Let's say an IBM employee fuels up his/her vehicle. How exactly did they get the money to fuel up their vehicle? They're using what IBM paid them to fuel up.
And the Federal Reserve printed the "money" they were paid. I mean WTF is your point supposed to be? As far as I can tell, you have NONE. Your "paid for the by the private sector" fits the bill with government employees as well, except they're not paid by the private sector, unless you're going to make some convoluted argument that their money is from tax payers who are paid by the private sector (except the government workers who also pay taxes and are not from the private sector, thus junking your silly argument with an infinite loop ad nauseum).
And IBM gets the money to pay them because of demand for their goods and services. So "you and I" are part of the private sector in that we work for companies in the private sector.
Speak for yourself. I do not work in the private sector.
Don't you just love it when your government wastes money like a drunken sailor?
Don't you just love it when greedy corporations waste money on CEOs that bankrupted the company and get golden parachute packages worth MILLIONS
anyway?
And if you think that YOU don't pay for it (unlike government jobs by taxes), think again. All those costs are passed on to the consumer and when banks get bailed out, YOU foot the bill once again, private or not. So once again, I say your argument has no merit what-so-ever. Money is money and it's ultimately just numbers in an account or ink printed on paper. Unless you've purchased something like gold, your "money" will disappear the minute inflation runs rampant in a Greece Gone Bad scenario.
Don't you love it when your tax dollars go towards paying salary and benefits to a government employee for a particular job when someone in that same job in the private sector could never dream of getting those benefits/salary?
That depends on the job and what job you're comparing it to. I think a LOT of private sector jobs are massively overpaid, particularly at the top-end which has risen at rates hundreds of times higher than the people under them over the years. CEOs used to make maybe $1-5 million. Now they make $50 million a year plus $200 million in stock options and if they're a bad CEO they still get rewarded for it. But people like you justify that by saying they're somehow "worth" it (even if they run the company into the ground), because "supposedly" they're not easily replaced unlike your mid-level office worker where ten interns are waiting at the door to get into the company. Human life is measured and valued by how many replacements are waiting at the door. It's a crock of crap.
I make Middle Class income. I have Blue Cross health insurance. I pay large co-pays. My house isn't worth 1/8 what the same size house goes for in California (i.e. 2000 sq. feet). I drive a Subaru, not a Ferrari. The only person that "dreams" of making what I make (rather than what CEOs make) are minimum wage employees. The idea I'm overpaid is laughable. 1st Energy down the street typically pays 1.5-2x what I make for the same sort of job. They're downsizing/consolidating right now, though or I'd probably be applying there right now.
And before you say, I'm not talking teachers, firefighters, police officers, and ambulance drivers.
I'm none of those. My two degrees are in electronic engineering. Nobody "gave" me this job either. I spent seven full time years in college to get where I'm at and I don't owe a dime to anyone except for my house mortgage.
And what you are talking about is not investment. Maintaining an existing road/bridge is not an investment. It's just the cost of maintenance.
Your words do little to convey the fact that are infrastructure is CRUMBLING and so whether you want to call it an investment of just "maintenance" is irrelevant. The right wing does NOT want to spend another
dime on repairing our infrastructure. All they can do is whine that we spend spend spend too much, block every program suggested (even ones they themselves proposed years earlier since they don't want the other side getting ANY credit what-so-ever) and so the GARBAGE drags on and on and our country sits here rotting away while these politicians play fraking GAMES with our lives. Complain about wasting money in one breath and give away land for $2 an acre to oil companies as a gift in the waning years of the Bush administration. Cry we are taxed too much on one hand, but refuse to vote for removing tax incentives for oil drilling on the other (even though they don't need a dime of it right now). Vote to screw people with preexisting health conditions but scream that "death panels" are going to decide who lives and dies with senior citizens (even though it's a total lie).
Sorry, but I know the right's line of bullcrap all too well and the problem is that they've destroyed all their own credibility along the way trying to disguise the fact that they think anyone who can't afford health care should die and that anyone in industries like fast food should make LESS than minimum wage (because they never wanted the minimum wage to ever be this high in the first place) and nevermind that you can't live on the wages most retail type jobs pay, they write them off as the jobs of students and idiots that couldn't get a college degree (even though a HELL of a lot of college degree people are stuck working those jobs right now with tons of debt beacause they excessed all those higher paying jobs to places like India for the SAME FREAKING REASON.
GREED
Yes, you don't want your tax dollars to pay for ANYTHING that doesn't benefit you personally and you'll whine all flipping day long about it, but in the mean time everyone beneath you is worthless animal trash and should be euthanized if they need health care. Yeah, I know your type very well and you make me sick. Call that
insubstantial all you want. That's what I call your conscience, after all.
Countries like Germany and China are investing in their own transportation networks like high speed rail. We have Amtrak. I think there was another train collision somewhere today even. Yeah, we don't
need high speed rail. We don't
need NASA. We don't
need a lot of things. But the difference between a 1st world country and a 3rd world one isn't measured on what they need, but on how they LEAD. We used to lead in space exploration. We used to lead in manufacturing. We used to lead in new technology. We used to do a lot of things. Now all we do is EXCESS middle class labor (because we can make more profit for the top 1% by doing so) and who gives a crap about this country? We can always move our headquarters to Mexico, after all (threat threat). Oh wait, technically we are already headquartered in the Bahamas where there are no corporate taxes what-so-ever.
