I realize taxes are a necessary evil to pay for a civilized society, and in theory I don't have anything against paying taxes if I think I am getting a good return on my taxes. But when it appears I am subsidizing the rich and the corporations with my taxes and/or my labor, then it just becomes an evil.
I think I got burnt out on paying taxes back in '97 when one of the Senators for the state I was working in released his tax info.
The previous year The Old Lady and I made $15K. The Senator made over $150K. We paid $1500 in federal taxes, give or take a few dollars. The Senator paid around $700 in federal taxes. He made over ten times what we did and paid less than half of what we did in federal taxes. At that rate, I guess millionaires pay no taxes, or so it seems to me. One of the reasons for this disparity is we have never been able to itemize our taxes. We've owned several houses and paid mortgages, but we've never cracked the threshold for itemizing. We've always had to use the standard deduction because we didn't have enough deductions even with mortgage interest and other stuff to itemize.
That same year I got this Dilbert shirt.(The shirt finally wore out last year and became rags.) Well, after that job ended, I put the bastard on a diet!! I did work off and on (more off than on) after that, but I lost all enthusiasm for working to subsidize the rich after that year.
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The FuckingRepublican'ts keep saying the government is redistributing the money from the rich to the poor, when exactly the opposite is true. The rich get huge taxes cuts with a few crumbs for the workers who by and large produce the wealth of this country. Then they add or increase things like sales tax and various fees which are harder on those with a limited income than for the rich. I'm still pissed when Michigan in the early '70s raised the license fees for vehicles and lowered the toll on the Mackinac Bridge from $3.75 each way to $1.50 each way. That made easier for the FuckingTrolls to come up to the U.P. to play, but fucked everyone in the whole state that owned a car or truck. One of my friends at the time said,
"It's like raising the property taxes in the whole state to build a new sewer system for Detroit, because you might be passing through one day and leave a shit in a gas station restroom in Detroit!!"
