Kansas Tax Cut Experiment Comes To An End As Lawmakers Vote To Raise Taxes

Maybe we as a nation can do the same thing finally and stop this idea of cutting taxes all the time. Whether we like it or not, taxes are what pay the bills for all the perks we have a society. Want good roads, gotta pay taxes on them. We use the roads and we either all use the interstates or products we buy are moved on trucks that use the interstates. School funding is essential, yet we continue to try and cut funding. We all know that better educated kids earn more money and make companies more profitable. The more people that earn more money and the more profitable companies are the better stock prices do which helps all of our retirement accounts. By paying more in taxes we could reduce the cost of food through subsidies to supermarkets. This way we could all benefit from lower food costs instead of just those on SNAP. We were once the world leader in research and development, but we have not properly funded that in years and we are now behind. Think of all the diseases we might be able to cure or the technologies we could develop. We as a country could do so much more if we just stop with the tax cuts all the time. Of course the government needs to spend wisely as well, but that is where we should hold congresses feet to the fire, not on tax cuts.

Think of it this way. There are roughly 160 million tax returns. If each return had an addition $10 tax that would mean the federal government would have $1.6 Billion extra dollars to fix something. $100 and we have $16 billion. $1,000 and we have $160 billion. With that we could end poverty and hunger in America, we could provide free lunches to all school children, we could provide very reduced tuition to most Americans in college, and still have enough left over to reduce grocery costs a few percentage points giving everyone a little extra in their pocket.

Some will say but i have already given enough. Have you really? I am sure there was someone who said the same thing many years ago when you got a free education, your college tuition was substantially lower thanks to higher state taxes, and the consumer prices of most goods were also lower compared to today all because someone else was paying higher taxes.

While it sucks to pay taxes, it is our social contract with the future generations and also our retirement that we pay to ensure they are better off than we are. We are not doing that.

I have never been a fan of tax cuts and grew up in KS however what those against taxes mention is corruption and misuse of tax money. If you give someone a million dollar budget they must spend by a certain date, a $200 toilet seat does not seem that expensive. Most of us look at budgets in thousands and a $200 toilet seat is crazy expensive and no one tells us we must spend this money by a certain date. Realizing these challenges is the real demon to overcome and folks on both sides of the discussion need to realize this.