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Automotive News & Views Is a Higher Gasoline Tax Good Or Bad For America?
849 messages, Last post on Nov 19, 2009 at 2:22 PM
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Replying to: xrunner2 (Jun 02, 2009 2:39 pm) |
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The brilliant people who founded this country thought that taxation was theft. A person has or had the right to keep the fruits of their own labor and own property. Some wise Justice once said: " The power to tax is the power to destroy" The quality of human life in the last century has increased dramatically due in part to the use of petroleum products. Our life span in 1900 was approximately 42 years of age. Left alone the market which is the sum total of the ingeneuity of the human mind free to find solutions will continue to make things better, faster and cheaper. If we could just stop the "World Improvers", from helping us gas would cost 50 cents per gallon and new wonderous technologies would arise on their own. Creative Destruction. Do we not remember the endless experiments in centrally planned economies in the 20th century??????? It is always a battle between stasiss and dynamisim, slavery vs. freedom. |
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Jun 02, 2009 4:43 pm) Really!! Speaking of "getting away with", the current admin is no slouch. Starting back a couple months ago with the stimulus/budget bill huge document, hundreds of pages long loaded with pork. The admin and Ms Pelosi intentionally did not allow sufficient time for Congress to read/review/peruse/digest details before quickly calling for a vote. Just one example of the out-of-control admin and Congress. Spying/torturing - See Post 805. Liberal and biased media obviously did its job in informing(?) and molding the minds of the sheepile. Don't see that media has made any kind of issue about oil/gasoline prices since new admin took office in Jan. Gasoline at the pump up at least 50 percent with new admin. But, maybe Obama would rather that oil/gasoline prices zoom up so that he can more easily promote some of his flaky energy plans without having to bring up issue of raising gas taxes. |
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Maybe this article will amke everyone understand that the average American does not have disposable money to pay more taxes of any sort. And especially the older middle-class people who had put together assets in real estate or stocks, have been hit very hard. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-06-04-foreclose-mortgage-seni- ors_N.htm If the government wants to collect extra money for road-projects or public transportation, they should go no further then to put a special tax on anyone in the financial and banking industries who made over $200K/year in the last 10 years. There are many people who walked away with tons of money, creating bubbles, sucking peoples' investments in, and left them with not much more than a mirage. People will now need SS, Medicare, and no new taxes to cope with these losses, from the system that our government allowed to operate, and encouraged in many cases.
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Replying to: kernick (Jun 05, 2009 12:54 pm) Husband had no way of knowing wife would contract Alzheimer's disease. I don't agree with his taking out a loan at the age which leaves him where he is today, with a mortgage. I'm his age and saved for our present home, paying cash 1999. Between 18 & 22 I learned about FDR's Supplemental Social Security Act & learned then the KEY word is "Supplemental"..it was never intended to be a mainline retirement fund, but intended to augment our individual savings & investment programs throughout our productive years. We have been savers and investers since 1954 which sacrificed our standard of living to be less than what it could have been. Today's high income folk do not deserve to be taxed more due to their wise frugality of the past. All should pay the same.
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Replying to: fintail (Jun 02, 2009 9:41 am) In theory, yes, but unfortunately the base of that pyramid is starting to crumble. When Social security was first enacted, I think there was something like 21 workers putting in, for every retiree. Today it's something like 3 or 5 workers per retiree. One problem is that people just don't have a bunch of kids like they used to. I think both of my Granddads had something like 6 or 7 siblings...but they lived on farms, where that was more common I guess. But then my grandparents only had 3 kids on my Dad's side, and only 2 on my Mom's. My Mom & Dad only had me. And I don't plan on having kids. Another thing that might be putting pressure on SS is federal employees. In the past, they didn't put into SS, but they didn't collect it either, unless they had enough "quarters" in. However, since around 1983, they started phasing out those federal pensions, and anyone hired after that now puts into SS. So I don't know what the net effect was...whether that helped SS or hurt it more? Social Security was never meant to be enough to retire on, but it was meant to make for a nice supplement. I think I read somewhere, though, that for something like 60% of all retirees, social security is all they have.
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Replying to: andre1969 (Jun 05, 2009 4:21 pm) The public sector pension plans are going to cause just as much of a meltdown, and probably stir a lot of resentment and anger from those who worked in the real world and weren't able to get into the "30 in - out with 80%" scheme that a lot of retiring boomer public servants were able to get away with. On a per retiree basis, those have to be a lot more of a drain on the system than simple SS benefits. By the time I retire, the average age for hanging em up will probably be 70 or more, and any SS I collect might pay for food or leisure, but maybe not much else. Of course, the losers in the last election believe we are headed to a Soviet hell, so I'll have socialized marginal quality housing available gratis anyway 
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Replying to: euphonium (Jun 05, 2009 3:17 pm) Remember who wars are fought to benefit...
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Replying to: fintail (Jun 05, 2009 5:57 pm) |
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