[rextorres]

Bill,

You made a mistake in your calculations. You included social security and medicare spending which is money people are merely getting back. I believe tax for this should not be used for anything else.

Social Security/Medicare Spending ~ $1.2B (Social Security Tax is collected for this)

Discretionary Spending ~ $800M - Defense Spending ~ $400M (Income Tax is collected for this)

So i'll clarify - 50% of our income tax goes to defense spending.

Anyway - my original point still stands - we all participate to "protect our way of life" which is true whether the portion of the taxes we pay to protect it is ~20% or ~50%.

[ April 24, 2004, 22:23: Message edited by: rextorres ]