Why I don't care about your tax bill
The Republicans and Tea Partiers are making a lot of fuss about "re-distribution" of wealth and how their freedoms are being taken away every time they pay taxes. We should all have the "freedom" to make as much money as we want and be able to keep it all, unencumbered by regulations or taxes. Well guess what? I could care less what rich people pay in taxes every year, I got problems of my own. And this is why I don't care: http://us.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/gulf.coast.oil.spill/?hpt=C1 Right on the heels of the Massey Energy mining accident comes a oil spill with a huge potential to ruin the lives of the little guys who work in the gulf.
British Petroleum wanted to set up an oil rig in our Gulf of Mexico to tap into the valuable oil reserves so we could have the fuel to power our cars, homes and businesses. There was plenty of blah-blah about them being "good corporate citizens" and "we care about the environment." So we let them drill and they made plenty of money doing it.
Well, because of substandard materials and workmanship (thank you, Halliburton) the livelihoods of thousands, perhaps millions, of people will be affected. Fishermen and shrimpers will be the first to feel the effects. Marine wildlife will be killed or contaminated and the people who made their livings catching, buying, selling and serving seafood caught in the gulf will suffer. There won't be any way to accurately and adequately compensate all who've been affected. Sure, BP says it's going to pay for the whole cleanup, but are they going to pay everyone who's job has depended on the gulf? Probably not. There's just no way to estimate the damage. And watch them raise the price of their gasoline to pay for it.
Unfortunately, the rich have been lumped in with the mega-rich and maybe it's not fair to tar them with the same brush, saying they're at fault. However, the rich tend to side more with corporations because the rich invest in them and want to see a good return. The rich also tend to decry regulation of any kind, be it industrial (think mining) or environmental.
If the wealthy deserve the right to make money and not pay any more in taxes than they already are, I deserve the right to be able to actually make money. I'm not looking to make a killing in the stock market, I just want to pay my bills and not have my livelihood destroyed by their greed. The oil spill isn't the only example of this. Wall Street greed led to the creation of complex and flimsy mortgage investment instruments and when that pasteboard market crumbled, so did the building industry all over the country. A lot of really good, hardworking folks lost their jobs. I'm really sorry the haves don't like all the regulations, but they're not very good at policing themselves and until they are, I'm going to support any soak-the-rich tax the government proposes. It's as simple as that. After all, someone has to pay for the unemployment, food stamps and Medicaid that will be needed because people have lost their livelihood to this oil spill. The rich are the ones that benefit from corporate greed, it's only fair they pay for the damage they've caused.