Your taxes at work

This is the week that our income taxes were due and it was a week when we got a vivid example of our taxes at work. 

As a society, we like to complain about our taxes, but the truth is that the U.S. has some of the lowest taxes in the industrialized world.

Personally, I've never begrudged paying taxes. I see them as a part of the social contract that binds us together, as the price of all the goods and services I receive from the government, and paying them is part of my patriotic duty as a citizen.

If you feel disposed to grouse about your taxes, just keep this image in mind. Perhaps it may make you think twice.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rude people

I spent some time in a doctor's office waiting room today waiting for my husband. During much of my hour-and-a-half there, the room was very crowded with strangers. I had brought my Kindle and was trying to read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. It's a novel of manners about the way people treat each other and about their expectations of each other. It reminds me somewhat of Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series. It has the same gentle, meandering feel to it. Anyway, I was trying to concentrate on my book, but at some point, it just became impossible. On the opposite side of the room from me several rather elderly - that is to say older than me - people were seated, and, as always seems to happen in these circumstances, one of them, a woman, had a loud and abrasive voice and manner and she insisted on telling the others her life story and especially her medical history. A couple of other people there entered eagerly into the spirit of the...
Read more

Poetry Sunday: Citizen of Dark Times by Kim Stafford

This poem is from a collection of poetry written by Oregon poet Kim Stafford after the presidential election of 2016. It was his effort, he said in an interview, to find the "flavor of unity" in divisive times. It seems particularly appropriate at the moment. Citizen of Dark Times by Kim Stafford Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid. When things go wrong, do right. Set out by the half-light of the seeker. For the well-lit problem begins to heal. Learn tropism toward the difficult. We have not arrived to explain, but to sing. Young idealism ripens into an ethical life. Prune back regret to let faith grow. When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down. Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song. Keep seeing what you are not saying. Plunder your reticence. Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.
Read more

My new Kindle

I love books. I love the feel of books, the smell of books, the heft of books, the look of books - their perfect symmetry. I am, as the phrase goes, an "avid reader." I've always got at least one book going and several waiting on my "to be read" shelf, so I consume a lot of books in a year's time. I am a fairly eclectric reader, although my favorite genre is mysteries, and specifically, historical mysteries, but I read a lot of other stuff as well, both fiction and nonfiction. My devotion to the printed page has been unwavering and I've never even considered getting an ebook reader. Until earlier this year. I got a Kindle for my husband, the technogeek, for his birthday, and after watching him use it and seeing his enthusiasm for it, I decided that maybe I should try it, even though I'm decidedly NOT a technogeek. I did try it and I was hooked. So, Santa, that jolly old elf, knowing that I had been seduced by the Kindle, stuffed my Christmas sto...
Read more