wenty percent is a lot bigger burden for someone making only $30,000 a year (say) than it would be to someone making (say) $100,000.
Ahh, the "you can afford it" argument.
I actually don't agree, if you're making $30K a year, 20% is $6K. If you're surviving on $30k, you'll make it work at $24k.
If I'm making $100K, I have to pay $20K, that is 2/3 of your entire income. Expecting me to pay $23K so you only have to pay $3K is rather... selfish, crappy, and frankly stupid.
Why not restore the rates that were in force in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? The economy was doing just fine then.
Correlation is not causation, the economy had nothing to do with the tax rates back then. The actual amount collected in percentage terms hasn't actually changed that much. Who it comes from has however.
Failing that, get rid of tax havens and exemptions for unearned income over a certain amount.
When I say 20%, I mean 20%, that includes business income, unearned income, investment income, hedge fund income, everything. No deductions for anything.
I know of a woman who was using contraception methodically - and it turned out that that particular method had managed to get on the market despite being almost completely ineffective. She got an abortion.
Sure, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it.
There are places where date rape is mostly allowed in practice, in that the guy isn't going to get into legal trouble.
Boy, that is a can of worms...
Is it "rape"? Did the man throw the woman to the ground, rip her clothes off, and force himself on her while she was screaming "stop!"? Or did she just change her mind the next day?
Because both of those things happen, but only one of them is rape. The latter is poor judgement on the woman's part.
Speaking of poor judgement, one of the things I'm going to point out to my own daughter when she is old enough is that if you date a man, flirt with him, kiss him, let him spend money on you, then go back to his place for "coffee", don't be shocked when he expects to end up in bed with you and doesn't take the first "no" as an answer. Better solution, don't go back to his place, drive yourself to the movies/place to eat/etc. and let me know where you are, you can call me 24/7, no judgement, I'll come get you without a lecture.
Some men don't take kindly to being led on, and frankly women think they can do the leading without repercussion. I'm not saying it makes it right, it doesn't, but the woman doesn't have to be without fault for the man to be to blame. We love picking "the victim" while saying the other person is the "bad guy", but often both sides have some fault. If you're going to turn down a man, do it in a safe place with people around you, don't do it while sitting on his couch, or him sitting on yours. If you DO end up there, that is when you call a male friend (maybe Dad, maybe someone else), to come over and get you. Even if you have a car, call for help before you turn him down, that is just being smart. Or don't be there in the first place.
There are a frighteningly large number of girls in the US who are forced to be sex slaves.
Define: "large number"...
The number is more than 1, I will grant you that. It isn't a million. How "frighteningly large" probably depends on your point of view.
I am not going to call a fetus human unless that fetus has human-type brain waves, and in fact most abortions are performed before that, and the ones after that tend to be for medical reasons, not as a method of birth control.
I suspect a number of people would agree with that position.
I don't personally agree, I think the child is a human long before then. But then no one really cares what I think.:)
The irony is that my position is not religious based, it is simply my personal viewpoint on things.
How do I *keep* defending the current tax code? This is the first comment I have made on this story.
Fair enough, I don't always pay much attention to the names on comments, and your response was similar to many others.
Do you know why Buffet pays less than his staff? Because of people like Reagan and you who take marginal tax rates to mean absolute tax rates.
No, Buffet pays less than his staff because the tax code is written to favor him and not his staff.
When you talk about a marginal tax rate of 91%, it doesn't mean you are giving 91 percent of your total income to the government. It means you are giving 91% of your income *over a certain amount* to the government.
I think everyone here understands that, but it still isn't true, because most of Buffet's income falls into the top tax rate, and he STILL doesn't pay it. He makes enough that his total income over the top rate is the vast majority of his income.
If we were to follow your logic, a person making a million dollars would end up paying $910,000 in taxes
That isn't what I said, and no one should have taken that meaning, unless they wanted to argue.
A person making $1 million pays a lot of different tax rates. A person making $2 million pays the same as person 1 on the first million, but on the second million, pays ONLY the highest tax rate.
If that tax rate is 91%, then indeed, $910,000 in taxes on the second million goes to the government.
My point is that no one is going to bother to earn the second million, only to keep $90,000 of it, if they can't avoid the taxes some other way. That was Reagan's point as well. People just don't want to hear it.
I'm personally in the 33% tax bracket, but I don't pay 33% on ANY of my money, due to deductions. I could earn $2 million and I still wouldn't pay 33% (or 35% or more) on any of it, due to deductions.
