Hey Friends,
So I woke up this morning with this crazy idea for our country. How about this: We each pay in something to a big pool, based on what we earn each year. You know, maybe one year we earn a lot of money, one year not so much, one year our expenses for our business are so high we pay in virtually nothing but the next we pay in more? Whatever it is, we pay in a percent with some adjustments for hard times. Maybe we could call this a "tax"? Yeah maybe we could call that an "income tax", how does that sound....pretty reasonable?
Then, we could use that money to pay for the things that we all need. You know, things likes roads to get around on and a group of people to stand by ready to help us if our house catches on fire or someone has a heart attack in our house or something. An emergency core of people standing ready to defend our country in case something really bad happens? Maybe we need some people to ride around in cars and make sure everyone is safe and that no one breaks into our house when we go out of town.
Of course we all would like someone with expertise to look at our children each year and help us determine if they are their healthiest, someone to help them when they're sick and treat us when our health fails, maybe some Dr.'s for that and some hospitals, yes we will definitely need some hospitals. You get the idea.
Anyway, if we all chipped in some for this stuff with our "taxes" (paid relative to what we have of course) that should be enough to make sure everyone can be covered for these things we all need. We'd probably need to decide on some people to help manage all of this and if we all decided there were some more things we really need (like maybe we decide that it is good for all of us to try to....I don't know "stop global warming" or something, we could pay in a little more.
What do you think?
Or, now here is another idea. We could just let everyone kind of decide for themeselves. Like, if you have a lot of money, you can kind of do what you want. You can build your own roads around town (you know just for your family and guests) and you can hire a group of people to stand outside your house to keep you safe. Of course you can hire the finest building inspectors etc. so that won't be a problem for you. You'll want a swimming pool of your own obviously and hopefully you can buy a portion of what some call Yosemite or Yellowstone or some place beautiful like that that you can go with your kids when you get the urge. The Grand Canyon is nice.
You can pay to see the best Dr.s and maybe you can even build a little hospital for your family and friends, just big enough so that you're not tempted to let anyone else use it? Stuff like that.
And if you don't have a lot of money? Hmmmm .....I guess......well... you'd just be screwed. But I don't know ......maybe that's better?
Maggie Baird
photo from Huffington Post via About.com
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