PerryChase
Leaving the foreign policy debate over your comments to others in another venue, your comment
$120 billion to bailout homeowners? That’s nothing compared to what we’re spending in Iraq. That’s no big deal. We can afford it.
implicitly assumes that any tax dollar that is spent is the same, regardless of where it goes. It most certainly is not.
Most of the cash spent ON Iraq is spent IN America. It is forced out of my pocket and goes to soldiers, defense contractors, civil servants, contractors, etc, all of whom (love them or hate them) are doing a job that the USG has decided is important. Such is the price of being an honest tax-paying citizen. However, paying for bad behavior simply encourages more of the same.
Personal and corporate tax laws are rife with handouts intentionally engineered to elicit certain behaviors (e.g., buying energy efficient appliances), which is why I am continually befuddled by fiscal liberals who think we should pay people for behaving poorly. It is not simply the dollars out of otherwise innocent taxpayer pockets that is wrong—rewarding bad behavior is doubly wrong.
