The Tea Party and Taxes

Two Tea Party Signs

I'm not interested in the racist, crazy signs. I'd rather those hate mongers read their Bibles, repent of their ungodly anger and turn to Jesus.

But I am interested in the real fear, misinformation and hypocrisy that people display. These are scary times. A lot of people are still out of work and need someone to blame. Let's get this straight though, we're far from becoming a socialist state. Go live in a real socialist state for a while and you'll see the difference. Now, I don't share the extremely negative hate messages of some of the members in the Tea Party, but I would like to cut spending and lower taxes in certain areas too. Where we cut and which taxes we lower are real questions though and the answers have to be worked out right or we're all screwed.

At its most basic, this is why politics matters - many laws have real effects on how your tax dollars are spent and how much money our government needs to do what we want it to do.

Do you want a strong military? That costs a lot of money.
Do you want great social security for retirement? That costs a lot of money.
Do you want excellent public schools? That costs a lot of money.
Do you want good public safety (fire, police)? That costs a lot of money.
Do you want public services for our elderly? That costs a lot of money.

You want more stuff? You gotta pay more taxes.

The world looks at us and laughs because we still haven't figured this one out. We either have to cut programs or raise taxes, both at the state and federal level. It's basic math. If I want pie (I love pie) and it costs $5 a slice and I only have $3, I can't get my slice of pie (dammit all). I have to settle for three $1 fruit pies from the market (not real pie, but better than nothing).

Some people say they want to be taxed less. Fine. I have noooo problem with that. Others say they want the government out of their lives. Fine. But don't take social security checks and don't take government jobs. To illustrate this hypocrisy and the problems that face the Republicans for the next few years (because they hijacked the Tea Party movement), take a look at Alaska.

Alaska

• Republican state, heavy Tea Party support
• Just elected big-government spending Lisa Murkowski over the official Republican Party candidate, Joe Miller (gosh-darn-it Joe, you even had the right name) for Senate.
• 1/3 of Alaskan jobs are federally funded (paid for by the US government).
• Roads, bridges and Native American programs are all subsidized (supported by money from the US government).

My point is, we need to spend our tax dollars together for the public good. There are some things we just can't do ourselves. Just to start thinking about this, answer one question for yourself:

• What kinds of things do you think our tax dollars should pay for?

If you're feeling brave, just to see how complicated the discussion can get, try to think about some of the following questions:

• Do you think we should be allowed to see where all our tax money goes?
• What kinds of punishments do you think we should enforce on those that waste and abuse our money?
• How much do you think we should pay our politicians?
• Who should pay the most tax?
• How should we tax businesses?
• How should we pay our public school teachers?
• How should we pay our armed forces?
• Who should get tax breaks and when?

Not easy, eh?