I can afford good tax advice, and I plan my money so that I don't. I likely pay a lower total tax rate than people earning half as much.
It doesn't matter what you raise rates to, I won't pay them, no one else will either, it is a bad plan. Yet people keep bringing up "raise taxes on the rich" like it solves anything.
Flat 20% tax across the board, no deductions. (not even the house)
However, AC lives in this society and benefits by all sorts of things we do as a society, and really can't pick and choose what AC wants and what AC doesn't want.
That is true, to a point... You can move outside of a city and county school area and cut your housing tax obligations by a lot, just as an example.
I live in a major city, my property tax bill is substantial. While I don't *LIKE* it, I understand it and pay it without serious complaint, because it buys me civilization. If you came to me tomorrow and said "we want to raise your annual property tax bill by $1,000, but we will pass a law requiring class sizes be cut to 1 teacher per 10 students", I would pay it in a heartbeat, without complaint.
So there ARE things I'll pay for, but I also get that not everyone would agree. People who have no kids would probably not like the above very much.
As a homeowner in this city, I have the right to water, sewer, natural gas, electrical, telephone, garbage pickup, and education services to name some of them, since that's what the appropriate governments have decided.
It may just be a word choice, but I think it is worth pointing out that you actually don't have the *right* to those things, you have the privilege to pay for them. You don't have to buy your *rights*. If I don't pay my water bill, they turn off the water.
I don't have to buy my freedom of speech, for example.
Health care can work well under all of these systems. We do have to let practitioners make good money, or we aren't going to have enough, so we do have to allow something like for-profit doctors.
I don't consider a doctor's paycheck to be "for-profit", at least no more than the paycheck of anyone who works for the government. I'm more thinking of the billions of dollars insurance companies and large hospital systems make.
---
If the Government decided tomorrow that Blue Cross/Blue Shield was going to run national health care, fine. Then everyone gets it without having to fill out endless forms and pay a bunch of fees. It is just paid for by our taxes, and it could be like a regulated utility.
What I DO object to is being forced to shop for private products and services that I may not want, that come with a lot of expenses and conditions attached, that I didn't ask for.
If Bernie Sanders gets his way and raises taxes to provide Medicare for all, with no charge to have it, I'm ok with that actually.
Maybe that seems strange to some, but it works for me.
You of course bring up the reason why rape and incest are often carved out...
Because people love to find corner cases and try and attack the middle with them.
You'll always be able to find an edge case to beat up the general principle with, but you're ignoring the bulk of the cases to try and win an argument.
Then why do I have the right to NOT donate blood that will save your life and let you die?
Really? I have to explain that? Sheesh, what happened to logic and common sense?
The reason you have that right is because it is an inaction. You cannot be forced to take specific action, such as giving your blood, against your will.
That is completely different than punishing you because you TOOK ACTION to hurt me.
You sitting there, at home, not giving blood, might well mean they run short and someone dies. You didn't cause the problem that put that person in that place, thus you aren't responsible.
If you DO that cause, such as running them over with your car, then yes, you ARE responsible.
Seriously why does my dead CORPSE have the right to let you die if it doesn't CHOOSE to be violated to save you, but a woman doesn't have that autonomy ?
A woman has to make a choice to kill the child. This is not death via inaction, but rather via action.
The $100K is clearly the "last $100k", that part should have been obvious, but you choose to be obtuse instead.
We've got people voting who don't understand the most basic things about how government works.
Yes we do, but I'm not one of them. You seem to think that a 38% rate is acceptable for ANY level of income. It isn't, and that is what is wrong with you.
Bottom line: Your reasoning looks so neat and simple, but it has holes so big as to drive a mac truck through them.
No, it really doesn't... all of the reasons you listed largely don't apply in civilized society in the 21st century.
Oh sure, you can find edge cases, but we've moved past that stuff. I'm also only talking about laws in the USA, not in third world nations. One of the great mistakes the USA has made in the past 70 years is to try and tell the rest of the world how to live, then bomb them when we don't like it.
As for adoption, that needs attention in the US. My wife and I have three children. She does not want to bear a fourth, but we would love another child. Do you have ANY idea what it costs for a normal couple to adopt a normal child in the USA? It is crazy. The system is completely backwards and messed up.
You could resolve a lot of the remaining nagging issues with unwanted children if you changed birth and adoption laws.
A tumor can't grow into a person, it just kills you.
Perhaps when the baby has a heartbeat, that is one possible place.
