Conservative rant...your opinions?

I think your and Itsystems' proposals are excellent and should be expanded to remove everything currently funded by income taxes and change it all to user fee-based systems, so nobody who doesn't use something has to pay for it. Wait, these are conservative viewpoints, aren't they? Sorry, wrong thread.

i think there are 3 things taxes should pay for,

healthcare (shit happens, i dont care who you are.)

school (lets put it like this, you pay for your own, back in time (plus id like to see real changes in school, absolutely 99% of schooltime is a waste of time and damaging to kids)

transport. (even if you dont move, you need shit moved, food for instance)

(guess you can add army there if you want, people are crazy after all and absolute fucktards)

(also some money should be diverted to host a tv show, similar to stephen kings running man, except for expoliticians only and business men (bankers and shit like that, most lawyers welcome too)

Hey me too!

I like your amendments. But Sso does have a point that if schools are paid for by taxes, your essentially paying for your own education. Now to further that: if you work at Micky D's your whole life and are taxed minimally, your not contributing much to schools. But you obviously didn't get anything from school, so you're giving what you recieved in a sense. Unfortunately, I see a perpetual cycle with this. But honestly, there needs to be assessment tests to remove morons and violent kids from schools.

The military is absolutely essential in this day and age. Ideally we wouldn't need it, but the world is not yet united.

joe Dickhead DOES pay a shit load of road tax, every time he has to fuel his 6 MPG "monster"

so yeah he and us all pay a shit load of road tax ..... BIG incentive to buy a more fuel efficient cars ..... not only you use less fuel, you pay less fuel tax BECAUSE you also do less harm to the roads v. even a ford excursion (7,190 lb) vs. a newer Civic at (3,627 lbs) and with 5x the fuel mileage. there are 2 local , albeit short bridges that it's actually illegal for an Excursion to cross, being over 3 tons, tho it's never enforced


T_C

ps i HOPE you ppl are joking about cutting funding to public schools and :

no an assessment test to weed out moron teachers PERIOD. and maybe some good teachers to work with the rest. cant boot 'moron' kids, EDUCATE THEM. violent ones i dunno

this is a big problem. the teachers union is strong and trying to fire a teacher for jest plane incompetence is impossible. but that said some teachers can not teach do to the role they play as baby sitter for much of the day. a child that is parented mainly by mtv and video games will not learn about respect, cooperation, manners, and other social behaviors that are needed to succeed. incompetent, abusive, absent, neglectful parents should be given notice that they are failing raising their kids and if they do not change they may suffer consequences. this is one area i would like to see government involvement,

i could not agree more on every point



T_C

My parents paid way more than enough income taxes while I was young to fund my education and I don't think I should have to pay more now.

But there aren't any very fuel efficient cars available on the market. I see advertisements bragging about 30 some MPG. That's the most you can get without spending a bunch more initially for a hybrid with unknown reliability. 20 years ago they were making inexpensive gas cars that got over 50 MPG.

Well, thing is...income taxes are not what paid for much of your K-thru-12 education. Local property taxes most likely did. The entire federal budget for primary and secondary education is about $80 billion (including all related k-12 expenses like special-ed, etc.) and total US public school enrollment is estimated at about 50 million students. That means the feds spend about $1600/year/student. That doesn't get the job done--not even close. Your income taxes pay for your wars and bank bailouts...that kinda' thing.

I know pointing this out in the first place seems like nit-picking but I think it matters and this is why: it's the extreme concentration of wealth among such a small segment of society which is a primary cause of our lousy public schools. If this is the way we choose to fund public education then we've decided that the children of the poor and middle classes deserve to stay that way. Those who succeed do so very modestly or, if they succeed big, they do so either via sheer luck or by acquiring the tools for success elswhere.

But the equality argument aside...you really don't think you should have to pay more now--presumably because education no longer affects you directly. I'd ask this: do you really believe that you are not harmed by your neighbor's stupidity?

My parents paid a lot of property taxes when I was young too, and I only went to school through the 8th grade before college, which makes me think genetics, parenting and home environment are much more important than school, and less inclined to throw more money at something that isn't working well. My income taxes don't pay for anything because I haven't paid any in over 15 years, and plan to continue to avoid them as long as I can. I know a lot of property taxes go for education and unfortunately haven't found a way to avoid those, or sales tax, gas tax and a few others. Whatever the source, they get more than enough money out of me to pay for everything taxes should be paying for. More tax money is not the answer to any problem.

I'm harmed by lots of people's stupidity and other actions but it doesn't make me think I should have to pay to fix them, which wouldn't work anyway.