Entitlement programs handicap people into not being able to provide for themselves, and they exist to buy votes. If people are given everything they have no reason to work for anything.
I have been registered independent since I have been able to vote, and party affiliations are a non-issue for me. I look at the people, what they have done, and what they are promising. Obama has no history of ever wanting to cut any spending other than on defense, and he has promised so much to several different groups, its hard to imagine he wouldn't spend more on entitlement programs that any president in history.
You have to pick your battles, and at the time, Iraq had the most anti-American government. Hopefully I don't need to remind anyone that we got hit before the war started.
Because national defense is one of the three things we should be spending money on, national defense, roads, and education. Anything that doesn't fit into one of those three categories should be cut. Of course, he doesn't take a stand on it like that, but Obama would spend circles around McCain.
"The United Nations once again has ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq. Today's evacuation follows a new warning from chief weapons inspector Richard Butler accusing Iraq of once again failing to cooperate with the inspectors. The United States and Britain repeatedly have warned that Iraq's failure to cooperate with the inspectors could lead to air strikes."
--Bob Edwards, NPR, 12/16/98
"What Mr. Bush is being urged to do by many advisers is focus on the simple fact that Saddam Hussein signed a piece of paper at the end of the Persian Gulf War, promising that the United Nations could have unfettered weapons inspections in Iraq. It has now been several years since those inspectors were kicked out."
--John King, CNN, 8/18/02
Now all we hear is "no blood for oil" and "Bush lied, people died"
I am probably just being baited right here into a conversation that no one is going to get anything out of (especially conversing with an anonymous coward) but there was a war fought over slavery, and those who were against it won. Can we get over it, or is it going to be continually used as a scapegoat against anyone using an argument made by our founding fathers? The men who wrote our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are quite possibly some of the greatest men to ever grace this planet we call earth. The gifts they gave us are being slowly taken away by an ever expanding government, and we need to stop it. Those of you who are allowing it to grow out of control are those who use this excuse to try and invalidate the great ideas they had. What are those ideas: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Finally found the quote I was thinking as a response to this nonsense:
The majority of the rich either inherited their fortune or were lucky. Becoming rich through hard work is really rare. Sometimes I've mused about the possibility of a 100% inheritance tax making everyone even at the start of their lives.
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it" Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, Apr 6 1816
There, from one of our founding fathers. If you disagree with that and live in the US, you are in the wrong country.
Anyway, my point was to counter your argument by discussing actual tax rates and pointing out that current rates, and increases (small ones, for sane definitions of small) on them are unlikely to push all that many people into situations where they stop working because of the tax burden they see on the additional income.
And my point was that lowering the incentives to achieve will have a horrible effect on everyone. People will not reach their full potential because they will not have as much of an incentive to. The government has always put in more social programs to continually "help" people, while handicapping them because they are not being forced to provide for themselves and reach their full potential. This is a slippery slope we have been sliding down for as long as our country has existed, I am just doing everything I can to stop it. It looks like we are shifting into a different country than as we were founded. I believe it was best said by Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
Just to be clear, I never gave any or quoted any tax rates by percentage. Now that you mention the Laffer curve, I am pretty sure we are on the same side of this. Laffer curve states lowering tax rates (%'s), increases the total revenue that the government brings in, a truth that seems to have been forgotten and/or ignored by liberals today, that simply want to tax the rich out of "fairness" or if your Biden, paying huge taxes is "patriotic".
"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
Alexis de Tocqueville
I was not saying that that is his tax plan, I was giving an example of the law of diminishing returns. Like you do exponentially more work, but your income does not rise at the same ratio. Better example would be the difference between buying a BMW vs a Honda, the BMW is much more expensive, and (in my opinion) better cars, but is how much better it is worth the difference in price. And if you move from a BMW to a Bentley, it will be a better car, and way more expensive, but is it really worth it, it is still a car that is used to take you from point A to point B.
I use this as a comparison to Obama's tax plan in that you are working and working, trying to create a higher and higher income for yourself, but once you get to a certain point (right now he is saying $250,000/yr, but Biden said yesterday $150,000/yr, might be down to $50,000/yr halfway through their first year) you are really not increasing your income by much, while at the same time you are actually producing much more and deserving of (as far as the free market is concerned) the same ratio increase you were increasing before breaking the Obama income ceiling.
Ahh, so much to respond to, but I am going to keep this short. The current financial crisis is the fault of our entire government, not the system, but the people running it. That being said, even though the government screwed it up, in the end, these businesses (and by extension their employees) made the decisions that they made, and they should suffer the consequences. Banks that failed, should be allowed to fail, and if the employees were the ones making bad decisions, management should have figured that out and fired that person.