I am aware that some people say life begins at conception. I don't know that a few cells fertilized is a "life", so much as it is a possible life. But then I'm not an expert on the subject, few people really are.
I think it is clear that a 5 month old baby inside a mother is a child, even at that early stage, if you take it out, it looks like a person, at least enough of one.
I will say that personally I have a lot less of an issue with an abortion at 4 weeks than I do at 28 weeks.
The whole point is that someone should be defending the rights of the child. All I ever hear is "woman's right to choose", and that's nice... what about the child's right to live?
Why not? Explain why, without appealing to religion.
For the same reason I don't have the right to kill you, just because I think you're an idiot.
Or... are you suggesting that I *DO* have the right to kill people who I think are idiots, without legal repercussions?
We have decided as a society that murder is wrong. This is why if you go kill a pregnant mother who has a 5 month old child inside of her, in many states you'll be charged with double homicide. The state considers that child a life when it comes to murder laws, yet for some reason, we allow the mother to do the killing and all is ok.
Why are rape and incest different? The "child" isn't responsible for the rape or incest. Why should a potential child suffer for someone else's actions? The potential child is the victim.
I tend to agree with you, but I also understand those two issues are highly emotional and charged. I except them to avoid the argument over them, since otherwise someone comes along and uses them to try and fight the main point.
What I am saying here is that "no abortions, except in the case of rape or incest" is not a moral position.
It is not for you to say what is, or is not, a moral position.
You don't get to decide what a moral position is for someone else. Morals are just another word for opinion.
Too bad Reagan purposely misrepresented what *marginal* tax rates are.
Too bad that you're doing the same, by saying nothing other than that.
Reagan's point was completely correct. No on is going to give 91% of their income to the government. Either they'll find tax deductions or other options to avoid it, or they'll go somewhere else, or they'll just not work.
He was correct, such a tax rate is stupid, it doesn't get paid, having it is a lie.
You keep defending the current tax code, yet it is that code that allows Warren Buffet to pay half the effective tax rate of his staff. Why are you defending this?
Well, actually, two people chose to have sex. Yet the condemnation seems to fall squarely on one of them. Funny that.
Why do you think it seems that way?
The father is just as responsible for the baby as the mother, and I think society has made that clear, that is why child support exists.
And that's ignoring the whole host of other perfectly legitimate reasons why continuing with a pregnancy would be a bad idea even if both parents wanted to. Your black and white view of the world is sadly detached from reality.
Like what?
Murdering a child is not a good idea for any reason other than to save the life of the mother. I can understand a debate for "rape/incest". I cannot understand a "because I don't want it" argument.
Consider the grand irony that in some states, it is legal to have an abortion of a 5 month old baby, but if you kill a pregnant woman with a 5 month old baby inside her, you'll be charged with double homicide.
So if the woman kills the child, it is legal. If someone else does it, it is murder. What the hell?
Actually it's not, because there would still be choice. The important thing here is that people aren't "forced" to be incubators and subjugated to a lifetime of servitude.
Excepting cases of rape and incest, you chose to have sex, deal with it...
You not wanting to carry the child doesn't give you the right to kill it...
Exactly. If a 91% tax rate was so bad shouldn't it have put a damper on economic growth?
Using that logic, why not just raise all tax rates to 100%, then load it up with deductions?
All that does is give those who can afford tax advice a way to pay less than those who can't.
I don't pay half of my top marginal tax bracket, because I have good tax advice. You can earn half what I earn, and I probably pay less in percentage terms than you do.
That isn't right, but raising my rate isn't going to change it.
Yes, I'm aware that practically no one paid that rate and there were a lot of loopholes, then Kennedy lowered the tax rate to 75% and closed a bunch of loopholes. My main point is that high taxes by themselves don't necessarily kill the economy.
Yea, but people think that "tax the rich" will solve all our money problems too...
It won't, it never raises as much actual money as you think... people change their behavior to avoid the taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but that isn't going to happen, for many reasons.
You *still* haven't grasped my position. My position is that there are only two positions that can be justified on moral grounds:
No, I heard you, I just don't agree with you.
Because I don't agree with you, there is no point in disputing your two options, since morals aren't limited to what you say they are.
wenty percent is a lot bigger burden for someone making only $30,000 a year (say) than it would be to someone making (say) $100,000.
Ahh, the "you can afford it" argument.
I actually don't agree, if you're making $30K a year, 20% is $6K. If you're surviving on $30k, you'll make it work at $24k.
