In commercials they always show these happy people who have nice houses, often on a beach, they have nice loans and other property, they have time to do nothing but laugh for some reason, their teeth are perfectly white and their clothing looks fresh and it's sunny.
Seriously though, all these ear buds and other types of earphones that go inside the ear - I can't use them. None of them, they fall out, I would like to be able to use them, but I think my ears are too small or something like like that, so to use one, I'd have to tape it to me. But then there is another problem, long ago I lived in very cold climate, I had a situation when I was stuck in the cold for too long, had some frostbite and since then my left ear had this problem - when I use the phone on the left side for more than a few minutes or have earphones on, it starts hurting and the pain is very strong and lasts for a while before it subsides. Whenever I see a commercial that shows people wearing earphones for too long (like blue tooth devices) I start having this phantom pains in my ear, it hurts even to look at that commercial:) So they are showing this nice looking chick, I am enjoying the view and all of a sudden they are showing the earpiece, crap.
People with all the smart phones around, people with blue tooth headphones in their ears, it's already 'the norm', it's just it's not very convenient to have various electronic interfaces sticking out of your body, once the technology allows people to have all of this stuff on their bodies without the inconvenience of wires, weird gadgets that make you look like an Apocalypse Now character, then it will be part of daily life.
Ha ha ha, and if nobody can loan you money and your money isn't good because nobody produces anything, so your money isn't worth anything, where are you going to get the loans from? And if all of the credit that you had was used to build up the war machine and to buy foreign made consumer goods and finally nobody wanted your money anymore, where are you going to get the loans from?
I don't disagree that IF you have credit and can borrow, then you can in principle use the credit to build up infrastructure, but I do disagree that you know what you are talking about.
Infrastructure by itself will not make you more productive. USA didn't have any government infrastructure, yet in from early 18 hundreds up until 1913 the country did become the largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation, which means it had to produce enough to export, and to do that it had to build up infrastructure, all privately, so that the products could be produced and then exported.
Investing in infrastructure first? 1. You don't have the money. 2. Every cent you borrow you spend on wars and consumer goods (foreign once, that's your 54 billion USD/month trade deficit) 3. What are you going to connect with your infrastructure?
What are you going to connect with your infrastructure? You lost the factories, sure sure, you can connect one downtown to another with yet another wider road, you can put a road from your downtown right into a corn field in Iowa.
That's right, at this point in your history, the infrastructure that you COULD use to reduce your trade deficit has nothing to do with moving cars around, it's not roads, it's a pipe that would be eventually used to pump your natural resource for productive use somewhere else, like China, because they CAN pay, they produce things. And for you to build up your economy again, you'd have to work down your debt and deficit, and to do that you'd have to EXPORT something useful, not just fresh looking pieces of green paper.
USA is going to be a net energy exporter, USA will be exporting what it can still produce. Energy, food, other resources that it mines, that's going to be the backbone of US economy for a while, before it can rebuild its real manufacturing capacity.
Investing in infrastructure first? What gives you the idea that your government wants to do that anyway? Your government wants to put the borrowed money into the pockets of military contractors and it has to put some money into the pockets of you consumers, so that they won't pay attention to what's happening and would continue 'voting' the way they are supposed to, Obama or Romney, whatever.
You can't invest into shit worth of infrastructure if you don't produce anything that can pay for that expense, and all of your credit is used to buy wars and also foreign made goods.
Until you restructure the debt and get gov't out of business of regulating business and doing all of this stuff (including wars, infrastructure, business regulations, all the nonsense that has been going on for over 100 years now), you won't have any new infrastructure that will make any sense.
Oh, sure, you can have gov't come up with work projects, but none of them will be sustainable and useful, they will put you more into debt and won't give you any competitive advantage since that infrastructure won't be built to satisfy real demand, only to have gov't create more make shift work and spend more.
There are 9 justices, 4 of them completely dismissed ACA as unconstitutional. 5 of them didn't, that doesn't change the fact that the law is unconstitutional.
4 justices agree with my assessment, AFAIC the 4 liberal justices there don't even understand the Constitution, and SCOTUS has been completely worthless for over 100 years now on these matter in any case. SCOTUS failed to protect the Constitution, which is its direct duty in hundreds of cases, they are politicians, not real protectors of what they are given to protect.
I can absolutely say that this ruling is unconstitutional.
As to mandate in ACA being ruled Constitutional because it is a tax, well gov't doesn't have unlimited taxing authority, and this argument did NOT come up in the ruling.
Gov't cannot levy just any tax it wants, it is limited by what is Constitutional as a tax, here is what Congress can levy as a tax:
1. Direct apportioned taxes. 2. Uniform excise taxes. 3. Due to the 16th amendment, direct income taxes that are not apportioned.
That is all that Congress can implement as a tax, this fine - tax does not fall under any category, so without amending the Constitution, the mandate is illegal based on that.
