RipCityKJ wrote:dice wrote:nedleeds wrote:Just like the "Amazon pays no taxes" that people parrot. It's just an utter lie and completely misleading. They pay an absolutely astounding amount of taxes. The absurdly massive payroll they pay and expense thus offsetting revenue is then taxed at the personal level so we can fuel our bloated useless federal government. Sales taxes, property taxes, matching payroll taxes add up to a metric **** ton of cash for the government.
the military is grossly bloated...but not useless
infrastructure...pretty damn useful
social security...drastically reduced the level of senior poverty. pretty useful, i'd say
medicare...you have to be pretty rich to retire without it...private insurers would charge a king's ransom to provide your old ass health care
food, water and air travel safety standards/testing...i'm good with that
etc. ad nauseum
getting back on topic...wtf do they mean "move MSG." building a new facility would NOT be MSG whether they name it that or not
All these supposed great things that our tax dollars pay for have been depleting and getting worse while meddle and low income workers pay the most taxes and the richest 1% has gained astronomic amounts of wealth while paying little to no taxes.
that's an indictment of the tax structure, not the role of the federal government
The military wastes trillions a year, it is one of the worlds largest polluter of green house gases ( https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-140-countries-combined/ ) and the only success in the last 30 years have been the hedge funds formed by defense contractors who got billions in grants to develop weapons that they then sold to the Saudis all for a profit and not paying a dime in taxes while using all tax payer funded money to build their empires
totally agreed
Infrastructure - We haven't have a grade above C- in 30 years with some the worst roads in the developed world, depleting bridges that could collapse at any second, thousands of buildings not up to code and the bill just passed to finally provide money to start fixing things is a joke, the second most expensive part of the bill is over $250 billion in tax breaks for the top 500 richest Americans who through a new SALT tax reduction.
also agreed. but the reason for the degradation of the infrastructure is the lack of federal funding for upkeep, not the role of the federal government in the first place
by the way, the build back better bill would be mostly financed by $1 trillion in tax hikes on the wealthy, with the rest coming from new corporate taxes
Social Security - Will be depleted by 2034 according to AARP and multiple other resources, I'm 35 and have paid SS tax since I was 14 but will never be able to collect on it. My father luckily has a great pension but my mom was self employed and at 68 her monthly SS payment is less then $1200, I could not imagine paying SS tax for 50 years and only getting $1200 to live off of.
social security ain't going anywhere. here's a right wing article from 1999 referencing projected insolvency in 2013:
https://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/the-impact-removing-social-securitys-tax-cap-wages#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20eliminating%20the%20cap%20on,years%2C%20from%202013%20to%202019.
and it's not intended to live off of. it's intended to supplement savings. again, the poverty rate of seniors plummeted when it was implemented. if your mother is getting $1200 a month and lives a normal life expectancy, i'm betting that she gets out of it more than she put in. of course, had she invested that money in the stock market instead of paying into social security, she probably would have done much better, but that's another conversation
Medicare - Again my mother is on medicare and they just removed all dental and vision from Medicare, she has to pay out of pocket for that and her premiums went up while her overall coverage went down. For the last decade there has been a steady fall in services and preventive care in the medicare system.
probably because the cost of health care continues to skyrocket and the funding hasn't increased appropriately. the answer isn't getting rid of medicare. the answer is EXPANDING medicare (4 million more would get it under the build back better bill). to as many people as possible, drastically shrinking the role of the private market. and allowing the government to negotiate drug prices (partly implemented by BBB, in addition to a $2K annual cap for seniors). only then will prices get under control
Food & Water: I remember not to long ago the mile long lines of people waiting to get food that was not provided by our government but by local charities. Ask the people of Flint how well the government takes care of our water, their not the only ones look at South Chicago Indiana or Washington DC itself has a huge lead problem. As for Air safety, have you not seen the numerous stories of people beating fly staff, causing outburst that lead to emergency landings or how about the Boeing 737Max?
you're cherry picking examples that involve a lot of local screwups (making a case for more federal control). ask residents of countless nations whether they'd rather have our food and water quality on the whole. and surely you're not blaming the government for the bad behavior of individuals on planes...
my point is that these are all things that are by and large done by the federal government as opposed to states. for good reason. how WELL the feds carry out all of these responsibilities is, of course, ripe for criticism. i think we're largely on the same page, actually
and still be treated as if you were reasonable.