Tuesday, July 13, 2004

A dummies guide to the federal budget...

I thought this would be a good time to stop and talk about where federal monies go. Why? Well, I recently had yet another right wing IDIOT tell me that money should be given to the wealthy because the poor are stealing it all. (No shit. I mentioned how Shrub's tax cuts went mostly to the wealthy and he said, "That's cause there's so many lazy people on Welfare who take it all."

I would have killed him but his lapse in logic actually cut me.

So, here: Take a look at this. This is a chart brought to you by the organization called "TruthandPolitics", which shows, in very simple terms, where money goes.

The largest cut, about 21%, goes to Social Security. If you didn't know, that's not going to shore up Social Security for the future. Those are payments right now. For security in the future, you need to - you guessed it - INVEST MORE MONEY. Most of the recent budget surplus would have come from this. That's right. The "surplus" was created by not INVESTING MONEY. Shrub stole this "surplus" and gave it to his friends. Sill wanna vote for him?

The next largest cut goes to the military. Does it go to pay for the Iraqi debacle? No. It goes to pay for the weapons we already bought. Remember, this is the 2004 budget. It is money we spend to kill people. How much do we spend to kill people? Over 19%. That's right. More than $.19 of every dollar you pay in taxes goes to kill people. Still feeling righteous?

Next, comes Medicare at over 11%. Pissed off because more than $.11 on every dollar you pay in taxes goes to help heal the sick? Look at the previous paragraph. If you don't mind killing as much as you mind healing, go find a very tall building and jump off of it.

Fourth down is social welfare. $.08 on each dollar goes to the poor.

Now, is that too much?

Well, first of all, you already spent 52.7% on killing, healing, and making the rich richer without knowing you were doing that to begin with. That's $.52 as opposed to $.08.

But I can see people going crazy saying, "IT'S MY EIGHT CENTS AND I WANT IT, DAMMIT!" Well, then, I'd get pretty mad at the money stolen from social security as well as the 6.2% that goes to other and the 6.7% that goes to interest because that money is also going to the rich. It's called corporate welfare and it covers about $.12-.15. Yep, nearly twice as much as social welfare.

And this isn't including tax breaks, tax dodges, and loopholes that the incredibly rich are given so they don't have to pay taxes to begin with.

So, next time you're ranting about your eight cents, shut up.

It's too much like a man whose car was totalled, screaming that he lost his floor mats.

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