I live in NY. We pay more in taxes than people in any other state.
What I think is you resent every penny you have to pay in taxes and the more taxes are cut the happier you are.
I don’t mind the taxes. I pay a ton, but it’s not the $ I mind. It’s the waste! We could do so much more with the $ they have if the govt would be more judicious, and operate as of it was their $. Or their jobs were on the line if they didn’t control the budget.
Actually, no I don’t. You are making a generalization without reading a single word I’ve said on the subject, obviously. I pay a high percentage of my income in taxes, and I wouldn’t mind paying more if it went to things that I thought were important. I would happily pay more for a Medicare type system for all who needed it, to reduce the debt, for lower taxes for the poor and middle class, and for stronger social services, particularly in mental health care.
However, I totally agree with HRSmom’s post #101. Taxes quite often don’t go to where you want them. Propping up murderous regimes, flushed down the toilet. And with an administration change, now your taxes might be going to build an expensive wall, tax breaks for the ultra wealthy, and building up our nuclear arsenal. Aren’t taxes just great? We can have a smile on our face when we write out that check 
I’m not in the position to decide where my tax money goes except for my school taxes. But I do know that cutting taxes makes everything worse for everyone - so regardless of who is in power at the moment I am for paying more taxes on the local, state and federal level.
Oh boy, not me. More is not always better.
I’ve never added up all federal state local and property taxes. I’d probably have a heart attack if I did!!
Don’t do it, HRSMom, it’s too scary!
But since Emily is all for more taxes, no matter what, hopefully she’ll get to be part of the group of 8 million middle class taxpayers that would see a tax increase in the latest proposed tax plan, while the highly wealthy get a huge tax cut. Hey, paying more taxes is a great thing, right? Though the other 7,999,999 affected taxpayers might disagree with that premise.
It’s weird how some employee benefits booklets will really spell things out and others won’t. Or, there will be vague areas. For example, my H works at a large hospital. There were only 4 of them on the night shift in a certain department so they worked out their vacation schedules together (you always needed the other person to cover you). They were all supposed to get 3 days for the death of a parent or spouse’s parent but H only took one day, when he switched with his counterpart, and had to pay that day back to the counterpart.
The night crew went to their department with this and other grievances. It was clarified that for bereavement or other situations the person would just not go to work for the 3 days and the hospital would have to hire a service remotely to cover for them. Of course, the hospital is not going to bend over backwards and offer to do that so it suited them that the night shift had been so accommodating. It was good for all that the situation was clarified because soon afterwards one of the night crew got called in for jury duty and he was out for more than 2 weeks!
Not Canada! 
“A small company…thanks for the bonus (I earned). A public company…silence”
I don’t agree. My husband works for a large corporation. They have yearly bonuses. But his bosses, boss decides how to allocate the pot of money. He says thank you every year. Also at a small company unless they specify that they are going to give a bonus based on certain things then you should say thanks to the owner because they don’t have to give you one if they don’t want to.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
This discussion is straying well off the original post. Let’s dispense with discussion of tax policy please. Several posts deleted.
As a small business it’s not part of compensation, we just do it to be nice. I was taught to thank people growing up, not everyone was raised the same. But I give for my own reasons, not to be thanked. It’s just good manners in my opinion.
@emilybee, I have never heard of “all you can eat vacation policy”. Wonder how that works…
There are no set amount of days for vacation, sick days, personal days. You can take however many you want. Company has had this policy since it’s inception 10 years ago, so I assume it works fine, I doubt people take more time than companies with a set policy and maybe even less time as there is no rush to take your time earned before you lose it at end of the year.
But, for instance, say H and I wanted to do a 3 week family trip to some exotic place next summer - S could join us even though he’s just started his job this month. And he couid take another week to go visit his grandmother in Florida later if he wanted.
Most young people don’t have a ton of disposable income to fritter away on vacations constantly so I don’t think it makes a difference to the company’s operations or bottom line.
I also think it prevents people from coming to work when they are sick because they don’t have to save those days for something more serious.
My D’s current company has the following vacation policy:
There’s no “use it or lose it” vacation policy at XXX. Employees take the time they need with their manager’s approval. Prior to requesting time off, employees must discuss their plans with their manager and co-workers to make sure their work is covered.
“Employees take the time they need with their manager’s approval. Prior to requesting time off, employees must discuss their plans with their manager and co-workers to make sure their work is covered.”
Don’t people have to do that no matter what a company’s vacation policy is?
My husband works at a tech startup with microbrews on tap and unlimited vacation. He is much older than almost all the other employees. He was uncomfortable at first with the policy. (A generational thing.) He noticed that the young employees commonly took a month off to visit their families in foreign countries and he finally took a few weeks off.
They have to offer these benefits to attract top talent.
@emilybee - yes, but my D finds it much better than her former job. At her former job, they were short-staffed and even though she had earned personal leave, she was never approved to take it even when she requested it months in advance. She was working 7 days a week, more than 8 hours a day, and couldn’t even leave her desk at lunch.
She’s only been at her new job a year, but being overworked/never permitted to take leave was the main reason she left her former job.
That’s great @college_query, good for your D! From what my S tells me (he knows several people at his companyalreadt ) it’s a great work environment, so I assume people do take off and when they want to, without any hassle. The work/life balance thing is very important at a lot of young companies/start ups and they aren’t tied to the policies of long established companies. So they do things the way they want. He is very excited about his new job - even though his old job (at big Fortune 200 company) had great benefits and sane hours, too. And he’s thrilled to be working in downtown Boston vs the burbs.
Here’s the update on my young coworker. He’s now a former coworker. He quit, effective next week (when his paternity leave was supposed to end). I’m disappointed that he turned out to not be a good employee. But for the same reason, I’m not disappointed that he quit. I hope his replacement, whenever that person is hired, is a better fit.
None of my business, but does he plan to be a SAHD?
@rosered55 I hope they hire a replacement for him.