A Quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
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In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes.
Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible.
Rich people don't pay taxes? Of course they pay taxes - they pay tons in taxes. They pay for everyone else who doesn't pay taxes.
Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.
Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine.
By the standards of honest, if unorthodox, accounting, government workers don't pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. In other words, they pay taxes out of money confiscated from taxpayers, who, in turn, pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy. At the very least, this should disqualify state workers from voting.
When people pay taxes, they are buying a service and benefit for their community. Colorado Tax Tracks shows taxpayers what they pay and what they buy for their money.
The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money that the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents.
Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, in tax-sold farms, and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill, but they pay. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased cost of what they buy, or - as now - in broad unemployment throughout the land.
Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don't pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.
I thought you liberals cared about people, but here you're perfectly content to get them addicted to tobacco and make them pay taxes through the nose and continue to pay taxes through the nose and raise their taxes. And then you try to make 'em think you care about 'em by running PSAs telling them how they shouldn't smoke and how they should quit. You're exactly right. If they really cared, they would ban the product, but they can't, because the revenue from tobacco taxes - I'm not kidding you - funds children's health care programs, and a number of other things as well.
Every two weeks, I'd get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
I dislike paying taxes as much as anyone, but yes, taxes are the price of civilization. There is no America without taxes. The question isn't, "Do we want to have taxes?" The question is, "How heavy is the burden, and who bears that burden"?
Buttercup's mother whirled on him. 'Did you forget to pay your taxes?' (This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)
Corporations can't have it both ways. They can't tell Americans how much they want us to buy their products, but then run abroad to avoid taxes or hire cheap labor. American corporations should pay their fair share of taxes and create decent-paying jobs here - not in China.
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