This is not insightful, people! To be extradited, the same law has to be valid in both countries. Like copyright law! Trial to be done where the damage occured.
Who in Austrailia is damaged by copyright infringement against US companies? Why on Earth would you hold the trial there? (Mind you, they do hold a hearing in Australia to make sure that the charges are valid and warrant extradition. But that won't be discussed on Slashdot, eh?)
Now you give the murderer a BFG - he sits in Australia picking off Americans one by one via long range death.
To you propose to let him off? He never left Austrailia, never killed anyone there, etc.
He committed a crime in a foriegn country. Both his country and the foriegn country 1) agree that the accusation is about an actionable crime, and 2) agree that people should be tried in the country where the damage was done.
This isn't unusual, this is how law enforcement works, people!
Or, more likely, you'd have more numerous single-casaulty shooting incidents as more weapons would result in possibly more ivolent flareups. None of which, interestingly enough, would make the news...
Trust me, this kind of thing happens WAY more in: Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, etc.
You do not get their news, you only get yours. It doesn't seem to happen as much in Europe, though. My guess is that it is a cultural thing - which is too bad for Europe, since their culture is rapidly changing right now.
So why can't those of us that are trained carry? That is the question! Why do I have to be a full time cop?
Situations like this would be greatly helped by 1 person in 50 being trained with a weapon. There are far more people willing to be trained than that! As it stands now, a former cop or marine cannot carry a firearm - that's just dumb.
People like you have no idea what it means to live in a society where everyone has a gun.
I beg to differ - I have live in many societies where most (all?) people had guns - and none of them were violent, and they had no fatal shootings I know of. First, rural Virginia (interestingly enough), on farms. Everyone had guns, everyone practiced with them. My family only had to use a gun against a human twice - both times, people from out of town. (My father was the town doctor, presumably these people thought robbing a rural doctor would be a piece of cake).
Second was in the military - you probably don't count that, but they are humans too. Very few of them kill each other. (You don't know humor until you are forced to go through a metal detector to board a plane full of marines, armed and in battle armour - like you would really try something!)
Last was in Utah, and hey, that whole state is rural.
Now I live in the big city, so no guns allowed. Personally, I would still feel better if I had a weapon at home, but cities are different and have different requirements and advantages. Mostly, the police and abulances can at least concievably get here before I die...
We use data models for all sorts of shit, for example, 'proving' that the design of the aircraft you're flying in won't crash
Interesting that you would say this. Models are indeed used when designing aircraft. But any prediction made by the model is not trusted if the model predicts deviation from normal behaviour - for that, we have to use wind tunnels and models.
That is the problem here. You cannot create a model which predicts a deviation in behaviour and then use that as proof. You use the model to make a prediction, and then you compare the prediction to reality. Then you have proof.
Many aspects of Global Warming have followed this procedure. The "doomsday" projections have not. That is why most people don't argue the existence of Global Warming, they argue the necessity of doing anything about a 1 degree change over a decade...
I'm afraid you are incorrect. Transistors become more conductive as they get hotter - the failure mode of a hot transistor is to become essentially a short.
Incorrect. This is one of the most useful items in society, a way to transfer economic power from the idiots that buy gold plated laptops to the genius that is selling one...
Let's face it, we need to remove as much money as possible from anyone that would buy one of these!
By the way, the cost of Sarbox compliance is estimated at $1M per $1B in revenue. At about $10T of total revenue in US public companies, we are spending $10B per year on compliance...
To avoid a few billion lost in Enron, and a few billion lost in MCI - every few years.
Wait - the Democrats want to use VAT? As in I get to keep the 1/2 of my money that the government takes, and only pay tax the same percentage as everyone else on purchases?
I'll look into it, but it seems like a lot of lying is required.
No it isn't - I'm not telling you to lie. You really would be starting a company in Illinois. You really would have 2 employees. You wouldn't have much of a product or service, but that still puts you ahead of half the companies out there (at least you aren't spending money to create nothing!).
Just using the system in place, the way it was meant to be used.
But, no, the media continued to operate as an arm of the White House
What's funny is that I see it the other way - the media under-reports the excesses of the Democrats, and so they tend to be more corrupt. You aren't seriously suggesting that the media that went out with obviously forged documents were holding back on the real dirt?