Now, Roberts said in the ruling that Congress is NOT allowed to legislate by taxing what it cannot legislate directly by law. That means that for example the only way to make alcohol illegal to buy was not to pass a tax, making alcohol completely unaffordable (for example instituting a tax of 1,000,000 dollars per bottle), the Constitution had to be amended to pass the prohibition law.
BUT Roberts said that in this case, because the tax that is implemented is NOT a huge tax (specifically it is LOWER than the cost of prescribed subscription to an insurance policy), it is thus not a type of tax that can be seen to prevent people from not buying insurance.
Roberts said (majority opinion) that the mandate is only passing as Constitutional because it is a tax, and because it is a small tax, but if the tax GOES UP, then this matter will have to be brought BACK to the court.
Roberts also declared that this is not a 'direct' tax because not everybody has to pay it (since those, who buy insurance and pay monthly premiums do not have to pay this fine - tax).
But that is completely outlandish, the income tax is a direct tax and yet NOT everybody pays it. Robert's ruling that a tax is only direct when 100% of population has to pay it and there are no exemptions is RETARDED.
It will be used in the further rulings, unfortunately now, but it is completely WRONG, and I know that it is wrong without being one of the justices on SCOTUS, I know it is wrong because I can read English and I understand what is written.
If Roberts came out and said: moon is made of cheese, would I still have to accept such nonsense? No.
Same here, I don't have to accept nonsense and saying that a tax is only direct when 100% of population pays it is nonsense. 51% of population in USA only contributes 3% of all income taxes, huge number of people get a return, they don't pay income taxes, but income taxes are still DIRECT taxes, they are unapportioned, but they are made legal in the 16th amendment anyway.
By saying that this is not a direct tax, Roberts has implied that this is an EXCISE tax, but in order for this to be an excise, there HAS to be a TRANSACTION taking place.
Excise tax is a tax on a commercial transaction. It is not a commercial transaction when you do NOT buy something, and in fact the further majority ruling (and the liberal justices said it themselves by the way) is that the commerce clause DOES NOT APPLY.
That's right - commerce clause is not broad enough to apply to ACA, and that is correct, it doesn't apply. (Fact is, commerce clause doesn't apply to businesses, it applies to the ACT of commerce - a transaction of buying and selling something, so this has been abused by the government for a century, again, I know it because I can fucking read).
So you want only one place where bad decisions will be made, not 50 places, with competition among each other? AFAIC there shouldn't be public education period.
That doesn't qualify for insightful, because it is historically ignorant.
USA had inflation all the way from 1800 to 1913, and it became largest manufacturer, exporter, creditor, while inventing new tech, even new industries, having tons of competitors in the market.
Deflation is only bad for governments, who are the biggest debtors.
Property rights cannot be trumped by anything, because property rights start with your body.
Do you believe that in your situation if Adam was bleeding to death and Charlie had a gun and a syringe, Charlie and Adam would be within their right to tie Bob down and transfuse his blood to Adam?
What if Adam needed say 4 litters of blood (and a grown man has what, about 5-6 litters?) With about 80% of blood gone, Bob wouldn't live, but Adam would, and since Adam made friends with Charlie, at this point they can easily overpower Bob, since Charlie has a gun.
What if Adam needed a new liver and Charlie could do the surgery, are they within their right to kill Bob and take his liver?
Now, we are not talking about any type of government here yet, this example only has 3 individuals in it, but the same principle applies with gov't, is gov't allowed, in your mind, to take a liver from Bob to give it to Adam?
Ok, liver is too much, Bob would die. Is government allowed to take ONE working kidney from Bob and give it to Adam?
The moment you answer YES to any of these questions is the moment I don't want to continue this discussion, because we are in different universes morally speaking, and they don't intersect. --
Now, there is no difference between property that is inside your body and property that is outside of your body if you are the rightful owner of it, which means without your productivity this property would not have existed.
So if you make a table, it is your table, gov't has no right to take that table and give it to anybody, same as with your kidney.
The table would not have existed have you not had created it. If you made 3 tables and sold 2 and used one, the money that you made is just the savings that you have that are equivalent to the tables you produced, again, AFAIC there is no difference between the property that you have within you that couldn't exist without you and the property that is outside of you that couldn't exist without you.
So now you can see the basis for how I am going to answer to your original question, let's repeat it first:
1. 3 people in isolation, Adam, Bob, and Charlie. 2. Adam can't produce food and is starving 3. Bob has produced a lot of extra food 4. Charlie has just enough to eat and a gun.
Given this set of circumstances, here is what Bob has to consider. He has savings, so he can either give it to Adam for free or make an emergency loan to Adam. He can also forget about it and let Adam starve, after all, it's not Bob's fault that Adam didn't produce enough.
By the way, you have SKIPPED a possible solution, where Charlie gives some of his food to Adam and doesn't attack Bob with his gun, but I guess it's not something you'd think of, because you are a person with the gun and you don't want the resources to come from you (you are part of the majority, you want gov't to use threat of violence to steal from others to give to these 'poor'), but OK, let's look the other way for now.
