The Zong

For the millions of Americans who will pay taxes tomorrow, the National Priorities Project has a “fun” interactive graph that will break down approximately where the hell your kick-up to Uncle Sam is going. According to the budget proposed by President Bush for the 2008 fiscal year, (going with the dubious assumption that he won’t ask for additional war funds) every single breathing human being will be responsible for bringing in an average of over $9,000, (you infants and terminally ill folks had better get cracking!) and so I went ahead and punched in nine grand to see where the NPP says all that bread will land.

Of the $9000.00 you paid in taxes:

$2448.00 goes to the military
$1683.00 goes to pay the interest on the debt
$1881.00 go es to health care
$540.00 goes to income security
$405.00 goes to education
$306.00 goes to benefits for veterans
$234.00 goes to nutrition spending
$171.00 goes to housing
$135.00 goes to environmental protection
$27.00 goes to job training
$1116.00 goes to all other expenses

I won’t deny that the NPP is kind of an anti-war thing, but if these numbers are even close to accurate, then it’s gonna be hard for me to tell anyone that I don’t support the war in Iraq. I mean, we can all bellyache about the mishandling of the war, scream that we were lied to, even elect a different party to run congress, but the fact is, if you pay taxes, you’re supporting the shit out of this war.

I can see the point of refusing to pay taxes, sort of. Still, I don’t really think it’s an effective protest, since the IRS doesn’t have any say over the spending of the money it collects. Also, they can do stuff like garnish your wages and penalize you without any sort of consequences, so I say pay your goddamn taxes, hippie! The real solution is to get our asses out of Iraq ASAFP so the government can spend that money on Afghanistan, or on getting my turntable fixed.

- M.G.