Argument I'm having on Facebook: hey, conservative friend, let's help you get around paying taxes!

[calimary]

Ray: And your taxes will be so high you will never afford healthcare again!
10 hours ago · Like

calimary: Ray! Hey my friend, I just had a FANTASTIC idea! Let's help you make one of those flying cars. That way you can travel around town without using any roads. Those are paid for, paved, and repaired, through taxes (which your side hates). The only problem is, the airways above us that all those other flying machines use is all pretty well organized and regulated - so we'd have to help you navigate around that somehow too. That effort has of course been bankrolled by taxes. Maybe an orbital vehicle then?
7 minutes ago · Like

calimary: You should DEFINITELY grow ALL your own food, because using food you'd buy at the market - well, that market pays taxes, and charges them on nonfood items you'd also buy there. And the food they sell has all been inspected - that involves tax money, you know. And we're well aware you're not fans of paying taxes. So let's help you get around them, okay? And of course you'd need your very own water well or something, because the public water systems, including what comes out of your tap at home - well, taxes help ensure that this water is clean and its infrastructure is maintained. Can't have that then, either.
7 minutes ago · Like

calimary: You'd probably have to hire your own security guards, though - since calling the police for something involves those dreaded public employees your side resents so much. I mean, heaven forbid your house catches fire. More of those dreadful public employees would be scurrying around your private property at will! ICK!
6 minutes ago · Like

calimary: See, taxes have been so badly misrepresented over the past few decades - as something that only takes away. No one ever bothers to think WHAT WE GET FOR OUR TAX MONEY. But please make no mistake - NO ONE on our side ever claims there isn't waste. So absolutely, you monitor closely and streamline so the tax money coming in from all our participants in this country is used as wisely and efficiently as possible.
4 minutes ago · Like

calimary: But there's been NO on-going emphasis on the common good. And how we ALL benefit. There's been precious little emphasis, for example, on all the ills the Affordable Care Act has addressed, done away with, and fixed, to protect ALL of us from being ripped off! Hey, Ray, even my conservative friends are forced to concede that health care (ESPECIALLY!) should NOT be a for-profit affair. No one should be able to make a buck off your health or mine. Because then you really do get those "death panels" miz sarah was squawking about in 2008, only it'll be the insurance INDUSTRY, the businesses, the bean-counters, that decide whether you live or die - THEY will be the death panels. Oh wait ... we already have that. THAT is what the Affordable Care Act is designed to prevent, or at least circumvent. Health insurance and health care should be a public utility.
a few seconds ago · Like

I think we all ought to start approaching taxes a little differently. TIME FOR THE GREAT NATIONAL RE-EDUCATION.

[tabatha]

1. Good points, except the ACA is still for profit for insurance companies.

The neighborhood clinics will be better.

[Tennessee Gal]

2. Tell them to try a few facts:

The Requirement to Buy Coverage Under the Affordable Care Act
http://healthreform.kff.org/the-basics/Requirement-to-buy-coverage-flowchart.aspx

How health insurance mandate will work

http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/29/pf/taxes/health_insurance_mandate/

Health Reform Subsidy Calculator

http://healthreform.kff.org/SubsidyCalculator.aspx

What does the Supreme Court's health-care ruling mean for me?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/what-health-bill-means-for-you/

[savalez]

4. Thanks TG the calculator came in handy. n/t

[Life Long Dem]

3. You don't hear the right

complain about the cost of war for taxpayers.

[freethought]

5. Here's an argument I like to use

Last edited Mon Jul 2, 2012, 04:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Especially when someone on the right tries to corner me on the better efficiency of privatizing vs. public resources paid through taxes. Kind of goes like this:

"Okay let's try this. Let's say the town you live in decides to sell off sections of paved roads to any homeowner or business that has frontage on a street or road. If they buy a section they would be entitled to charge you a toll to use that section of street even if it's only a few feet long, regardless of the direction you're coming from and they could charge you anything they want. How many homes or businesses do you pass when coming to or from work, picking up the kids at school, dropping of the kids at school, going grocery shopping, picking up that pizza you just ordered, etc... just doing the stuff of everyday life. How many homes or businesses do you pass? 100? 200? 300? More? Does it make sense to you to pay 200 tolls to get to work in the morning? Let's not forget about coming back from work where you would have to pay the same tolls again! Where's the efficiency in that? How is having that sort of system more efficient or cost effective? Where's the common good?

