Ok, so I know that the budget was a little while ago, and Michael Cullen did not include any tax cuts. Boo Hoo. Have a Cry. Call the wah-bulence. Whatever.
I absolutely cannot stand rich people complaining about why they have it so hard in life because they have to pay more tax then others. I cannot stand it when they use the justification: "why should I be taxed more just because I work harder?"
Firstly, it makes huge generalisations that just because one earns more, one is naturally a hard worker. I will concede that higher-paying jobs often require a lot more skill then other low paying jobs, but this is not the arguement. I think the cleaners at univerity work hella hard cleaning up the place. Students are messy, I seriously think that students for the most part take them for granted. Many of these cleaners are at uni at 6am cleaning up our rubbish and because the cleaning companies that employ them are notoriously bad at giving them normal hours, they may not leave uni until 7-8pm that night. Not only that, they are doing the jobs that no one wants such as cleaning toilets, changing "feminine" rubbish bins, cleaning urinals - not exactly fun and easy tasks.
Furthermore, often people who recieve high saleries is because they tend to have a lot more responsibility, not always because they work harder than anyone else. Think about major CEOs, if they fuck up, the company fucks up - when you think about this, its a major burdern on one person, and hence why they can command a higher salery.
Finally, to pay for tax cuts we would effectivly take money from health and education- of course this wouldn't affect the well-off because they don't have to rely on these things as heavily as lower socio-economic groups. However, for people who are less well off, they will have to dig deeper into their pockets just to afford the basic nessessities in life.
Basically, I honestly do not have problem paying taxes. I see it as a way of pooling everybodies resources to look after those in society who have been born into disadvantaged situations. People at all times in their life will be dependent, and I see taxes as a way of ensureing that nobody becomes disadvantaged by social and economic inequalities. The system of cource is not perfect, and I don't think it will ever be, but I believe we are on the right track at least.
Anywho, thats just my rant.
One last thing: To all those libertarian minded people out there, normally I wouldn't mind you responding to this blog, but to be honest, I seen and heard all your arguements. I know exactly what you will say - taxation is theft, Robert Nozick's principles, Ayn Rand is a goddess and I want to have her babies even though she is dead, I will exhume her body, take some DNA, and clone her. It's rather predictable.
Can someone PLEASE come up with an opposing argument from an entirely DIFFERENT perspective? I know a marxist would be against the idea of taxation...