If I'm making $100K, I have to pay $20K, that is 2/3 of your entire income. Expecting me to pay $23K so you only have to pay $3K is rather... selfish, crappy, and frankly stupid.
Why not restore the rates that were in force in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? The economy was doing just fine then.
Correlation is not causation, the economy had nothing to do with the tax rates back then. The actual amount collected in percentage terms hasn't actually changed that much. Who it comes from has however.
Failing that, get rid of tax havens and exemptions for unearned income over a certain amount.
When I say 20%, I mean 20%, that includes business income, unearned income, investment income, hedge fund income, everything. No deductions for anything.
I know of a woman who was using contraception methodically - and it turned out that that particular method had managed to get on the market despite being almost completely ineffective. She got an abortion.
Sure, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it.
There are places where date rape is mostly allowed in practice, in that the guy isn't going to get into legal trouble.
Boy, that is a can of worms...
Is it "rape"? Did the man throw the woman to the ground, rip her clothes off, and force himself on her while she was screaming "stop!"? Or did she just change her mind the next day?
Because both of those things happen, but only one of them is rape. The latter is poor judgement on the woman's part.
Speaking of poor judgement, one of the things I'm going to point out to my own daughter when she is old enough is that if you date a man, flirt with him, kiss him, let him spend money on you, then go back to his place for "coffee", don't be shocked when he expects to end up in bed with you and doesn't take the first "no" as an answer. Better solution, don't go back to his place, drive yourself to the movies/place to eat/etc. and let me know where you are, you can call me 24/7, no judgement, I'll come get you without a lecture.
Some men don't take kindly to being led on, and frankly women think they can do the leading without repercussion. I'm not saying it makes it right, it doesn't, but the woman doesn't have to be without fault for the man to be to blame. We love picking "the victim" while saying the other person is the "bad guy", but often both sides have some fault. If you're going to turn down a man, do it in a safe place with people around you, don't do it while sitting on his couch, or him sitting on yours. If you DO end up there, that is when you call a male friend (maybe Dad, maybe someone else), to come over and get you. Even if you have a car, call for help before you turn him down, that is just being smart. Or don't be there in the first place.
There are a frighteningly large number of girls in the US who are forced to be sex slaves.
Define: "large number"...
The number is more than 1, I will grant you that. It isn't a million. How "frighteningly large" probably depends on your point of view.
I am not going to call a fetus human unless that fetus has human-type brain waves, and in fact most abortions are performed before that, and the ones after that tend to be for medical reasons, not as a method of birth control.
I suspect a number of people would agree with that position.
I don't personally agree, I think the child is a human long before then. But then no one really cares what I think. :)
The irony is that my position is not religious based, it is simply my personal viewpoint on things.
And the irony to that is if you kill a mother who is carrying a child, you're often charged with the murder of that unborn child.
Humans are funny creatures...
Nice strawman argument you have there...
How do I *keep* defending the current tax code? This is the first comment I have made on this story.
Fair enough, I don't always pay much attention to the names on comments, and your response was similar to many others.
Do you know why Buffet pays less than his staff? Because of people like Reagan and you who take marginal tax rates to mean absolute tax rates.
No, Buffet pays less than his staff because the tax code is written to favor him and not his staff.
When you talk about a marginal tax rate of 91%, it doesn't mean you are giving 91 percent of your total income to the government. It means you are giving 91% of your income *over a certain amount* to the government.
I think everyone here understands that, but it still isn't true, because most of Buffet's income falls into the top tax rate, and he STILL doesn't pay it. He makes enough that his total income over the top rate is the vast majority of his income.
If we were to follow your logic, a person making a million dollars would end up paying $910,000 in taxes
That isn't what I said, and no one should have taken that meaning, unless they wanted to argue.
A person making $1 million pays a lot of different tax rates. A person making $2 million pays the same as person 1 on the first million, but on the second million, pays ONLY the highest tax rate.
If that tax rate is 91%, then indeed, $910,000 in taxes on the second million goes to the government.
My point is that no one is going to bother to earn the second million, only to keep $90,000 of it, if they can't avoid the taxes some other way. That was Reagan's point as well. People just don't want to hear it.
I'm personally in the 33% tax bracket, but I don't pay 33% on ANY of my money, due to deductions. I could earn $2 million and I still wouldn't pay 33% (or 35% or more) on any of it, due to deductions.
I can afford good tax advice, and I plan my money so that I don't. I likely pay a lower total tax rate than people earning half as much.
