Topic: Ridiculous prices of today

[Kpyna]

taxes can fund some good things though. for example, when you pay taxes it goes to paying the salary of your town's firefighters, social workers, and other public servants as well as making sure people less fortunate than you get food. i also get the impression that you live somewhere in the UK, so that also helps to pay for your health services. at the same time though, it does pay for things like the ever growing salaries of politicians and wars.

being in the USA, things are a bit different. i don't mind paying taxes for the social good of everyone, but you look at the breakdown of how we pay taxes...



... really make me think we need to stop shooting people that live overseas... maybe stop giving as much money to the few people in our government and give more to the veterans which we don't seem to care too much about once they're out of that big blue hunk of the circle... i digress...

[lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes]

incoming boring lefto pinky post comin in

I've heard of this, but I'm not quite sure exactly what it is. What is tax?

its a certain amount of money that the government "collects" off money that you as an individual either make, or spend, so that the government can do stuff like offer what are called Public Services. i,e, police, ambulances, your local citizens advice bureau, surfacing and tarmacing/aslphalting the roads etc. etc. since the government/public owned stuff doesn't really do stuff For Profit and doesn't really have much other funding other than Charitable Donations (other than the mess that is currently Privatisation of Public things but thats a discussion for another day)

it comes in different forms but mostly

a) on the money you earn as "income tax" and

b) on the products you buy as "sales tax".

in theory it is sound cos for most of your life you are directly dependant on the govt for where you live, the police, the ambulance, the fire service, unemployment welfare, certain Medical Stuff, the roads you drive on, etc etc so you are effectively "paying them back" for it kinda. stuff that is done with govt money is considered "public" money, whereas stuff by non-governmental companies is "private".

its a tricky balance. people who believe in No Tax and No Government are often a thing called Libertarians and should probably be ignored cos they are naive and dont quite get what goes into it all and believe in No Health and Sanitation Committee stopping them from not dying when they go out to eat/drink either, apparently.

people who believe in taxes and them funding the public err towards being Socialist, i.e. "its ok that i get slightly less money if my money goes to help others who aren't in the health/mindset/ability to make money at all.". sadly, socalism is a bit of a Bad Word in the USA currently where its seen as Communism partly cos "i dont want to give my money to a bunch of lazy welfare queens, they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps etc. etc. people want free handouts argle bargle"



there are issues with how its spent and who pays it tho:

1) how its spent:

as liz said, the Central Government (in the case of the UK and the US especially) keep saying we barely have any money to invest for our people or their health or their support oh its so sad we've got to cut Public Services cos theres no money going around. but suddenly when we need to invade yet another middle eastern country we suddenly got all the cash in the world. the F35 plane is basically a brilliant example of the "military complex" as they call it and how you can bleed the govt for so much cash and essentially deliver so very little and get away with it. its partly cos all the Higher Ups are all buddy-buddy with each other for the most part.
 
2) rich people and various companies you know and love using Tax Evasion Schemes:

The more you earn, the more tax you are supposed to pay, cos as a richer person you can afford to put a bit more money in the govt, so to speak. however, rich people are greedy and want to keep even more money and as it turns out you can get Tricky with the law and essentially not pay stuff like Cororpoation Tax (companies are supposed to pay tax on their massive earnings) due to various Laws and Legal Loopholes. there are acutal private companies you can go to to get advice on how to avoid paying tax, as the recent Panama Papers scandal in the UK is showing.

there is a sad thing about Charity, i.e. if you donate to a charity you can "write off" that amount from your tax bill. so large comapnies "donate to charity" only to get that money back by not paying it as tax. which is a Shame but honest to god i do think that the way some of this rich people are they wouldn't even pay it unless there was something in it for them, cos if it weren't for this loophole i dont know if a bunch of the charities would even exist.

 

another sad thing is the people in charge of the Tax Collecting thing often are buddies with the corporations, hence why amazon, apple, uber, etc etc all use Tax Trickery and get away with not putting money in. there was a big profile case with HMRC (the uk's govt tax body) and Vodafone a while back where vodafone didn't pay several million quid of tax and the HRMC ''forgot'' about it. which is usally buddy buddy favours being done between rich white blokes.   

this is happening on a local level in San Francisco. in the tech industry where a lot of big Tech companies (apple, google) use Legal Loopholes to not pay any tax to their local government despite making stupid amounts of money. so the local govt ends up with barely any cash or welfare for people while the tech companies make yet ANOTHER cool several million, and so you have ridiculous numbers of homeless people who the SF govt can't afford to help literally pooping in the street, while the Google bus full of rich manchild employees drives up the road to One Infinite Loop.







being a pinko lefty i have paid tax throughout my working life and will continue to do so when i get back into work, despite everything cos even if the system is a bit screwed im sure at least some of my money is helping fund someone half-dying in a hospital somewhere to not die so much. i should be on jobseekers while im not in a job but ugh its such a mess (deliberately, of course) and ive already missed the deadline for Income Based Contributions and i already got enough Shame bout the dole from my family bout it.

the only Tax Break i get is that i am VAT Exempt (VAT is a type of tax on various products you buy in the UK) for Certain Disability Stuff cos it turns out in the uk if you purchase medical stuff w/ ur own money for certain disabilities and its to be privately used by yourself you are Tax Exempt. its a long story but VAT/sales tax is mostly on things which are seen as "luxuries" and "non-essentials", so to speak, and if you're having to buy these its not exactly a non-essential luxury lmao.

which kind of helps a teensy bit and i weigh it up as a net benefit cos i could be making the NHS shell out £60+ every month and a half for me cos of my body's inability to work right so

[Milsap]

when you pay taxes it goes to paying the salary of your town's firefighters

I can never get round that your schools, police, firefighters are run by the town. Maybe it's because I'm so used to the police/ambulance/fire being county-run rather than by the town. West Midlands Police, Yorkshire Police, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue etc.

F35 plane is basically a brilliant example of the "military complex"

And the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers that will transport them. For £6.2bn we could have painted "Get stuffed, Germany" onto the moon.

[sans the skeleton]

on the topic of government, one of the questions on a disability thing my aunt filled in recently had a question that asked if she could lift an empty box.

what kind of job consists of only sitting in a chair all day while holding an empty box?????

but yeah you have to pretty much literally jump through the most ridiculous of fire hoops to get anything you actually need from the government. in short, they hate us. they want all the money they can get at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society - whether thats the kids, the disabled, the pensioners, or anyone else. pretty much anyone who isn't a brown nosing rich white dude that looks vaguely like david cameron or donald trump i guess

i hate this planets greed oh my god

EDIT: also it specifically asked CARDBOARD BOX on the question. what the hell, what the h-

[not chloe]

Aye we've probably already had a train ticket debate on this thread but tl;dr.

For me to get a return from Chelts to Sheff at the start of June it's gonna cost me just shy of £75 what is this

Would usually cost about £45 if you booked it nicely in advance but I guess not. Travel links from Chelt to N-Hampton or from Sheff to N-Hampton are also terrible and it costs a bomb because you have to make like 2/3 changes.

I hate sitting on trains and just looking around at the number of people even in one carriage and thinking "in this carriage there about 50 people who all paid £45, more or less, and there are three more carriages on this train, including first class who will have paid closer to £80, and this route runs at least 15 times a day every day"

Like honestly what are they even doing with all that money they're rolling in because it's not like the state of the trains are improving

[The name master]

The last few times I've bought a Dairy Milk, I've noticed it feels thinner. Last time I asked "is it just me, or is it thinner?" yes, it was! Big dairy milks cost £1 and whole nut dairy milk costs £1.49(???) why?