Jus' sayin'...

[ceagle]

Finished my income taxes... at last!

Now, I paid about $3,000 for a)current use of the country b)future use of medicare and c)future use of social security. Looking at it that way, it doesn't seem like too much.

If anything, the taxes which seem too high are Property Taxes, Sales Taxes, and some other Excise taxes and such.
I'd prefer if it was about half the current rates. In fact I think Property Taxes are part of the major barriers to home ownership and part of the housing crisis.
And in Sales Tax, I wouldn't mind if it was sorta like Hawaii and Louisiana (4%) ... but floating around 10% seems a bit high for sales tax ... I remember when it *was* around 5% .. :/

Comments

[orv.livejournal.com]

I think it's split long-term vs. short-term, which probably helps some, but I suspect there are plenty of ways to make speculative investments look like long term investments.

Looking at what happened over the last few years I'm not convinced investment as it's currently carried out by the big players is a net benefit to society. Investing in actual stocks and bonds I can see the social benefits of, but by the time you get to things like CDOs it's so far removed from reality that it's hard to see how it benefits anyone but the investment banks that dream these things up.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping they see it as an ongoing project that can be made *better* as they find out what works and what doesn't.