Late Night Ramblings: 2007 Budget

I was thinking about some things earlier today and I came up with an interesting question: at what point (in income) do you stop giving the government and start being just dependent? I mean, we all pay taxes that go towards roads, schools, and things like that. But which taxpayers at the lower end of the brackets are getting more than they actually pay for? I just couldn't come up with any sort of an idea. And so, would these people be considered freeloaders? Certainly some of us contribute more to the government than others, I just wanted to know how much of it I actually paid for, I suppose. Or perhaps discover whether or not the tangible government property is more mine than someone else's, or less mine than some others. Or would the 'one vote per person' system mean that we all own the same amount?

Here's another thought, while I'm on taxes and things like this. The next time I file income taxes, I want a detailed receipt detailing what my money is spent on, per the hundredth of a penny. We'll put the biggest items at the top of the list, such as military, transportation.

Ok, I just found a few different pie charts about government spending, since everyone has their own take and everyone's accountant apparently has a different opinion. This one is on Wikipedia for the year 2007. So here we go: Last year the federal government spent just over $2.8 trillion. That's $2,800,000,000,000. And let's say, for basic example, that my income taxes, soc, medicare, and medicaid last year I paid $4,000. I contributed to just over a billionth of the national budget, so that's not bad. Now let's see how much of that went to things that don't help me whatsoever.

About 43.59% went to health care. This does not help me. Social security, medicare, medicaid and State's programs for children's insurance. That's a lot of money (only $1.2 trillion, but whose counting?), especially considering that I paid about $1700 out of my pocket for nothing. I could have spent that $1700 to pay off the credit cards that have been bought by the collections companies who are owned by the banks that were almost about to close, until this week when the federal sabotage-out kicked in and now they're done altogether. Now they're just closing. So who do I owe that money to now? Good Job, Federal Government. The federal government shouldn't meddle with things they don't understand.

About 9.1% went to unemployment, welfare, and 'other mandatory spending.' What the hell does that mean, exactly? Anyway, I did participate in our state's unemployment program last year, though here in Alaska we have unemployment insurance, so I believe that I was not contributed to by this 9.1%. So over half the money I paid last year in taxes was not spent on me.

The DoD had about 16% of the budget spent on itself last year. That's for our soldiers and lot of important stuff. And a lot of unimportant stuff. This number is far too small - we need to be able to supply our soldiers with bullet proof vests and our borders need to be protected. We could be reallocating a lot of money wasted by the DoD playing real-life Space Invaders and NASA forgetting simple English-Metric conversions when bombing Mars, and putting these dollars towards useful projects. Or better yet, not taking the money from us to begin with.

I won't get into the rest of the budget, I think I've made a pretty large point. When I file my taxes, I should be able to decide how much I pay and what my money gets spent on. There should be a line for every thing on there. I'd throw some money towards finding some cheap alternative fuels. But when NASA makes a $125 million mistake and then asks for more money, guess what guys: my dollars are elsewhere because you proved to me you're incompetent. If a particular road that I drive on every day is in really horrible shape, then I should be able to say that 'I want this $500 to go towards repaving the Parks Hwy between mile 52 and mile 70' for example.

These are the things we need to be telling our legislators, but they don't listen. They're too caught up on getting a vote than to actually spend our money for us in ways that help us out. We need to rely on individuals for the budget, not a bunch of suits.

Also, the word 'couldn't' is not in the blogger spellchecker for some reason, fyi. Neither is Wikipedia, or everyone's.