Bob woke up one morning, and like every other morning, gave thanks to God. He thanked God for many things, but among them was that he was smart enough to be a Conservative, and not some socialist liberal whining snowflake, always looking for a handout.
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| "All these withholdings, the poor are robbing me blind!" |
Bob did not think to thank the police and military for that he woke up peaceably by his phone alarm, and not by slavers or looters or killers, like had been likely throughout much of history in areas that did not have such armed forces on call 24/7. He thanked them on other occasions, but he rarely specifically applied their service to his own personal safety, or the safety of his family. Nor did he stop and ever calculate just what the private cost of such a team of security professionals and mercenaries would be.
Team? Even for just one person per shift, unarmed, and only at minimum wage, would cost around $90,000 per year.
It was 6:02 am, he saw by glancing at his iPhone, with tech from lavish government research grants and receiving it's up to the nano-second time from a government atomic clock kept in perfect order by government workers. He jumped into the shower, and enjoyed the hot and clean water that came out - as it always came out - courtesy of the municipal water department that made sure that all the pathogens and bugs and germs and disease were out of it.
Bob had never lived through, or even heard of, a city-wide pandemic in which even as few as 1 out of 100 died. Let alone 1 out of 3. The public sewers that he had flushed his waste into shortly before the shower saw to that.
He made himself a quick breakfast, and at no point in any of the foods that he selected did he wonder if they were safe. Up until the 20th century, that had been a problem, a lack of standardization - or even standards - had made meals somewhat risky for his ancestors, with one never knowing just what the "meat" really was or how well things were packaged and stored. Yet Bob lived in an age of the Food and Drug Administration, where thousands of men and women he had never met made sure that all of his food was clean and safe for he and his family.
Blowing his still sleeping wife a kiss, he exited out of his house, a house built to standards undreamed of in the past for a man of his economic status, and kept safe by dozens of men who's job - without Bob worrying about it - was to do nothing but make sure that he did not have to worry about it. Bob admired his neighborhood as he went to his car, not in words, but just a vague feeling of contentment at it's quiet prosperity.
He could admire it because he could see it. Street lamps were not only on every corner, but all up and down each block, so that all could see and there were no dark spots for muggers or rapists to hide in. On they were, without Bob having had done anything for that to happen, and off they'd go, and without him doing a thing, or even noticing. So had it been for every day of his entire life.
One single street light, installed, is on average about $5,000. Bob neither knew that, nor cared. But he relied on this socialist single payer, universal illumination system all the same.
That there were no feral dog packs running loose, or for that matter, no feral child packs running loose, did not occur to him by thought or feeling as a thing to be content about. It would not have occurred to him that it could be any other way than it was, he not thinking about the Animal Control Officers and Department of Child and Family Services bureaucrats who worked tirelessly to guarantee he did not have to think of it.
Getting in his car, he did not worry about it exploding. Those "standards" again, this time applied to this and all manner of other consumer products, all that had to meet various standards, all that had to be safe. All made by companies that not only had to comply with those government standards, but would be held strictly accountable in government courts in the form of fines and damage claims were they to fail.
But Bob didn't think much about the courts, or how so many judges and bailiffs and such were on call, round the clock, to make sure not only that the various companies treated him and his family correctly, but that various of his neighbors did not get as out of hand as in nations without such systems.
If he'd been reminded, he might vaguely recall from a National Geographic article about how in some villages in Sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Europe neighbor spats were automatically turned into blood feuds, but at this moment, he just was glad that he was driving through such a great neighborhood.
On a public road, of course. There being no other kind. And at no point did he give thanks to not have to pay a toll every few blocks. He also did not think about the cost of just one intersection worth of traffic lights, which cost more than he'd see in half a year. He did not wonder who paid a $56,000 per year technician to re-time the lights at that one intersection every few years at a cost of $10,000 to $12,000. He did not marvel that should he drive to the furthest corner of his nation, that such lights, at an annual maintenance cost of nearly a billion dollars a year would be there to guarantee his safety.
Nor did he think to be grateful for an interstate network so vast and so comprehensive that he could safely go to those furthest corners, and indeed, navigate the entirety of his continent spanning nation with never any fear of being stranded, or set upon by marauders, or lost. No mile of it was not ceaselessly patrolled, endlessly maintained, and provided with free illumination and guidance.
Having exited his bedroom community - which was only possible in these times, in prior parts of history, raiders or nomads would have laid it to waste - he quickly traversed the interstate and made it to the city where his job was. Bob was a foreman at a factory that made parts for an assemblage which then was part of something else, and that ended up in some kind of weapons system.
It was the excessively large expenditures that Bob's government spent on military hardware that made Bob's job possible, but he didn't think of that. Nor did he ponder about how if America's military were not so excessive, that the factories overseas that made other parts of what all was required would hardly be left intact to make sure that Bob's company had those parts. Or indeed the supplies they needed for the parts they made here.
Bob also didn't think about massive corporate subsidies and bailouts that had kept manufacturing corporations like his solvent. Or the bonuses paid to those who had mismanaged his and other companies, corporations, and banks in the first place.
Bob's factory was clean and ordered and well lit, and Bob walked through it without a care in the world. He did not worry - more than a foreman should, anyway - about work place accidents that as a child he had read of in books about Victorian England. Machines in his factory - like every other factory in America - had safety feature after safety feature built into them, all by law, all enforced by many thousands of government workers.
Bob also knew, as did everyone, that any work place injury was covered by Worker's Compensation, a program funded not by the loving kindness and charitable impulses of his and other corporations, but by the mandate and order of the government who made sure of it. In his great, great grandfather's time, a broken arm could have happened, and had it, perhaps bankrupted him. In Bob's time, the broken arm was unlikely to happen, but would only be a vacation if it did.
