Re: Where do our taxes go?
.....Vice to try and get us for an arrest.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Technically they go to the private corporation that owns the debt (and therefore this country) this country supposedly owes from around 1913.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Maimed
Technically they go to the private corporation that owns the debt (and therefore this country) this country supposedly owes from around 1913.
Bingo!
We could control spending a bit better - but there is a saying about democracies and spending...
Re: Where do our taxes go?
I can answer the first two. Our federal and state income tax eventually goes to provide benefits and/or subsidies and/or services for the majority (yes, majority !) of other residents who do not actually pay any federal and state income tax after federal and state tax credits are applied.
This is the essence of your old saying about democracies ... as several states suddenly find that the demographics of their registered voters now consist of less than 50% of actual taxpayers, because the public benefit policies of these states has successfully attracted new benefit recipients, and the corresponding tax policies of these states necessary to pay for those public benefits has prompted taxpayers to relocate elsewhere.
" A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, and is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."
— Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), Scottish jurist and historian. Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University in the late 18th Century. From the 1801 Collection of his lectures.
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Re: Where do our taxes go?
More specifically, which taxes pay for the roads, the schools, the libraries, the law enforcement, the parks, the military, etc.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scout
More specifically, which taxes pay for the roads, the schools, the libraries, the law enforcement, the parks, the military, etc.
The Yen does these days.
We are really in trouble but nobody will care until it falls apart.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scout
More specifically, which taxes pay for the roads, the schools, the libraries, the law enforcement, the parks, the military, etc.
Roads are generally paid for by a combination of federal and state gasoline road tax plus local property taxes (and sometimes local sales taxes or state income / sales taxes too).
Schools and libraries are paid for primarily by local property / school / sales taxes, with some fraction of state income / sales tax and federal income tax also being allocated.
Law enforcement is usually paid for by a combination of federal and state income taxes plus local property taxes - depending on whether the LE agency is federal or state or local (although fed grants are also given to states, and fed + state grants are given to localities).
Parks depend on whether the park is national (paid for by federal income taxes), state (paid for by state income / sales taxes) or local (paid for by local property / sales taxes)
The military is paid for exclusively by federal income taxes.
Noteworthy anecdote ... if you total up all of the above, they don't come close to equalling federal + state + local expenditures for Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid + Welfare.
Quote:
The Yen does these days
To be technically correct, yes the yen, the yuan and the euro are indeed paying for these US gov't expenditures since the US federal gov't is running a huge deficit, printing new money as fast as it can, packaging some of that newly printed money as treasury bonds, and selling those treasury bonds to japanese, chinese and european govt's and individuals. Also, state gov'ts, although they are supposed to operate with balanced budgets, in reality also sell bonds to raise operating revenue which are indeed also purchased by some foreign investors with yen, yuan and euros ! And of course gov't bonds can be thought of as an offshoot of mortgage refinancing, where 'extracted' cash is spent immediately while the 'investors' lay a claim on X billion dollars worth of monthly payments for the next Y years. Politicians will eventually have to figure out how to actually keep making monthly payments on these bonds for the next 10-20 years, as the bond interest' is now really starting to become a significant part of federal and state budgets (but by then some other politician will be in office and will get blamed for the tax increase or devaluation of the US dollar).
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Re: Where do our taxes go?
^^^
Yeah. I noticed that "Health" took about 25% of federal taxes. What health? I'd like to see some of that.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scout
^^^
Yeah. I noticed that "Health" took about 25% of federal taxes. What health? I'd like to see some of that.
Illegal Aliens in emergency rooms and in WIC
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Our federal tax pays for ...
National defense, nationally funded entitlements, interstate highways, state and local grants of all sorts, infrastructure,...lots of things,
Our state tax pays for ...
State taxes vary by type, but generally pay for much of the same things that federal taxes do except defense.
Our county tax pays for ...
Pretty much the same answer as state taxes.
Our sales tax pays for ...
Redundancy...
Our property tax pays for ...
Usually schools.
Our cigarette tax pays for ...
? Lots of things, this falls under sales tax
Our gas tax pays for ...
Roads and bridges.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
^^^
Ie - most of it goes into the "general fund" which gets gleefully handed out to what ever special interest paid the most in campaign contributions.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
In pol's pockets, & to the war fund?
