[casey35]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Casey:

As to your second point. I'll tell you as a parent. When I didn't take my son to the doctor, it was because I didn't have health insurance!

As far as your paying your own way in life:
Please answer the following:

1) How much money did you pay and to whom did you pay it, for the road you drive to and from work on?
2) If you have ever had to call the fire department, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
3) If you have ever called the police, how much did you pay and to whom did you pay it?
4) If you use the public library, how much do you pay and to whom do do you pay it?
5) Who do you pay to insure that your employer maintains a safe work environment?
6) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test the medicines you take for safety?
7) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have someone test your food to make sure it is safe.
8) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it, to ensure that the person in the semi next to you, doing 60 mph is licensed?
9) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay for the air traffic controller who makes sure that the plane you are on doesn't fly into another plane?
10) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to make sure that criminals are locked up behind bars where they belong?
11) How much do you pay and to whom do you pay it to have your mail delivered to you daily?

Your statement that you don't take anything from anyone simply isn't true--UNLESS--you live off the grid. But you are here, on the Internet, so that tells me you are not off the grid. You are using satellites that you don't lease time on. You are using microwave transmission towers that you don't lease time on. You make use of hundreds of little services that you pay your taxes for but that you do not pay for directly. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay the NIH and CDC workers who maintain public health but you have never written a check to the NIH or the CDC. Some portion of your taxes go to pay the police but you have never paid an individual cop for showing up. Some portion of your taxes goes to pay for the roads but, toll bridges not-with-standing, chances are you don't pay to drive on the surface streets in town.

As one Supreme Court justice said at the beginning of the last century "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society". There is an entire infrastructure, supporting your "I'm a self-made-woman" illusions that you utterly take for granted. If you had to pay for all those invisible services that make the wheels of modern life turn, it would be prohibitively expensive.

Now, again, if you live off-the-grid none of that applies to you but you're using a computer, which means you're on the grid, and I know, for a fact, that you aren't paying to rent satellite, microwave and fibre time. Yet, your electrons flow over the same pathways that my electrons flow over because we pay into it *together*.

Well geez, I think i do pay for most of that, due to the fact I pay taxes and home owner insurance. Pay state taxes and county and city taxes. Pay taxes on everything I have or use. I do not have medcaid or food stamps. I dont sit on my ass and draw money from the government. So I do pay my fair share in life.