Probably, the "evils" of the Democrats outweigh the "evils" of Republicans to me, so I see underreporting on the Democrats and wonder why the heck anyone cares that a Republican is gay. To you, the "evils" of the Republicans outweigh the "evils" of Democrats so you see the opposite.
Protesting the Vietnam war isn't betraying your country.
Note that I never said he betrayed his country. He betrayed the military - his brothers in arms. He said that they were all baby-killers, rapists, etc. What's funny is that he testified before Congress that he imself was a baby-killing rapist - I'm not sure that that qualifies you for the White House, but apparently it does for Congress... (Note also that it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what the men in the military think. And that should have been obvious to anyone that cared enough to ask the question.)
that no one had heard of, and unlike, oh, Ann Coulter
This is exactly what I am talking about. If Cindy Sheenan had not been such a public $*^%%$&, then Ann Coulter would have been thrown out. But since the Democrat party sided with Sheenan and her like, the conservatives and Republicans had no alternatives. We couldn't exactly say "look, if you get that Ann person out one more time I'm going over with Cindy." If the Democrats had just held more to the center (as in half way between the old Republicans and the old Democrats, not some idealistic version of center), the Republicans would have been forced to the center as well. Obviously the reverse is true as well.
There is no party for conservatives, for people that want sound economic policy. There is either "tax your way to socialism" Democrats, or "spend your way to pork" Republicans. To me, at least the pork will work long term - I mean they aren't that large a percentage of the GDP - but socialism will kill the country, and force me into a situation I don't want to be in.
1) Form an Illinois LLC. (There are probably other states that work as well, but I only know about Illinois)
2) Hire 2 people - yourself and some random friend. You need to have at least 2 employees.
3) Get a group health insurance package for the company. Just contact an insurance broker. (I can help you with this also, if you need it)
4) By state law, the insurance company must accept you in the plan - and the rate is capped at a certain point (I think 200% of normal premium, I'm not sure). Preexisting conditions may apply for a few months, but after that everything should be covered.
The requirements vary by state, but most states have some form of this available. Call an insurance broker in Illinois. Make sure that they understand that you are starting an Illinois company, and you want group health care coverage. Ask them to explain the qualification process, any preexisting condition problems, and how out-of-state coverage works (you travel a lot, right? Like to Georgia?).
Hope this works for you. The cost to form an Illinois LLC is $500. The insurance costs vary depending on the plan you choose, and whether you have a family, but adding all those up probably is cheaper than $15K in 8 years - and then you have insurance if something else goes wrong...
Back to our original topic - personally, I think the best outcome is what we have right now. Republicans control one part of government, Democrats control the other. That way they fight - and the easiest way to fight is to point out the other side's problems. So then the turkeys are thrown from office. The main problem right now (from my perspective) is that the Democrats have gone to the fringes. That makes it very difficult to control the Repulicans, because they know that the alternative is even worse. In fact, that might sum up the entire problem with our current government - no one is running saying "I'm good", they are just running saying "he is worse".
I mean really, you couldn't beat Bush last time? What was that! I had thought that anyone would be better than Bush (even if you liked the guy, replacing him would have been good for America - too many burnt bridges by him) - but then I saw who was chosen! (Here's a hint: having a commander in chief during a time of war who is famous for betraying the military is just not cool, OK? I'm from a military family...)
Only the first $90,000 of income a year is taxed for that
OK, so when you see those poor people earning $90,000, you have a point. Until then, you don't. A person making $90,000 pay in a lot more than they will ever receive. A poor person receives a lot more than they will ever pay in. Wealth transfer, QED. (The same applies for Medicare. Old rich people do not use it, because they self insure. Only the poor people use it. Wealth transfer, QED.)
Your I wonder how much of the 33% paragraph didn't seem to make much sense. I'm probably missing your point.
I am all against corruption, I just don't believe that socailists and liberals are any less corrupt than conservatives and Republicans. Liberals are just more careful to hide financial linkages to corporate america because their constituants care more.
Democrats cannot stop the war, they do not have the votes.
They could stop the war on a dime - just don't vote in the money. They won't do this, for the reasons I've already stated. It's easy to talk big when you are a minority - but now that they are a majority they have to tone back, or people will ask why they are not following through...
to be insisting that the Government
Cut off. But anyway, I would rather have someone tell me that they are going to do something in their own best interest, rather than telling me that they will help others.
