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Lily writes

But when I mention this to a conservative I almost always get the response, "That's Socialism for you". So my question is, what's wrong with paying taxes and having the government run things if it makes life more comfortable and convenient for us?
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If it is working, there is nothing wrong with paying taxes to have those things. However, not at the federal level. That was the beauty of our nation's founding. We had sovereign states that could do whatever the people of that state wanted and were willing to pay for. They could even make bad decisions, but they wouldn't drag the rest of the nation down with them.

When you do it at the federal level, you make states that don't want some of those things, pay for them anyway. When you do it at the federal level and it is bad, you drag the entire nation down. When you do it at the federal level it is usually more inefficient and costly than if done at the state level.

When you do it at the federal level you are removing "choice" from "we the people" to self-govern at the lowest possible level of government as was intended for all but "national" issues given the Federal Government. If you tax the people, and not business past the point of being able to compete, you can have anything you are willing to pay taxes for.

In the U.S., contrary to some "socialist" nations, they individual wants the taxes paid by somebody else. Also, some of those aren't as socialist as some think. They are cutting taxes and de-centralizing to keep business competitive but keeping taxes high on the individual. That way, they keep the jobs they need and the people get the social services they want and are willing to pay for from their own tax dollars.

Centralization of power and wealth redistribution to pay for social programs is more damaging than having social programs or as you point out, spending on good infrastructure.

Here, our infrastructure is all rated at C's and D's and getting worse. Why? Because more and more of our tax dollars are going for entitlements that we "borrowed" from and now will have to pay back. Cities and states are starting to have trouble meeting state government retirement promises and so they are cutting spending on infrastructure to pay the retirees or to shore up the accounts that will be needed to pay them as the "boomer" retirement tsunami begins.

Some say, "we must raise taxes" to pay for them in that case. But, try and raise the taxes on the individual and he wants to pass a referendum to prevent it. Try to tax business and they close or leave. Try to tax investment income and it sends investment money overseas. Thy to tax the wealthy and they put the money in trusts, foundations, and offshore accounts or overseas businesses.

Folks, you can have anything we are willing to pay for and some "socialist" nations have done a pretty good job of managing it but most are now having serious problems competing with "new Europe" and Asia as even high tech is leaving for new low tax nations.

Remember that there has always been "low wage" competition but now we have low tax and low healthcare cost nations as well. They are also raising their education standards while ours are dropping. We have nation that isn't willing to pay the taxes we need for what we have or what we want.

We face a $50 trillion unfunded liability. That is hundreds of thousands of dollars for every private sector worker (about 124 million) that he has to pay for with taxes in the next few decades to keep the systems going.

For $50 trillion and that number of private sector workers, it will be $403,000. It think the date of that projection is 2030 or in 23 years. So, in addition to all the taxes for what we do fund in government, he will have to add over $17,000 a year more in taxes for the entitlements that are unfunded.

Don't forget the over $1 trillion in compliance costs that are added to prices each year too. Then figure in the regulations costs, unemployment tax, sales taxes, and other energy, phone and fuel taxes.

A $17,000 a year worker that pays no income tax is in the 50% tax bracket just from the 35% in taxes and compliance costs, 7.5% payroll, and 8% sales taxes most states have. Then add property tax and other taxes and you can have him in as much as a 55% tax bracket depending on where he lives and still not pay income tax.

Much of the problem is not that we don't want to pay the taxes on what we want but that we have added so much cost to how we collect those taxes, we can't afford them. So we try to pass them on even more to business and the wealthy which drives even more middle class jobs out of the country and replaces them with lower wage, service industry jobs.

We do have "Congressmen" but, they don't represent us very well. They are listening to the 1/2 who don't pay income tax and giving them what they want and won't pay for and that is hurting the 50% who do pay income taxes and even the 50% who don't because the costs and taxes are passed on in prices. But, because they don't realize they pay those taxes in prices, they keep asking for more and for the taxes to go on business raising prices even more until they can't compete, or their high prices reduce our buying power.

Socialism isn't "social programs." All nations need several social programs. Socialism is a system of centralizing power in the federal government in our nation, and trying to use wealth redistribution to pay for it.

We need to return power to "we the people" in each state and let each state, even they work with neighboring states, work out funding for social programs based on local, needs, resources, demographics, "tax willingness," and other factors. Stop the "one-size-fits-all" federal policies that hurt all of us in the long run in this new "world market."