zorg wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 1:17 pm
Gramsci wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 11:55 am
zorg wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 9:27 am
That is an exceptionally credulous, royalist position. Is the handyman working under the table the real criminal, or is it the tax haven 1%’ers?
I’m talking about convenience stores, beauty salons etc. not someone popping over to put some shelves up.
Small business tyrants can pay their fucking taxes, as should offshore hedge funds. Both can be true at once.
I’m curious about the “royalist” taunt, what’s “royalist” about excepting everyone to pay their Civilisation Fee? Those goblins should pay much more taxes and not receive a penny of public money.
Well, the US was famously founded on not wanting to pay taxes, and that persists. So the idea of a penny going to the food and lodging of a bunch of ermine wearing blue-blooded freaks rubs many of us the wrong way...and so I side with the small business owner. I have similar feelings about our "defense" spending, and so on. But hell, if you're gonna pay your taxes you may as well be pleased about it, so more power to ya. We'd probably be less jaded if we had public healthcare or something that actually serves the public good, at all.
Taxes here pay for universal healthcare, public education, welfare, clean streets, infrastructure, international aid… plus too much on the military and a small but annoying amount on the Monarchy.
I use all the other stuff so I’m very happy to pay my taxes. I would have been fine with them going up a bit to be honest. But in the US I get it. The military budget is grotesque and you don’t have universal healthcare.
clocker bob may 30, 2006 wrote:I think the possibility of interbreeding between an earthly species and an extraterrestrial species is as believable as any other explanation for the existence of George W. Bush.