I spent a few years unable to walk - and thus unable to earn much of an income (I was WAY below poverty in the US). My family was overseas, my father was in Desert Storm. I had to make do on my own. I went to the government for help, and they turned me down. I was not politically connected or the right color, so no help for me. I couldn't pay my medical bills (so don't talk to me about the poor not getting coverage - I know that doctors just see you anyway and write it off).
So I DO NOT beleive in the government's ability to help people. They just can't do it! Why should I pay for their friends pork when I desperately needed help and they turned me down!
I obviously did all right in the end (I ended up starting my own company from my bed) - but government does not work to help people. My story is hardly unique...
you're still operating on the assumptions that taxes go from the rich to the poor
Here is the actual government spending data:
Department of State 1% Department of Defense 19% Environmental Protection Agency 1% Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 24% Social Security Administration 18% Interest on the Public Debt 13% Other 24%
So, you are saying that the DOD only benefits the rich - so the poor don't mind being Muslim. OK, whatever. It sure seems to me that "Medicare and Medicaid" and "Social Security" give basically zero to the rich. That is 44% of the total US budget! The rich pay the most taxes: the top 50% pay 96% of taxes, the top 10% pay 66% of taxes. How is this not "taxes go from the rich to the poor"?
Now you probably say "but those don't count because of X". Well, I only have one question: Do the rich pay for it? Yes they do, so what we have is wealth transfer from the rich (but only the non-goverment rich - note that the democrats in office pay no appreciable taxes) to the poor.
the government has to hire people to provide those services
First, I do not differentiate socialism and communism that much - communism is just socialism taken to extremes. The basic idea behind both is the same. Now, back to this hiring: OK, so your are the governor. Who do you hire? The guy that spent 4 years going to college, knows everything about the field, and will do the best job possible or your friend from high school that will give you a 10% kickback? And how much do you pay this friend? How about enough to allow for an increase in the kickback?
Governments suck at providing services. Please visit the nearest DMV immediately.
the fact that there at many corrupt 'liberals' that will not vote for things
OK, say you are saying that you will only vote for honest politicians. You mean the ones smart enough to hide their corruption, right? There are no honest politicians - here's an easy proof (within reason): You have two politicians, one honest, one not. The one can hide his dishonesty, because they are powerful politicians. The voters determine who is best essentially on 1) what is promised, and 2) how much money is spent (hopefully in that order). The lying one can promise more (because he doesn't actually have to deliver) and has more money (because he can give contributors money from the till). So the dishonest one wins most of the time. Now you get to Congress, where the politicians have to have competed in many races before and won - they are almost all corrupt, and you cannot find the few that aren't because they have enough power to hide their evil.
As for proof of this - the single biggest issue in the last election was the war, right? All Republicans are evil because they support the war, right?
But everyone in government knows that the war is necessary. So what you will see is back-stabbing, everyone screaming that the war is evil, etc. But no one actually votes on measures that would stop the war. If a Democrat wins the presidency, the war goes on anyway...
You are obviously young, and haven't thought this stuff through. Please let go of your anger, and engage your mind. Everyone wants to help the poor (and everyone else, for that matter), but when push comes to shove you help those you know, not strangers.
socialism is aiming the government at providing things to benefit all people, instead of providing benefits to certain people
Right... so the few people that run the government are going to be nice and give resources to everyone else instead of their friends and themselves. That is delusional, and if you believe that this happens anywhere (posibly excepting Scandinavia) you are a fool. The aristocracy still controls Europe, they just say that they don't - the most obvious sign of this kind of thing is a lack of startup companies. If you are really free, then you don't work for someone else, you start your own company. In most of Europe, this is practically impossible - but in the US it happens every day.
Socialism is great in theory - it just doesn't work at all in the real world. In the real world, socialism and (US type) liberals are just people lying about helping you so that you will give them power. It wuld be nice if people would give to stangers as much as they give themselves, but it just doesn't work that way in practice. (As an aside, I believe it can work that way in smaller groups. Families are socailist, for example.)
I agree that there is a historical biase towards governments serving the rich. I agree that governments should serve the poor more. I disagree that the way to do that is socialism, and voting for people who promise to hand out money. The way to do that is education - first and foremost I think negotiation should be studied and taught in school, followed by economics (real economics, not socialist economics - the study of why people do things in the real world, not what they should do in some pretend world) The reason that works is that it benefits the rich guys also.
But if it really worries you that much, we can just destroy their money.
