🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <31E086A8.743C@frii.com>, Lyle Cox  <lyle@frii.com> wrote:

\ Any one ever stop to think that the poor (I'm one of them) also tend to 
\ use a higher percentage of the government's resources.  Maybe we should 
\ pay a higher percentage of our money in taxes.

Is this really true?

Think about what the government's resources are doing.  Take defense, 
for example.  Someone who is quite wealthy would probably suffer far 
greater losses if we were invaded than someone who was unemployed and 
on welfare--hence the rich can be said to get a much higher benefit 
from defense dollars than the poor.  Similarly, all the money spent to
keep the economy rolling and to avoid inflation benefits those with a 
larger stake in the economy much more than those without--someone 
without a life savings doesn't lose anything if we have a brief spell 
of hyperinflation.  

Think of all the money spent on interest in the debt...  who holds 
bonds and benefits from that expense?  (As best as I can recall this 
is one of the two or three largest lines in the budget...)  If the US 
were to default on its debt (or print money to handle it), it wouldn't
be the poor who saw their assets become worthless.

The larger one's stake in the system, the more one benefits from 
government expenditures to preserve and protect that system.  

D.
--
* The Minstrel in the Gallery        http://sunsite.unc.edu/scocca/  *
* D. A. Scocca (scocca@gibbs.oit.unc.edu)          "Heteroskedastic" *
* "My love does not, cannot _make_ her happy.  My love can only      *
*    release in her the capacity to be happy."     --J. Barnes       *