Guest Blogger: Josh Piens

Now that you have hopefully read the image that goes along with this post, I have a confession to make. It’s true. Every word. The picture is exactly right. It very succinctly and humorously portrays the taxation and national debt problem in the United States. Basically, we are in the situation we are in because of several reasons.
Reason one: Nobody likes paying taxes. This is pretty obvious. People work hard for their money; so why should they have to give it away? With this comes the lovely graph in panel 9, tax rate vs. motivation to earn money. As the tax rate increases, people are less motivated to earn, because more of it will be taken away from them. So, the government doesn’t want too high of taxes. Pretty self-explanatory.
Reason two: People want stuff from the government. Again, pretty simple. The government gives out handouts, why not take some? Even funds for road construction and similar public works projects count as government “stuff”. When people don’t get as much back from the government as they pay in their taxes, they tend to get mad. In order to keep the services flowing, the government has to borrow money from foreign countries like China. This creates our national debt.
Which brings me to reason three: people don’t realize this. Most people have no idea that this philosophy of “less taxes, more services” creates debt and other problems. When an elected official tries to tell his/her constituents this, they get pretty mad and as soon as possible, vote in another person who is less honest. This is why politicians never say “STOP SPENDING!”, because the public doesn’t want to hear that.
This cycle of less taxes, more services, borrowing from China, seems to be the style these days. It doesn’t help that our current fiscal year is also burdened with bailouts and healthcare, as well as two foreign wars. This isn’t working so well. As the final panel in the cartoon says, we may have to cut down on services like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and, yes, maybe even scrap national healthcare. It may be time to pick between the lesser of two evils: being owned by China or providing fewer services to our citizens. Well, we could always raise taxes. But of course, if anyone advocates that, they may need to find a new job.