Why Do You Pay Taxes?
By: BJ Lawson
As various tax-related mail begins to appear in the mailboxes of hardworking Americans across the country, it’s instructive for all of us to reflect on why we carry the burden of our government every April.
Take this morning, for instance. We can credit the “ingenuity of the markets”, and specifically the ingenuity of John Thain, for moving annual executive bonus payments by Merrill Lynch up by a month last November, thus disbursing $15 billion in executive bonuses just before closing Merrill’s acquisition by Bank of America. Fast forward a few months, and the United States taxpayer just gave Bank of America another $20 billion in newly-borrowed funds to put a band-aid on mortar wounds in Merrill Lynch’s balance sheet.
Doesn’t that make you relish the withholding from your paycheck? Seventy-five percent of the cash payment from our latest Bank of America bailout went directly to Merrill Lynch executives.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Hi B.J., for inspiration you should watch the movie “Street Fight” about the New Jersey Mayoral race.
http://www.marshallcurry.com/
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I don’t.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Thank you so much for this timely piece and for your efforts on behalf of both your community and your state and our nation.
As we look down the road to April 15th, we must ask ourselves, why indeed? We are marching our future generations into a slave state of bondage and debt unprecedented in a once free and prosperous nation.
Is there a way to reverse the trend? I hope so. . .
January 24th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Thank you so much for this timely piece and for your efforts on behalf of both your community and your state and our nation.
As we look down the road to April 15th, we must ask ourselves, why indeed? We are marching our future generations into a slave state of bondage and debt unprecedented in a once free and prosperous nation.
Is there a way to reverse the trend? I hope so. . .