Money

With citizenship comes responsibilities. Everything costs money and the money has to come from somewhere and nobody wants to pay more taxes. There are, however, things that could be taxed that aren't, like divorces. A lot of people complain about the high rate of divorce in this country, taxes might be one way to stop that. After all, high cigarette taxes will supposedly make people quit smoking. How about a wedding tax on weddings that don't take place in churches?

We could expand the "sin" tax and include rap music. I'm all for freedom of speech until it gets vulgar. Musicians that want to record and release vulgar lyrics could pay a tax for that privilege and people that buy that stuff could pay a higher sales tax as well.

There could be an R-rated movie tax, a Victoria's Secret tax, and a "sinful business" tax for Playboy and Hustler and other assorted magazines.

Do current luxury taxes include spa treatments or gym memberships or designer jeans? I know our collective government has to be more creative than they're letting on. If we spread the taxes out, then no one single group of taxpayers has to shoulder the tax burden. It also gives the American taxpayer the ability to choose which taxes he/she wants to pay.

Food and clothing items less than $20 should be tax exempt. We have to eat and we have to wear clothes. We don't necessarily have to wear designer clothes, but we do have to wear clothes and so do our children.

There should not be a "fat" tax anymore than there should be a gay tax, or a black tax, or any other kind of tax of that nature. Taxes should be on things, not on people. People pay the taxes,things do not.

All the money doesn't have to come from taxes. We could start imposing fines on people who don't vote. Now there's a cure for voter apathy. It won't necessarily be a go to jail offense, unless of course you don't pay the fine or do the community service. People who are too lazy to vote probably don't devote much of their time to community service voluntarily. They're the ones that are going to make our recovery process take longer. At $25 a ticket, not voting in local, state and federal elections might speed things up. It may not give us a 100% voter turnout rate, but at least people who don't vote will be contributing to the process. This may also be a way to cut down on incidents of voter fraud without making it harder for people to vote.

There is one more idea I have, but a lot of people may not like it. We have to have licenses to drive and licenses to fish and permits to own guns. It might not be a bad idea if we have to have a license or a permit of some kind to own a computer. It shouldn't be either difficult or expensive to get a computer license/permit. They could be sold wherever computers are sold for a modest fee of $10, but it should require a background check to buy a computer. Convicted pedophiles should not be allowed to own computers in this country.

It is time for us to start dealing with the Internet. No, we do not have the right to legislate how other countries choose to deal with this problem. That's why making porn sites all have the same dot name won't work. Not all porn sites are operated in this country. We can only lead by example. Children can and should have access to computers because of their tremendous educational value. It is the people who prey on children that should not be allowed the same privilege. I know there are those that will circumvent the system, but that doesn't mean we have to make it easy for them.

And while we're at it, we could solve the college drinking problem by raising the legal drinking age to 23. Teenagers who go straight from high school to college generally graduate by the time they're 22.


Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato

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