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deogol
Illegal Aliens in emergency rooms and in WIC
Actually I am pretty sure the vast most of the healthcare goes to the seniors- ie Medicare.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fan_Dancer
Actually I am pretty sure the vast most of the healthcare goes to the seniors- ie Medicare.
I believe that is a seperately funded account. It is not from general taxes... but I might wrong.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deogol
Illegal Aliens in emergency rooms and in WIC
Or about 84% of the strippers I've worked with.
Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scout
Or about 84% of the strippers I've worked with.
Or a lot of plain 'ol working class people who are finding it harder and harder to find decent jobs with any kind of benefits.
But it's so much easier to just blame the brown people, right? ::)
Re: Where do our taxes go?
^^^ Nina is absolutely correct. A statistic that most people don't think about is that, until reported annual income rises above about $30,000, US 'taxpayers' don't actually pay any income tax to speak of. However, most are eligible for enough direct (like WIC or welfare or medicaid) or indirect (like subsidized rent / electric / heat bills) gov't benefits, and/or tax credits, such that literally 50% of Americans are receiving net gov't benefits which are funded by heavily taxing the other 50%.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/men....ImageFile.gif
PS the 'top 50%' income cutoff that goes with this data from 2003 (newest complete data available) is $29,019 . The 'top 10%' income cutoff is $94,891, which undoubtedly includes a good number of full time dancers !
!
As to the 'cost' created by illegal aliens, a CIS study showed that the average FEDERAL cost per illegal household for the federally funded gov't benefits they consumed was $2,700 per year in 2004 ( see ). Quantifying the additional 'cost' created by illegal aliens for STATE funded gov't benefits and services varies by state, but is probably at least equal to - and in many states significantly higher than - the federal costs based on state funded matching medicaid payments, plus costs of ejudication / incarceration, plus costs of 'educating' illegal alien children, plus costs of state and locally funded direct and indirect gov't benefits.
(snip)"In California, households composed of an illegal alien parent and citizen
children represented about 10 percent of the state’s AFDC and Food Stamp
caseloads in 1995 and accounted for $720 million in AFDC and Food Stamp
benefits combined [in 1998 dollars - sic]. Other studies from the California counties of Los
Angeles and Orange estimated that these households have constituted up
to 20 percent of each county’s AFDC caseload in recent years."(snip) from a GAO report at
In all cases, the studies point out that the primary reason that illegal aliens create such high cost for other US taxpayers is not that they consume an inordinate amount of gov't benefits, but because they simply don't earn enough to actually pay any income taxes to offset the benefit costs they create. Despite highly publicized US citizen 'welfare families', the numbers show that the majority of US citizens who collect gov't benefits do so on a temporary basis, and eventually wind up becoming taxpayers thus 'paying back' a portion of the cost of the benefits they previously collected. This doesn't happen with semi-skilled illegal aliens, because many work 'off the books', and those that do work 'on the books' don't earn enough to actually have to pay income taxes.
However, with the outsourcing / bankruptcy / cutbacks in US manufacturing, union and construction jobs, an increasing percentage of US citizens are now finding that their 'replacement job' earnings potential places them under the $30,000 mark. As such they cease being taxpayers and become net consumers of gov't benefits, which of course must be paid for by higher taxes on an ever shrinking percentage of remaining middle class Americans.
This of course is gradually creating the situation quoted earlier, where more than 50% of total registered voters become permanent recipients of gov't benefits, which must be paid for by the less than 50% of remaining registered voters who are no longer in a position to prevent their taxes from being raised to pay for those benefits. This gradually reduces the middle class to nearly the same standard of living as the recipients of gov't benefits, leaving the 'rich' and the 'poor' and nobody in the 'middle'.
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Re: Where do our taxes go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by NinaDaisy
Or a lot of plain 'ol working class people who are finding it harder and harder to find decent jobs with any kind of benefits.
But it's so much easier to just blame the brown people, right? ::)
You should have stopped at the first paragraph.
The second one shows why liberal democrats have such trouble getting elected. They make everything a matter of race and totally disregard the hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and taxes bore by the american people.