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Originally Posted by CDSmith
I think you may have missed the point of it Rick. I don't read it as the author bitching about taxes per se, but he does make it a point to mention how 100 years later things have changed drastically. I especially took note of the last part about mom no longer being "home to raise the kids."
Wars usually mean an economic boost to the economy, no?
No, I don't think I'll be putting the entire blame or explanation for this on "history", I think that like banks the government looks for ways of nickel-and-diming the country more and more, banks with service charges, governments with taxes. 100 years from now I'm sure we'll have an equally long list of new taxes that aren't in place today.
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Hm, fair enough. It's late and my allotment of critical thinking has been given over to coding to the wee hours.
My intention was to say that over the last 100 years a lot of shit's gone down and that now, more than ever, people are standing in line in front of you with a hand out.
Wars don't give a boost to the economy at large per se, although certain sectors do very well (mil and aerospace, among others). The boost generally shows up afterwards as the Peace Dividend, but when it comes down to it wars are generally very messy and costly affairs that burn off a lot of money that eventually needs to be reclaimed in some fashion.
As for the nickel+diming thing, I suspect someone along the line noticed that people won't complain loud and long about a 25c 'surcharge'. That level of cash glides in under our wetware radar as something we should get seriously pissed off about. Annoyed, perhaps, but people rarely go to the mat over a mere annoyance. I'm talking about the luxury and vice type taxes on that list, of course... some of the other are legit (school tax, for instance, is a direct expense for the dubious benefit of having a public school system).
I'm curious about your conclusions as to 'where the money went' with the VLTs. We have a situation not too dissimilar here in NS, but the Hamm government is so opaque that you can barely tell money gets spent, let alone how much or on what. What is it about conservatives that makes them congenitally incapable of coming clean on anything, telling the truth willingly, or give up any sort of facts without holding a gun to their heads?
