Subj : Re: Um...no comment?
To   : Sam Alexander
From : Daemon
Date : Tue Sep 20 2005 01:48 pm

  Re: Re: Um...no comment?
  By: Sam Alexander to Mrproper on Tue Sep 20 2005 01:49 am


  Ah...  I missed Syncedit...  Had to reinstall it from a backup since it
wasn't in the new version of SBBS.

 > opinion on this.  I honestly think there should be a tax based on the 
 > percentage of what you make and not on what you buy.  It seems that we often

  Why?

  I'm for a flat tax, percentage-wise, but would be perfectly happy with a tax
on consumables as opposed to income.  No more "cigarette tax" or "gas tax" or
whatever tax...  Just a plain old vanilla X% across the board, and goodbye to a
huge piece of the beaurocracy AND the concept of "tax shelters" and/or "tax
evasion" all at once.

 > in what the government thinks we owe we pay in more.  Plus what's with all 
 > the fee's like to fish, get married, etc.  I can see paying a fee to enter a
 > park or church for the services, but why does the state/government get it's 
 > chunk?

  Odd.  Personally, I take literal offense to the idea of paying to use a
public park, find the idea of "paying" for church services immoral, and see a
benefit at least so far as being able to gauge wildlife protection/control via
permits, etc to a limited extent as being a reasonable solution to the
problem/question.

  I DO think, though, that funds generated in the interests of wildlife
protection/control should go to wildlife protection/control and not into a
general fund, but that's a very broad gripe of mine against the government at
large anyway.

  Lottery funds, for instance (in NY anyway - no idea about anywhere else) are
supposed to go STRAIGHT to educational funding.  But it doesn't.  It goes into
a general fund.

  That huge tobacco settlement a while back, similarly, was supposed to go
towards health-related expenditures, particularly those directly related or
caused by smoking.  That goes into the general fund, too, though, despite
court orders to the contrary, and in some cases (like for instance Erie County
where I live) the government borrows against those funds at high interest
purely for budget balancing reasons, financing their own inability to do math
to our DOUBLE detriment (firstly by neglecting that which is supposed to be
funded, secondly in interest payments that drive municipal and county credit
ratings down).

  The two-party money shuffle is FAR more expensive than we are led to believe,
and a lot of that damage is done by NOT allocating funds where they're supposed
to go.


       [daemon]                 
       In the shuffling madness...      



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