My answer:
1. Bob knows that with only 3 people on the island losing one of the inhabitants can be dangerous for himself because it is possible that at some later point in time Bob will be in this same situation and he may have to ask Adam or Charlie for the same favour.
2. Bob knows that if he just gives his savings away without getting anything back, he himself can be in the same position as Adam, because he is giving away something that he stored for a rainy day and nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, also clearly Bob worked for his savings, so that's the most important consideration - it's his property.
3. Bob knows that if OTOH he doesn't give the savings to Adam, he may be attacked by Charlie.
Real possible scenarios:
1. Bob kills Adam before there is a possibility of an attack.
Pros:
a. There will be no more Adam to talk about.
b. There will be no Adam asking Bob for his savings.
What do you do with those people who aren't that productive?
- under a productive system, the people who you are so worried about (children, the elderly) have the charity to look after them, and under a productive system the means of basic survival are extremely affordable.
Any kind of food is available today very cheaply, compare to 200 years ago, most people wouldn't be able to buy things as cheaply relatively to their circumstance, because of how unproductive the society was in general.
Productivity is a function of capital being applied to labour, the more capital is applied, the more productive a worker becomes.
So if a worker has only his hands and a stick to dig a hole, he can only do so much. Give him a good shovel and he'll do more, but save and invest the savings and produce (or buy) an excavator and all of a sudden one worker can replace a few hundred people with shovels.
That's productivity, that's what competition and free market capitalism does, that's what I am talking about, when I say that society gains most wealth under this model, I am not coming up with it from nowhere, I am looking at the history and it becomes clear that when a society provides more freedom to individuals, the society becomes wealthier for it.
Now, I do have moral objections to all types of welfare, to all types of wealth redistribution, I disagree with even minuscule amounts of socialism and obviously plenty of people (most people) do not agree with me on that, but those are our differences.
I see it as a completely immoral act to steal productivity of any individual and use it to subsidise any other individual, age, situation notwithstanding. If they are willing to provide charity on their own, that's not even a question, but stealing productivity - money from some, to give to others, that's not a charity, this violates all principles that I have and that is that.
However saying that I advocate your proposed option "B", completely dismisses the fact that a wealth society is society that provides the lowest prices for the basic necessities, and the lowest prices and most choices for every other type of product and service as well, and under such a system the people are free to form charities and help each other out, but nobody is free to steal from some to provide for anybody else.
AFAIC those who steal are criminals, and government that steals and subsidises then becomes illegitimate, so you can appreciate my view of the governments of the world.
Yeaaah, no need, I am not doing it either. I am not knocking grits and football, I am not knocking bread and circuses, it's the consumers of these, who are also supposedly 'informed voters', they make me vomit.
I know that, but I know the reasons as well - inflation. They were coin clipping (their version of money printing), diluting the value of precious metals in coins with base metals, they were counterfeiting and thus savings and investments were leaving, while the Republic became a democracy, and relied on gov't to 'redistribute wealth' to get their daily share of free bread and circuses.
1800 to 1913 - medicine was becoming better just as well, costs were fallig.
1913 to 1965, medicine was becoming better, costs were rising.
1965 - 2012, medicine was becoming better, costs took off and were not just rising, they went into space.
Difference? 1800 to 1913 - real money, no inflation, in fact deflation, no regulations on medical care, no regulations on medical insurance (which appeared around 1850 first, again, capitalism to the rescue)
1913-1965 still not too many regulations, little government involvement, no Medicare, no price fixing, the costs were rising in line with inflation that was caused by the Fed, people bought insurance out of pocket, a family of 4 would pay $25 per year for a comprehensive plan, with $500 deductible, covering up to 50K per year (2.5 yearly stays in a hospital).
1965 - 2012. With government money in insurance, later with Nixon, and his deal with the insurance companies, all the patents and gov't created monopolies via the FDA, the prices in medical insurance skyrocketed, the prices in health care skyrocketed, all of it went up much faster than inflation.
Now, in electronics the competition pushed prices down and even inflation couldn't cause the prices to stay up, that's how fast things were moving in computers, TVs, phones (once the gov't mostly stopped protecting AT&T monopoly on landlines), yet the expense to do research, build factories, release products was always considerable, it costs over 2 billion USD to build a fab as an example, it takes years of development to build a good product.
If government started a program designed to 'help the poor' to give everybody a cellphone, a computer, a TV, the prices for all of those products would be going up, not down, while the quality would be much lower with much less competition in the field, again, because there would be government money and regulations in it.
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As to charity - who says it should be equal exactly? Equality of charity - is that the motto? How about equality under the law? Equality under the law is obviously not enough anymore, we are looking for 'equality of charity'.
The gov't isn't authorised to provide charity by stealing productivity of others, the gov't isn't authorised to run health insurance or health care programs, it's not authorised to do 99% of what it does today.
You should move that 'moron' down to your signature section.
sure, 16th amendment, it relates specifically to income taxes and allows them, without changing anything else. Some believe that 16th amendment allows a direct tax without apportionment, that's not the case, direct taxes other than income taxes must still be apportioned.
but clearly constitutional under the taxing authority, regardless of the labels used.
