Taxes...

We had a lengthy discussion at dinner the other night about taxes. The kids' school has been talking up the importance of voting in May to pass the sales tax increase in order to save "specials" (i.e. art, music, and PE), and to maintain reasonable class sizes and a host of other things.



So our discussion went from what is a sales tax and who pays it, and what is an income tax and who pays it (and who doesn't. One example that came up was drug dealers, which Gabrielle had a bad opinion of. Remember this.)



Then the discussion turned to what things are paid for with your tax dollars, and this list included road maintenance, police officers, firefighters, prisons, uninsured people, our court systems.



Gabrielle's first comment after we told her prisons were paid for by tax dollars was "Why can't the prisoners pay for themselves? The drug dealers have all that money they aren't paying taxes on." and so we talked about how prisoners weren't working, and that someone had to pay for the building itself, the heat or air conditioning, the food to make their 3 meals a day. To which she responded, "They're criminals. Can't we just feed them every second day??"