Tax Freedom Day!
Sorry, this is not the end of taxation. From the Advocates:
Every year the Tax Foundation calculates a “Tax Freedom Day” for the U.S. and for each state. “Tax Freedom Day” is the day when, by their calculations, Americans have earned enough money to pay the cost of government.
This year, Tax Freedom Day arrives April 30 — two days later than just a year ago. Indeed, it’s a whopping 12 days later than just 2003, when Tax Freedom Day came on April 18.
Of course this only includes current spending by the government and does not cover the humongous debt or the vast entitlement commitments.
April 7th, 2007 at 11:15 am
The Tax Foundation’s tax freedom day statistic is at best meaningless and in actuality truly deceptive. It is a “smoke and mirrors” statistic made up of numbers that don’t really tell you anything, with peculiar assumptions and estimates thrown in. (For example, the foundation generally revises its prior year’s statistics each year months later after the “real” information for the year is available.) The “special report” uses words like “burden” and “freedom” that carry a presumption that all taxes are bad and not having taxes is good. Nothing could be further from the truth. NOT ONE OF US COULD EARN A DECENT INCOME IN A WORLD WITHOUT TAXATION AND THE STABILITY THAT GOVERNMENT PROVIDES ON THE LOCAL, STATE, AND NATIONAL LEVEL FOR ENTERPRISE AND HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT.
Imagine where this country would be if we hadn’t invested in our citizens’ educational development with the GI Bill supporting college education after World War II. Taxation is absolutely vital in support of government programs –from Centers for Disease Control to support for basic research that we cannot ever accomplish individually and that won’t be accomplished for the majority of citizens if the few wealthy can fend for themselves. Anarchist states are states controlled by the wealthy few or the armed few. Not a place I want to be.
And we are fast running dangerously close to letting a wealthy oligarchy take over the country and run it for its own aims, letting the middle class fend for itself. Privatization is really capture of programs that the government provides for everyone, turning them into programs that really work only for the wealthy. The corporatization and privatization of America is harming the vast majority of American citizens. It does not provide true individual freedom to realize one’s potential but an arbitrary Lochnerian notion of “liberty” that in fact is not far removed from slavery because of the empowerment of the rich and the disenfranchisement of the rest. One result of the empowerment of the rich–corporate managers making off with the store and mercenary troops fighting with billions of dollars wasted on a war that makes no sense while children lack decent health care and ordinary old folks can’t count on pension protection.