- yeah, this is wrong.
As a tax, this is clearly UNconstitutional.
Here is a list of constitutional taxes:
1. Uniform excise tax. 2. Direct apportioned tax. 3. 16th amendment established a direct tax on 'income' that doesn't have to be apportioned.
This tax doesn't fall under any of the options in that list, it is unconstitutional.
Now, maybe the gov't wants to argue that it is an excise tax, because by not making monthly payments you are 'buying a privilege' or some such nonsense, but if they do that, then they have to go around another issue.
Court basically said: there is no mandate because you don't go to jail if you don't pay monthly premiums.
BUT THERE IS PENALTY. What is it, 2.5% of your income, something around that.
OK, but the court said: there is no mandate there. So if there is no mandate, there can be no privilege not to buy that product, because if there is no mandate, you have a right not to buy it.
This entire thing is not over, there will be more challenges and there should be.
I understand your confusion, you have been taught that and you believe that an empire can be successful by stealing from others, this is consistent with your believe that in the capitalism 'rich steal from the poor', none of it makes any sense, but I understand your believe structure, which is what you have been taught. You should try and research this subject a bit.
The failure on your part to understand that the Romans only became as wealthy as they did because they allowed... free trade. That's right, they had the most freedom in trade than anybody ever had before them, and that's what they derived all of their wealth from, which they stole from the private sector to grow an unsustainable government eventually. Does it remind you of anything?
Of-course a few thousand years from now, a similar clip will be made about USA.
What is it that USA ever did for us?
You know, except the production line used in car manufacturing, the airplane, the refrigerator, the sewing machine, the telegraph, the electrical grid.
Well, surely they'll include the Internet and the Bomb as fine examples of something that is a bit closer related to the research done by actual government, of-course all for war.
So no, it's not a response that is appropriate, it's a sad one, because it should point you at the exact problem and yet you think you have something that is helping your argument.
Relax, I don't have anything specific against football or any other sport for that matter, it's not about football, it's about daily cheese and the sports arena intake that satisfies the primal instincts absent of capacity for higher mental faculties. I should have added porn to it, of-course, and there are different types of porn.
As I said, you are within your rights to stop participating in this discussion. I am much more knowledgeable on US laws and Constitution than you will ever be, clearly. As to economics - you can't even start understanding the basics of it, you don't have the mental capacity.
That's just one more reason (as if more were needed) that government shouldn't be allowed in business, education, health care, money, etc., oh well, eventually the society will be so dumb, it wouldn't care about anything but their daily bowl of cheese grits or whatever they eat and a 12 hours of American Football on all channels daily. Eventually... oh wait.
First: gold is valuable because HISTORY shows that it is valuable.
You are 'sneering', show me one piece of paper currency that is older than gold. Forget it, show me a piece of fiat currency that is older than 200 years. How about a piece of fiat currency that is older than 150 years? I can continue.
There is an expression - not worth a Continental. I wonder if 'not worth a Federal will be within my lifetime (and I only wonder because I don't know if I'll still be around in 5 years from now).
OTOH gold has PROVEN to be a good store of value, it is a good unit of account and it works as means of exchange. Today on this planet people trade for gold instead of paper money in places like Zimbabwe, and they wrap their gold dust in Trillion Zimbabwe dollar notes.
So again, you are trying very hard to show how stupid gold is supposedly, while completely dismissing the simple historic truth - gold is still here, it's still money, paper and other types of fiat always disappear, they don't last too long.
You want to be in US dollars or Euro for much longer? Hey, it's not problem. You think it's circular logic that gold is valuable? We know gold is valuable, we still have mining companies extracting it, thus it is valuable to us.
Gold is not air, water, food or clothing if that is what you mean, because they only things we truly can't survive without is air, water, food and clothing - but we do want to have savings beyond the immediate air, water, food and clothing that we need, because that's how we improve our lives - build up savings, invest, make more stuff with investments, store value in certain things, gold works, history shows it works, maybe you like paper, it's your life.
You probably haven't done business with China, so you don't know, I don't have to teach you everything, but factories in China are mostly built privately, stores are all private, the country is giving a good name to communism while being most free market capitalists in the world.
Anyway, you can keep enjoying your mental masturbation if you like, I have to sleep.
Ratification, my dear anonymous coward, the States ratified the Constitution and gave the federal gov't CERTAIN powers, obviously the powers that the federal government stole from the people over the years are nowhere near being limited by the document.
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Christ, 'nice loans', I meant nice lawns. Now when will the computer learn to understand not just what I typed, but what I meant, ha? Ha?
In commercials they always show these happy people who have nice houses, often on a beach, they have nice loans and other property, they have time to do nothing but laugh for some reason, their teeth are perfectly white and their clothing looks fresh and it's sunny.
Here is what they don't show.
