Did you get yours done early or are you currently standing in a post office line from hell hating life?  If you are in the latter category, will this learn ya?  Yeah, didn't think so you procrastinating bastards, you.

Today's post actually has some useful information.  Have you ever wondered where your tax dollars are going, but were too lazy to care enough to find out?  Well today's your lucky day, cause if you go to wheredidmytaxdollarsgo.com you can find out.  From there you can plug in your income and filing status and it'll tell you where your tax dollars went.  (Note however that it estimates the standard deductions so it's not completely accurate.)

Let's say I made $225,000.00 last year because I'm a rich ass motherfucker, but I'm a moron and I took the standard "fuck me and take all my money please, Mr./Ms. IRS" deductions.  This is where my money went:


So what you'll notice, regardless of how much you actually paid, the largest chunks of your tax money are going to Social Security, Net Interest, National Defense, Medicare, and Income Security.  Some of the larger pie slices that aren't labeled, include Veteran's Benefits, Education, Transportation, and International Affairs.

If you don't know what social security, net interest, national defense and medicare are then you are an idgit and should just stop reading this now.

But what is Income Security?  I'm glad you asked!  Well it includes welfare, among other things, but there are quite a few of those "other things".  About 45% of Income Security is spent on Federal employee retirement/disability and on Unemployment.  About 15% is for food and nutrition assistance (i.e., food stamps) and then about 3% (1% of total tax dollars) is going to what you and I both consider "welfare": i.e., money given to those poor, lazy, unwed bitches milking the system and TAKING ALL MY HARD EARNED CASH, right?  Hmmm..... let's say that the average person pays $11k in taxes (assuming a $50K salary and standard deductions).  That would mean that about $110 of his/her tax money went to "welfare".  (Yeah I know - goddammit, you coulda used that to buy a sweet ass Xbox game and some raisinetes and maybe a case of Mountain Dew or something.)

Hey - you know those tax rebates?  Those are lumped into the Income security category too.  About 4% of your tax dollars go to various and sundry tax rebates.  How much did you get back way back when with those "stimulus" checks?  If you're single the max was $600.  Going back to that 50K/year example, about $440 of your tax dollars go to tax rebates.  Wow, that rebate was awesome, wasn't it?  (Obviously I didn't get one because I'm a rich ass motherfucker.)

Anyway, don't take this as me being pro/con anything.  I'm not against giving money to the government for certain things.  On the other hand, just like you, I'd like to keep as much of my money as I can since I fucking hate sharing as much as the next person.  (And those of you saying, "what do you MEAN just like me??? I think we should pay more taxes.  We're too greedy.  We need to share the love and spread the wealth around!!!!" - go for it.  I'm sure the government wouldn't mind if you wrote them a check for an extra couple-o-grand or 10 or 50 or more!  And I know we'd all appreciate your generosity as well.)

So since I know you think you could run this country better if they'd only listen to YOU, what would you cut back on?  Where would you stop spending money?   The conservatives would pick social services and the liberals would pick defense, right?  Those are easy things to hack since they account for so much of our budget.  But how would you propose to make those cuts?  What would you take out?  Maybe you think we shouldn't have military presence where we do, but it's kinda too late at this point isn't it?  Or maybe you think we should cut welfare and unemployment.  Let them eat cake! 

I'm thinking the problem isn't really what we spend our money on, rather it's how we spend that money once allocated because I suspect (though I don't know for sure...) that we squander a lot of money on stupid people and stupid shit.  Do we need new fangled airplanes that bring tons of money into some congressman's district or do we need to pay our soldiers enough to put them above the poverty level?  Do we need some obscure tax rebate or do we need to feed hungry people?

Do we need 10 levels of bureaucratic bullshit with 500 forms to fill out to complete a simple task?  Yes, apparently we do...

It's all about making the right choices and perhaps some of us are bad at choosing wisely or perhaps we are bad at electing officials who can choose wisely or perhaps we are just a country full of morons. 

Maybe it's just too late to rescue ourselves from our ultimate demise. 

And on that cheery note,  Happy Tax Day!  If you are getting a refund, go out and buy something awesomely frivolous.  The government appreciates you allowing them to hold onto your hard earned cash all year.

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