Quote:
Originally Posted by wistahpatsfan
Because taxing the money that a roofer or firefighter makes makes risking his life, enduring stress, losing his grip on relationships and sanity, bleeding, breaking bones, and destroying his back by the time he's 50 is obscene to me.
Taking a part of the pay from a waitress who can barely walk by the end of the week while taking insults sexual advances from her customers is obscene.
Taking a piece of the pay from a landscaper who are forced to inhale toxic chemicals, shovel mulch and build stone walls and patios with his bare, broken hands is obscene.
Taking part of the pay from a nurse, who works harder and does more to help the sick and dying than any doctor who is making 100 times what she does and gets to shelter and write off most of it is obscene.
It's not about the bottom line, for me. I'm an idealist, and pragmatism, to me, means not insulting people and doing right by those who work hard on our behalf.
The income tax is obscene and offensive to me.
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You're still taking X% more from a firefighter who is breaking bones, stressing out, bleeding, burning, asphyxiating, and otherwise having an unpleasant go of it whenever he goes to the store or out to dinner.
And, you're taking
more of it because the math gives the edge to the plutocrat who makes his money by watching his money make money.
Because of how much gets taken from the different income layers, until we have million-dollar-a-year firefighters, the firefighter will always get screwed in a national sales tax scenario compared with a plutocrat.
What you're pointing toward is that a waitress, a roofer, a firefighter, a regular middle class
person... has more burden than he or she should. That's the obscene part.
You don't cure that obscenity by making it worse.
The visceral reaction specifically to
income tax, versus some other kind of tax that would be better for the very rich and worse for the people you mention, just doesn't hold water... it's a giveaway
from those very hardworking people you just mentioned
to the people who don't work.
I agree with your gut reaction point: Regular people need a break.
But I disagree that we should do things that cosmetically
look like they give regular people a break when they just make things worse.
But one other point I guess of agreement... OT, tax policy aside... if we could stop just for ten seconds from simply being buttholes to each other, at least people could go about their lives feeling like they have to fight less to maintain basic dignity.
We all know the righties that are still trying to make hay from a very real phenomenon in the 60s or 70s.
People came home from war, and got blamed for the policies that sent them to war. The U.S. Army set up free-fire zones. Then you pulled the trigger. Then the person you freely fired on turned out to be a 6-year old -- or, you didn't, but somebody did.
Then you come home to derision for serving your country.
Well, that was wrong. It's not happening anymore. It's common for people of every political persuasion to tell people coming home "thank you." No matter if you agree with the war, we're all aware you have to value the vet. They do what they do
for all of us, whether you disagree with present policy or not.
Why can't we think that way about everyday people who break their bodies to make cars, get dinner out to the fourtop at table 3, put out the fires, do the EMT work for people who are hurt, do whatever they do to keep our lives running "as we assume they should"?
I don't mean never complain if service is bad, I just mean
assume that people who do things for you are serving you, just as you serve them when you do what you do?
Random thought. Seems like we feel like we're all trying to grind down whoever we get a chance to. It might have the equivalent value of a sizable raise, in terms of wellbeing, if people were just not habitual buttholes to each other.
/rant
PFnV