Seriously though, all these ear buds and other types of earphones that go inside the ear - I can't use them. None of them, they fall out, I would like to be able to use them, but I think my ears are too small or something like like that, so to use one, I'd have to tape it to me. But then there is another problem, long ago I lived in very cold climate, I had a situation when I was stuck in the cold for too long, had some frostbite and since then my left ear had this problem - when I use the phone on the left side for more than a few minutes or have earphones on, it starts hurting and the pain is very strong and lasts for a while before it subsides. Whenever I see a commercial that shows people wearing earphones for too long (like blue tooth devices) I start having this phantom pains in my ear, it hurts even to look at that commercial :) So they are showing this nice looking chick, I am enjoying the view and all of a sudden they are showing the earpiece, crap.
People with all the smart phones around, people with blue tooth headphones in their ears, it's already 'the norm', it's just it's not very convenient to have various electronic interfaces sticking out of your body, once the technology allows people to have all of this stuff on their bodies without the inconvenience of wires, weird gadgets that make you look like an Apocalypse Now character, then it will be part of daily life.
Ha ha ha, and if nobody can loan you money and your money isn't good because nobody produces anything, so your money isn't worth anything, where are you going to get the loans from? And if all of the credit that you had was used to build up the war machine and to buy foreign made consumer goods and finally nobody wanted your money anymore, where are you going to get the loans from?
I don't disagree that IF you have credit and can borrow, then you can in principle use the credit to build up infrastructure, but I do disagree that you know what you are talking about.
Infrastructure by itself will not make you more productive. USA didn't have any government infrastructure, yet in from early 18 hundreds up until 1913 the country did become the largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation, which means it had to produce enough to export, and to do that it had to build up infrastructure, all privately, so that the products could be produced and then exported.
Investing in infrastructure first?
1. You don't have the money.
2. Every cent you borrow you spend on wars and consumer goods (foreign once, that's your 54 billion USD/month trade deficit)
3. What are you going to connect with your infrastructure?
What are you going to connect with your infrastructure? You lost the factories, sure sure, you can connect one downtown to another with yet another wider road, you can put a road from your downtown right into a corn field in Iowa.
The little infrastructure that does make sense to build would be build privately but you are blocking those efforts.
That's right, at this point in your history, the infrastructure that you COULD use to reduce your trade deficit has nothing to do with moving cars around, it's not roads, it's a pipe that would be eventually used to pump your natural resource for productive use somewhere else, like China, because they CAN pay, they produce things. And for you to build up your economy again, you'd have to work down your debt and deficit, and to do that you'd have to EXPORT something useful, not just fresh looking pieces of green paper.
USA is going to be a net energy exporter, USA will be exporting what it can still produce. Energy, food, other resources that it mines, that's going to be the backbone of US economy for a while, before it can rebuild its real manufacturing capacity.
Investing in infrastructure first? What gives you the idea that your government wants to do that anyway? Your government wants to put the borrowed money into the pockets of military contractors and it has to put some money into the pockets of you consumers, so that they won't pay attention to what's happening and would continue 'voting' the way they are supposed to, Obama or Romney, whatever.
You can't invest into shit worth of infrastructure if you don't produce anything that can pay for that expense, and all of your credit is used to buy wars and also foreign made goods.
Until you restructure the debt and get gov't out of business of regulating business and doing all of this stuff (including wars, infrastructure, business regulations, all the nonsense that has been going on for over 100 years now), you won't have any new infrastructure that will make any sense.
Oh, sure, you can have gov't come up with work projects, but none of them will be sustainable and useful, they will put you more into debt and won't give you any competitive advantage since that infrastructure won't be built to satisfy real demand, only to have gov't create more make shift work and spend more.
There are 9 justices, 4 of them completely dismissed ACA as unconstitutional. 5 of them didn't, that doesn't change the fact that the law is unconstitutional.
4 justices agree with my assessment, AFAIC the 4 liberal justices there don't even understand the Constitution, and SCOTUS has been completely worthless for over 100 years now on these matter in any case. SCOTUS failed to protect the Constitution, which is its direct duty in hundreds of cases, they are politicians, not real protectors of what they are given to protect.
I can absolutely say that this ruling is unconstitutional.
As to mandate in ACA being ruled Constitutional because it is a tax, well gov't doesn't have unlimited taxing authority, and this argument did NOT come up in the ruling.
Gov't cannot levy just any tax it wants, it is limited by what is Constitutional as a tax, here is what Congress can levy as a tax:
1. Direct apportioned taxes.
2. Uniform excise taxes.
3. Due to the 16th amendment, direct income taxes that are not apportioned.
That is all that Congress can implement as a tax, this fine - tax does not fall under any category, so without amending the Constitution, the mandate is illegal based on that.
Now, Roberts said in the ruling that Congress is NOT allowed to legislate by taxing what it cannot legislate directly by law. That means that for example the only way to make alcohol illegal to buy was not to pass a tax, making alcohol completely unaffordable (for example instituting a tax of 1,000,000 dollars per bottle), the Constitution had to be amended to pass the prohibition law.
