The American tax system is busted

Tags

Budget, community, Government, IRS, Taxation, taxes, United States

This may be the only thing all Americans agree on. In addition to the yearly tax frenzy in April, we pay taxes throughout the year on myriad items. Often these incremental taxes are off our radar, buried in monthly bills and daily expenses:

• On retail & grocery sales
• At the fuel pump & auto licensing bureaus
• Tacked into telephone & cable bills
• Added to utility bills
• Added in various formulas to property tax bills
• Estate taxes

We pay taxes in so many ways that it takes a mathematical genius or an economist to really know what percentage of our personal budget is siphoned off for the greater good.

I am curious how much of our personal budgets should be set aside to keep the country humming. If we could scrap the entire mess we’ve got, if we could envision a new way to fund our community, both local and larger, how much of our wallet would we happily part with? I think this concept is hard for Americans to even fathom. When I ask the question, I get all sorts of push back about formulas and flat taxes vs. incremental taxes. I am posing a purely theoretical question.

So far I’ve received answers that plumb both extremes:

One individual is happy to pay 40% of her income. But she does not live in America. She lives in a country in which her contribution buys her “great public infrastructure, a health system covering her and her family with good (not luxurious, but reliable!) health care, good schools, free higher education, and PEACE OF MIND!”

At the other end of the spectrum, one person suggested that 15% should suffice.

Of course, what we are willing to pay is also predicated on what we expect to receive for what we pay. And that is a whole other can of worms. For now I am interested in one simple question:

All things being equal, how much of your income would you feel was a fair contribution to the country we are all so proud of when we aren’t gnashing our teeth and pointing fingers at each other?

There may be a follow up question, if I have the courage to pursue this polarized topic.

Celebrating—for better or worse.

Tags

art, Boise Idaho, celebration, Fourth of July, Holiday, Independence Day, photography, poverty, sesquicentennial, United States

This gallery contains 19 photos.

Today is a big day in my town. Not only is it a national holiday—Independence Day—but Boise is also celebrating …

Continue reading →

It’s that damned 2nd amendment, Stupid!

Tags

McCarthyism, National Rifle Association, NRA, Pledge of Allegiance, Sandy Hook, Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, Stanley McChrystal, United States

The recent Sandy Hook massacre blasted open a fractious debate about solutions to gun violence in America. This is a …

Continue reading →

USPS to default on $5.5 billion federal payment on Wednesday!

Tags

Fredric Rolando, Lori Ann LaRocco, mail, National Association of Letter Carriers, New York City, Postal reform, Postal Service, unfunded mandates, United States, United States Postal Service, USPS

This gallery contains 1 photo.

So screamed the headline, wedged between ubiquitous Olympic news. What does this hyperbole mean? Not much for you and me …

Continue reading →

What’s in your tree?

Tags

Adrian Grenier, ancestry, Barack Obama, geneology, Harry Connick, Henry Louis Gates, Public Broadcasting Service, United States

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Does any American exist who does not recognize this line? It is from the sonnet written for the Statue of Liberty by poet Emma Lazarus. Our country has long been recognized as a haven for the poor and the oppressed. But we have also done our share of oppressing and importing poor people to oppress. In this giant stew pot of a nation, we have blended blood, genes, colors, religions, cultures, and names. Sometimes the blending was voluntary. Often it was not. We have become so blended that we often don’t know quite who we are. And for a host of reasons, many Americans have little access to birth records going back more than a few generations.

Harvard professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is hell-bent to demystify the intermingled ancestry of our people. His weekly PBS series, Finding Your Roots, examines histories and family genealogies through steadfast research and with the help of new scientific DNA tools. The series uncovers hidden ingredients of family history, while also unflinchingly shining the spotlight on America’s life story. Most of the people profiled in the series are household names like Martha Stewart, Kevin Bacon, Condoleeza Rice, Harry Connick, Jr. Interestingly, Gates finds threads of commonality among his guests, often linking them to each other in some surprising way.

As I watched the story of Adrien Grenier unfold onscreen, I reflected upon my own genealogy, a topic which has never particularly interested me. Why is that? I wondered. Why is the family history of Grenier or any of the others featured in the program more interesting or more important than my own family history? And as I watched these black, white, brown, yellow, and red-blended people grapple with their mixed up heritage, I finally understood the resistance to form-fields denoting a person’s race. How does Barack Obama select which box to check? He is neither Caucasian, Asian, or Black, but he is all three. The “mixed race” option sounds too much like “grade brood mare” or “Heinz 57 hound.”  At last I get that, I really do.

My own heritage is as incomplete as that of these onscreen personalities. I am reasonably familiar with some of the blends involved on my maternal side. But I know absolutely nothing about my paternal side. It never occurred to me that the sperm that created me actually came from a man with his own story, his own skeletons in the closet, his own ancestors whose graves I may have danced upon without even knowing it. I had no interest in the man, so I never considered his story worth my time.

I can only imagine the mixture of curiosity and trepidation that Grenier felt as Gates moved back in time, pushing past the history Grenier knew and revealing the secrets that lurked on the next page and then the next after that page in the photo album.

And I wonder how the new-found knowledge of his hidden ancestry will affect Grenier’s future. His absolutely stupefied demeanor hinted at a future filled with the hard work of processing a new identity. How have the other profiled personalities used their new grasp of the truth?

I hope to DVR this PBS series, if I can just remember to leave the cable connection on. KAID, my local PBS station airs it a 8PM on Sundays. The Finding Your Roots DVD is also available on the PBS website, along with a link to local listings around the country.

How about you? Are there family secrets in your closet? Have you ever uncovered some surprising fact about your ancestry? How would you react to learning that a pirate’s genes are dancing with your own? Or king’s genes?