Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Worth the Price of Admission

I was finishing up our taxes yesterday (I always wait till the end, for no reason). The little guy was inquisitive, like always, what I was doing. He then followed up with what are taxes.

Hmm. How to boil this down to a 6 year olds level. The simplest concept I could think of, "it is the price we pay to live in America".

This answered seemed to satisfy his question for now. I hope he continues to ponder on this and come back to it, like he does on most issues.

This conversation got me thinking. How do we compare and what do we get for our price of admission. Well basically there are only a few countries that have lower taxes than the US. Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Ireland.

Personally I might consider living in Japan but I am not sure about the rest. I have often considered my self lucky. I was born right here in the middle of the greatest most free country in the world. I was born in a time of prosperity and growing freedoms. Now of course I had no choice where or when I was born.

What if we did can you think of a better time and a better place to be born. What if your first stop before being born was a ticket booth and you could pick a country to be born in. Considering all the options and their "admission price" (taxes)can you think of a better value than America offers. I think it is worth pondering on this tax day.

1 comment:

eric said...

Excellent perspective. Gotta pay to have good infrastructure and a country we can be proud of. I really see no problem with taxes...someone has to pay for all that we are lucky to have.