BUT Roberts said that in this case, because the tax that is implemented is NOT a huge tax (specifically it is LOWER than the cost of prescribed subscription to an insurance policy), it is thus not a type of tax that can be seen to prevent people from not buying insurance.
Roberts said (majority opinion) that the mandate is only passing as Constitutional because it is a tax, and because it is a small tax, but if the tax GOES UP, then this matter will have to be brought BACK to the court.
Roberts also declared that this is not a 'direct' tax because not everybody has to pay it (since those, who buy insurance and pay monthly premiums do not have to pay this fine - tax).
But that is completely outlandish, the income tax is a direct tax and yet NOT everybody pays it. Robert's ruling that a tax is only direct when 100% of population has to pay it and there are no exemptions is RETARDED.
It will be used in the further rulings, unfortunately now, but it is completely WRONG, and I know that it is wrong without being one of the justices on SCOTUS, I know it is wrong because I can read English and I understand what is written.
If Roberts came out and said: moon is made of cheese, would I still have to accept such nonsense? No.
Same here, I don't have to accept nonsense and saying that a tax is only direct when 100% of population pays it is nonsense. 51% of population in USA only contributes 3% of all income taxes, huge number of people get a return, they don't pay income taxes, but income taxes are still DIRECT taxes, they are unapportioned, but they are made legal in the 16th amendment anyway.
By saying that this is not a direct tax, Roberts has implied that this is an EXCISE tax, but in order for this to be an excise, there HAS to be a TRANSACTION taking place.
Excise tax is a tax on a commercial transaction. It is not a commercial transaction when you do NOT buy something, and in fact the further majority ruling (and the liberal justices said it themselves by the way) is that the commerce clause DOES NOT APPLY.
That's right - commerce clause is not broad enough to apply to ACA, and that is correct, it doesn't apply. (Fact is, commerce clause doesn't apply to businesses, it applies to the ACT of commerce - a transaction of buying and selling something, so this has been abused by the government for a century, again, I know it because I can fucking read).
B
So you want only one place where bad decisions will be made, not 50 places, with competition among each other? AFAIC there shouldn't be public education period.
You are a dumbass, talking about 'collapse' due to higher competition, idiot.
As to Rome - inflation was rampant as the government grew and stole money by coin clipping.
That doesn't qualify for insightful, because it is historically ignorant.
USA had inflation all the way from 1800 to 1913, and it became largest manufacturer, exporter, creditor, while inventing new tech, even new industries, having tons of competitors in the market.
Deflation is only bad for governments, who are the biggest debtors.
Property rights cannot be trumped by anything, because property rights start with your body.
Do you believe that in your situation if Adam was bleeding to death and Charlie had a gun and a syringe, Charlie and Adam would be within their right to tie Bob down and transfuse his blood to Adam?
What if Adam needed say 4 litters of blood (and a grown man has what, about 5-6 litters?) With about 80% of blood gone, Bob wouldn't live, but Adam would, and since Adam made friends with Charlie, at this point they can easily overpower Bob, since Charlie has a gun.
What if Adam needed a new liver and Charlie could do the surgery, are they within their right to kill Bob and take his liver?
Now, we are not talking about any type of government here yet, this example only has 3 individuals in it, but the same principle applies with gov't, is gov't allowed, in your mind, to take a liver from Bob to give it to Adam?
Ok, liver is too much, Bob would die. Is government allowed to take ONE working kidney from Bob and give it to Adam?
The moment you answer YES to any of these questions is the moment I don't want to continue this discussion, because we are in different universes morally speaking, and they don't intersect.
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Now, there is no difference between property that is inside your body and property that is outside of your body if you are the rightful owner of it, which means without your productivity this property would not have existed.
So if you make a table, it is your table, gov't has no right to take that table and give it to anybody, same as with your kidney.
The table would not have existed have you not had created it. If you made 3 tables and sold 2 and used one, the money that you made is just the savings that you have that are equivalent to the tables you produced, again, AFAIC there is no difference between the property that you have within you that couldn't exist without you and the property that is outside of you that couldn't exist without you.
So now you can see the basis for how I am going to answer to your original question, let's repeat it first:
1. 3 people in isolation, Adam, Bob, and Charlie.
2. Adam can't produce food and is starving
3. Bob has produced a lot of extra food
4. Charlie has just enough to eat and a gun.
Given this set of circumstances, here is what Bob has to consider. He has savings, so he can either give it to Adam for free or make an emergency loan to Adam. He can also forget about it and let Adam starve, after all, it's not Bob's fault that Adam didn't produce enough.
By the way, you have SKIPPED a possible solution, where Charlie gives some of his food to Adam and doesn't attack Bob with his gun, but I guess it's not something you'd think of, because you are a person with the gun and you don't want the resources to come from you (you are part of the majority, you want gov't to use threat of violence to steal from others to give to these 'poor'), but OK, let's look the other way for now.
My answer:
1. Bob knows that with only 3 people on the island losing one of the inhabitants can be dangerous for himself because it is possible that at some later point in time Bob will be in this same situation and he may have to ask Adam or Charlie for the same favour.
