I'm neither rich nor poor, but every year I have the joy of paying about 35% of my income to taxes. That doesn't even include all of the sales taxes, car taxes, property taxes, and taxes levied on telephone service, electricity, gasoline, etc, etc, etc. But this is tax time, so I'll just concentrate on the 35% that I pay in federal, state, and social security taxes.

What do I get for my 35%? Well for starters, I get a social security system that I'll never use. Every year they send me statements that say that if I keep working my ass off, and live another 37 years I'll get a whopping $1100 a month. That's assuming they aren't broke, and there are still enough suckers paying into the system to give me my fair share. I'd be much better off sticking that money into a private account every month than paying into the government mandated ponzi scheme.

My 35% also gets me a road system so filled with potholes that I have to get my car re-aligned every year. And I get endless miles of concrete barriers and orange cones that have been highway fixtures for the past 10 years. I've become convinced that the federal highway money is not much more than a jobs program used to pay for votes in upcoming elections. Of course I also get the obligatory road debris kicked up into my windshield. Since moving to D.C. where I get a twice daily commute on the federal highway jobs superprogram, I've got three rock chips in my windshield, one of which should blossom into a nice long crack this summer.

I also get a school system that I do not use. I have no children, but any realtor that buys or rents homes will still try to sell you on the added value of the local public school system. But this system, which supposedly adds so much property value to our homes, routinely graduates kids that cannot read, can't do math, and do not know who their vice president is; much less who George S. Patton was. First we pay to send them to school, and then we pay to send them to college where they usually protest against our very way of life. Worse yet, these skulls full of mush will one day be running things; a prospect which I find to be frightening.

I also get a police force that can only respond adequately enough to stop a crime 5% of the time. The other 95% of crimes an officer has to spend time investigating what happened after the fact and trying to bring the criminal thugs to "justice". Ironically, once they are brought to justice, even more of my taxpayer money is spent trying to defend the guy. His defense is usually on the grounds that it was my fault for being so rich and successful, and for providing him with the temptation to rob me in the first place. If convicted (and that's a big IF these days) I get to spend even more money paying for his state provided room and board, the numerous appeals with state provided attorneys, and the limitless lawsuits he'll inevitably file from prison.

I also get countless government agencies which issue unfunded mandates with no regard for the cost to the public. I get mandates for airbags, expensive gasoline formulas, dolphin safe tuna, cigarette warning labels, airport security, drinking water quality, and just about every other consumer product on the market. Some of them have real world benefits, but all of them have costs and none of them are voluntary.

I would like to think that for all it's worth, I at least get a government that protects my individual freedoms. But I don't. Instead I get a national, state, and local government that works to limit my speech, take away my guns, and search my house for no good reason. I also get a strong central government that constantly oversteps it's Constitutional authority and tries to run 280 million private lives from Washington. Each year government gets larger and more intrusive, and it seizes more of my money in exchange for votes from large blocks of sheep citizens. We're spending more and more money on failing programs, when we should be asking for our money back.

(originally posted, April 05, 2004)