"Real intelligence is a creative use of knowledge, not merely an accumulation of facts. The slow thinker who can finally come up with an idea of his own is more important to the world than a walking encyclopedia who hasn't learned to use information properly"
D. Kenneth Winebrenner
In the height of the petroleum problem in this country I read recently that the lawmakers in Maine raised the gas tax by 8/10 of one cent. The general consensus was that they didn't even raise the tax a penny so who was going to notice. well first of all how is the dealer going to collect 8/10 of a cent and not hurt their already slim margin on gas so they are almost definitely going to raise the price a penny. Is this the way to help build consumer confidence? Yes people may be driving less so revenues are not going to be there, so is adding taxes to what has become a basic necessity in this country, especially in rural areas the right answer? My other pet peeve is when politicians say they will not raise taxes on working people, they are just going to tax corporations more. This would be fine on paper, but the reality is companies do not pay taxes, people do, and if you raise the tax rate for a company, in order to maintain their profit margin, and keep their investors happy, guess what!!!!! They increase the price of their product to cover the increased taxes, hence the tax increase falls again on the back of the consumer without them really being aware that they are being taxed more.
I am a firm believer that we should do away with payroll withholding taxes, and people should have to pay a quarterly estimated income tax just like the self employed and they would be more aware of what they are paying in taxes. I was talking to a young man right out of college one day the beginning of April and he was all excited because the Government had just given him several hundred dollars. It turned out to be his tax refund, he was not aware that he had paid this money to the government and he was just getting back what was over withheld from his paycheck every week. We need more common sense in this country and especially in our politicians who are "looking out for our interests"
1 comment:
Hurray for people like Winebrenner! (Can you guess that I was never a good book learner, but always an creative problem-solver?!)
Regarding your post, I'm not sure the main problem is that the public doesn't notice, but they don't always do the math (ie., it's 8/10th of a cent times X). This is compounded by the fact that, in groups, we have very short attention spans and don't remember, for example, that the new one cent sales tax is in addition to the "temporary" one cent sales tax added ten years ago and still in place!
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