Taxes Due!

[evolutionmovement]

Here in MA, you have to have health care or you get penalized at tax time for every month you weren't insured. And state tax, of course, sales tax is 10% on everything but food, clothes, and (I don't think) health expenses. NH has horrendous property taxes (their only tax), and they get almost no services in return. My sister's friend pays almost double property taxes for a house worth about 3/5 what mine's worth. My uncle pays somewhere around 10k for his. ME has higher sales tax than MA and VT has state tax, higher sales tax, and even more brutal property taxes than NH, I've been told. Everyone calls MA Taxachusetts, but compared to our neighbors, it's not actually that bad and I get to live in Cape Ann.

[SubaruNation]

taxes are good in some instances

[James614]

Here in MA, you have to have health care or you get penalized at tax time for every month you weren't insured.

That's brutal. But I guess it's fair, since it IS the government's responsibility to help health care and insurance companies' bottom lines.

[evolutionmovement]

Yeah, it sucks. I have relatively cheap premiums, but only because my company offers it (most companies have to unless it's a small place with less than 10 employees IIRC). Doctors are the most worthless overrated mechanics there are. The only time they've ever done anything for me was when they wrote a prescription for what I already diagnosed (ulcer). They've never been able to figure out my inner ear issue that prevents me from riding a bike (my diagnosis - the idiot doctors want to keep looking into my heart when they've already ruled it out, something I knew the result of anyway seeing as low blood pressure and good cholesterol runs in the family. It could only be my heart or inner ear and the heart's been ruled out as well as that I never get these dizzy/nauseous spells any other time but when I'm balancing to ride a bike.

This isn't House - these people are freaking idiots. Don't even get me started on how they still haven't diagnosed my mother's lung problem or didn't find my grandmother's cancer, etc.

I'd rather give the money to charity than have it go to these glorified pharmaceutical salesmen douchebags (plus I can write off charitable contributions).

[SubaruNation]

yyyyyyyyyyep. *drinks beer*

[Richard]

Boomhauer FTW!

How are your roads in Mass? Ours are absolute crap. The DOT doesn't even have the money to half-assed patch the canyons and craters left from winter, let alone fix them. The good 'ol Governor gave all the money set aside from our huge gas taxes to the teachers and schools just so he could get reelected. Two months after he won, saying he had balanced the budget, we found out we were actually $2 billion in the hole. And guess where he wants to take from again?

At least we don't have Glug Glug for a senator.

[evolutionmovement]

The roads are pretty pockmarked, but they're definitely not the worst in the country. But we have bridges that are only standing because they are so old that they date back to the days of overengineering (like the 100+ yr. old Boston-Cambridge Longfellow bridge spanning the Charles River). New bridges in a similar state of disrepair would have collapsed. You see netting under some over them on the freeways to catch falling concrete. All our road money went into the Big Dig disaster which, you may have seen on the news as it was a huge project, has massive leaks and a ceiling tile fell and crushed someone last year due to shoddy construction (how about this? They used epoxy to anchor 3-ton concrete ceiling tiles into place, which is bad enough, but they got the wrong kind as well. The whole thing is slap-your-forehead stupid - do ceiling tiles need to be 3-tons to withstand the vacuum generated by the vent towers? I can't see why a relatively light-weight braced steel panel couldn't do the same job). But that's what you get when you give billions to mobsters and notoriously thieving contractors. I was offered a no-show job with no qualifications for $60k/yr. I didn't take it because what goes around comes around and I just don't agree with that shit anyway. They wonder where all the money went when simple flag men are living in half-million dollar homes with two new big SUVs in the driveway.

[Richard]

Yeah, the big dig was quite the boondoggle many thought it would be.

And with the rich roadbuilders, I see you suffer some of the same problems we do. To bad they're union workers or things would actually be more proportionate to the real world.

[n2x4]

BUMP! It's that time again...