Tax Burdens

The other point to be made is whom do our taxes go to support?

Do I use an airport and an FAA as much as some CEO who needs to go places and ship his goods?

How about an FCC that has more to do with facilitating how they can advertize than for my edification and entertainment.

Does anyone think the highways were built so you can go visit your Aunt Ida?

The court system? The cops? Are they there to serve MY interests as much as someone who can afford the armies of lawyers?

The military? Fighting wars of choice to keep trade going? The schools? Training workers...

Banking and finance? All set up to maximize profits. Is a working guy benefiting from profits to the tune of the monied interests? Of course not. He's got a wage. And we've seen the benefits of expanding profits to the working class. Look at any chart.

The entire system is set up for their benefit. And I'm not even talking about "direct" subsidies. EVERYTHING is a corporate subsidy. And now they want to cry tears about taxation being theft.

Cry me a river.

There is a reason for progressive taxation. And there is a reason to expand it.

The whole thing is too aggravating to think about. And we've been duped into being distracted from doing so.
  
The Lie of the Free Market by
Thom Hartmann

"Listen to the right-wing pundits--the people I call the cons--and they will tell you something completely different. They suggest (and some actually believe) that a middle class will naturally spring into being when the kingdoms of corporate power are freed from government restrictions.

"The way to create good jobs, according to the cons, is to 'free' the market. When business gets to do whatever it wants, they say, it will create wealth, and that wealth will trickle down to the rest of us, creating a middle class.

"The con's belief in 'free' markets is a bit like the old Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the solar system. The free-market line is widely believed by those in power, and those who challenge this belief are labeled heretics--and it's wrong.

"Here's a headline for these cons who are masquerading as economists without having studied either economics or history:
"There is no such thing as a "free" market. Markets are the creation of government."
"Governments provide markets with a stable currency for financial transactions. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make the market possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, and airways provided by the government. Businesses that use the 'free' market are protected by police and fire departments provided by the government, and they send their communications--from phone to e-mail--over lines that follow public rights of way maintained and protected by the government."
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