It doesn't matter what you raise rates to, I won't pay them, no one else will either, it is a bad plan. Yet people keep bringing up "raise taxes on the rich" like it solves anything.
Flat 20% tax across the board, no deductions. (not even the house)
However, AC lives in this society and benefits by all sorts of things we do as a society, and really can't pick and choose what AC wants and what AC doesn't want.
That is true, to a point... You can move outside of a city and county school area and cut your housing tax obligations by a lot, just as an example.
I live in a major city, my property tax bill is substantial. While I don't *LIKE* it, I understand it and pay it without serious complaint, because it buys me civilization. If you came to me tomorrow and said "we want to raise your annual property tax bill by $1,000, but we will pass a law requiring class sizes be cut to 1 teacher per 10 students", I would pay it in a heartbeat, without complaint.
So there ARE things I'll pay for, but I also get that not everyone would agree. People who have no kids would probably not like the above very much.
As a homeowner in this city, I have the right to water, sewer, natural gas, electrical, telephone, garbage pickup, and education services to name some of them, since that's what the appropriate governments have decided.
It may just be a word choice, but I think it is worth pointing out that you actually don't have the *right* to those things, you have the privilege to pay for them. You don't have to buy your *rights*. If I don't pay my water bill, they turn off the water.
I don't have to buy my freedom of speech, for example.
Health care can work well under all of these systems. We do have to let practitioners make good money, or we aren't going to have enough, so we do have to allow something like for-profit doctors.
I don't consider a doctor's paycheck to be "for-profit", at least no more than the paycheck of anyone who works for the government. I'm more thinking of the billions of dollars insurance companies and large hospital systems make.
---
If the Government decided tomorrow that Blue Cross/Blue Shield was going to run national health care, fine. Then everyone gets it without having to fill out endless forms and pay a bunch of fees. It is just paid for by our taxes, and it could be like a regulated utility.
What I DO object to is being forced to shop for private products and services that I may not want, that come with a lot of expenses and conditions attached, that I didn't ask for.
If Bernie Sanders gets his way and raises taxes to provide Medicare for all, with no charge to have it, I'm ok with that actually.
Maybe that seems strange to some, but it works for me.
You of course bring up the reason why rape and incest are often carved out...
Because people love to find corner cases and try and attack the middle with them.
You'll always be able to find an edge case to beat up the general principle with, but you're ignoring the bulk of the cases to try and win an argument.
You are worse than stupid. You are intractably and willfully ignorant.
The grand irony is that actually that applies to you, not me.
The situation is clear to me, but you are being obtuse either on purpose, or out of ignorance.
You do understand that by forcing women to carry a fetuses that they did not wish upon themselves is akin to forcing them into slavery, right?
No, that is not an accurate portrayal of the situation at all.
no one forces the men to stick their dick in someones reproductive system.
And excepting cases of rape, no one forces the woman into accepting it...
Which is why "other than rape or incest, or risk to life of mother", abortion is wrong.
You choose to have sex, you have to live with the consequences.
Then why do I have the right to NOT donate blood that will save your life and let you die?
Really? I have to explain that? Sheesh, what happened to logic and common sense?
The reason you have that right is because it is an inaction. You cannot be forced to take specific action, such as giving your blood, against your will.
That is completely different than punishing you because you TOOK ACTION to hurt me.
You sitting there, at home, not giving blood, might well mean they run short and someone dies. You didn't cause the problem that put that person in that place, thus you aren't responsible.
If you DO that cause, such as running them over with your car, then yes, you ARE responsible.
Seriously why does my dead CORPSE have the right to let you die if it doesn't CHOOSE to be violated to save you, but a woman doesn't have that autonomy ?
A woman has to make a choice to kill the child. This is not death via inaction, but rather via action.
You dumb shit.
Right back at you...
The $100K is clearly the "last $100k", that part should have been obvious, but you choose to be obtuse instead.
We've got people voting who don't understand the most basic things about how government works.
Yes we do, but I'm not one of them. You seem to think that a 38% rate is acceptable for ANY level of income. It isn't, and that is what is wrong with you.
Bottom line: Your reasoning looks so neat and simple, but it has holes so big as to drive a mac truck through them.
No, it really doesn't... all of the reasons you listed largely don't apply in civilized society in the 21st century.
Oh sure, you can find edge cases, but we've moved past that stuff. I'm also only talking about laws in the USA, not in third world nations. One of the great mistakes the USA has made in the past 70 years is to try and tell the rest of the world how to live, then bomb them when we don't like it.
