Taxing Teenagers

Spider at home in Nepal

by Shannon Sturman

Of coarse you’ve all heard of the very well known saying “there are only two things guaranteed in life - death and taxes.” During these hard financial times it is especially difficult to pay taxes when politicians are so careless with money that is so hard to earn.

Taxes are no strangers to me. I worked at a sandwich shop for two years while I was in high school, and I was able to see first hand just how much the government took from my pay check every two weeks! It was sickening to see how hard I worked each hour and then so much money was taken away in taxes. It was frustrating to know I was a high school student working twenty five hours per week, and my money potentially was being given to people who didn’t have quite the same work ethic as I did. Something just doesn’t seem right when a hard working teenager is building a foundation to be responsible by working after school and on weekends, and all they see for that hard work is Uncle Sam taking a lump sum from every paycheck. It seems to me the government is discouraging hard work and making it too easy to be lazy. What are the true incentives to be a hard worker when it is so easy to free load off the system? By the time I left my job at 18 years of age, I probably worked more in those two years than some have by 30 years of age.

I’m not against taxes. I believe when taxes are used in realistic manners such as maintenance of roads and public safety, they can be very beneficial to everyone. However, I do have an issue when my tax dollars are being used to support politicians’ lifestyles. For example, the use of private jets when commercial travel is so much less expensive . It is mind boggling to know just how many tax dollars politicians spend even though they know we are experiencing major deficits. Yet, they tell us we need to learn how to cut back and adjust; it seems to me they are hypocrites.

If there was more tax money put into higher education I think we would get a return on our investment. If California put as many tax dollars into higher education as they did welfare, every student could earn a PhD. With more professors and better instruction, undergraduate graduation rates and the quality of education would increase significantly. In return the graduates would enter the job field better prepared and able to repay the tax payers by contributing their tax dollars back into the system. This would create a circular movement of money flow where the tax payers would gain more money than they originally paid into the system