Hey Mr. Hemingway where do our taxes go?

 HEMMINGWAY, TAXES, & HAPPY THOUGHTS?

Well we are in  what can best be described by accountants as “tax season.”  Here in my lower intestine of the woods (why should the neck always be featured?) we did our tax prep and some electronic filing.  Much like life tax prep is complicated  and needs to be simplified if possible.  It seems like  completing tax forms is pretty much a parallel  activity. To writing as described by HEMMINGWAy. Now I haven’t found  the original source for this, however  my memory serves me that he once said... 

“Writing is simple...you just sit down and bleed...”  And spit is with filing your taxes.  

Then there is. The question—“what does the government do with  the money?   

Well it seems  lawmakers like to argue over  what the government  will do with it, and yet, if you really sit down and think about it before you complain,  maybe the outlook would be different—for some of us anyway.  

You see we  have great assistance  in forgetting  that there is a difference  between politicians and what they do and what government is.  maybe we should look behind the curtain and pay attention for a second.  Politicians are the  people we choose to run the government or at least decide  the rules by which it will run and the things it will attempt to do. The government  or more correctly governments are. The organizations that spend funds to do the things we decided we couldn’t do by ourselves.  Have you ever taken a trip across any large segment of our country?  If so then you might realize that no individual  could have  built the roads you were driving on and maybe you can understand that t group of citizens got together and decided we needed  different roads and someone  to build them.   Have you ever seen a fire in your neighborhood?  Congrats for hiring a bunch of people trained to come put it out.  Have your children or did you  attend. A school?  In almost any case your neighbors a or the members of your religious community decided to raise up a school and hire some teachers.  

So before  you complain about taxes and politics...maybe ..just maybe... smile because some pretty cool things —we take for granted- are “government.  Even better is the fact that. We came together  to decide how, when, where, and with what...to do. A crap load of things.  

So here it is....tax time and while you may  not agree with the penalty for early withdrawal of pension funds, you might feel good that some of the funds go for things people.still agree upon and still work together to make better.  Plain and simple ...the fact that we have a civilian government and we have agreed to do so much with it holds out promise that people in your community can agree on other things that might help you find peace and joy... 

So get out that 1040 Schedule  A and start thinking about what you are doing for your neighbors and what they are doing for you.   More soon