As for adoption, that needs attention in the US. My wife and I have three children. She does not want to bear a fourth, but we would love another child. Do you have ANY idea what it costs for a normal couple to adopt a normal child in the USA? It is crazy. The system is completely backwards and messed up.
You could resolve a lot of the remaining nagging issues with unwanted children if you changed birth and adoption laws.
A tumor can't grow into a person, it just kills you.
Perhaps when the baby has a heartbeat, that is one possible place.
I am aware that some people say life begins at conception. I don't know that a few cells fertilized is a "life", so much as it is a possible life. But then I'm not an expert on the subject, few people really are.
I think it is clear that a 5 month old baby inside a mother is a child, even at that early stage, if you take it out, it looks like a person, at least enough of one.
I will say that personally I have a lot less of an issue with an abortion at 4 weeks than I do at 28 weeks.
The whole point is that someone should be defending the rights of the child. All I ever hear is "woman's right to choose", and that's nice... what about the child's right to live?
Why not? Explain why, without appealing to religion.
For the same reason I don't have the right to kill you, just because I think you're an idiot.
Or... are you suggesting that I *DO* have the right to kill people who I think are idiots, without legal repercussions?
We have decided as a society that murder is wrong. This is why if you go kill a pregnant mother who has a 5 month old child inside of her, in many states you'll be charged with double homicide. The state considers that child a life when it comes to murder laws, yet for some reason, we allow the mother to do the killing and all is ok.
That is messed up.
Why are rape and incest different? The "child" isn't responsible for the rape or incest. Why should a potential child suffer for someone else's actions? The potential child is the victim.
I tend to agree with you, but I also understand those two issues are highly emotional and charged. I except them to avoid the argument over them, since otherwise someone comes along and uses them to try and fight the main point.
What I am saying here is that "no abortions, except in the case of rape or incest" is not a moral position.
It is not for you to say what is, or is not, a moral position.
You don't get to decide what a moral position is for someone else. Morals are just another word for opinion.
Too bad Reagan purposely misrepresented what *marginal* tax rates are.
Too bad that you're doing the same, by saying nothing other than that.
Reagan's point was completely correct. No on is going to give 91% of their income to the government. Either they'll find tax deductions or other options to avoid it, or they'll go somewhere else, or they'll just not work.
He was correct, such a tax rate is stupid, it doesn't get paid, having it is a lie.
You keep defending the current tax code, yet it is that code that allows Warren Buffet to pay half the effective tax rate of his staff. Why are you defending this?
Well, actually, two people chose to have sex. Yet the condemnation seems to fall squarely on one of them. Funny that.
Why do you think it seems that way?
The father is just as responsible for the baby as the mother, and I think society has made that clear, that is why child support exists.
And that's ignoring the whole host of other perfectly legitimate reasons why continuing with a pregnancy would be a bad idea even if both parents wanted to. Your black and white view of the world is sadly detached from reality.
Like what?
Murdering a child is not a good idea for any reason other than to save the life of the mother. I can understand a debate for "rape/incest". I cannot understand a "because I don't want it" argument.
Consider the grand irony that in some states, it is legal to have an abortion of a 5 month old baby, but if you kill a pregnant woman with a 5 month old baby inside her, you'll be charged with double homicide.
So if the woman kills the child, it is legal. If someone else does it, it is murder. What the hell?
Actually it's not, because there would still be choice. The important thing here is that people aren't "forced" to be incubators and subjugated to a lifetime of servitude.
Excepting cases of rape and incest, you chose to have sex, deal with it...
You not wanting to carry the child doesn't give you the right to kill it...
That, and the right of revolt is right in the state constitution...
"Live Free or Die" is the motto for a reason...
Exactly. If a 91% tax rate was so bad shouldn't it have put a damper on economic growth?
Using that logic, why not just raise all tax rates to 100%, then load it up with deductions?
All that does is give those who can afford tax advice a way to pay less than those who can't.
I don't pay half of my top marginal tax bracket, because I have good tax advice. You can earn half what I earn, and I probably pay less in percentage terms than you do.
That isn't right, but raising my rate isn't going to change it.
Yes, I'm aware that practically no one paid that rate and there were a lot of loopholes, then Kennedy lowered the tax rate to 75% and closed a bunch of loopholes. My main point is that high taxes by themselves don't necessarily kill the economy.
Yea, but people think that "tax the rich" will solve all our money problems too...
It won't, it never raises as much actual money as you think... people change their behavior to avoid the taxes.
Flat 20%, no deductions.