In the 80's Republicans talked up the idea of "welfare queens" -- people who milked the welfare system to live the high life while not actually holding a job or having any real income. The idea of these people driving new cars, eating steak and buying big new televisions and partying every night with the tax dollars of the average working Joe drove the Republicans crazy. It drove them even crazier when most of them assumed these people belonged to minorities, who, in the mind of a certain subset of Republicans, were already naturally lazy and shiftless and welfare was just rewarding them for that.
It was all a fiction, of course. There really isn't that much welfare fraud, and certainly nowhere near the level Republicans fantasize that there is.
But there is another group of Welfare Queens I'd like to point the spotlight on. The New Welfare Queens are the Republicans themselves. Explanation below the break.
In this case, I'm not even talking about corporations getting big government subsidies, or the agricultural subsidies. Those are certainly welfare, and it's amusing and infuriating at the same time to think of people with seven and eight figure (or greater) incomes owing a chunk of that to government largess, even while they pay a lower tax rate than people earning a tenth of what they do in a year.
No, rather than look at direct government handouts, let's look for a minute at those people who just plain don't want to pay taxes, period. They might not be looking for a check from the government, but what they do want in the end is a matter of semantics, really, in that instead of collecting the money and then cutting the check, the government just doesn't collect the money in the first place.
In my opinion, Republicans bent on ever-further tax reductions are the real parasites on society. They can't understand that the standard of living the average American has enjoyed since the end of the Great Depression is due in no small part from the taxes that were collected to fund things that were hugely beneficial to our life today as we know it.
Just a couple of examples...
The G.I. Bill. An America grateful to its veterans created massive government-funded opportunities for them by subsidizing educational opportunities. Some of the best professors in college I ever had received their degrees thanks to the G.I. Bill. This one bill had a profound effect on the U.S. by giving us one of the best-educated and most skilled workforces on the planet. And it was all thanks to tax dollars.
Interstates and highways, paved roads generally -- by the 1960's the US had a transportation system that was the envy of the world, thanks to the new Interstate Highways that allowed rapid and direct travel on well built paved roads from coast to coast. Paved highways acted as capillaries, taking traffic to and from the main Interstate conduits and also enhancing the ability of transporting goods to even the more remote small towns. Suddenly people were able to get better goods more reliably than ever before and had better access to the amenities of larger cities (of course, a downside to this was the development of a suburban American highly dependent upon the automobile, but that's a story for another time). And it was all thanks to tax dollars. And needless to say, these projects did a lot to spur employment both directly and indirectly.
Today, though, we have a large part of society that doesn't think they need to pay anything for the benefits of living in the society created by their taxes of their parents and grandparents. And I have no idea how to get this through their heads.
I work as a municipal employee, so I see this sort of thing on a very local scale. People constantly complain that their property taxes are too high or that city fees are too steep. Interestingly, when asked if they know what their tax rate is or how much they actually pay in a year in property taxes, most can't tell you. And an even greater percentage can't tell you how that tax money is divvied up - what part of it goes to the local school district, what part goes to the county, what part to the city, etc.
So they know nothing about what their taxes actually DO, but gosh darn it, they're positive that whatever it is, they pay too much for it.
Which is why the city I work for is now in the position of considering tax rate adjustments that have the potential to leave our budgets, which have already been slashed to the bone, utterly ravaged. We're to the point where staff is questioning whether we'll have the funds to do stuff as basic as replace light bulbs in city buildings if they burn out. Light bulbs, for God's sake. Even maintenance on essential equipment is potentially on the block, because certain members of the council have decided they need to trim even more than we have the past 3 years.
But the problem is, whenever we bring up specific items to cut, nope, can't cut that, that's too important. But they're certain that there's gotta be some fat there somewhere, they just have to find it and they think we (city staff) are hiding it from them. Which is laughable, because they have the budgets right in front of them. The maddening thing is, most of the items they're eyeballing as potential cuts are miniscule as far as tax savings for the average property owner. My department is looking at cuts that would eliminate overtime, cut equipment maintenance budgets and trim staff training, all for the princely tax savings of about a quarter per year to the average homeowner. Yup, you read that right, for a savings of about 2 cents per month on their tax bill, the next time our department copier breaks down it becomes a paperweight.
If this sort of thing comes to it's logical conclusion, in a very few more years, the city eventually won't be able to function. Streets won't get repaired, snow won't get plowed, laws and building codes will go unenforced for lack of staff to enforce them. And it's a double edged sword, because every year we fall short means that taxes will need to be raised that much higher to get us back where we were.
But in the Republican mind, such failures are the public employee's fault because we're incompetent, you see. It can't be that we're doing our jobs with 80% of the staff we actually need to accomplish everything that needs to be done. It's not because we can't pay to fix city equipment when it breaks down, or God forbid actually buy new equipment. Nope, it's all because government sucks and can't get anything right. And this sort of thing scales right up to state and federal departments. It's an interesting circular argument - public employees suck and government sucks, so let's cut their budgets...which means that they'll suck even more next year because they're trying to do more with even less than before. That's Republican logic for you.
And it's all because the ultimate Welfare Queens want their services, their paved roads, their safe neighborhoods with rapid police, fire and EMS reaction times, potable water, someone on call to fix that sewer line break at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning. They want food that safe to eat, drugs that are safe to use when they get sick. They want airplanes that land safely without colliding in midair. But they don't want to pay for it. Nope.