2. Bob knows that if he just gives his savings away without getting anything back, he himself can be in the same position as Adam, because he is giving away something that he stored for a rainy day and nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, also clearly Bob worked for his savings, so that's the most important consideration - it's his property.
3. Bob knows that if OTOH he doesn't give the savings to Adam, he may be attacked by Charlie.
Real possible scenarios:
1. Bob kills Adam before there is a possibility of an attack.
Pros:
a. There will be no more Adam to talk about.
b. There will be no Adam asking Bob for his savings.
Cons:
a. Charlie may see this as a threat, and
What do you do with those people who aren't that productive?
- under a productive system, the people who you are so worried about (children, the elderly) have the charity to look after them, and under a productive system the means of basic survival are extremely affordable.
Any kind of food is available today very cheaply, compare to 200 years ago, most people wouldn't be able to buy things as cheaply relatively to their circumstance, because of how unproductive the society was in general.
Productivity is a function of capital being applied to labour, the more capital is applied, the more productive a worker becomes.
So if a worker has only his hands and a stick to dig a hole, he can only do so much. Give him a good shovel and he'll do more, but save and invest the savings and produce (or buy) an excavator and all of a sudden one worker can replace a few hundred people with shovels.
That's productivity, that's what competition and free market capitalism does, that's what I am talking about, when I say that society gains most wealth under this model, I am not coming up with it from nowhere, I am looking at the history and it becomes clear that when a society provides more freedom to individuals, the society becomes wealthier for it.
Now, I do have moral objections to all types of welfare, to all types of wealth redistribution, I disagree with even minuscule amounts of socialism and obviously plenty of people (most people) do not agree with me on that, but those are our differences.
I see it as a completely immoral act to steal productivity of any individual and use it to subsidise any other individual, age, situation notwithstanding. If they are willing to provide charity on their own, that's not even a question, but stealing productivity - money from some, to give to others, that's not a charity, this violates all principles that I have and that is that.
However saying that I advocate your proposed option "B", completely dismisses the fact that a wealth society is society that provides the lowest prices for the basic necessities, and the lowest prices and most choices for every other type of product and service as well, and under such a system the people are free to form charities and help each other out, but nobody is free to steal from some to provide for anybody else.
AFAIC those who steal are criminals, and government that steals and subsidises then becomes illegitimate, so you can appreciate my view of the governments of the world.
Yeaaah, no need, I am not doing it either. I am not knocking grits and football, I am not knocking bread and circuses, it's the consumers of these, who are also supposedly 'informed voters', they make me vomit.
I know that, but I know the reasons as well - inflation. They were coin clipping (their version of money printing), diluting the value of precious metals in coins with base metals, they were counterfeiting and thus savings and investments were leaving, while the Republic became a democracy, and relied on gov't to 'redistribute wealth' to get their daily share of free bread and circuses.
1800 to 1913 - medicine was becoming better just as well, costs were fallig.
1913 to 1965, medicine was becoming better, costs were rising.
1965 - 2012, medicine was becoming better, costs took off and were not just rising, they went into space.
Difference? 1800 to 1913 - real money, no inflation, in fact deflation, no regulations on medical care, no regulations on medical insurance (which appeared around 1850 first, again, capitalism to the rescue)
1913-1965 still not too many regulations, little government involvement, no Medicare, no price fixing, the costs were rising in line with inflation that was caused by the Fed, people bought insurance out of pocket, a family of 4 would pay $25 per year for a comprehensive plan, with $500 deductible, covering up to 50K per year (2.5 yearly stays in a hospital).
People preferred private insurance to the existing options of Blue Shield, Blue Cross, I have a detailed journal entry on this.
1965 - 2012. With government money in insurance, later with Nixon, and his deal with the insurance companies, all the patents and gov't created monopolies via the FDA, the prices in medical insurance skyrocketed, the prices in health care skyrocketed, all of it went up much faster than inflation.
Now, in electronics the competition pushed prices down and even inflation couldn't cause the prices to stay up, that's how fast things were moving in computers, TVs, phones (once the gov't mostly stopped protecting AT&T monopoly on landlines), yet the expense to do research, build factories, release products was always considerable, it costs over 2 billion USD to build a fab as an example, it takes years of development to build a good product.
If government started a program designed to 'help the poor' to give everybody a cellphone, a computer, a TV, the prices for all of those products would be going up, not down, while the quality would be much lower with much less competition in the field, again, because there would be government money and regulations in it.
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As to charity - who says it should be equal exactly? Equality of charity - is that the motto? How about equality under the law? Equality under the law is obviously not enough anymore, we are looking for 'equality of charity'.
The gov't isn't authorised to provide charity by stealing productivity of others, the gov't isn't authorised to run health insurance or health care programs, it's not authorised to do 99% of what it does today.
You should move that 'moron' down to your signature section.
sure, 16th amendment, it relates specifically to income taxes and allows them, without changing anything else. Some believe that 16th amendment allows a direct tax without apportionment, that's not the case, direct taxes other than income taxes must still be apportioned.
