[hi, taxpayer here
@andreagrimes @Swainstache_CR isn't contributing tax dollars to pay for abortions the same as paying for the giant death machine?
30 comments
No, I am of 2 minds.
A bit off topic, but I wonder how well it would work if one had the ability to opt out of having their taxes paying for certain things. You can't opt out of "education" (and you especially can't opt out of "education for certain groups of people") and possibly a few other vitally important things, but almost anything goes as long as the categories are sufficiently broad and not blatantly discriminatory. Opting out wouldn't prevent your specific dollars from being used, that would be needlessly complicated. Instead it would "shelter" a portion of the total funds equal to your paid taxes.
Depending on how it worked, it would either result in a government budget defined largely by the people rather than the politicians, or it would just be an inconvenient thing for the politicians to work around, requiring them to manipulate percentages to get something close to what they were going to do anyway.
Would the former actually work, or would the stupid people destroy society? Would the latter result in less social outrage, and if so would it potentially allow stupid or malicious politicians to inflict damage with less opposition and fewer consequences to their political careers? It would be an interesting experiment... for a country I'm not living in.
Planned Parenthood supplies things like mammograms and prenatal health checks for indigent women. It saves more babies than it aborts. The government, which never did pay for abortions, has yanked the money that pays to have those women space their pregnancies with birth control, and get the proper check ups and health care so their babies are born strong and healthy, and check for breast or cervical cancer.
Those things compose the largest part of PPs services ...and the government thinks it's OK to throw poor women under the bus, and they use the non-issue of their non-payments for abortions as an excuse.
On the other hand, the military keeps the thousand and one enemys of the grand ole US of A away, or at least it distracts them.
I look at it this way. Defense spending IS important, and anyone who suggests it should be abolished entirely wants another country to invade and take everything away. However, the US uses 60% of their entire federal budget on defense spending; it dwarfs EVERY OTHER EXPENSE by an order of magnitude. It's so large that the Pentagon themselves have told Congress they don't have to give them so much money every year. Despite this, Republicans are constantly pushing to cut social programs and up the defense budget...
Defence spending is a giant, virtually uncontrollable pork barrel for entrenched interests which probably contributes less than one dollar in every hundred toward the security and safety of average Americans. You could strip the defence budget by billions, still be just as safe and have all sorts of cool social toys like education, welfare and decent healthcare but you won't do that because you've been persuaded by the people in charge that you are threatened by poor people from far away and can only be saved by the very latest shiny thing, Look! Shiny! Go back to sleep! Trust us! Ooh babies! Ignore the Man behind the Curtain! Sleep...Sleep.
Nope, in a juridical sense, the embryos aren't alive.
You have a larger death machine than something like the ten next countries in line, combined.
I understand the confusion because the death machine is usually called 'defense' without any sense of irony.
If you think this 'defense' is really defending you, you have to ask; from what? If the answer is 'from people who are pissed at us for (indirectly) inflicting (economic) violence upon them' then maybe you need this 'defense' like you need a hole in the head.
@ #2035983
Having spent half a working life in public service, I'd say what you'd be left with would be a disaster that would make the current crop of populists look statesmanlike. Apart from the mind-bending complexity involved in trying to administer such a task, the problem would be that government does a lot of jobs which are barely noticed or unpopular which need doing but most would opt out of. The big or popular things, like upkeep of National Parks and veterans' benefits would be very well-funded, while things such as pensions for federal corrections officers and customs officials would likely be ignored altogether. The problem with letting "the people" micro-manage the government is that they have no idea how something so big and complex works. That's one reason why we consistently end up with elected officials who think that government can be run like a business; we were fortunate to have someone like Obama who understood the difference.
In the U.S. at least, nobody's tax dollars are paying for abortions due to the Hyde Amendment. But personally I wouldn't mind if my tax dollars did pay for an abortion for someone who desperately needs one.
While I understand the military is necessary for us to retain our freedom, we could take a few hundred billion away from the military budget and we could fund health care and education for everyone in the country. But politicians will never do that because the first time someone proposes doing that, their opponent will run attack ads the next election claiming that they are taking food out of the mouths of our hero soldiers and putting them in harm's way.
Hmmmm....a voluntary medical procedure vs. weapons designed to kill as efficiently as possible...
Here, hold this grenade while I decide...
Well, you can use the dollars saved in not paying for abortions in looking after all the unwanted babies as a result of your whining.
IRS Representative: '...or will that be cash or cheque?'
For the record, I also happen to believe the US defense budget is ridiculous. Your politicians seem to have no idea what "stop increasing the defense budget, it's more than sufficient already" means. That doesn't mean we should denigrate the military as a "giant death machine" - save that moniker for the military-industrial complex.
@THX 1138
Contrary to what the GOP's deceptive term "funding" has led the public to believe, the taxpayers don't "fund" PP, any more than they do any other private doctor or hospital. There's no appropriation in the federal budget for PP. When they say they want to "defund" PP, that means they want to block them from accepting Medicaid, Medicare, and Title X patients, and billing for what they're owed for services rendered, like every other provider does. Because of the Hyde Amendment, none of those programs reimburse for abortion, so no federal taxpayer funds have paid for abortion (except in some allowed cases) since 1976.
My question for you is, why do you think it's okay for a legal, necessary medical procedure to be excluded from insurance coverage because some people think it's "icky"? Colonoscopies are pretty icky. Should we demand that they be paid for by private donations? Should we debate the merits of blocking clinics that perform them from accepting Medicaid patients? What about Jehova's Witnesses' objections to blood transfusions? Should hospitals be blocked from accepting Medicaid if they provide them? Would you even think of suggesting that insurance coverage for any medical procedure required exclusively by men should be the subject of debate?
Thats not even close to what I was implying. I whole heartedly agree with your assessment about colonoscopies.However, if Medicare, Medicaid and Title X are funded by taxes, then I'm confused by what the difference is.Personally, I think Planned Parenthood should be funded by those groups.Just not the Abortion program, which appears to be already privately funded.Therefore,the issues you have with my post were caused by misunderstanding.
@THX 1138
This is how it works:
Old person gets sick.
Medicare does not go to the doctor, hand over money and say take this and treat sick old people.
It's the same with PP. Medicare does not hand over money to PP and say spend this on pap smears. There is no line item in the medicare budget for PP, nor is there one for the private practice of Dr. Jones.
The comment discussion immediately made me think of concepts such as "The free rider problem", "Negative externalities", "Public good", "Tragedy of the commons"
Like so:
image
What pisses me off is how many congressmen I could ask to define just one of these terms before one came up with an answer.
Maybe we should elect people who know what the fuck they are talking about?
Almost makes me feel like running.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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