I even checked to make sure you still were able to post.
I live in a red area, and I've learned that a good half of the people who call themselves republicans or use the talking points you do are simply misinformed. On health care alone I think I've forwarded the full info at least a dozen times.
You are exactly right on one thing, taxes are hugely important. Without them we don't have the funding for our infrastructure and it starts going into serious decline. Without that infrastructure, our country will grind to a painful and screeching stop.
It doesn't have anything to do with being smart enough, information is power and it's in corporations best interest to make sure the majority of people don't have the correct information they need to succeed. Less competition means more for the "I got mine" crowd.
I think the best way I've gotten people to understand how this works is by describing it as a never ending circle, where money travels from spot to spot. When we get in trouble, it's usually because somewhere along the line the money was stopped from moving forward to the next step.
Lets talk about fictitious Mary.
Mary is 16, she works at a local mom and pop burger joint. Mary doesn't really care about the mechanics of how she gets her money, she's just glad she has a job.
Mary pays to take the public bus to work, driven on public roads. She learned how to read and write from a public school, funded by the county.
Mary goes to a private business to buy her clothes, get her nails done. Her mom goes to a private business to get her groceries, work done on the car and they go to a clinic to get health care. A privately owned one.
These businesses take the money that Mary and her mom have spent, and use it to pay salaries and buy items to restock.
If these are imported items, our infrastructure keeps rules in place to make these items safe. It also allows transportation of these items from stop to stop, with more rules about how to drive on these roads.
There are literally hundreds more people and businesses involved in this money circle, in the interest of simplicity I'll not talk about them.
In turn everyone in this circle so far pays taxes, each penny they pay in taxes goes to a fund that keeps our roads and schools going. It pays for our police, fire and in many areas EMS. It pays the salaries of the people responsible for oversight, and our clean water.
Unknown to Mary, Joe is on his way to the warehouse of her favorite clothing store. He's hungry and he decides to stop at the burger joint, completing one of at least 20 money circles. Mary->store->suppliers->distribution->transportation->delivery->sales floor->Mary purchases the next pair of jeans she likes.
Joe is the delivery step, he takes the money paid to him by his boss and goes to eat lunch starting another money circle. By purchasing lunch, he is helping pay Mary's hourly wage which in turn helps pay his.
Looking at this, it's easy to see just how many money circles we touch every single day. Everything from paying our bills to purchasing gas.
Now, what if someone along the line decided "Hrm...I want more money but instead of working for it I'm going to take it from other places and keep it for myself."
The entire money circle would start to collapse, because it DEPENDS on that money moving from spot to spot.
Lets throw a monkey wrench in there, not only do we now have a guy at the top of the circle keeping more money for himself, which means less money for the rest of the cirlce...which in turn means less money moving from hand to hand. Which in turn also means less for businesses and roads, and less taxes to keep our roads and education up to speed. Now we learn we have a parasitic insurance system in place.
In many places, health insurance for a family of four is over 600 dollars a month. This money is being paid to an insurance system that thrives on denying people medical care. Medical care that is imperative to allowing them to work, and being a part of these money circles. Because these families can't afford to purchase insurance for themselves, they are literally held hostage in a job they may hate just to be sure they can feed their family and have a home to sleep in.
That 600 dollars a month could be spent on:
100 meals from Mary's mom and pop burger place.
24 pairs of jeans from Mary's favorite clothing store.
Much needed vehicle maintenance for Mary's moms car.
These are just a few examples.
The fact of the matter is, we live in a synergistic society. We rely on each other in more ways than the average person realizes. It's not about if the business owner is more important than the government, or if the government is some benevolent overlord. Neither is true, each is equally as important as the other and both rely on the middle class to keep them going.
We need to free the money up that's been roadblocked. For much less than the 600 dollars a month per family, we could have a health care system instead of an insurance system. By calling the people to task at the top of the circles we can free up the money to flow through the circle, much like when your leg falls asleep and you get the circulation going again. Yeah, its uncomfortable at first but if you don't get blood to that leg and willfully ignore it you're asking for trouble.
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Absolutely right.
