Death and Taxes
It is often said they are the two inevitable things in life. They also happen to be the two things we, as a society, tend to put off as long as possible and contemplate with a growing sense of dread that slowly builds like a knot in our collective stomachs. At least with taxes we know when it'll happen -- not sure if that's a good or bad thing. We also know that it happens annually, which is definitley a bad thing, or so my financial advisor tells me. And he should know, after all, that's what I pay him for.
Anyway, I put off my taxes until April 17. The last possible date. In fact, I had my taxes done well before that, but I wanted to earn every last penny of interest before sending the government some of my hard earned money. Do you want to hear why? No? Well then stop reading. Cuz I'm going to tell you anyway.
The fact is that I'm kind of pissed off that I feel like I don't have more say in how my government spends my tax money. I don't want a ridiculously large percentage of my taxes to go to the pentagon. I feel like they squander a lot of it and are extraordinarily inefficient, which means that next year I'll have to pay them more, cuz they're certainly not going to get more efficient with the incentives structured backward like they currently are.
I also don't want money spent on the Iraq war, I don't want money spent on poor healthcare initiatives, I don't want money spent on Bush's midnight flights back to Washington for the Terry Schiavo case, and I certainly don't want my money spent on fighting legal and PR battles to defend policies I strongly disagree with. It just seems absurd that the government is using my money to fund PR campaigns to tell my why they think I'm wrong.
Couldn't we have an opt-out system? Every citizen would get provided with a list of all major line items in the governments budget. By default money would go to all of them, but you could actively select a maximum of 2 departments that you don't think should get your money. And tax dollars are distributed accordingly. I realize that's a libertarian type argument, but it makes a certain kind of sense to me. Of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Any thoughts on this?
It is often said they are the two inevitable things in life. They also happen to be the two things we, as a society, tend to put off as long as possible and contemplate with a growing sense of dread that slowly builds like a knot in our collective stomachs. At least with taxes we know when it'll happen -- not sure if that's a good or bad thing. We also know that it happens annually, which is definitley a bad thing, or so my financial advisor tells me. And he should know, after all, that's what I pay him for.
Anyway, I put off my taxes until April 17. The last possible date. In fact, I had my taxes done well before that, but I wanted to earn every last penny of interest before sending the government some of my hard earned money. Do you want to hear why? No? Well then stop reading. Cuz I'm going to tell you anyway.
The fact is that I'm kind of pissed off that I feel like I don't have more say in how my government spends my tax money. I don't want a ridiculously large percentage of my taxes to go to the pentagon. I feel like they squander a lot of it and are extraordinarily inefficient, which means that next year I'll have to pay them more, cuz they're certainly not going to get more efficient with the incentives structured backward like they currently are.
I also don't want money spent on the Iraq war, I don't want money spent on poor healthcare initiatives, I don't want money spent on Bush's midnight flights back to Washington for the Terry Schiavo case, and I certainly don't want my money spent on fighting legal and PR battles to defend policies I strongly disagree with. It just seems absurd that the government is using my money to fund PR campaigns to tell my why they think I'm wrong.
Couldn't we have an opt-out system? Every citizen would get provided with a list of all major line items in the governments budget. By default money would go to all of them, but you could actively select a maximum of 2 departments that you don't think should get your money. And tax dollars are distributed accordingly. I realize that's a libertarian type argument, but it makes a certain kind of sense to me. Of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Any thoughts on this?
posted by slithytoves at 2:13 PM
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