<p>Zoos:
Not sure I follow you. Are you saying you would like to pay less taxes and have your husbands wages reduced?</p>
<p>"Stamping your pretty little foot "</p>
<p>Well thank you for knowing that about me! (I’m smiling here) Seriously, though, my point is that income shouldn’t be confiscated willy-nilly. There should be accountability and a certain level of consent. Not to mention respect for whose money it actually is. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you, but it does make sense to me.</p>
<p>"I wish you the best with your upcoming surgery. I didn’t know about it, but I’ll be thinking of you. Please keep us posted with how you are doing. "</p>
<p>Thank you for the kind words! I support paying taxes for infrastructure and I have only this year begun to use the public schools and feel fine about paying tuition without a tax break because it’s my choice. We volunteer, contribute and believe in giving back, but I’d like to see people who take my money have some real understanding of where it comes from.</p>
<p>gla–only in dreamworld. Most people still work for the money–even highly paid Ibankers, surgeons, lawyers, CEO’s, etc.</p>
<p>I always like the story of Andrew Carnegie. He spent the first half of his life trying to make as much money as possible and the second half trying to give it all away. Compound interest did him in. He thought it would be bad for his kids to inherit wealth.</p>
<p>“Zoos:
Not sure I follow you. Are you saying you would like to pay less taxes and have your husbands wages reduced?”</p>
<p>What I’m saying (and this makes no sense, it’s totally emotional) is that it annoys the heck out of me that he gets so much outside of what most workers get. I think the municipal workforce is part of the reason why our taxes are so high. Some of the contract provisions are ridiculous.</p>
<p>I would like accountability too.</p>
<p>My husband and I have also handed our hard earned dollars to the government, by law. However, I have given no consent for them to take my income towards $30B in war costs. I would like some accountability, and respect. Makes sense to me.</p>
<p>I wish you best of luck with your surgery, Zoos.</p>
<p>
Fine, except that I get to decide how much of a house I want to buy, or what other bills I care to have. If I don’t want to have an expensive car payment, I don’t have to buy the car. </p>
<p>What zooser and I object to is paying for whatever bizarre spending program someone else decides we should have to pay for. As an example, the HS in a town we used to live in had a retractable roof over the soccer field, a latte bar and other frivolous items. I don’t want to pay for someone else’s nonsense.</p>
<p>I especially object to paying for things that I believe are morally wrong, i.e. abortion.</p>
<p>"What zooser and I object to is paying for whatever bizarre spending program someone else decides we should have to pay for. "</p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes!!! Exactly!</p>
<p>“I would go with “high income” but not wealthy and certainly not rich. As some here know, I’m facing breast cancer surgery in the near future, and if I don’t work I don’t earn. That’s the difference to me.”</p>
<p>If there was a civilized health care system in this country, that certainly would be of much less concern, wouldn’t it? And if you don’t earn, you don’t pay. (But your children will, if the rich don’t.)</p>
<p>We could eliminate ALL income taxes (hence the issue of “high or not high” income would go away) and instead go with a progressive “asset” tax. Maybe even exempt the value of the family home up to a reasonable number.</p>
<p>The thread title, well - probably not much fun today!</p>
<p>“If there was a civilized health care system in this country, that certainly would be of much less concern, wouldn’t it? And if you don’t earn, you don’t pay. (But your children will, if the rich don’t.)”</p>
<p>I’m not sure I follow. How would a “civilized” health care system help me earn money when I’m not working?</p>
<p>civilized would mean that people wouldn’t go bankrupt getting health care for a child with cancer, but guess that would be too much to ask for some people to even fathom</p>
<p>civilized would mean that my mom wouldn’t pay double here what she could get in Canada for medication to keep her alive</p>
<p>civilized would mean the preventative care would be for all, not jsut the richest</p>
<p>but civility wasn’t much of a watchword for the family values party</p>
<p>“civilized would mean that people wouldn’t go bankrupt getting health care for a child with cancer, but guess that would be too much to ask for some people to even fathom”</p>
<p>That didn’t answer the question I asked.</p>
<p>A civilized health care system would mean you would no longer have to pay into a health care system while you were not working (and sick), and coordinated with a well-established safety net, protect you from catastrophic losses. </p>
<p>At your income/asset level, you may already have that protection ($200k a year is, after all, in the top 10% in NYC, and top 3% nationally).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, you still haven’t answered my question: you pay; your children pay; the rich pay; none of the above.</p>
<p>Zoos: Sorry to hear about your surgery. It can be a scary thing to contemplate - and being self-employed, I also understand the whole “If I don’t work, I don’t earn” dilemma. People think that being your own boss is great - until they realize that that boss doesn’t give paid sick leave, vacation leave, etc. </p>
<p>I apologize for overreacting to the “It’s MY money” riff. That particular meme just bugs the heck out of me. What most people don’t get is that by far the largest receipients of free governmental assistance are the wealthy. Virtually every infrastructure project lines someone’s pocket and increases the value of someone else’s holdings - and those “someones” aren’t the poor. From the internet, created through government-subsidized research, to roads, dams, airports, the SEC, FDA, etc. the more you have the more the government is likely to be doing for you. People who insist that they are solely responsible for everything they earn and that therefore that taxes are just some form of robbery bug me. Chances are, a thorough examination of all the ways government services benefit most people would reveal that the working poor (<$30K/yr) are the group that gives the most in relationship to what they get in return. But you’ll never convince the affluent of that, because most of their government benefits are hidden or indirect, or just taken for granted.</p>
<p>SJMom: I’ve got no problem paying for health care, including abortions if that’s a preganant woman’s decision. On the other hand, I consider it immoral to spend $30B in a stupid war which apparently has as its primary product the creation of more terrorists and terrorist-sympathisers. I also object to employing political hacks and cronies in positions that were previously filled by qualified professionals. Unfortunately, a series of events in 2000 and 2004 meanth that those things happened. Like Mini says: either we pay for them, the rich pay for them, or our kids pay for those things. I don’t suppose you’d support having only the people who voted for Bush pay for the Iraq war?</p>
<p>you asked what civlized health care was…sorry if that didn’t answer your questions</p>
<p>"A civilized health care system would mean you would no longer have to pay into a health care system while you were not working (and sick), and coordinated with a well-established safety net, protect you from catastrophic losses. "</p>
<p>I think you and I are posting at cross purposes here and not really understanding each other. The point I was making is that I don’t believe a person is “wealthy” who makes the money that they do based on the amount of hours he/she works. I consider that high income, not wealth.</p>
<p>“At your income/asset level, you may already have that protection ($200k a year is, after all, in the top 10% in NYC, and top 3% nationally).”</p>
<p>My medical benefits will continue and my salary will for a short time, but the overtime that gives me the income that I have will, of course, not continue. Nor should it.</p>
<p>“Meanwhile, you still haven’t answered my question: you pay; your children pay; the rich pay; none of the above.”</p>
<p>I already pay quite a lot. A more than sufficient amount, and the spenders on both sides of the aisle should make do with what they have efficiently.</p>
<p>Give me roads, infrastructure, schools, health care, any day, with my tax money. I will gladly support it.</p>
<p>No thanks on throwing billions and billions and billions of dollars, some of it my very hard earned money, on a misbegotten war. Oh, and those “rebuilding” contracts…I’m irritated about my money going to Cheney too.</p>