Would you like living in a country where you did not have to pay any taxes?

[kentuck]

Except maybe on food and luxuries?

What kind of roads do you think you would have?

Or schools?

Or cops?

Or security?

But you would get to keep almost every penny you made. It is yours. All yours. Would that make you more happy?

That is the direction we are headed with extending the Bush taxcuts. Can we not see how much we have deteriorated in the last ten years? What do you think it would be like in ten more years?

When people making $250K years are exempted from a progressive tax structure, we cannot pay for the basic necessities of government. We cannot continue to borrow trillions of dollars. When we debate whether or not to give more taxbreaks to millionaires, we are headed toward a ditch that even Barack Obama can not get us out.

Democrats need to think long and hard before they compromise with the Repubs on extending these taxcuts. They will not help our economy. They will destroy our economy even further. It is not a pretty picture.

[jwirr]

1. Years ago my young hippie brother and his wife moved to Arkansas

to homestead. They bought a small plot in the country and built their own home on it. The real estate taxes were only $6.00. Come spring and the rainfalls and washes out the road. They waited for the county to come and fix it like they do in many of our states. Neighbors finally explained - you are supposed to fix the road in front of your own place. Bummer!

[bvar22]

10. Hey, my wife & I did that in 2006 !

:hippie:
We are Old Hippies living well on a low taxable income, and the skills we learned in the 60s
So far, so good.
We don't fix the road.
We have 4WD when needed.

So how is your Hippie Brother doing?

[jwirr]

11. He and his wife are still living the good life. He has never regretted

dropping out.

[Denninmi]

2. Well, they don't seem to get the connection.

First and foremost, many of them are worked up to the point that the believe tat there should be no taxes of any kind, and certainly never any kind of tax "increase" or even renewal.

The real problem with the premise of "you would get to keep almost every penny you made" is that it would make very little practical difference to the average working class or middle class person -- what real difference is a few thousand dollars a year going to make in the "big picture" of their lives. But, the many, many thousand of dollars paid by those wealthier taxpayers who haven't managed to totally game the system to get their tax bill down to a very low level already seems to be an unjust enrichment IMO.

I live in metro Detroit. Many communities here are beginning to really face the crunch. Yesterday, my county government announced it was laying off 1/3 of the road plow drivers due to budget cuts. Our winter road maintenance during snowstorms and ice storms was already poor, it will only get worse.

But, will the teabaggers put 2 and 2 together and ever come up with anything other than 5?

I have a perfect example from another forum I post on regularly, and I would LOVE to have responded to this idiot, but I kind of held my tongue because I wasn't quite sure what to say without coming off as an a-hole myself:

A thread was started about budget deficits and government layoffs. One woman posted that she was a librarian and has already been told that by spring she most likely would lose her job. A few posts later, semi-regular, tea party type person who posts mostly around election cycles and other big political events (lots of posting last March, for example) got on there and said "well, we need to thin out the deadwood, the lazy, the unnecessary. But, don't fire my 2 sons, who both work for the government..." Hypocrite and stupid as all get out to boot. This person gets on there and posts about the evils of government and taxes and so on and so forth, but can't connect the dots and figure out that her own attitudes, activities, and voting patterns might contribute to the very situation she fears. And, she is arrogant enough to suggest that her 2 sons are somehow more deserving than the poor librarian, who is "deadwood" in her opinion.

[33Greeper]

3. Yeah!

Somalia rocks! Bring it! //snark off

[flor-de-jasmim]

4. And the super wealthy get to keep every cent of theirs, too. Whoopie...not.

[kentuck]

5. But , of course....

...would you like a little Grey Poupon with that? :-)

[felix_numinous]

6. There should be a price for privilege

not a price for poverty.

[LaurenG]

7. Sure but what would we do for infrastructure and what about the national debt

not to mention the wars and all the wars the republicans are watering at the the mouth to start. How would that work? ;)

edit: typo

[jillan]

8. NO - I just wish I had more input of where my tax dollars are spent.

When they're used to pay Jan Brewer's salary - I have a major problem with that.
But when they are used to build new roads or new schools, provide healthcare to the needy.... I am glad to do my share.

As Biden said during the primaries, paying taxes is patriotic. He got beat up about that comment, but I couldn't agree more.

[rhett o rick]

9. Haiti