Where Did My Charitable Spirit Go?

Seems like every few weeks, there's another disaster, following which come pleas for donations to aid the victims.

I was in a disaster once. Mine was less overwhelming than many others--although not to those who died. I lost a lot, but not everything. FEMA helped some, though most of the help came from our own insurance. Altogethe, it covered maybe half of our loss.

Presumably, there were calls for charitable giving, though I was too busy to be aware of it. None of that charity came my way, though I didn't ask. We recovered, eventually.

My dad told me, years ago, that when he was a young man just getting started on his railroad career, that his taxes were about 10% of his gross earnings. Local, state and federal. I don't think he actually paid income tax those first years.

Thirty years ago, I earned around $6.50 an hour. I did pay state and federal income taxes, and all the normal stuff, BUTT! I was a single dad at the time. I had a nice apartment. I had a used pickup and a new motorcycle. I sent Jim to a private school (even then, I thought that government schools were bad business) and I often took time off from work to ride up and down the state to see the sights. We ate at restaurants. We went to LA often for libertarian group outings and went to an occasional movie or rock concert.

I make more than four times that now. I'm doing ok, but there's little extra. I have to think about going out to the better restaurants, running up to LA for the evening doesn't happen any more--traffic, the cost of gas and the cost of the entertainment are the main issues. No way could I afford private school tuition for a youngster. My quality of life is better, but not four times better.

The cost of the several layers of government is about half of my production. That's bogus! Most of that money is wasted, and/or goes into the pockets of politicians and their cronies. The roads and parks, etc are--well, to only say poorly maintained would be a major failure in perception. The schools' best areas of competence are in subverting parents' value systems and distorting America's founding principles--that is, substituting a state-subserviant morality for individualism. I could go on and probably will at some point.

Back to the original point, my charitable spirit is lost somewhere in that 40%. I figure that if the several layers of government really need that much of my productivity, they can take care of the disaster victims, the poor, the lazy and all the unfortunates.

Except that they aren't doing that, either!

They take half of our prodictivity to "care" for the unfortunate victims and there are more of them now than ever before!

Well, that's where my charitable spirit went.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California