Not every bank failed, some still decided to only lend to people who proved they have the ability to pay it back. Market go up and they go down, its just how they work, I still believe most of this financial crisis is media hype. I am doing just fine, I am still getting credit card offers with huge credit lines sent to me everyday, I have yet to actually meet someone who has been affected by this "crisis".
>Because you'll still earn more money then you would if you weren't productive or inventive.
Ever heard of the "Law of Diminishing Returns" Why do 50% more work if I am only going to make 10% more?
>The thing is, no one wants to be unemployed living on welfare.(Expect people exploiting the system which should be dealt with). It should always be beneficial to work harder.
Any welfare system, well hell, any system that exists will be attempted to be exploited and will eventually be exploited. Cmon man, you are on slashdot, you should know this.
>What's wrong with socialist, I keep seeing Americans throw it around like it's an insult. The cold war is over.
Socialism is un-American, and if you are not insulted by being called a socialist, you either don't know what it means, or are a radical.
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." Alexis de Tocqueville
>The majority of the rich either inherited their fortune or were lucky. Becoming rich through hard work is really rare. Sometimes I've mused about the possibility of a 100% inheritance tax making everyone even at the start of their lives.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So you are saying the government should confiscate all of the deceased's belongings and them pass them out as they see fit? That is the epitome of taxation without representation, one of the main reasons our ancestors left Europe. While our ancestors left Europe for America, it seems many Americans now want to leave American values for Euro ones.
>How exactly is creating wealth useful if it's hoarded? You might aswell just chuck it all into an incenerator for what it does to the economy.
You forgot a "?", and no wealth is able to be completely hoarded, good salesman can get a big sale out of the stingiest of penny pinchers.
Trickle-down does work. Do you know anyone who works for tips?? Yes, rich are rich because they don't waste, they save and invest, which is what people should do, but if your savings and investments are being taxed, then they are taking your savings, and you must reinvest. It basically comes down to who you think is better with money, are you better with your money, or would you rather have the government decide what to do with it? As far as your comment about the oil money that goes to Alaskans, that oil is being taking from land that THE PEOPLE OWN, so yes, they should get paid for its use. As far as redistributing money so that people will spend it and "stimulate" the economy, that is what has been happening, and it creates the bubble that we are now all seeing burst. It all comes down to this, do you want to let people make their own financial decisions, or do you want the gov't doing it? If the federal government would cut ALL spending except for defense and roadways/infrastructure, everyone would have more money and we would all be better off. I know I am going to have people crying "what about the schools?" and "what about social security?" but i will answer that when it comes.
You really can't say legitimately that "Bush broke the economy". We have seen constant growth in his first six years. The downswings started in the past two years, when the Democrats took congress. I blame ethanol, without money from the taxpayer's, ethanol would be more than $9/gallon, with oil going down now, regular unleaded is now cheaper than ethanol in northern MN
If you are going to tax the hell out of anyone making a certain amount of money, then what would be the incentive to be productive and innovative, other than just being able to say "Hey everyone, look what I did!" ? On top of that, giving tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes is socialist, and if you are being given money that has been taken from someone else, because they make too much, why would you ever want to make a lot? Rich people are rich because they have made themselves that way. Sure, there are some who live off of family fortunes, but if you made yourself a millionaire, wouldn't you want your kids to be taken care of after you are gone? Ever since the New Deal, we have been creating a group of people that is reliant on the government, and pretty much is a permanent voting block for the Democrats. Taking away incentives by punishing those who create wealth is simply un-American and anti-capitalistic. That is my economic argument on why to choose McCain over Obama.
Companies placing advertising/bloatware on a machine before it ships? What would be the point of that? I have never known a computer manufacturer to do anything like that. I have now reached my sarcasm limit for the day.
I see what you mean, but one would think that they would attempt to make Vista at least as good as XP was/is before they begin to come out with a "new" OS. Its like they are moving on to a new project when their previous one is no where near complete.
In this instance, I wouldn't put lawyers in the same category as doctors and plumbers (maybe mechanics) because in most cases (such as class actions and civil cases where its state vs "some company", {MN vs. Tobacco Industry}) in that they are the ones creating the problem so that they can profit from it.
Sorry to any mechanics out there, but I have dealt with car mechanics that I have gotten to admit to not replacing belts that are very visibly worn, because once they break, they will break a bunch of other stuff that will be much more costly to fix. Its not that they are creating the problem in this case, but they are ignoring one, so it gets worse, so they can make more money later.
