Joe, “the plumber” may be a decent guy, but I don’t think we need to keep hearing about his situation. To be honest, if I had $250,000, I’d be thoroughly willing to pay an extra 3% in taxes to help this country’s schools, hospitals, infrastructure, transportation and public servants (police, fire, etc.)!
This country is NOT purely Capitalistic. Nothing is that black and white! We have small pieces of socialism and communism and other isms spread throughout our society. We are diverse and all of these isms play an important part of our beliefs and goals! Read this, from Wiki: “In the schema of historical materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no division or alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions. Socialism is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism, to collective ownership.”
Taxes are socialism… they are, no matter what you want to call it. Gov collects money from individuals and businesses and spends it on things for the good of the whole society. That is why we have things like roads, schools and hospitals. Nobody, in their right mind, would argue that this is a bad idea. We NEED schools, safe roads, hospitals, police and fire!
Next, this whole “Bail Out / Rescue Plan” is socialist! McCain voted for this; therefore, it is hypocritical for him to call Obama a socialist when he is also participating in socialist ideas. Not that either of them wanted to vote for this bail-out, but they KNEW it was necessary to get credit flowing again. See, sometimes socialism IS a part of our society, and it’s a necessary part to keep people and businesses alive. Our government MUST sometimes step in to make things better for our country as a whole. There is NOTHING wrong with this. I am tired of this term being thrown around with such negative connotations.
I believe that businesses and people are too greedy to take care of one another. I believe that, without government, we would not have public schools, safe roads, nor would we have strong police and fire departments in our cities. The private sector will NOT do its job to take care of these things. That is why we NEED taxes. That is why those who can afford to pay their bills and still have money left over can also afford to help out a little bit more with additional taxes.
If we cut taxes for everyone, then we will have no money to take care of the veins of our country… no money for teachers, firemen, police, public works, transit workers, construction workers for roads and public buildings… we NEED money to pay for these vital workers. We need taxes to pay down our country’s debt and keep these important people working. When taxes are cut, teachers get laid off, students suffer from overcrowded classrooms and having to share outdated books. When we cut taxes, roads fall into disrepair and traffic gets worse, people have trouble getting to work. When we cut taxes, firemen are let go or quit, fires erupt and they burn many more houses as we won’t have enough men to help put these fires out. This is not the world I want to live in. I want these people and programs funded and funded well. I even want to fund other great programs – to help the homeless and jobless, to help sick people without insurance, to help children learn arts and music, to help every day people learn about culture, art and history… our life should not be so dull and mundane as to deny us of these great things!
Obama’s plan to tax those who can afford it is what we need to keep this country alive. Government, good, intelligent, compassionate government, is necessary for redistributing this money to our country’s organs. Without this “socialist” task, we fail…miserably!