I saw this picture today, and while it was so ridiculous that it was actually funny, the replies kind of pound home a pretty good point:
I'm not here to make fun of or shit on anyone's religion, but the root of the problem is clearly in our methods of taxation:
Staggering numbers, but are they legit? In the above graphic there are two sourcing links, did you try to click them (ha)? I took the liberty of following the first one for you, the second one appears to be dead. That first link takes you to a USA Today article that tackles this very subject; how much money does the U.S. government forgo by not taxing religious institutions?
In the article, Professor of Sociology Ryan Cragon and two students conducted research that says that the government could be losing out on as much as 71 billion a year. 71 billion...that is 71,000,000,000 dollars. That's a lot of rovers.
How can you justify that? Well, when asked, Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said that "Americans have made a democratic decision that religious institutions are good for our communities — believers and atheists alike."
Good for our communities? I can see 71,000,000,000 feeding a lot of people, paying for more police and fire men and women, paying our teachers more, improving road conditions, allowing for tax breaks for hard working middle class families. Yes, 71 billion dollars would benefit our communities far more than giving tax exemptions to religious organizations.
So, why does the fundamentalist right want to attack science every time a major achievement happens? Is it because of them that the funding for NASA has been sliding down hill since the 1960's? Here is another alarming graphic:
In the 1960's NASA's budget peaked somewhere close to 4.3% of the Federal Budget. Now? 0.5%. That's sad. What's more sad? In 2012 NASA got just below 20 billion dollars, that is more than 3 times less than religion saved on tax breaks. Keep that in mind next time you want to cry about X amount of money going towards the next X scientific endeavor.
I'm not here to make fun of or shit on anyone's religion, but the root of the problem is clearly in our methods of taxation:
Staggering numbers, but are they legit? In the above graphic there are two sourcing links, did you try to click them (ha)? I took the liberty of following the first one for you, the second one appears to be dead. That first link takes you to a USA Today article that tackles this very subject; how much money does the U.S. government forgo by not taxing religious institutions?
In the article, Professor of Sociology Ryan Cragon and two students conducted research that says that the government could be losing out on as much as 71 billion a year. 71 billion...that is 71,000,000,000 dollars. That's a lot of rovers.
How can you justify that? Well, when asked, Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said that "Americans have made a democratic decision that religious institutions are good for our communities — believers and atheists alike."
Good for our communities? I can see 71,000,000,000 feeding a lot of people, paying for more police and fire men and women, paying our teachers more, improving road conditions, allowing for tax breaks for hard working middle class families. Yes, 71 billion dollars would benefit our communities far more than giving tax exemptions to religious organizations.
So, why does the fundamentalist right want to attack science every time a major achievement happens? Is it because of them that the funding for NASA has been sliding down hill since the 1960's? Here is another alarming graphic:
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| Graphic via MHBenton |
In the 1960's NASA's budget peaked somewhere close to 4.3% of the Federal Budget. Now? 0.5%. That's sad. What's more sad? In 2012 NASA got just below 20 billion dollars, that is more than 3 times less than religion saved on tax breaks. Keep that in mind next time you want to cry about X amount of money going towards the next X scientific endeavor.