Well, I know I sure wouldn't be working in your country. When people try foolish things like that, the rich just leave. And the (new) rich are rich because they know how to turn labor (something everyone is born with) into stuff worth more than labor. And what that means is that you end up with a country where no one knows how to make things worth more than the labor it takes to make them. We call those "third world" countries...
And just for completeness, destroying the money would not cause deflation. Again, remember that inflation is caused not by "printing money" per se, it is caused by devaluing money (that is its definition, after all). So if you don't print money but destroy value in the economy, you still cause inflation. (The obvious example is if your economy consists of only chickens and dollars, and you kill half the chickens, you will have inflation as the price per chicken doubles). So in your example, by stealing money from the rich you make money less valuable (at least to the rich), and so they are less willing to trade expertise and goods for it, and so you have inflation. Burning the money probably would curb that inflation, but you would not have deflation. To have deflation you would be saying (in my example) that there are suddenly more chickens to be had.
Playing around with money is dumb. When it comes down to it, you have X chickens/household - and nothing you do with little pieces of paper is going to effect that. All you can really say is that you are going to steal some else's chicken. But I would say to that that the rich do not have things that are valuable to the poor. If everyone gets a Lexus they are no better off than if every gets a Yugo - the only reason the Lexus is "better" is because it is rare...
I mean you don't think that rich people are eating 10,000x as much food or something as the poor, do you?
You seem to think that the ills of socialism don't apply to Europe... they do.
If fact, Europe will almost certainly cease to exist as we know it in our lifetimes. Socialism doesn't work. Every bandaid they try does not make it work - and Europe's bandaids are wearing out. I'll bet that it will start in France (some historians will probably conclude that the end really started last year).
You may not get all that right now - but remember what I said when Europe falls... because of course it will be blamed on all the symptoms (upset laborers, money flight, no industry), not the disease of socialism.
Liberals just want to alter who some of the benefits are aimed at, aiming more of them at poor people and less at rich. Or, more often, just leaving the ones aimed at the rich alone, and adding new ones aimed at the poor.
As I point out - that is what they say. But they are rich, so you are saying that you believe that they will act against their own best interest - they are saying that they will take from themselves, and give to the poor. They can do that without government, if they really wanted to.
They are lying - they act for themselves, and only use the power given them in their own interests...
As for the rest, I think you'd find that without contracts, laws, etc. nothing would get done/built/whatever. So everyone would be worse off, even the poor. And of course, the new rich pay for everything anyway, so what is your point? (Note that Democrats tend to be "old rich", and pay no taxes, while Republicans tend to be "new rich" and bear 90% of the tax burden)
Finally, with regards to the non-linear value of money you are correct. I would point out two things, however - first, compare the minimum standard of living between two countries, one socialist for 50 years and one capitalist for 50 years. Then pick which one you'd like to live in. (Here's a hint - we have millions of illegal immigrants, they have to threaten violence to prevent people from leaving...). In addition, as you mention the value of money is non-linear. But what you fail to realize is what that implies: If we took all of Bill Gate's money and divided it up among the poor, all that would happen is inflation! More stuff would not magically appear to be purchased - so the stuff that existed would just rise in value!
Money does not cause stuff to exist, money is only useful for evaluating trades - redistribution of money eliminates its usefulness for value evaluation, and it quickly becomes worthless. For an example of this, see South America - Argentina in 1975-1991, and Venezuela in a few years (beginning to show the cracks now). This is not some complex theory, it is dead simple - socialism doesn't work.
It is only the "old rich" that are liberal. Personally, I think it is an attempt to keep wealth through abuse of power, myself. Liberal policies tend to favor stasis - nanny state regulations to keep small company competition from entering; environmental regulations designed to ignore the actual environment, but require million dollar studies so that small companies cannot enter; etc.
Conservatives want to make the pie bigger, without regard to how the pie is divided.
Liberals want to divide the pie equally, without regard to how big the pie is.
The reason I can not vote for a liberal is that they are saying that they will act against their own best interest - they say that they will act to move money from themselves to the poor. I doubt them when they say that...
On the other hand, a conservative says they will act to make the total available bigger. I believe them when they say that because it is in their best interests - they take a percentage off the top. Eventually everyone else is made better off through trickle-down effects, but at least we are not relying on a politician being honest about harming his own self-interest...
