Originally Posted by
Skroe
What's wrong with that? I have a social obligation to contribute my fair share as we democratically decide what that should be (we elect representatives, those representatives set tax rates on our behalf). But beyond that I'm entitled to every cent.
What's the problem there?
I pay 37% of my income in Federal Income Taxes, and about 6% of it in State taxes and some other percent in Social Security and Local taxes. So nearly 50% of my income in taxes.
How precisely is that leeching?
I mean, this is correct and I'm a big advocate of government spending on science and technology. More specifically my company (I work for... not "mine" per se) is a research company - we don't really make anything for sale, but we develop technologies and IP. It's a US firm owned by a Japanese industrial company. Our largest three "investors" (in the sense of contract awards and grants) are the Japanese government, the US government and the Canadian government, in that order.
I don't know what pile of bullshit you pull that from, but holy hell, that's wrong. I am a scientist. I've been in this industry over a decade (Robots/Distributed computing). Government directly does almost no research in computer science anymore. That was a mid-Cold War thing. Universities do largely basic science. Today it's done largely by private companies like mine, or research groups like GoogleX or Microsoft Research. This is true of most science and engineering. Governments do award grants - and government funded science is particularly important in the fields of biological science and physics. But don't extrapolate that to mean "all science", because it is not remotely uniform. The professional experience in who they work for, writing proposals, procuring funding, and publishing a paper molecular biologist and a computer scientist in the US are going to be very different.
Even a favorite internet topic of science-engineering - Space - is largely private. Government pays for it. But the technology is proprietary and it's largely private companies executing it.
Yes, it's a real sad story we don't still rise horses and are limited to traveling no more than 25 miles in a single day due to the endurance of said horse.
Real sad.
Geographically America is not ideally built for public transport.
I like land. A lot of land. I own 2 acres and a 4000 sq foot house. I live in a rural area in Massachusetts, next to a farm, 50 minutes from Boston. It is 25 minutes for me to drive to work in a suburb of Boston in my BMW 550i with a V8 engine, or a 90 minute commute on a bike, then take two buses, then walk.
I'm going to put this simple: I am not remotely interested in living some kind of urban, communal mode of living. I like land, and I want land. It is mine. It belongs to me. This is not unique.
America is very spread out, and Americans want land to call their own. Car culture in America isn't driven by government. Car culture is driven by Americans deciding what they want for themselves, and the fact is, we have more land than we know what to do with.
Who said anything about the Government stealing anything? Certainly not me. I have a social obligation to fulfill in taxes. That is my patriotic duty. And not one penny more.
As for the rest of your targets, I mean, that's a matter of opinion. I have fairly cheap utilities that are all-renewable. I drive a German car. I have a mortgage not a land lord. I have employer provided health insurance that I'm very happy with. That last point is the biggest problem of a public healthcare option in the US - The overwhelming majority of Americans are quite happy with their insurance, and are pretty much ready for the 7% without insurance to rot.