Some things simply work better if they are in the public sphere, paid for by taxation! Sure there are some freeriders, sure there may be inefficiency and some waste, maybe even fraud. Maybe it's the duty of the public itself to ensure that tax revenues are wisely and efficiently spent! Consider it the price paid for being a citizen of a civilized society."

The response I usually get is something like this: "Well...um...I didn't mean to say that we should....blah, blah" And then they start back pedaling.

Some may think it's bullshit hypothetical argument but in my eyes it highly underscores the need for common benefit created by taxation. Turning a society and all of it's assets into some sort of free market utopia does not and has never struck me a solution to all of this country's ills.

[calimary]

6. NO. This isn't just some bullshit hypothetical argument.

It's an accurate prediction of the future in the full vision of the teabaggers. Only they're unable to envision anything beyond their own selfish little myopia.

I was part of a forum last summer in which there were several rigid howard jarvis worshippers. One, a crotchety little old lady who could almost literally have come from Central Casting, proved utterly unreachable. But others not quite so much. One fellow I sat next to may have at least begun to think a TINY bit beyond the Pox Propaganda.

I gave a hypothetical, too, that actually is based on quite a bit of truth. The state of our roads here in CA is WIDELY agreed to be pretty shabby. Especially around my area. Not enough money to do road repair and simple things like filling potholes because no one dares raise taxes and so many fund-raising bond issues are defeated at the polls. I posed the question to everyone about that - how much more do you stand to have to spend on auto repair, fixing your wheel alignment, replacing oddly-worn tires, maybe in some extreme cases having to replace your front axle because that one pothole was bad enough to bend it just to the point where it made your car dangerous or more difficult to drive? How often do you have to go in for wheel alignment since most of the roads around here are so damn bad? How much more is that gonna take out of your pocket for car repairs than the few extra dollars we ALL are asked to chip in, in taxes, to underwrite general road repair? This guy next to me stopped arguing so vehemently and admitted in a subdued voice - "well, I didn't think of that..."

And that covers ALL the roads. Not just the ones that affect me directly in my own geographical area. Listen, I've got a daughter living in the Pacific Northwest, and I've got a son with a rock band who tours nationally, which means they're out on the road EVERYWHERE. They've been through at least three-quarters of the lower 48 states by now, some places getting quite a few repeat visits. And while it doesn't affect me in So Cal (because I'M not driving through Georgia or the Florida Panhandle or New Hampshire or Flint Michigan. But he is, and the five other young dudes with him are in that same vehicle. And dammit, I care! I care a LOT. I want ALL the roads repaired and kept in good shape for EVERYONE in this country!

Taxes are DUES. DUES we all pay for the privilege of living in a country like this, and all the wonderful things and advantages and opportunities that it offers that MAKE such a wonderful country in the first place. No one who wanted the privilege of belonging to a high-class country club would begrudge paying those often exhorbitant dues to belong there. Well, America is like the greatest and most wonderful and desirable country club in the world! The wonderful freedoms and amenities and opportunities and blessings and riches of this country - are worth us all chipping in to help underwrite. That's how we MAKE it that wonderful, in the first place!

Freedom indeed is NOT free. True that. But it costs much more than exclusively the blood of patriots. It also costs tax money.

[freethought]

7. That's an excellent argument, I wish I had thought of it

I'm originally from New England, a place known for notorious potholes, dangerous intersections, a number of decaying bridges. Go to the right places and you'll see not a paved road but a patch work of pothole patches that may extend for hundreds of yards.

Drive into one good pothole and there goes $200+ to have the cast, camber, and toe adjusted on your car. Provide, of course, if you haven't damaged a ball joint, tie rod end, or perhaps screwed up your wheel hubs. I don't want to even think of the costs of replacing an entire axle. I remember on one vehicle I owned I hit something hard enough to break a steering knuckle. It was not a cheap fix by any means.

I tend to wonder if any sort of research has ever been done on this. How badly maintained roads cost consumers in auto maintenance and repair that may otherwise be prevented.

[calimary]

8. I feel like we don't have roads anymore around L.A. We drive on long narrow quilts.

They're a mess, mainly because nobody wants to pay taxes anymore. But they expect decent roads and they expect nothing to go wrong when they drive over that big open hole in the pavement. That whole howard jarvis movement was one giant public lobotomy.