I'd rather Americans get a small part of our tax dollars than Iraqis getting lots of them.

Can I get an Amen? ....  Amen!

When I go to the grocery store and see people buying expensive steaks with food stamps (or food debit cards now) and using their cash to buy cigarettes and alcohol, it really bothers me.

Scott I am sorry but that is such a sterotypical line I laughed.

The idea is that taxes means the government taking money away from the people who earned it and spending it on those who don't make enough money to pay for services themselves. With the distinct connotation that these people are slackers, layabouts and free-loaders. Never mind that some of these people work 12 hour days for money that can only laughingly be referred to as a living wage.

Leaving aside that most of what the government spends money on (infrastructure, defense, education, healthcare, police etc.) is stuff that benefits everybody, here's another point.

When we make money, it's by getting something low and selling it high. With ordinary working people that means trying to hire ourselves out for more than it takes to keeep us and our families alive.

When we make or transport goods, what we do is to try to increase its perceived value to a purchaser by changing it or moving it. The increase in value that our labor creates is the "worth" of our labor. The same goes for those who are above us in the "profit increase" pyramid. However, the further up the pyramid you come, the more power you have to give people under you less for their labor than it is worth. It may not be much in each instance, but by the time you get to the top, it can be a lot.

This is money that the guys on the top accumulate by paying people less than their labor is "worth". Now in the capitalist system this is considered fair. So let's say it is. While recognizing that to a lot of people lower on the pyramid it is seen as the people on the top unfairly taking "their" money away.

Then government comes along and says: this system doesn't run itself. The state, the  government guarantees the money and makes the monetary system work as a preferrable substitute for a barter system where the extent of a person's wealth is severly limited by the transportability of his barter-goods. It also defends your property domestically with the police and abroad with the armed forces. We provide education for your children and your workers, we provide basic healthcare, we build and maintain the roads, harbors and airports that you use to transport your goods.

Your profits depend on our services, and we will be paid for them. Now, since it is contrary to the security and stability needs of this country, as well as contrary to the health of the economic system that we all depend on to take the government's share out of the pockets of those who have very little disposable income, it is much more convenient to take it from the rich.

So basically the government gets paid what it determines to be its fair share of the profits that it helps create. and being "top dog", if they don't have the right to make the call as to what is their fair share, how does the CEO (or the stockholders) of a corporation get the right to determine what his (or their) fair share is? The government is at least as much a part of the reason these companies make money as the CEO, the board of directors and the shareholders.

And if the government shares the conviction that a large part of the wealth of the richest is derived not from their own participation in the profit increase of the goods they sell, but rather from appropriating a large amount of other people's "value increase" for themselves, then , as the tax dollars are then used to fund services that benefit those who have received less than their "fair" share of the "value increase", the act of taxing the rich is actually more fair.

It's (in this context) about giving people their money back (or their money's worth back), not about taking them away.

Just some points to ponder.

"A good parent doesn't keep having children that they can't provide for."

Unless of course they have religious views that prohibit them from using birth control or having an abortion. Or live in a country where their right to use birth control or have abortions have been taken away by law or in practice because there are others who hold the view that birth control or abortions are immoral.

So I take it from your argument that you're not only pro-choice but favor inexpensive and readily available birth control and abortions for everyone (including underage girls)?

Okay, call me ignorant, but what is flank steak? Help me out here, Al.

Are there legitimately poor, down-on-their luck people in America? Absolutely. I don't mind helping them, particularly the elderly, the infirm and children.

But make no mistake about it -- there are many able-bodied Americans who choose not to work and instead live at the public trough. The rest of us hard-working taxpayers subsidize their poor decisions and, yes, laziness. 

I personally know some of these people. I have a cousin who is in her early 20s. She dropped out of high school and had two out-of-wedlock children. She currently works a part-time job at a restaurant and collects every form of public assistance imaginable (welfare, medicaid, food stamps, WIC, etc.)

Her employer recently offered her a full-time job. She said, "No thanks," as her Uncle Sam is picking up the tab.

I know another person, a friend-of-a-friend, who literally has not held a steady job in a decade, despite having a college degree and marketable skills. Again, he's an able-bodied adult who simply chooses to collect public assistance rather than work.

This simply is unfair. Hard-working people shouldn't have to subsidize others who won't pull their own weight. Again, I don't mind aiding the truly needy, but I've seen time and time again that government assistance programs quickly become giveaways.