Last week, Americans paid their income taxes. Regardless of what an individual paid, the Tea Party continued across the nation fighting the Obama Administration’s socialist policy of “tax and spend.”
If you are a free-thinking individual, you, too, might have some frustrations regarding the political atmosphere in Washington. Sure, Tea Party activists are just tools of conservative think tanks and the extremist branch of the GOP. But if you could get past all the whining about “socialism” you would realize they do make a point.
The national frustration we are witnessing is simply America’s hatred of taxes, but more of a reaction to the Bush Administration. We have taxation with representation, just representatives who ignore the voters (except during election season). This nation had to endure eight years of the worst corruption in government which facilitated the economic collapse we are enduring.
To better understand how tax dollars have been used in America, one would need to do a comparison with the governments of European nations.
Up to 50 percent of the income of European citizens goes to taxes while Americans barely have to pay a fraction of that amount. The difference is that the European government ensures that their citizens have the best public services in the world, while in America we get nothing.
European nations have some of the best education systems, universal health care, and governments that look out for the best interest of its citizens. In America however, we are witnessing our education deteriorating, public transportation that is lacking infrastructure, citizens who are going bankrupt because health insurance is unreliable and a government that ignores their needs.
Correction: America has the best military in the world, since the government funds it with a large portion of our GDP. That doesn’t even count all the money that is wasted on private contractors such as paying Halliburton billions to fix a leaky pipe with duct tape (watch the documentary “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteer”).
However, if you’re a lobbyist then the government will cater to the needs of who you are representing. Thanks to some hard lobbying, Wall Street got all the deregulation it wanted just to screw over the nation’s economy.
Hard working Americans have a lot to be upset about, but rather than directing our anger at the Obama Administration we also need to hold the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations accountable for their actions as well.
If the American government continues to look out for the interest of lobbyists or their personal needs, then it will only be a few years before the oldest democracy falls prey to revolution as its citizens sit back and watch the world burn.