Someone asked "how do we pay." I can't find your comment back right now, but I would like to make an observation about what we can and cannot afford.

I am troubled by the assertion I hear often in Wisconsin that we cannot afford higher taxes. I challenge that.

I know. There are a lot of people out of work....I know some of them, and I feel for them. I get that. But if there are, say, 10% unemployed, we have a 90% employment rate. Now those who are employed may indeed be making less than they used to. I get that too.

Nevertheless, every time I look up how people spend their money,
how the gross national product is spent, I see that as a society we still spend about 10% of our money on entertainment and eating out. This is, in other words, discretionary income. We don't need to spend our money on this. We choose to. I see that the sports stadiums are still packed. I saw on the news a while back that some town spent 60 million dollars for a football stadium for its high school. And how much did we just spend for election advertising? And how much did the latest movie take in? And how much did we just spend on the latest iteration of the cell phone? Oh I know, this spending is all good for the economy. But the choice to spend all that money as we did is a choice. We could have chosen, as a society, to spend it differently. We are not nearly as much the victims as we like to think. Maybe not individually, but as a society, we can afford to pay higher taxes. Whether that is what we should do is another question, another debate. But it seems to me that the honest thing is to say, "We don't think paying more taxes is a good thing, even though we could."

That is a canned answer ..... I did not refer to the Presidents plan .... I said go back to the tax rates of the Reagan years ..... and also allow only the deductions allowed during those years ....

Let me tell you two stories that illustrate my point.
I live in a rural community that has only 1 doctor-we all know that there will be waiting-just the way it is. In the waiting room with me was a woman that worked at the Walmart, two retirees, a woman who cooks at the school bringing her father. A couple people stopped by to ask their wait time then left again we all chose to just sit. Then arrived a lazy welefare monger with her poly-tattooed friend. She 'had a terrible sore throat' yet went out 9 times to smoke. But her real reason was "to get something for my nerves. i've got terrible stress". The two were conversing loudly on their new smartphones. She began yelling at the office staff that she didn't have time to wait around she had 'things to do'. They then got into a loud discussion about some 'be-ache' who had done something with tattoo's boyfriend. Then she complained how the food pantry didn't "give me as much this wee". Now medicaid patients have a $3.65 copay. She was outraged over this "why do we even bother to pay insurance then if we have to give you money". Since when does welefare which is free to her count as paying insurance.


Story 2: last month lazy slob at work complaining loudly "only 4 more days and i won't have to be eating cereal" Referring to when the link cards come out. She always complains how she suffers so even though also had a smartphone and polytattoos. "So poor I can't feed my kids." Few days later she is showing around pictures of herself and babydaddy in their smurf costumes at the bar halloween party.

Why do these people upset you so?

Why do these people upset you so?

Why do they NOT upset you?

Why should they? Do you really think that they are the root cause of what is wrong in this country today? Does a CEO who screws up a company and then gets a golden parachute upset you? There will always be liars cheats and thieves in all classes of society, do you think by lowering taxes they will all go away?