By no means am I a political activist nor do I plan on blogging each and every day about political issues. However, I’ve become more interested as I’ve gotten older (not to say that I’m old). I hope to learn a lot more about the potential candidates during the next few months. My biggest struggle is choosing a candidate to vote for because there isn’t one I agree with 100%. So, the only way I know to move forward is to prioritize my beliefs (i.e. choose my battles). I haven’t decided on the priority, but here is my most important issues:
- National Budget and Tax Reform (Would love a Flat tax)
- Up holding of conservative Christian beliefs (pro-life, sanctity of marriage)
- Fix social security (leaning towards privatizing)
- National security (Make for a stronger America)
If you can’t tell from my stance on these issues, I’m fairly conservative in my political beliefs. The biggest challenge I have with the political world is our system is so messed up. We have a few candidates that are proposing drastic changes to our tax system, namely a flat tax. However, everyone pretty much rights them off because that type of tax reform is to far fetched. Which at first seemed really confusing.
Then I started thinking about our tax system and how its created a huge ”tax” industry. If the IRS was closed, what would all of the tax lawyers, accountants, and tax filing businesses (like Turbotax) do. That would leave 10s of thousands of people without jobs. So, what to do? It seems we are in a damned if we do damned if we don’t situation. So the easiest thing to do is nothing drastic, which is what we have been doing as a country for a long time. I feel we would be better off if we just ripped the band-aid off and fix our mistakes(tax reform, social security, etc…), so we can make our country more economically sound. If I take this same thought process to my own life, I can easily see how it applies to me. There are a lot of things I continue to let limp on because I’m too invested in it and it would be very challenging to address.
This definitely a lesson I’m still learning. What are your thoughts? Am I too jaded?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Tim Wilson // Feb 7, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Heh-heh. Flaming liberal here…
My top priority in this area is, “Help out those who have been less fortunate in life than I have.” This can somewhat be traced back to my upbringing, I suppose, but I can pinpoint having to read Jonathan Kozol’s Rachel and Her Children before I showed up for freshman orientation in college as a defining moment.
My volunteer work has increasingly been centered around basic needs: food, shelter, financial assistance. So, I’ve seen and learned more and more about how hard it is, when you start out in a hole, to ever get out. And, I’d rather have some inefficiencies in the system, and some people able to “game the system,” than eliminate that…but leave real people hungry and homeless.
And, honestly, the environment is right up there pretty high, too.
A progressive vs. a flat tax is an argument that can be stated two ways. The pro-progessives say, “The wealthy still take home much more post-tax money than the poor with a progressive tax,” while the pro-flats say, “The wealthy pay a higher percentage of their income than the poor with a progressive tax — and, even with a flat tax, they’d still be contributing more.” In the “life lessons” world…I can say with certainty that neither side is going to convince the other to change their perspectives.
In a lot of ways, my dream ticket would be Gore-Edwards. Doh! If you factor in other issues — the war in Iraq, various social issues, etc. — Kucinich is my man (with Edwards a close second).
But, the reality is that, fairly high on my, “It sure would be nice” list is breaking the “white male” hold on the oval office. That’s not at the top of my list, but there’s definitely a part of me that’s glad that the Dems aren’t going to be able to avoid having a minority or a female at the top of their ticket.
2 mrlifelesson // Feb 8, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Wow. We are on different ends of the spectrum. My ultimate ticket would be Bush-Bush. Just Kidding. I’m not sure who my ticket would be, but it definitely would not be Gore-Edwards. I’m all for helping the less fortunate. I’m just not sure going to socialistic state is the right solution.
3 Tim Wilson // Feb 9, 2008 at 10:28 pm
LOL! I inadvertently named my oldest son after a diehard socialist — Benton MacKaye (reading his biography now and learning how much of a socialist he was)!
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