Patriotism and taxes

On the airplane to Ft. Myers, I met a few people who were going to a building contractors’ supply conference at Marco Island. I heard my mom say my brother-in-law is going to a doctors’ conference at The Homestead. These are expensive places--conferences are always held at expensive places. But, hey, all the costs can be written off on your taxes if you go, so the joke is on people like you and me who pay our taxes so people on junkets to Las Vegas and elsewhere can live it up. The villa where we are staying is in a gated community and has a lot of country club and miscellaneous fees. Our hostess wrote off 55% of these fees because, if members of the country club had questions about roofs, they asked her husband.

It makes me angry that so many people in this country love to claim that they are patriots and they love their country while they aren’t willing to pay their fair share of taxes, letting other people pick up the tab for them as they jet around the country drinking cocktails and eating canapés. Same for corporations, which benefit from a range of taxpayer subsidies while offshoring patents and subsidiaries to dodge taxes.
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