POLITICS: States that give, states that get

You and your silly need to cling to the reality based world...
Not sure if you've seen this:

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once.

If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out,

Blue States

Here you go: dissenting information.

Just some more food for thought

The first part of Larry Elder's essay touches on something I've always believed - it's not just about the $$$, it's about the standard of living.

As an example:

Household A makes $20,000 a year.
Household B makes $200,000 a year.
Household C makes $2,000,000 a year.
Household D makes $20,000,000 a year.

To keep things simple, I'm just going to say that all of them are married with two kids, and I'm going to use the tax bracket tables found here for Head of Household:

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

I'm not even going to factor in write-offs and tax breaks. We'll just go with each household having to pay the full percentage as a flat tax (it doesn't really work that way, but this keeps things from getting too complicated).

Household A is in the 15% bracket, for $3,000.
Household B is in the 33# bracket, for $66,000.
Household C is in the 35% bracket, $700,000.
Household D is on the 35% bracket, for $7,000,000.

To simply say "the top X percent paid most of all of the taxes" doesn't tell the whole story in my view, and I even think it presents a very skewed view because it would be easy to say, just looking at the pure $$$ numbers, that it's not fair for Household D to pay so much more taxes than A, B and C. But, even after paying taxes, I don't think anyone would say that the standards of living between Household A and D are anywhere close. To me, that matters far more than Person A paid XXX taxes and Person B paid XXXXXXX taxes.

What matters to me is: can the person meet his or her basic needs with the money left over? Are they able to keep a roof over their heads, and feed their families and keep the lights and the heat turned on without having to choose one over the other?

Sure, people like Bill Gates pay a lot of taxes, but his standard of living still puts him up in the clouds when compared to the person who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and who probably pays no taxes at all.

In looking around, I found some reviews of a book by Arthur C. Brooks called "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism" and it looks as though the real key isn't whether a person is conservative or liberal, but whether they are religious or not. And, since more conservatives tend to be religious than liberals (or so the theory in the book seems to go), thus more conservatives tend to be charitable than liberals. :)

I think Ysabet may be on to something in terms of liberals wanting to pay higher taxes to provide governmentally-funded social services for those in need, whereas conservatives prefer to give those dollars to their church and other local charities. Very interesting.

Very interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing that.

Somehow, this doesn't surprise me in the least.

My dad is a conservative, and we were talking about taxes the other day. The debate came down to donate money to charity vs pay taxes and let the government decide how to use it. My dad's argument is that if the rich guy with 15 BMWs wants to buy one more, he should. So then I asked him "Is Greed an American value" and he said "Yes!" It makes me sad....

Later I had this thought.... "What would Jesus do with your pay check? How would Jesus spend your taxes? Would Jesus buy one more BMW?" Some how I think not.

I feel that we can't trust the rich to donate to charity, but as I understand it donations to charity are tax deductible. So I say, if the rich don't want to give their money to the government, they should decide how they would like to support their fellow man and give to a charity of their choice.

Dove