So I ask a question, it gets answered, then my question becomes redundant? How can a first post be redundant? I just assumed after reading the article that Minefield is a new browser, separate from Firefox, that Mozilla is developing. After reading posts that came after my post, I found that I misunderstood the article. I now have stopped caring about these scores.
"some of which ended up matching known MD5 hash values for known child pornography image and video files."
Wait, so law enforcement has a database of kiddie porn and kiddie porn md5's? Some perverted bureaucrat found himself the right job.
Slashdot Mirror
Entitlement programs handicap people into not being able to provide for themselves, and they exist to buy votes. If people are given everything they have no reason to work for anything.
Like I said before, you have to pick your battles, and someone had to pay for 9/11. Iraq was the most manageable evil at the time.
I have been registered independent since I have been able to vote, and party affiliations are a non-issue for me. I look at the people, what they have done, and what they are promising. Obama has no history of ever wanting to cut any spending other than on defense, and he has promised so much to several different groups, its hard to imagine he wouldn't spend more on entitlement programs that any president in history.
You have to pick your battles, and at the time, Iraq had the most anti-American government. Hopefully I don't need to remind anyone that we got hit before the war started.
Because national defense is one of the three things we should be spending money on, national defense, roads, and education. Anything that doesn't fit into one of those three categories should be cut. Of course, he doesn't take a stand on it like that, but Obama would spend circles around McCain.
"The United Nations once again has ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq. Today's evacuation follows a new warning from chief weapons inspector Richard Butler accusing Iraq of once again failing to cooperate with the inspectors. The United States and Britain repeatedly have warned that Iraq's failure to cooperate with the inspectors could lead to air strikes." --Bob Edwards, NPR, 12/16/98
"What Mr. Bush is being urged to do by many advisers is focus on the simple fact that Saddam Hussein signed a piece of paper at the end of the Persian Gulf War, promising that the United Nations could have unfettered weapons inspections in Iraq. It has now been several years since those inspectors were kicked out." --John King, CNN, 8/18/02
Now all we hear is "no blood for oil" and "Bush lied, people died"
I am probably just being baited right here into a conversation that no one is going to get anything out of (especially conversing with an anonymous coward) but there was a war fought over slavery, and those who were against it won. Can we get over it, or is it going to be continually used as a scapegoat against anyone using an argument made by our founding fathers? The men who wrote our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are quite possibly some of the greatest men to ever grace this planet we call earth. The gifts they gave us are being slowly taken away by an ever expanding government, and we need to stop it. Those of you who are allowing it to grow out of control are those who use this excuse to try and invalidate the great ideas they had. What are those ideas: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The majority of the rich either inherited their fortune or were lucky. Becoming rich through hard work is really rare. Sometimes I've mused about the possibility of a 100% inheritance tax making everyone even at the start of their lives.
There, from one of our founding fathers. If you disagree with that and live in the US, you are in the wrong country.
And my point was that lowering the incentives to achieve will have a horrible effect on everyone. People will not reach their full potential because they will not have as much of an incentive to. The government has always put in more social programs to continually "help" people, while handicapping them because they are not being forced to provide for themselves and reach their full potential. This is a slippery slope we have been sliding down for as long as our country has existed, I am just doing everything I can to stop it. It looks like we are shifting into a different country than as we were founded. I believe it was best said by Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it." Alexis de Tocqueville
I use this as a comparison to Obama's tax plan in that you are working and working, trying to create a higher and higher income for yourself, but once you get to a certain point (right now he is saying $250,000/yr, but Biden said yesterday $150,000/yr, might be down to $50,000/yr halfway through their first year) you are really not increasing your income by much, while at the same time you are actually producing much more and deserving of (as far as the free market is concerned) the same ratio increase you were increasing before breaking the Obama income ceiling.
Not every bank failed, some still decided to only lend to people who proved they have the ability to pay it back. Market go up and they go down, its just how they work, I still believe most of this financial crisis is media hype. I am doing just fine, I am still getting credit card offers with huge credit lines sent to me everyday, I have yet to actually meet someone who has been affected by this "crisis".
