Facts and Figures

Hi. Found a tool that might be useful, and thought I'd share it with you. I've just started fooling around with it myself, and it's been fascinating.

The problem is, both sides of the political aisle go on and on about taxes, federal revenue, and so forth and so on. One side says that we have to raise taxes in order to raise federal revenues, the other side says that raising taxes will actually HURT revenue flow, and that cutting them will increase it. Then you have Ron Paul, who thinks we should cut taxes until it hurts revenue and just spend a lot less.

But the politicians go on television and talk about these things as if they were privvy to secret information that no one else can know, and it's simply wrong. Taxes are paid publically, the rates are written down in black and white, anyone's tax payments can be made public and they are all the time. The information is there. It's damn well time that we took the time and made the effort to see just where our money is going.

What I'm sick to the teeth of is being treated by politicians and power-brokers as if I were stupid. We are ruled by sound bytes and slogans and are expected to salivate on command whenever certain key phrases are issued. Job creators. Top 1%. Wall Street. Main Street. We are expected to decide whether we are conservative or liberal, and then just blindly follow the leaders of the catagories without question.

Well, I don't trust any of the bastards. I think anyone with power skews the game to benefit themselves. It's human nature, and I'd probably do it if I were a billionaire. Yes, I would go in trying to do the right things, but it's inevitable that the necessity for compromise would arise and I'd begin to sell out a piece at a time.  Anyone who says they never would is kidding themselves.

One of the greatest things about this country is that we, the average folks, actually have the power available to us to level it back out. But it takes effort, and intelligence. So I've Googled "Federal Tax Revenue," and the first thing I clicked on was this:

http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/

It's not an official government website. It's put together by some guy named Christopher Chantrill. He's probably got a political agenda, but I haven't yet figured out what it is. Whatever it is, most of the site seems to be facts and figures. In two clicks I got to a page that breaks down federal tax revenue for fiscal 2011, by half a dozen different catagories. There are links to past fiscal years, along with deficit figures, budget figures, and a bunch of other fascinating stuff. It looks like a good place to start finding out how much money the federal government really takes from us and what they do with it.

So if you find anything useful, feel free to put a link to it in the comments section. People, we're never going to be able to run this country right if we don't educate ourselves. The politicians have no interest in helping us, so we've got to take the initiative. I don't know about you, but I want to know what's going on. If I find anything interesting, I'll post it, but you really should look for yourselves.