Here is what I do not understand.

I pay income taxes. I pay taxes on gasoline,tires,my land, my home,my autos, my motorcycle,my electric bill, my gas bill, a 10% sales tax,and many other taxes too numerous to mention.

How come my city is broke, my county is broke and my federal government is almost 16 trillion dollars in debt?

Where in the heck are they spending all that money? I have s*#t left after taxes but I am not in debt.

16 TRILLION DOLLARS !!!! it aint all goin to the poor because if it were we would have no poor.

 

because when the recession hit people started to lose their jobs so less taxes were brought in..so the fed and state and city just kept on spending not cutting back when the income was going lower..businesses cut spending,people cut spending but not the politicians

 

welfare hasbeen around for 50+ years..what has it done to help the poor..nothing..they are still poor..they need job training and education..thats the only way to help them..pennies each month does not get them anywhere..welfare doesnt work at all..

 

So...before 2008 we were only about five trillion in debt ???

My point is simple...the government is bleeding money...who is gettin rich?

The local Mayor came by the house to ask for my vote. He said he needed the job because he needed the money.

Then he spotted my motorcycle and talked about his Harley and how he goes to Sturgis every year and takes several trips to Florida.

I voted for the other guy.

 

Anyone that tries to pretend the rich are paying a similar tax rate to the rest of us, needs to remind themselves of all the taxes just listed.

I drink and smoke as well, so my tax rate as a % of income, is so much higher than any millionaire's.


As to the ops question, our money goes to profits for MIC, and HC industries as their is no pricen integrity in either market. Almost our entire Federal budget is in Medicare, Medicade, SS, and defense. Its a really simple answer to a pretty simple question.

As for the local governments, you know that LIBOR story that the MSM tells you doesn't matter. It is estimated that just Nassau county in Florida had 14 million dollars stolen from it in the LIBOR scandal. Throw in all the robbed and mismanaged pension funds, and other local municipalities attempts at being hedge fund managers whilke losing millions of tax payers dollars, and you have a pretty good picture of why states and cities are broke.

 

Because politicians' ability to spend outstrips their ability to fund the spending.

 

Some of it goes to the wealthy through such things as corporate welfare and tax loop holes, some of it goes to the middle class, some of it goes to the poor, some of it goes to other countries etc. Then when everyone is getting a peice of the pie they are free to do what they want with the rest. If anyone raises an objection they risk losing a peice of the pie.

Got it?

 

One thing you need to understand is that government tax revenues should grow with the economy but taxes have been reduced on the wealthy, who have received all the income gains from economic growth over the last few decades. This has resulted in a huge decline in government revenues as a percentage of GDP while expenditures have remained roughly the same.

 

A welfare system obsessed with efficiency doesn't work. Other countries, with greater social mobility, show that a welfare system based on effectiveness does indeed work

 

Try dropping by for a city council meeting. I grew up in a town of about 400 people, the mayor's yearly salary was $50 (so you can imagine what kind of budget the town was working with).... On the day I attended a town council meeting, they passed a bill granting $50,000 to a local woman to repair her over-flowing toilet, because it was draining the town's water supply. $50,000 for an overflowing toilet! ..... That's how government works. They can't put up a stop light for less than a million bucks. Although I'm risking delving into generalizations, I'd say that government programs ALWAYS exceed the budget estimates, and tend to work less-than-expected.


Here's another local example. Washington State paid $213 MILLION dollars to build three state-of-the-art ferries...... The problem? THEY TILT! Passengers get sick riding them. To save face, the government says the ferries were "designed" to tilt, because they "cut through the water like a knife!" When they load the ferry, they put all the cars on one side to "balance things out". I've actually talked with someone who works for the company that built these things. He says that government has certain regulations, you know, it must meet this requirement, this requirement, and this requirement. So they build the ferry to pass the inspection test, BUT they use the absolute bare minimum effort in all the materials, etc. By law the government has to accept the lowest bidder's contract. They ensure they pass the inspection test, but beyond that, the ferry is a piece of trash poorly designed and extremely expensive.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2013474146_apwanewferry.html


That's why you pay so many taxes, yet your county and country is broke. Rather than collecting & spending money WISELY, government throws away money on programs that don't work, with money we do not have, on projects we don't need.

 

I have a highway that goes in front of my house. It was in really good shape but they (the State I think) decided it needed to be resurfaced. A few miles up the road they tore up a perfectly good asphalt road (county road) and replaced it with gravel.

Someone is getting very rich.

 

Again, same thing happened in my town, right around the time the stimulus was passed. I swear construction companies were swimming with money. There was one intersection, that looked fine in the first place, they entirely tore it up. A week later there was freshly-paved roads and wide sidewalks. It looked beautiful. Then they tore it up again, did a week's work, and re-paved it again. Yet again they tore it up, worked on it for a week, and re-paved it a third time. Meanwhile there were roads badly in need of work that were left to rot.

.......... But at least it provided some jobs for three weeks.

 

Well, a lot of politicians get rich. Then you have to consider their friends and family who need cushy appointments. Then there are the countless billions spent on making the warfare pimps rich. There's the drug war, in which the government must put millions of people into the justice system. All of those people need well paid jobs with short hours, lots of holidays, and early retirement on spiked pensions. Then there are all the rent-seekers who want a piece of the pie. They shouldn't be denied.

 

It is really quite simple. Your local bureaucrats are draining the city coffers dry with millionare retirements. Don't you know after 20 years of Government service that you are ENTITLED to a MILLIONAIRE'S retirement and full medical for life?

Just about every municipality in America is swamped by legacy costs of their public workforce.

Federally, paying for unlimited health care for the old, sick and poor is breaking us.

 

The problem is simple. The US decided it needs to have a huge military but hasnt got the income to pay for it. Then it decided to wage 2 illegal wars, without the funds to pay for them.

Finaly, the people have been conned into believing that the health care system is cost effective, when the reality is that it is 3x the cost of a full free national system. But the politicians wont tell you that because they get huge sums of money from the private insurance companies.

 

I don't quite agree. We can use terms such as 'waste', but the military has been an integral element into how US capitalism has evolved: from spin-off technologies to using the military sector instead of 'dangerous' social expenditures to stabilise the macroeconomy.

A good point!

 

That doesn't explain why STATE AND LOCAL budgets are broke while we pay so many taxes. You're talking about the federal budget.

 

Just look into the Jefferson County sewer system in Birminham Alabama.

3.4 billion dollars in debt...the former Mayor in prison, wanting people to pay for the system that are not on the system, and widespread graft.

Then look into Cooper Green Hospital.

If ya ain't got nothin better to do.

 

Because walmart and Koch industries think you should pay a larger share of their tax burden they inflict on us all.

 

Yep. Not to mention that when the people lost their jobs because of deregulation of banking/finance hurting the overall economy, they ended up needing to rely more on assistance programs.

 

pensions to union types sitting on bum, and fat contracts to build new infrastuture that will be overpriced by 100x and make few toads rich who have graft, and pay for more pension types to sit on butt, the silly claim by obama that infrasturure made business succcess!! when infrastture buitl with money from business!! lol

 

The answer is simple. You, like all the productive, are on a treadmill: taxes. The treadmill powers the escalator that the privileged are riding up at their leisure. The money you pay in taxes goes to the privileged on the escalator. Simple.

 

Do you think cliché is going to be useful?

 

Cliché is not cliché for no reason, and is certainly more useful than evasion, misrepresentation, inanities, lying, sneering, dishonesty, red herrings, fallacies, snottiness or lying.