For someone with a reasonably high IQ, I can be remarkably stupid. When I became self employed 3-4 years ago, I had my tax returns done by an accountant, and didn’t think too much of them.
Recently, however, I HAVE been looking at them, and one interesting fact emerges: I have to pay 15.3% of my income in FICA–which is to say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and who knows what. This is over and above whatever my income tax is for my income level. You can read about it here: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98846,00.html
I want to burrow this in your brain: ALL OF US PAY THIS. People who flip burgers at Wendy’s. Waiters. Gas Station attendants. Every man and woman who works for an income in this country pays nearly 15% of every paycheck to support programs which are bankrupt and cannot possibly exist in their current forms 15 years from now, which is to say the soonest any person in the prime of their working career could expect to get any of that money back.
People don’t see this for two reasons. First, the money is taken out before the check gets cut. Second, and more importantly, is the bastards in Washington have very cleverly required your employer to pay half of it. That means that they are sending money on your behalf to Washington that never shows up on a statement anywhere that you would see.
THIS IS MONEY THEY COULD HAVE PAID YOU. If they had not paid you, they could have used it for business expansion. Overall, economy wide, this would very clearly lead to business growth and growth in overall income.
There are just so many TRICKS these people play. Most all of us work nearly half the year to pay the salaries and benefits of people who contribute something close to NOTHING to our overall economy. The military, police, fire: yes, we need them. The rest of it though: throw it on the trash bin and leave me the hell alone.
The word fascist is becoming less repugnant to me in describing our current governmental order. In that regard, we need to keep in mind that the man who first ran FDR’s New Deal more or less WAS a Fascist, being a keen admirer of Mussollini. We need to remember that the man who coined the term “New Deal” was an ardent admirer of Lenin’s Soviet Union, and thought the rich should, if no lesser remedy presented itself, be shot. This is history, not hyperbole. And the programs they created remain with us.
Don’t fool yourself: simply because we have not YET faced large scale disaster does not mean it cannot happen. Hitler was considered a joke–a bad joke–by most Germans, until they found they had to keep a copy of Mein Kampf on their tables to stay out of jail or worse.
There are days I want to get the hell out of a nation capable of the stupidity that put Obama in office, and which tolerates the continued daily new assaults on our freedom. But where would I go? As bad as it is here, it is much worse in almost every other nation on Earth.