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This is not insightful, people! To be extradited, the same law has to be valid in both countries. Like copyright law! Trial to be done where the damage occured.
Who in Austrailia is damaged by copyright infringement against US companies? Why on Earth would you hold the trial there? (Mind you, they do hold a hearing in Australia to make sure that the charges are valid and warrant extradition. But that won't be discussed on Slashdot, eh?)
OK, to extend the metaphor way beyond breaking...
Now you give the murderer a BFG - he sits in Australia picking off Americans one by one via long range death.
To you propose to let him off? He never left Austrailia, never killed anyone there, etc.
He committed a crime in a foriegn country. Both his country and the foriegn country 1) agree that the accusation is about an actionable crime, and 2) agree that people should be tried in the country where the damage was done.
This isn't unusual, this is how law enforcement works, people!
Trust me, this kind of thing happens WAY more in: Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, etc.
You do not get their news, you only get yours. It doesn't seem to happen as much in Europe, though. My guess is that it is a cultural thing - which is too bad for Europe, since their culture is rapidly changing right now.
So why can't those of us that are trained carry? That is the question! Why do I have to be a full time cop?
Situations like this would be greatly helped by 1 person in 50 being trained with a weapon. There are far more people willing to be trained than that! As it stands now, a former cop or marine cannot carry a firearm - that's just dumb.
People like you have no idea what it means to live in a society where everyone has a gun.
I beg to differ - I have live in many societies where most (all?) people had guns - and none of them were violent, and they had no fatal shootings I know of. First, rural Virginia (interestingly enough), on farms. Everyone had guns, everyone practiced with them. My family only had to use a gun against a human twice - both times, people from out of town. (My father was the town doctor, presumably these people thought robbing a rural doctor would be a piece of cake).
Second was in the military - you probably don't count that, but they are humans too. Very few of them kill each other. (You don't know humor until you are forced to go through a metal detector to board a plane full of marines, armed and in battle armour - like you would really try something!)
Last was in Utah, and hey, that whole state is rural.
Now I live in the big city, so no guns allowed. Personally, I would still feel better if I had a weapon at home, but cities are different and have different requirements and advantages. Mostly, the police and abulances can at least concievably get here before I die...
We use data models for all sorts of shit, for example, 'proving' that the design of the aircraft you're flying in won't crash
Interesting that you would say this. Models are indeed used when designing aircraft. But any prediction made by the model is not trusted if the model predicts deviation from normal behaviour - for that, we have to use wind tunnels and models.
That is the problem here. You cannot create a model which predicts a deviation in behaviour and then use that as proof. You use the model to make a prediction, and then you compare the prediction to reality. Then you have proof.
Many aspects of Global Warming have followed this procedure. The "doomsday" projections have not. That is why most people don't argue the existence of Global Warming, they argue the necessity of doing anything about a 1 degree change over a decade...
I'm afraid you are incorrect. Transistors become more conductive as they get hotter - the failure mode of a hot transistor is to become essentially a short.
This is true of most semiconductor based devices.
but this is just wasteful.
Incorrect. This is one of the most useful items in society, a way to transfer economic power from the idiots that buy gold plated laptops to the genius that is selling one...
Let's face it, we need to remove as much money as possible from anyone that would buy one of these!
At first I thought ORAC!
By the way, the cost of Sarbox compliance is estimated at $1M per $1B in revenue. At about $10T of total revenue in US public companies, we are spending $10B per year on compliance...
To avoid a few billion lost in Enron, and a few billion lost in MCI - every few years.
That is Congress math!
Enron guys could have been charged with regardless of Sarbox.
That's the crazy thing! The Enron guys weren't charged as a result of Sarbox - Sarbox came afterwards! The existing laws were obviously sufficient!
Wait - the Democrats want to use VAT? As in I get to keep the 1/2 of my money that the government takes, and only pay tax the same percentage as everyone else on purchases?
OK, I am now a Democrat! Where do I sign?
Even funnier - in Japanese, Japan (the name of the country) has no J in it. It is Nihon.
So they are adding the English first letter of their own country's name. What's wrong with N-SOX?
I'll look into it, but it seems like a lot of lying is required.
No it isn't - I'm not telling you to lie. You really would be starting a company in Illinois. You really would have 2 employees. You wouldn't have much of a product or service, but that still puts you ahead of half the companies out there (at least you aren't spending money to create nothing!).
Just using the system in place, the way it was meant to be used.
