You are correct. They also take it from my investment accounts (outside of my fedex paycheck).

 

I'd take a wild guess that you don't pay much in taxes. When you do, come back and tell us how thrilled you are to pay a top tax rate of 39.6%, plus 2.9% medicare, plus 0.9% Obamacare, plus your state tax rate. Tell us how thrilled you are to pay additional money to fund hundreds of millions of dollars for a crummy website and new government programs.

When they raise your taxes again, and you're already paying through the nose...I'll bet that you won't say, "Hallelujah, I'm saving a life!" You'll roll your eyes about more costs for another government boondoggle. Funny how much one's perspective changes when the money confiscated is yours, not someone else's.

 

Bravo Busdriver, it's all great and sounds good until they come for what you've worked a lifetime to achieve. Can't agree with you more!!!

 

StarClipper needs to look up the words "voluntary" and "coerced".

 

Don't forget you also contributed to the largess of American business in the form of corporate welfare. The federal government continues to subsidize some of the biggest companies in America. Boeing, Xerox, IBM, Motorola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, and others have received millions in taxpayer-funded benefits through programs like the Advanced Technology Program and the Export-Import Bank etc,

One of the single biggest is the $25 billion in federal handouts to the farm industry. Most of it goes to large agribusinesses.

Billions to the energy industry as well, Exxon did particularly well with federal subsidies, in 2009 it paid no federal tax, and its usual "effective" rate is in the mid-teens on around $7.5B in income!!

So let's all pat ourselves on the back that were helping those under-deserving citizens smoke a choke, while at the same time also sending Biffy & Muff to the country club in the Bentley! Our tax $$ at work!

The monkeys in the middle (28-39%ers) will get nothing & like it!

 

At least all the companies you list actually produce something I can use. So I get something back on my involuntary investment.
What do I get back from welfare rats? More crime, more children without parents and more demands that I give them more money to support their lifestyles until I can pay even more money to pay their medical bills or prison bills.
Given those choices, I'll take Biffy and Muff.

 

With welfare being a broad term that encompasses things like food stamps, many of our enlisted soldiers and their families would disagree that you don't get anything out of your contributions.

 

Actually you might do well to understand some macro-economic workings of the social programs vs. the upper end.

From economists, to the CBO, the consensus is that the recipients on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder spend all of their "handouts" on the local economy. Groceries, transportation, utilities, etc- it's generally all spent in their local economy, giving impetus employers in producing those things they buy.

By & large the corporate welfare programs don't increase their revenues from earnings, it doesn't increase their employment, it generally pads the bottom line. The companies, usually increase their dividends, do stock buybacks or hold the $ internally. This money is usually reinvested with the shareholders or company, (a very narrow slice of the population), and is NOT injected into the local economy.

So while private jones is using his snap $ to buy groceries, (farmers producing & selling, grocers hiring workers & suppliers to execute the business, etc). Blindem & Robbem are using their welfare to eliminate business/personal risk, and enhance their profits- which generally do NOT go back to stimulating the economy as those $ sit in the investment accounts, or to a very narrow industry segment (the Bently, etc).

The sugar industry is a poster child for this (billions annually in federal "aid"). You can easily learn what's really going on (google- plenty articles if your first selection seems biased), and the mainstream media just doesn't cover it, while the right wing media would have you believe that the poor folks are the only culprits consuming $$ from the federal trough.

So while there needs to be some entitlement reform, social spending reform, let's not be ignorant that there is an entire stream of federal $$ going to corporate welfare that must be reformed as well.

A very good & brief primer, if your open to understanding some macro economics, is here- it illuminates the fact that "demand" is what creates jobs & lifts the economy (GDP), not largess at the top.
Rich People Actually Don't Create The Jobs - Business Insider

 

Good info, but brace yourself.

 

If you equate the term "welfare rat" to "enlisted soldier" you haven't spent enough time in the military or in urban or rural communities where a majority of the residents are voluntarily unemployed. There is no comparison.