Spring sprang with a vengeance in April, and despite the bouts of Spring fever, we took our laptops outside to enjoy the new season while keeping the posts flowing.
No foolishness here… just good stories from the wide world of sustainability. Here’s a few of our best…
April 2008
By John Ivanko •
April 30, 2008
May 1: May Day.
For the average American working for a paycheck, May Day — a pagan spring ritual where you dance around a Maypole — marks yet another, less festive occasion.
From the first of January until around the first of May, all the money many of us will earn goes to pay our share of income tax to the US government.
Kiss those months — that money — goodbye (the present tax stimulus package is really just a refund).
We followed the advice of our parents, as most children do: get a good education, go to college and get a job — a nice, secure, well-paying one, with great fringe benefits, stock options or profit-sharing. But the bimonthly paychecks — after the government gets its share for income, Social Security and Medicare taxes — aren’t enough to keep up with the bills. Even with raises and promotions, many of us feel that we keep getting further in the hole, since the more we earn in earned income, the more it’s taxed. The reality is that the system is largely devised this way, not to tax the very rich but to exact a fee on the middle class and poor to keep these wage earners on the treadmaster of a job — or “promising career.”
