Last week I blogged about my adventures at the Public Service Recognition event on the National Mall wherein I collected ridiculous swag with government logos. As I mentioned, there were lots of goodies for kids: toys, Frisbees, puzzles, yo-yos, activity books, and more. One of the coloring books I found deserves some extra attention. The IRS’s Statistics of Income Division is usually known for producing invaluable reports on tax data. The Division took a break from number crunching to put together a little booklet for children called, "How Taxes Help Us."
It opens with a little piece called, "Taxes":
When you have a job you send
some of your money to the I.R.S.
this is called paying a tax.The people who work at the I.R.S.
count the taxes that all of us pay.They tell the leaders how much
money there is to spend.
Left out is that: 1) we generally don't send the IRS money, they take it straight out of our paychecks, 2) about 47 percent of households pay no income tax, and 3) the leaders then completely disregard the information about how much there is to spend and run up trillion dollar deficits.
It continues on the next page:
Our leaders decide how to spend
our money.This money helps us in many
ways. It pays for schools, roads,
parks, and many other things.
And among the "many other things" are included transfer payments, bailouts for Wall Street, bailouts for automakers, Cash for Clunkers, wool and mohair price supports, tattoo removal, a water taxi service, kudzu removal, political party conventions, historic whaling and trading programs, foreign aid to Northern Ireland, sugar subsidies, office perks for millionaire ex-Presidents, government swag (like this coloring book!), and to top it all off, interest on the national debt.
Here is the rest of the coloring book, as you can see, my 3-year daughter was enjoying it, right before I snatched it away just like the IRS:
