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Did you know that the income tax amendment enacted 1913 was temporary or that income taxes are theft? Income taxes are voluntary because they are illegal. How about there is no need for property taxes even though they have funded local education since the 1840s?
Oh, Social Security is a scam. If you die early all you get is $250 and the government takes the rest of your money. If “they” hadn’t stolen the Social Security funds, we wouldn’t have a problem today. Did you know we seniors paid our dues and therefore have no more obligation to pay taxes!
Where did I get this nonsense? Not nonsense, it’s on social media thoughtfully posted (and too often believed) by the experts among our citizenry so it has to be true, right? And we are concerned about the lack of financial literacy😳 Perhaps ignorance about how government and taxes interact and what they provide is more of a concern?
Hey, the federal government spends about $18 billion a day, mostly on programs directly benefiting Americans, but tariffs can replace the income tax, right?
Estimates suggests that monthly tariff revenues might rise toward $40–$50 billion/month at peak levels which is about $1.6 billion per day – a tad short of $18 billion. Of course, the $18 billion being spent is about $5 billion a day more than revenue. The gross interest on debt alone is about $3 billion a day.
Between the uninformed, naive, gullible people reflected on social media and the real fiscal state of government finances, it’s not a pretty picture.
We are all in the same pickle jar and it’s really sour.
Here are two examples from today on FB of how out of touch people are with no concept of how paying for things is connected. Each of these received thousands of “likes” and hundreds of favorable comments.
“Our parents deserve to retire with dignity. If we can afford massive giveaways, we can afford to increase Social Security for seniors.”
“Seniors should not have to pay for Medicare out of their very small amount of money. They have already paid Medicare taxes during their working life.”
I HAVE TO ASK, who should pay for Medicare “the government?” 😎
Financial literacy on full display.
I agree with Mr. Quinn, it’s not a pretty picture.
There are certainly some weird and uninformed folk in the world. I suspect that has always been the case. Personally, I take a view that I can’t educate or inform the whole world, so I probably shouldn’t let it bother me.
I like social media, but carefully curate it so my feed represents things I want to see – Major League Baseball, cricket, multitools and local news. Anything that creeps into my feed outside that gets very quickly booted.
There is a fellow on FB that follows me but is so off the wall, so subject ignorant and at times nasty, other people ask why I don’t block him.
I tell them and him the reason I don’t block him is because I want other people to see what ignorance, extremism and in this case xenophobia is like and what it can create.
Does it help, probably not, but I feel I have to do something to counter misinformation. He makes sure he tells everyone Congress stole the SS funds and Medicare is socialized medicine.