my view on Taxes

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Public education if well enough funded and managed well is the best opportunity for everyone to reach their full potential. Even if the rich person doesn't themselves want to use the public education system I'd argue they still lose if they don't pay more than others to tax it. That's because they have more to contribute to it and it needs plenty of funding. And when the children who are given a great opportunity to rise from poverty and harness their skills start reaping the fruits of their labors, then the rich man will benefit too. There could be a child living in poverty who has the potential to build a spaceship fit to colonise another planet. That's an extreme example but anyway, if that child and the children in his neighborhood are not given good education he's more likely to be a member of a criminal gang or become a victim of them than he is to harness his potential. A neighborhood with lacklustre schools and facilities more often than not tragically becomes a drain on society. It doesn't have to be that way.

I agree unions can get in the way of progress. But I'd rather people will try to reform them and public services rather than abandon them. Without unions and public services the human race would be screwed. They developed for a good reason. The same is true for capitalism - it replaced serfdom. We've just got to keep trying until we find a fine balance. I'm an optimist and I think we will.

It doesn't have to be a fantastic Horatio Alger story to have class mobility. My grandfather only ever completed up to the 8th grade (and it took him 10 years to do that ) and he spent his entire life as a poor farmer. But, he was able to send his sons and daughters to college, one of whom graduated from Harvard Med School, another got a PhD in materials science from an excellent university. Two others became successful lawyers. That was on my mom's side. On my dad's side, again, grandfather never even went to high school (dropped out to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps and support his family, then off to fight in the Pacific front) and after the war he spent his life doing menial labor for some ceramics company. He also sent his sons to college, and my father became an engineer. Then, my parents, though initially coming from a lower-class background, were able to provide me and my siblings a comfortable middle-class upbringing, with all the advantages that entails, and I ended up in a position to decline full rides at Ivy League institutions. We have plenty of class mobility in America so long as you are willing to apply yourself and work to break out of that cycle. The opportunities are there, and now more than ever people who have money to throw around make a point of giving it to people who are trying to break out of that cycle.


Again, the amount of tax money that actually goes to helping the poor is negligible. You may as well not even mention it. Taxes pay for the military and for federal bureaucracies and regulations.


There is enough opportunity in education already, at least in America. If you come from a poor background, are a first-generation college student, etc, you can get disgusting amounts of scholarship money without actually doing jack s**t to earn it. I've seen it happen.


I would agree that they don't, but I would disagree that taxes as they currently exist serve that purpose.


BS. There is plenty of class mobility, and that negates most of the gap. Besides, the standard of living of even our poor people is quite incredible by historical standards, and also by current global standards. Europe isn't poor, and yet their middle class has a lower standard of living than America's poor. Suck on that, you socialist pigs! Capitalism wins again.