But, no, the media continued to operate as an arm of the White House
What's funny is that I see it the other way - the media under-reports the excesses of the Democrats, and so they tend to be more corrupt. You aren't seriously suggesting that the media that went out with obviously forged documents were holding back on the real dirt?
Probably, the "evils" of the Democrats outweigh the "evils" of Republicans to me, so I see underreporting on the Democrats and wonder why the heck anyone cares that a Republican is gay. To you, the "evils" of the Republicans outweigh the "evils" of Democrats so you see the opposite.
Protesting the Vietnam war isn't betraying your country.
Note that I never said he betrayed his country. He betrayed the military - his brothers in arms. He said that they were all baby-killers, rapists, etc. What's funny is that he testified before Congress that he imself was a baby-killing rapist - I'm not sure that that qualifies you for the White House, but apparently it does for Congress... (Note also that it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what the men in the military think. And that should have been obvious to anyone that cared enough to ask the question.)
that no one had heard of, and unlike, oh, Ann Coulter
This is exactly what I am talking about. If Cindy Sheenan had not been such a public $*^%%$&, then Ann Coulter would have been thrown out. But since the Democrat party sided with Sheenan and her like, the conservatives and Republicans had no alternatives. We couldn't exactly say "look, if you get that Ann person out one more time I'm going over with Cindy." If the Democrats had just held more to the center (as in half way between the old Republicans and the old Democrats, not some idealistic version of center), the Republicans would have been forced to the center as well. Obviously the reverse is true as well.
There is no party for conservatives, for people that want sound economic policy. There is either "tax your way to socialism" Democrats, or "spend your way to pork" Republicans. To me, at least the pork will work long term - I mean they aren't that large a percentage of the GDP - but socialism will kill the country, and force me into a situation I don't want to be in.
OK. Here's what you do:
1) Form an Illinois LLC. (There are probably other states that work as well, but I only know about Illinois)
2) Hire 2 people - yourself and some random friend. You need to have at least 2 employees.
3) Get a group health insurance package for the company. Just contact an insurance broker. (I can help you with this also, if you need it)
4) By state law, the insurance company must accept you in the plan - and the rate is capped at a certain point (I think 200% of normal premium, I'm not sure). Preexisting conditions may apply for a few months, but after that everything should be covered.
The requirements vary by state, but most states have some form of this available. Call an insurance broker in Illinois. Make sure that they understand that you are starting an Illinois company, and you want group health care coverage. Ask them to explain the qualification process, any preexisting condition problems, and how out-of-state coverage works (you travel a lot, right? Like to Georgia?).
Hope this works for you. The cost to form an Illinois LLC is $500. The insurance costs vary depending on the plan you choose, and whether you have a family, but adding all those up probably is cheaper than $15K in 8 years - and then you have insurance if something else goes wrong...
Back to our original topic - personally, I think the best outcome is what we have right now. Republicans control one part of government, Democrats control the other. That way they fight - and the easiest way to fight is to point out the other side's problems. So then the turkeys are thrown from office. The main problem right now (from my perspective) is that the Democrats have gone to the fringes. That makes it very difficult to control the Repulicans, because they know that the alternative is even worse. In fact, that might sum up the entire problem with our current government - no one is running saying "I'm good", they are just running saying "he is worse".
I mean really, you couldn't beat Bush last time? What was that! I had thought that anyone would be better than Bush (even if you liked the guy, replacing him would have been good for America - too many burnt bridges by him) - but then I saw who was chosen! (Here's a hint: having a commander in chief during a time of war who is famous for betraying the military is just not cool, OK? I'm from a military family...)
I can't get insured either.
Are you serious about that? As I said, I do know a fair bit about insurance (the free or low cost kind), if you need some help.
Only the first $90,000 of income a year is taxed for that
OK, so when you see those poor people earning $90,000, you have a point. Until then, you don't. A person making $90,000 pay in a lot more than they will ever receive. A poor person receives a lot more than they will ever pay in. Wealth transfer, QED. (The same applies for Medicare. Old rich people do not use it, because they self insure. Only the poor people use it. Wealth transfer, QED.)
Your I wonder how much of the 33% paragraph didn't seem to make much sense. I'm probably missing your point.
I am all against corruption, I just don't believe that socailists and liberals are any less corrupt than conservatives and Republicans. Liberals are just more careful to hide financial linkages to corporate america because their constituants care more.
