to continue to safely ignore the electorate.
After all, with no real recourse to removing a bad legislator... what are you going to do? Yell about it online? Try and "vote them out" next time?
Until people are ready to FORCIBLY remove these people, there is very little that will actually change.