Tax Withholding Is Bad for Democracy

[Stephen Frank]

People need to feel pain when they pay taxes. California Governor Ronald Reagan said his support of tax withholding was one of two of his worst decisions (the other being support of abortion on demand).

Folks need to see that government is not free, that the cost of government is being paid, every day, by your work. "Turn to the bottom three-quarters of the families who filed income tax returns in 2007not just low-income families, but everybody with family incomes below $66,500. That 75% of families paid just 13% of all personal income taxes. Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation has recast these numbers in terms of a single, stunning statistic: The top 1% of American households pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 95% combined."

If every loaf of bread had a warning: "The cost of this brad includes 67% taxes", or "This cup of coffee includes 80% in taxes." Let the folks know about the cost of government in every product or service. Pay your income taxes four times a year, from your own checking account. Your Social Security check should come with this notice, "This check represents the hard work of 5 workers efforts.

If a can of tomato soup must tell you its ingredients and nutrition values, why not government? There is a new law that demands Taco Bell tell the customer the ingredient values of its products, why shouldn't government.

Can you imagine the shock when you buy a car and you realize over half the cost of the car is a series of government taxes! Time to take back government.


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[saw mill worker]

Sir I don't know what social class you come from, but when you speak of Social Security in such an offhand way, you have personally offended the vast majority of citizens of this country, like the little character you're sticking a stick in their eyes.
Do you even understand why Social Security was formed ????? Do You believe that it is a government social program ???????
Or was it originally a private account for each person in this country that contributed into it ?????? and that the Republican party hijacked the money in the account and put it to the general account so they could use it, (( 1953)) instead of using it as it was initially intended to be used.
Do You have the slightest idea that this is the only program that is self-supporting to this day, and is only running out of money because our government can't keep their hands out of the candy jar ???????
AND that our government has never repaid one penny taken from this fund ????? Our forefathers of the 1930 saw what happened with no financial support of its citizens, and that why Social Security was created, laws were
passed to stop banks from creating another Great Depression, well thanks to our corrupt government officials, these laws were removed and here we go again, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand it was not the programs they created this mess, it was the greed of some people, and you sir would like to take that protection away, what's the matter with this picture ????????

[AyatollahGondola]

The Republicans could not have dipped into the SS trust funds without the willing complicity of Democrats. Employers pay for withholding in addition to what the employee contributes. Withholding is a big scam in the longrun. SS was a good program until it became a cash cow for government abuses

[ilbegone]

I had a rant on this but lost it when I got timed out and didn't copy text before logging back in.

Stay away from my social security, and quit hiking the eligibility age. Everyone is different, but in some trades it's over by the middle fifties, and no one wants to hire a broken down older man.

Quit subsidizing everything from corporate welfare to to wasteful consumer spending to people who violate our immigration laws.

A flat income tax is the fairest income tax, and an excessive consumer tax discourages economic growth.

The rant I lost had a lot more flesh on it, but this is the basic idea.

[DerailAmnesty.com]

People need to feel pain when they pay taxes. California Governor Ronald Reagan said his support of tax withholding was one of two of his worst decisions ...

Folks need to see that government is not free, that the cost of government is being paid, every day, by your work ...

I agree with both your assessment of the situation and Reagan's.

Well, I agree with you entirely and Reagan partially. With the advantage of hindsight, the 1986 IRCA was his biggest mistake. Taxes is Number Two.

[saw mill worker]

AG you're absolutely right about those Democrats, like I was told as a child by my uncle, and I tell my children this today ( you will never meet a politician that will not pick your pockets clean ) it doesn't matter if he's a Republican or Democrat.
Social Security was not supposed to be for our retirement's, it was supposed to help out with our retirement, and if our government would have kept out of our business over the last 40 years I definitely know we all would have been better off, I have two pensions that I can't touch thanks to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Old man Bush, thanks to all their deregulations of all the industrious that I worked in. And I deftly know that it had to hurt millions of others in other industries along with the industrious that I worked in.
And you bet when you get past a certain age depending on the industrious and type of work you're doing, you're over the hill you're done, nobody wants to hire you, and they all have different reasons for this, so in some ways you can't blame the industrious, but you definitely can blame the government for playing with your livelihood.