Democrats cannot stop the war, they do not have the votes.
They could stop the war on a dime - just don't vote in the money. They won't do this, for the reasons I've already stated. It's easy to talk big when you are a minority - but now that they are a majority they have to tone back, or people will ask why they are not following through...
to be insisting that the Government
Cut off. But anyway, I would rather have someone tell me that they are going to do something in their own best interest, rather than telling me that they will help others.
I spent a few years unable to walk - and thus unable to earn much of an income (I was WAY below poverty in the US). My family was overseas, my father was in Desert Storm. I had to make do on my own. I went to the government for help, and they turned me down. I was not politically connected or the right color, so no help for me. I couldn't pay my medical bills (so don't talk to me about the poor not getting coverage - I know that doctors just see you anyway and write it off).
So I DO NOT beleive in the government's ability to help people. They just can't do it! Why should I pay for their friends pork when I desperately needed help and they turned me down!
I obviously did all right in the end (I ended up starting my own company from my bed) - but government does not work to help people. My story is hardly unique...
you're still operating on the assumptions that taxes go from the rich to the poor
Here is the actual government spending data:
Department of State 1%
Department of Defense 19%
Environmental Protection Agency 1%
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 24%
Social Security Administration 18%
Interest on the Public Debt 13%
Other 24%
So, you are saying that the DOD only benefits the rich - so the poor don't mind being Muslim. OK, whatever. It sure seems to me that "Medicare and Medicaid" and "Social Security" give basically zero to the rich. That is 44% of the total US budget! The rich pay the most taxes: the top 50% pay 96% of taxes, the top 10% pay 66% of taxes. How is this not "taxes go from the rich to the poor"?
Now you probably say "but those don't count because of X". Well, I only have one question: Do the rich pay for it? Yes they do, so what we have is wealth transfer from the rich (but only the non-goverment rich - note that the democrats in office pay no appreciable taxes) to the poor.
the government has to hire people to provide those services
First, I do not differentiate socialism and communism that much - communism is just socialism taken to extremes. The basic idea behind both is the same. Now, back to this hiring: OK, so your are the governor. Who do you hire? The guy that spent 4 years going to college, knows everything about the field, and will do the best job possible or your friend from high school that will give you a 10% kickback? And how much do you pay this friend? How about enough to allow for an increase in the kickback?
Governments suck at providing services. Please visit the nearest DMV immediately.
the fact that there at many corrupt 'liberals' that will not vote for things
OK, say you are saying that you will only vote for honest politicians. You mean the ones smart enough to hide their corruption, right? There are no honest politicians - here's an easy proof (within reason): You have two politicians, one honest, one not. The one can hide his dishonesty, because they are powerful politicians. The voters determine who is best essentially on 1) what is promised, and 2) how much money is spent (hopefully in that order). The lying one can promise more (because he doesn't actually have to deliver) and has more money (because he can give contributors money from the till). So the dishonest one wins most of the time. Now you get to Congress, where the politicians have to have competed in many races before and won - they are almost all corrupt, and you cannot find the few that aren't because they have enough power to hide their evil.
As for proof of this - the single biggest issue in the last election was the war, right? All Republicans are evil because they support the war, right?
But everyone in government knows that the war is necessary. So what you will see is back-stabbing, everyone screaming that the war is evil, etc. But no one actually votes on measures that would stop the war. If a Democrat wins the presidency, the war goes on anyway...
You are obviously young, and haven't thought this stuff through. Please let go of your anger, and engage your mind. Everyone wants to help the poor (and everyone else, for that matter), but when push comes to shove you help those you know, not strangers.
socialism is aiming the government at providing things to benefit all people, instead of providing benefits to certain people
Right... so the few people that run the government are going to be nice and give resources to everyone else instead of their friends and themselves. That is delusional, and if you believe that this happens anywhere (posibly excepting Scandinavia) you are a fool. The aristocracy still controls Europe, they just say that they don't - the most obvious sign of this kind of thing is a lack of startup companies. If you are really free, then you don't work for someone else, you start your own company. In most of Europe, this is practically impossible - but in the US it happens every day.
Socialism is great in theory - it just doesn't work at all in the real world. In the real world, socialism and (US type) liberals are just people lying about helping you so that you will give them power. It wuld be nice if people would give to stangers as much as they give themselves, but it just doesn't work that way in practice. (As an aside, I believe it can work that way in smaller groups. Families are socailist, for example.)
