Think about this one, guys

Yeah : street art. Not bad. I like it a lot myself. In fact street art artists are being commissioned in France to do their thing on the tops and sides of ugly buildings thereby alleviating the architectural tedium of factories in the outskirts of Paris. So, I'm not so certain this necessarily qualifies as "illegal" -- at least worldwide. You'll also find many good, serious art books that document street art the world over and view it as a legitimate (as in "legal" at least in these art lovers' view). So, nice, but no cigar.

As far as paying no taxes is concerned. Ask yourself, what is it that you ensure receiving as a citizen in return for taxes -- things you need, things that are good, things you count on without even thinking about it. Roads, road repair : there's a good one.

Police : there's another. Would you want freelance policemen in your city? Would you want a mercenary army? I'm no huge fan of the military, but there's a lot of good it does, in addition to the destructive posturing crap.

Are you environmentally conscious? Do you have ANY idea the hoops oil and gas companies have to go through to drill in environmentally sensitive areas? Probably not. Most people don't. Unless you happen to be in a relatively remote hilly community, say, where an oil company wants to tap into a promising looking reservoir. If you live in such a place, you probably know about the sometimes years-long process the EPA can put "big oil" through to, first, get permission to drill and, second, drill in an environmentally sensitive manner.

You like to vacation a few hundred miles from home? Do you walk or bicycle to get there? Or do you drive a car or ride a plane or ship or train? If you like to take a break every now and again just to get away from it all, you're asking oil and gas companies to find the fuel that can get you there. And that's just your vacation. Just think of your everyday life. You like to use your computer? Obviously, you like the internet. So do I. I like my electricity. I pay my bills. I also want clean air and safe electrical generation plants and for my internet service to be reliable. SO : I pay my taxes so the folks who get my electricity for me and make sure my internet service is reliable don't screw up the environment in the process. 

With taxes, it's on and on about the good we get from them. Focusing on "government waste" is a red herring. And who, may I ask, is ACTUALLY doing the wasting? Medicare : old fat lazy smoking people who won't exercise and take responsibility for their own physical and mental health (I'm just generalizing here, so bear with me...). Social Security : old lazy people who had kids they couldn't afford and ended up alienating them and spent money they didn't have on homes and clothes and vacations etc relying on a handout when they got fed up with "working" : and LOOK INTO THIS ONE : poor old FDR didn't intend Social Security to last any much longer than a stop-gap period in the 1930s but which the American public (YES : the American PEOPLE) have been hanging on to for 80 years. Next to these expenditures, the money spent on the military nonsense that paranoid power grasping psychotics get us in to seems like a walk in the park.

Oh, be careful what you ask for : Not paying taxes? What if everybody had the same wish as you -- that all your wishes became reality : WHAT a mess..........

AND what about the "current economic crisis"? Yeah, what about it? What's it based on? Greed? Whose greed? What's that again : WHOSE greed? Think about it.

Great. Now : How do you pay the rent?

Thank you, sir. I did have a good day. And I hope to have a good day Monday. That's the way it goes : one day at a time.

Could you please look at my reply to lilly regarding lilly's answer "not paying taxes"? "Government waste" : What exactly IS this?

And, yes, the question I posed is hypothetical. Hypothetically, a great big bunch of steel and special alloys and o-rings and screws and huge tanks of gas and a great big diesel engine cannot defy gravity and soar across the Atlantic. Ask a physicist to tell explain to you HOW it works. He'll be able to give you theory up the ying-yang. But WHY? When it comes right down to it, if that physicist is worth his salt, he just plain doesn't know. So when you fly a couple hundred miles to visit your kids or your mom or take a little vacation, you're flying in the midst of a hypothesis that's built on the basis of theory.

And yes, you're just one person with one vote. Think about this : So is Mr. Obama : just one person, just one vote. No more, no less. Just like anyone. After all : What IS this country based on but that?? Only he has the guts to choose to upset his quiet life and muster up enough people to give their one vote to him -- with their confidence on his conscience day in and day out -- and to live in the White House, to the mortal danger of himself and the woman he loves and their beloved children. And you better believe he's in mortal danger. As we speak, there's someone who hates blacks JUST for being black and for no other reason at all, who's plotting to kill not only him, but his wife and his kids -- and would probably like to wipe out the family dog, too. I think Mr. Obama and his wife are smart enough to know that this is happening. And he is, NOT hypothetically, risking day in and day out for the rest of his current term and maybe for another grueling, aging, taxing, wearing four years, criticism and ridicule from us all for shouldering that burden. 

Well. Aren't you glad you didn't sign up for that life?

Hello Deb. Yes I have an answer. I was asked this question in 2000 as part of a "parlor game" and I've pondered my answer ever since -- especially compared to the answers of friends and family. 

I'm not willing to state my answer yet. I'm not satisfied that those who are idly perusing this site, just like any other on the internet, would give the sort of careful thought to my answer that I gave not only in coming up with it, but in thinking about it for the past nine years.

And, no, I'm not doing any type of research paper or anything. I'm just a nobody like anybody else. Just living my life like anybody else. I'm finding it pretty sad that nobody here, at any rate, is really giving the question -- or their answer -- the kind of consideration I think a question of this nature deserves.

Oh well, I'm kind of a lonely type. Quiet person. Nobody's ever paid that much attention to me in my life. Why should I expect a few strangers to do something even those closest to me never have.

And that's about as close to indulging in self-pity as I get, OK??

But, hey, you gotta admit, I think, that using the internet like this is a WHOLE lot better than so many of the useless ways people use this amazing and incredible gift.........