This is not an income tax here.
but clearly constitutional under the taxing authority, regardless of the labels used.
- yeah, this is wrong.
As a tax, this is clearly UNconstitutional.
Here is a list of constitutional taxes:
1. Uniform excise tax.
2. Direct apportioned tax.
3. 16th amendment established a direct tax on 'income' that doesn't have to be apportioned.
This tax doesn't fall under any of the options in that list, it is unconstitutional.
Now, maybe the gov't wants to argue that it is an excise tax, because by not making monthly payments you are 'buying a privilege' or some such nonsense, but if they do that, then they have to go around another issue.
Court basically said: there is no mandate because you don't go to jail if you don't pay monthly premiums.
BUT THERE IS PENALTY. What is it, 2.5% of your income, something around that.
OK, but the court said: there is no mandate there. So if there is no mandate, there can be no privilege not to buy that product, because if there is no mandate, you have a right not to buy it.
This entire thing is not over, there will be more challenges and there should be.
I understand your confusion, you have been taught that and you believe that an empire can be successful by stealing from others, this is consistent with your believe that in the capitalism 'rich steal from the poor', none of it makes any sense, but I understand your believe structure, which is what you have been taught. You should try and research this subject a bit.
The failure on your part to understand that the Romans only became as wealthy as they did because they allowed ... free trade. That's right, they had the most freedom in trade than anybody ever had before them, and that's what they derived all of their wealth from, which they stole from the private sector to grow an unsustainable government eventually. Does it remind you of anything?
Of-course a few thousand years from now, a similar clip will be made about USA.
What is it that USA ever did for us?
You know, except the production line used in car manufacturing, the airplane, the refrigerator, the sewing machine, the telegraph, the electrical grid.
Well, surely they'll include the Internet and the Bomb as fine examples of something that is a bit closer related to the research done by actual government, of-course all for war.
So no, it's not a response that is appropriate, it's a sad one, because it should point you at the exact problem and yet you think you have something that is helping your argument.
shouldn't you restate your earlier arguments, including the
dimwit, fuckwad, narrow-brain, right-wing, racist, dickless, dips hit.
- wouldn't it make your argument gooder (it's a word that you may recognise, you know - good, gooder).
Relax, I don't have anything specific against football or any other sport for that matter, it's not about football, it's about daily cheese and the sports arena intake that satisfies the primal instincts absent of capacity for higher mental faculties. I should have added porn to it, of-course, and there are different types of porn.
dimwit, fuckwad, narrow-brain, right-wing, racist, dickless, dips hit.
- aah, beautiful, if that's what passes for an argument from your point of view then I understand why you can't grasp simple things.
As I said, you are within your rights to stop participating in this discussion. I am much more knowledgeable on US laws and Constitution than you will ever be, clearly. As to economics - you can't even start understanding the basics of it, you don't have the mental capacity.
That's just one more reason (as if more were needed) that government shouldn't be allowed in business, education, health care, money, etc., oh well, eventually the society will be so dumb, it wouldn't care about anything but their daily bowl of cheese grits or whatever they eat and a 12 hours of American Football on all channels daily. Eventually... oh wait.
First: gold is valuable because HISTORY shows that it is valuable.
You are 'sneering', show me one piece of paper currency that is older than gold. Forget it, show me a piece of fiat currency that is older than 200 years. How about a piece of fiat currency that is older than 150 years? I can continue.
There is an expression - not worth a Continental. I wonder if 'not worth a Federal will be within my lifetime (and I only wonder because I don't know if I'll still be around in 5 years from now).
OTOH gold has PROVEN to be a good store of value, it is a good unit of account and it works as means of exchange. Today on this planet people trade for gold instead of paper money in places like Zimbabwe, and they wrap their gold dust in Trillion Zimbabwe dollar notes.
So again, you are trying very hard to show how stupid gold is supposedly, while completely dismissing the simple historic truth - gold is still here, it's still money, paper and other types of fiat always disappear, they don't last too long.
You want to be in US dollars or Euro for much longer? Hey, it's not problem. You think it's circular logic that gold is valuable? We know gold is valuable, we still have mining companies extracting it, thus it is valuable to us.
Gold is not air, water, food or clothing if that is what you mean, because they only things we truly can't survive without is air, water, food and clothing - but we do want to have savings beyond the immediate air, water, food and clothing that we need, because that's how we improve our lives - build up savings, invest, make more stuff with investments, store value in certain things, gold works, history shows it works, maybe you like paper, it's your life.
You probably haven't done business with China, so you don't know, I don't have to teach you everything, but factories in China are mostly built privately, stores are all private, the country is giving a good name to communism while being most free market capitalists in the world.
Anyway, you can keep enjoying your mental masturbation if you like, I have to sleep.
Ratification, my dear anonymous coward, the States ratified the Constitution and gave the federal gov't CERTAIN powers, obviously the powers that the federal government stole from the people over the years are nowhere near being limited by the document.