>Because you'll still earn more money then you would if you weren't productive or inventive. Ever heard of the "Law of Diminishing Returns" Why do 50% more work if I am only going to make 10% more? >The thing is, no one wants to be unemployed living on welfare.(Expect people exploiting the system which should be dealt with). It should always be beneficial to work harder. Any welfare system, well hell, any system that exists will be attempted to be exploited and will eventually be exploited. Cmon man, you are on slashdot, you should know this. >What's wrong with socialist, I keep seeing Americans throw it around like it's an insult. The cold war is over. Socialism is un-American, and if you are not insulted by being called a socialist, you either don't know what it means, or are a radical. "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." Alexis de Tocqueville >The majority of the rich either inherited their fortune or were lucky. Becoming rich through hard work is really rare. Sometimes I've mused about the possibility of a 100% inheritance tax making everyone even at the start of their lives. Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So you are saying the government should confiscate all of the deceased's belongings and them pass them out as they see fit? That is the epitome of taxation without representation, one of the main reasons our ancestors left Europe. While our ancestors left Europe for America, it seems many Americans now want to leave American values for Euro ones. >How exactly is creating wealth useful if it's hoarded? You might aswell just chuck it all into an incenerator for what it does to the economy. You forgot a "?", and no wealth is able to be completely hoarded, good salesman can get a big sale out of the stingiest of penny pinchers.
Trickle-down does work. Do you know anyone who works for tips?? Yes, rich are rich because they don't waste, they save and invest, which is what people should do, but if your savings and investments are being taxed, then they are taking your savings, and you must reinvest. It basically comes down to who you think is better with money, are you better with your money, or would you rather have the government decide what to do with it? As far as your comment about the oil money that goes to Alaskans, that oil is being taking from land that THE PEOPLE OWN, so yes, they should get paid for its use. As far as redistributing money so that people will spend it and "stimulate" the economy, that is what has been happening, and it creates the bubble that we are now all seeing burst. It all comes down to this, do you want to let people make their own financial decisions, or do you want the gov't doing it? If the federal government would cut ALL spending except for defense and roadways/infrastructure, everyone would have more money and we would all be better off. I know I am going to have people crying "what about the schools?" and "what about social security?" but i will answer that when it comes.
Thank you for getting that info for the parent of this discussion, any poll that says active military is voting for obama comes from msnbc
You really can't say legitimately that "Bush broke the economy". We have seen constant growth in his first six years. The downswings started in the past two years, when the Democrats took congress. I blame ethanol, without money from the taxpayer's, ethanol would be more than $9/gallon, with oil going down now, regular unleaded is now cheaper than ethanol in northern MN
If you are going to tax the hell out of anyone making a certain amount of money, then what would be the incentive to be productive and innovative, other than just being able to say "Hey everyone, look what I did!" ? On top of that, giving tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes is socialist, and if you are being given money that has been taken from someone else, because they make too much, why would you ever want to make a lot? Rich people are rich because they have made themselves that way. Sure, there are some who live off of family fortunes, but if you made yourself a millionaire, wouldn't you want your kids to be taken care of after you are gone? Ever since the New Deal, we have been creating a group of people that is reliant on the government, and pretty much is a permanent voting block for the Democrats. Taking away incentives by punishing those who create wealth is simply un-American and anti-capitalistic. That is my economic argument on why to choose McCain over Obama.
Companies placing advertising/bloatware on a machine before it ships? What would be the point of that? I have never known a computer manufacturer to do anything like that. I have now reached my sarcasm limit for the day.
I see what you mean, but one would think that they would attempt to make Vista at least as good as XP was/is before they begin to come out with a "new" OS. Its like they are moving on to a new project when their previous one is no where near complete.
Windows Vista Redux
In this instance, I wouldn't put lawyers in the same category as doctors and plumbers (maybe mechanics) because in most cases (such as class actions and civil cases where its state vs "some company", {MN vs. Tobacco Industry}) in that they are the ones creating the problem so that they can profit from it. Sorry to any mechanics out there, but I have dealt with car mechanics that I have gotten to admit to not replacing belts that are very visibly worn, because once they break, they will break a bunch of other stuff that will be much more costly to fix. Its not that they are creating the problem in this case, but they are ignoring one, so it gets worse, so they can make more money later.
I knew that, I just felt like making a joke, but someone had to look at it before it was hashed.
So I ask a question, it gets answered, then my question becomes redundant? How can a first post be redundant? I just assumed after reading the article that Minefield is a new browser, separate from Firefox, that Mozilla is developing. After reading posts that came after my post, I found that I misunderstood the article. I now have stopped caring about these scores.
"some of which ended up matching known MD5 hash values for known child pornography image and video files." Wait, so law enforcement has a database of kiddie porn and kiddie porn md5's? Some perverted bureaucrat found himself the right job.
who was the asshole? the lawyers on both sides