Bob's not got to his first break yet - a break that he has guaranteed by law, as when it was left to private employers to decide, there was barely fifteen minutes for lunch in a 16 hour day. No, he's not got to that government enforced 15 minute mid morning break - the first of two breaks and a lunch that he'll have in a mere 8 hour day. We'll take a break though, to evaluate Bob.
Is he truly that much of a free-loader? Living off of a variety of socialized services and government programs? Well, if he ever thought about any of these mentioned so far, he'd still think "no". Bob was a proud man, a good and hard worker, a staunch conservative, and he honestly believes he is pulling his own weight in all of this in the form of his taxes.
As a foreman, he makes $70,000 a year, which gives him, roughly, an $8,300 tax liability. Well, before he claims his two kids and his wife, that is. Given this and that, he's looking at between $5,000 and $6,000 a year in Federal taxes, or less than half of what his nation spends on him. Yes, the total cost of each citizen per year is over $12,000, as of 2015, and that's just at the Federal level.
At the State level, Jim pays $2,500, or thereabouts, to the State of Illinois. On his $70,000 income. That actually doesn't even reflect the deductions he'd get for his two kids, but let's go with that, anyway. It's still under half of what the State of Illinois pays per resident, which is over $5,000 a year.
At the local level, the city he lives in spends over $2,200 per resident. Bob is proud of his $70,000 house, but his taxes on it are only $1,860. And if that was all he paid in local taxes, he'd be falling a bit short. But he also pays sales tax, or more accurately his wife does, and that amounts to about $1,200 per year. Looks like he's $860 ahead of the game!
But wait! No, Bob does have those two kids, and the city's cost of $2,200 is per resident, not per adult. Those two kids represent an additional cost of $4,400, so at $6,600 in local money coming his way, in goods and services and such, he's still - after the $3,060 he pays out - $3,540 short.
And let's not get started on his wife, which some would say he's responsible for her $2,200 in local costs - and $5,000 in State's costs and $12,000 in Federal costs. Those are in no way defrayed. Nor is the $10,000 in State costs and $24,000 in Federal costs of his two children, they paying per citizen, not per adult. All told, his whole family is a $76,800 drain on all levels of government, with him not even earning - let alone paying - that amount.
Yeah, really. That's called "math".
And this does NOT take into account that some single and childless citizens would say that since almost $12,000 per child per year is spent by the public schools, that such is more on Bob than them, to the tune of $24,000 specifically spent for Bob that in no personal way benefits the guy with no kids.
Bob does not care to pay the $5,000 to $15,000 per student per year that many private schools charge, nor does his wife care to home school. That would be $10,000 per year, minimum, and would cut into other things Bob would rather spend his money on. Like his nice car, or large flat screen television. Maybe the guy getting a $64,000 plus a year subsidy for he and his family should sell that stuff and live on that.
Bob could thus be viewed - and is viewed by the 1% he so admires and identifies with - like one of those much talked about "welfare moms" who have kids just because they know they'll be paid for by others. Who only get to have their iPhones and flatscreens because others are paying for their kids. Right? Uh huh.
Let's get back to him, though. He's on his break, reading the newspaper that one of the guys insists on still getting. Everyone else is glued to their iPhones. He likes getting the local news, though. In this case, he's reading about how the school his kids are going to is going to raise the cost of lunches from $2 to $2.50. Darn, he thinks, another $20 a month total, what do they think he's made of money? That they get good, clean, healthy meals that if purchased privately would be $5 each does not occur to him.
What's this? Funding issues at the state supported facility his grandmother lives in? Oh, just a budgetary quibble, no real worries. The legislature was voting on how much of an increase for the next fiscal year. But he made a note to himself that he needed to take the kids to visit her again sometime this month. Hopefully her leg was fully healed, that break had been nasty. And that neither she, nor he, nor any of her family had had to pay for it to be set and fixed did not occur to him.
Nor did it occur to him that the only reason he had one of the bedrooms at the house as his "office" was because the Federal government was paying his grandmother a social security check and the State government was subsidizing her nursing home. Never minding the free medical care and the food stamps that the facility had applied for - and got - in her name. All things he could have provided out of his own pocket - but all things he left to the taxpayer.
Idly he thought of the much needed vacation he was planning on taking in a few months. He and his family were going to go out to Yosemite National Park, where'd he'd not be worrying about bandits or bears, not given the numbers of park rangers paid to be there for just in case he should ever wish to see the place.
A dozen other examples of what Bob gets could be cited and worked into this narrative. Tax funded stadiums for the sports he watches, his subsidized electrical power, free GPS, his cousin's food stamps meaning that Bob wasn't having to have him over for dinner every week, the fact that all the roads are kept clear of snow each winter, the state universities that have subsidized loans waiting for his kids, "loans" that are statistically unlikely to be paid back, never minding the Pell grants, tuition aid and assistance, and etc., the entirety of the internet, the entire U.S. Postal Service - but wait, Bob's seen something that has made him angry! What could that be?
Oh, yes. Bob is reading the national news now, and he's seen where there is some protest from some who want a single payer universal health care system! "Oh, those socialist freeloaders!" Bob is thinking, "Why don't they get a job? And earn their own care?"
"Like I do", he mutters aloud. And setting his perfectly safe and pure coffee down - that only costs $8 per container as the U.S. Navy keeps the pirates away from the trade ships - he got back to his job.
Because he believes in capitalism, and in pulling his own weight.
