{"id":12805,"date":"2008-09-24T07:08:58","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T14:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/09\/24\/is-paying-taxes-a-patriotic-act.html"},"modified":"2008-09-24T07:08:58","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T14:08:58","slug":"is_paying_taxes_a_patriot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/24\/is_paying_taxes_a_patriot.html","title":{"rendered":"Is paying taxes a patriotic act?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Short answer<\/strong>: Yes.<\/p>\n

Nuanced answer<\/strong>: It’s certainly a civic-minded act, and while we may individually object to some things taxes go for or grumble about how much we individually pay, it’s one of the most direct ways that we support our country as a whole.<\/p>\n

Answer worth writing a blog entry about<\/strong>: FactCheck<\/a> just raked the Palin\/McCain campaign over the coals for their misleading and obnoxious ad over this question, and Joe Biden’s assertion that paying taxes is, in fact, patriotic:<\/p>\n

<\/object> <\/p>\n

As the FactCheck article notes, the commericial as a whole, after you get past the basic that Joe Biden did, in particular case, suggest that paying taxes was patriotic. But that didn’t have anything to do with seniors, electrical bills, or even raising taxes as a whole. On Good Morning America <\/em>last week, talking about campaign tax plans for the future:<\/p>\n

\n

Snow:<\/strong> Anyone making more than $250,000 is going to pay more?<\/p>\n

Biden:<\/strong> You got it, it\u2019s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut. And the way to do that is \u2026 they\u2019re still gonna pay less taxes than they paid under Reagan.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sorry, no sad-faced impoverished seniors with their social security checks involved in the above sentence.<\/p>\n

That said — the topic is ludicrous because There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Or, put another way …<\/p>\n

Is it patriotic to support our military?
Is it patriotic to support our national parks?
Is it patriotic to build and maintain highways?
Is it patriotic to help out that poor, sad elderly woman in the ad?
Is it patriotic to defend against terrorism?
Is it patriotic to fight drug smuggling and other crimes?
Is it patriotic to help support public financing of presidential campaigns? (coughMcCaincough)<\/p>\n

Those things don’t just happen because someone waves a wand and makes money appear (unless you’re Henry Paulson). They only happen because we pay taxes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, does each of us know of things our tax dollars go to that we object to politically, financially, aesthetically, or from some other reason? Sure. Does each of us grumble over the taxes we end up paying? Of course. But that’s part of the political process, and why we elect people in the first place. We can argue over the overall level of taxes, we can argue over who should shoulder most of the burden of them, we can argue over what they should go toward — but nobody in the political system, especially not John McCain or Sarah Palin, or George Bush for that matter, will stand up there and tell you that we shouldn’t be paying any <\/em>taxes, or that paying taxes is unpatriotic, or that no real American would do it. Nobody’s gotten that <\/em>far from their high school civics class.<\/p>\n

What is patriotic is standing together in support of our country and its ideals. It means, also, shouldering our fair burden of that effort. To those with much, much is asked. Jury duty is patriotic, too — and it’s not patriotic for me to duck out of jury duty and let someone else do the job, any more than it’s patriotic for me to duck out of paying my fair share of taxes to keep the country running, to help its people and its defense and its infrastructure and its resources.<\/p>\n

So on the one hand we have Joe Biden saying that its patriotic for folks who make over $250K\/year to pay more of their share into the national effort. On the other hand we have the Palin\/McCain campaign saying, essentially, that asking people to pay their share into the national effort is evil and manipulative and laughable and not<\/em> patriotic.<\/p>\n

Who’s the real patriot here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short answer: Yes. Nuanced answer: It’s certainly a civic-minded act, and while we may individually object to some things taxes go for or grumble about how much we individually pay,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27136,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/16\/do-half-of-americans-really-pay-no-taxes.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":0},"title":"Do half of Americans really pay no taxes?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Mar-12 6:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"No, BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT REALLY AMERICANS!Wait. Got my political ranting mixed up.But the answer is still no, unless for \"taxes\" you mean \"federal income taxes.\" Of course, there are various payroll taxes that pretty much everyone who works pays (though people who earn a lot end up not paying into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29879,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/17\/the-whopping-13.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":1},"title":"The whopping 13%","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-Aug-12 6:32am","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't necessarily agree with the premise here -- that Romney seems amazingly proud of the fact that he paid the lavish effective rate of 13% on his taxes. \u00a0True, it's half of what I paid, as a rate, but ...1. We don't really know what that 13% actually represents,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alan.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2Fdavid_simon-300x199.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":29880,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/17\/obamas-sealed-records-arent.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":2},"title":"Obama's "Sealed" records … aren't","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-Aug-12 8:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"In the recent brouhaha over Romney's \"I keep the locked in a secret vault in my underground lair\" tax returns, I've seen any number of folks reply in comment threads asking why Obama hasn't \"unsealed\" various personal records (besides, of course, tax returns), as if that's countering the issue.It's not,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6617,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/12\/a_representatio.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":3},"title":"A representation on taxation","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 12-Aug-04 8:27am","format":false,"excerpt":"Up-front caveat: I am neither an economist (nor do I play one on TV), nor have I done a tremendous amount of study on this matter. But since it's an...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133675,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/14\/the-poor-pay-a-lot-of-taxes-too.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":4},"title":"The poor pay a lot of taxes, too","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 14-Jun-17 9:40am","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"makers vs takers\" mind-set imagines poor people as proverbial \"Welfare Queens,\" living high off the hog, taking from the wealth of Good, Honest, Hard-Working Americans and giving nothing in return.But that picture only takes into account income taxes, where the poorest often fall below the threshold. Low-income people still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131650,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/26\/on-the-paying-of-taxes-as-a-presidential-hopeful.html","url_meta":{"origin":12805,"position":5},"title":"On the Paying of Taxes, as a Presidential Hopeful","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Sep-16 11:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"1. It is well established in American law and culture that nobody is required to pay more taxes than they must under the law. That's being (as Donald himself put it) \"smart.\" I can't fault Trump for that.2. Folk who pay no taxes at tax time do so because of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}