Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love. They love the country, but resent paying for it. How does that work? Are they the ultimate freetards?
I resent paying for foreign wars I don't agree with, for secretive government agencies that unnecessarily pry into our private lives, and for ridiculous departments like the DHS which are largely ineffective and throw money away.
I would love to pay more for public education and a public healthcare system. I would love to pay more for innovative, effective solutions to poverty and homelessness. I'm happy to pay for the maintenance of our roads and for services like police and fire departments and public libraries.
Unfortunately, there's no good way for me to express this preference. All viable political candidates at the national level want to spend money on too many things I do not want for the voting apparatus to be of any help here.
So I sit back and grudgingly pay my taxes, hoping that people of like mind but with more political acumen and drive than I have will be able to make sense of the mess eventually.
Bunk. Being anti-tax has nothing to do with being "right wing" at all. In fact, the entire term "right wing" is 100% meaningless in modern terms.
Plenty of us who oppose taxation ALSO oppose our empire building overseas military operations, and aggressive foreign policy, and want the military rolled back to only what is required for defense of the USA. I for one want the US out of the "world police" role.
Just cutting a huge chunk out of the military budget would be a great start on reducing government spending and decreasing the tax burden.
Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love.
Our country and our government are not the same thing. And Americans have a long history of having issues with excessive taxation by the government.
From an American perspective they are more akin to the Democrats: they support gay marriage, support legal abortion, don't support reintroducing the death penalty, support public health care (to some extent), generally support public education, do at least claim to accept that environmental issues are a concern (although we do have an environment secretary who denies climate changes science…). They support giving benefits to at least certain groups in society (pensioners, land owners) and accept the need to provide some level of support for the disabled, unemployed, single parents and so on. They made commitments to maintaining the level of foreign aid. For all their talk of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights they have not actually done so. So they have a lot of policies that your typical Republican would be fairly disgusted by.
I wouldn't vote for them myself of course…
If a party in the UK hinted at dismantling public health care (the NHS) out loud, they'd be lynched (either in the polls or the streets, whichever was more convenient).
