What would you do?

[irishbobcat]

Sorry Ricky, your logic only works in a perfect ideal world........

We live in the real world......

grow up and start living in the real world, Ricky.....

Your neo-con ideals have no place in the real world....

maybe you should head for the borders.....please do, and take the rest of your neo-con cronies with you....

[Rick Rowlands]

What is fair about taxing someone "according to their ability to pay"?  Nothing else in life is done that way.  You don't buy any other service or product according to how much money you have, you pay what the product or service is worth, or what it costs to provide.   Fundamentally government is a service that is supposed to be equally given to all citizens and as such should be equally supported by all citizens.   The cost of government should be paid for equally by all citizens.  Divide the budget by the number of taxpayers and send out a bill for that amount.  Everyone from minimum wage worker to billionaire should have the same tax bill, their truly fair share of the cost to run the government.

When government is looked upon as a service provided to citizens and then is compared to all other services, you will see that this is a very simple and FAIR system.  To exist in this country there are certain bills that all of us must pay at some point.  Rent, electricity, food, fuel and travel.  None of these are provided based upon some mythical "ability to pay", but are based on the value of the services rendered. Heck if I were to start selling gas to customers based on their income, it wouldn't take very long at all before I was hauled into court on price discrimination charges.

With the budget at 3.5 trillion, divided by 320 million taxpayers, each of us would pay $10,937 for our true FAIR SHARE of taxes.  If you pay more than that you are being screwed.  If you pay less then you are getting a free ride. If that number is too high and you could not afford to pay it, then either lobby your congressman hard to cut spending or head for the nearest border.

After you have paid your ten grand then cut a check for $2,700 to the state of Ohio and then $2,300 to the City of Youngstown if you live in the city.  If you are a city resident and you are paying less than $15,900 in total taxes every year then you are living at the expense of other citizens and don't talk to me about paying your "fair share".

[iwasthere]

i had problems in downloading your video from this website due to those problems i did not see your video. as you well know all sides  will present videos that will make thier sides more believable then the other. i would like to see all sides in any issues to be represented in a fair manner in the same room at the sametime thus the duking out canbe a honest discourse. everyone should be tax accordingly due to their ability to pay without any loopholes or deductions, a flat tax for all.

[Dan Moadus]

Sorry "iwasthere" but that is not the case. Simply look at a historical chart of Ohio's tax revenues, and you will find that our problems began, not because of dwindling tax revenues, but tax revenues that did not increase as the politicians are accustomed to. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Also did you watch the video that I posted? Just curious as to how you could still believe that we could just "tax the rich" to end our problems after seeing it.

[iwasthere]

the politicians and ohioans should be more concern why we arrived at this point in ohio's politics. my opinion is the unfair trade policies and tax breaks for the rich and corporate welfare are the reasons.

[Why?Town]

With politicians that have been giving away the farm for years, what exactly do the government workers have to worry about anyway?

SB% doesn't mandate that anyone get screwed.

[Dan Moadus]

Let's say you owned a very large manufacturing company, which in these tough times, was struggling to keep it's head above the water. In order to stay afloat you just implemented some changes in how you pay your workers. And I'm not talking about just improving the bottom line, I'm talking about changes that could mean the difference between surviving and not surviving.

Now let's say the employees aren't satisfied and set up informational pickets at the  plant gate.

As you drive through the gate one morning you notice some of your supervisors participating with and siding with the picketers. What would you do?

Now, shouldn't we the taxpayers view the actions of our local politicians standing shoulder to shoulder with those protesting SB5 the same way?