I wonder why these politicians (New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland - they are all in trouble) never had the idea to "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" and "cut spending"?

It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.

Why is is that leftists often end-up looking like the right? (Or the church.) No sex. No drugs. No rock-and-roll. Oh and no sugar either.

Here's a thought: Why not just tax everyone according to this formula? yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep). People earning less than $30000 would actually get a handout to make it an even $30k.

There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.

>>>State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.

Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.

You do NOT have the right to take away his freedom of religion.... er, to eat as many burgers as he wants. Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.

Oh I see what you're saying.

Hmmm. Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff. If a poor person buys $5000 in clothes (25% out of 20,000) and a rich person buys a million in cars, boats, and other crap (50% of 2 million annually), the rich actually pays a higher percentage of income for his items. Correspondingly he pays a higher percent of sales tax too - 2.5% for the poor and 5% for the rich.

So you can't say it's "regressive" - it's not that simple.

The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.

Okay.

Well I used to think like you, no problems with IE, but what changed my mind was when my homepage kept randomly changing to various sites. Then I started getting weird images on my desktop. That's when I realized that IE is basically a giant hole for hackers.

Every week my employer sucks 35% off my paycheck.

(i.e. I take home about 650 out of $1000 earned.) Add in all the other taxes from sales, property, electricity, ....., gasoline and I am *well* over the 40% estimate.

That's not regressive. That's flat. A regressive tax would be one where the poor pay 10%, the middle incomes pay 5%, and the upper incomes pay 1%. And of course a progressive tax moves in the opposite direction, with ever-increasing percentages.

There is another alternative, one that seems to be unfolding even now:

- Lay off a lot of Americans.
- Unemployment rises.
- American workers will be in such a desolate state that they are willing to take any job they can get, even if it only pays $6 an hour for welding cars (or sewing Levis, or whatever), and therefore Asians/Americans are on the same wage scale.
- Factories flock back to America where they can get cheap labor.

NYC sucks down more dollars than any other city.

Businesses rarely buy the buildings in New York City - they are usually given gratis while the New York State taxpayers shoulder the burden.

Well they're not taxing mine. If I'm forced to collect the 7% sales tax through some automated system, I will, but then I'll refund it directly back to the NY customer. And I will NOT be filing any kind of tax form with New York.

New York is welcome to send the police to Southern Pennsylvania to try to arrest me. Good luck with that. The PA Militia (read: rifle-toting rednecks) and PA National Guard does not take kindly to foreign invaders, so I'm think I'm relatively safe.

I disagree. You don't have a right to tell someone "You can't eat that" or "You can't smoke that", because that makes them a slave to the government (i.e. not free to live how they want). But you do have a right to deny free handouts to such people.

We have socialized healthcare - Medicare - which pays a huge chunk of our hospital bills. That's why some American politicians get the "bright" idea to tax hamburgers to discourage bad health risks & lower Medicare costs.

Me, I prefer Thomas Jefferson's view:

(updated to the modern age): "Whether my neighbor eats one hamburger, many hamburgers, or no hamburgers, matters not to me. His actions do not harm my body, my property, nor my rights, so I will allow my neighbor to eat or not eat as many burgers as he pleases." - That is the true meaning of individual liberty. Do whatever you damn well please, and respect others' rights to do the same, so long as they do not harm your body, property, or rights.

How about we just apply 18% to all food (including your diet soda) to discourage overeating. Would you be okay with that?

Why or why not?