I agree that there is a historical biase towards governments serving the rich. I agree that governments should serve the poor more. I disagree that the way to do that is socialism, and voting for people who promise to hand out money. The way to do that is education - first and foremost I think negotiation should be studied and taught in school, followed by economics (real economics, not socialist economics - the study of why people do things in the real world, not what they should do in some pretend world) The reason that works is that it benefits the rich guys also.
But if it really worries you that much, we can just destroy their money.
Well, I know I sure wouldn't be working in your country. When people try foolish things like that, the rich just leave. And the (new) rich are rich because they know how to turn labor (something everyone is born with) into stuff worth more than labor. And what that means is that you end up with a country where no one knows how to make things worth more than the labor it takes to make them. We call those "third world" countries...
And just for completeness, destroying the money would not cause deflation. Again, remember that inflation is caused not by "printing money" per se, it is caused by devaluing money (that is its definition, after all). So if you don't print money but destroy value in the economy, you still cause inflation. (The obvious example is if your economy consists of only chickens and dollars, and you kill half the chickens, you will have inflation as the price per chicken doubles). So in your example, by stealing money from the rich you make money less valuable (at least to the rich), and so they are less willing to trade expertise and goods for it, and so you have inflation. Burning the money probably would curb that inflation, but you would not have deflation. To have deflation you would be saying (in my example) that there are suddenly more chickens to be had.
Playing around with money is dumb. When it comes down to it, you have X chickens/household - and nothing you do with little pieces of paper is going to effect that. All you can really say is that you are going to steal some else's chicken. But I would say to that that the rich do not have things that are valuable to the poor. If everyone gets a Lexus they are no better off than if every gets a Yugo - the only reason the Lexus is "better" is because it is rare...
I mean you don't think that rich people are eating 10,000x as much food or something as the poor, do you?
You seem to think that the ills of socialism don't apply to Europe... they do.
If fact, Europe will almost certainly cease to exist as we know it in our lifetimes. Socialism doesn't work. Every bandaid they try does not make it work - and Europe's bandaids are wearing out. I'll bet that it will start in France (some historians will probably conclude that the end really started last year).
You may not get all that right now - but remember what I said when Europe falls... because of course it will be blamed on all the symptoms (upset laborers, money flight, no industry), not the disease of socialism.
Yup - I remember playing on a minicomputer the size of a room.
Ah, those days!
Liberals just want to alter who some of the benefits are aimed at, aiming more of them at poor people and less at rich. Or, more often, just leaving the ones aimed at the rich alone, and adding new ones aimed at the poor.
As I point out - that is what they say. But they are rich, so you are saying that you believe that they will act against their own best interest - they are saying that they will take from themselves, and give to the poor. They can do that without government, if they really wanted to.
They are lying - they act for themselves, and only use the power given them in their own interests...
As for the rest, I think you'd find that without contracts, laws, etc. nothing would get done/built/whatever. So everyone would be worse off, even the poor. And of course, the new rich pay for everything anyway, so what is your point? (Note that Democrats tend to be "old rich", and pay no taxes, while Republicans tend to be "new rich" and bear 90% of the tax burden)
Finally, with regards to the non-linear value of money you are correct. I would point out two things, however - first, compare the minimum standard of living between two countries, one socialist for 50 years and one capitalist for 50 years. Then pick which one you'd like to live in. (Here's a hint - we have millions of illegal immigrants, they have to threaten violence to prevent people from leaving...). In addition, as you mention the value of money is non-linear. But what you fail to realize is what that implies: If we took all of Bill Gate's money and divided it up among the poor, all that would happen is inflation! More stuff would not magically appear to be purchased - so the stuff that existed would just rise in value!
Money does not cause stuff to exist, money is only useful for evaluating trades - redistribution of money eliminates its usefulness for value evaluation, and it quickly becomes worthless. For an example of this, see South America - Argentina in 1975-1991, and Venezuela in a few years (beginning to show the cracks now). This is not some complex theory, it is dead simple - socialism doesn't work.
Almost all business men are conservatives,
Most newly rich people are business men,
Most newly rich people are conservatives.
It is only the "old rich" that are liberal. Personally, I think it is an attempt to keep wealth through abuse of power, myself. Liberal policies tend to favor stasis - nanny state regulations to keep small company competition from entering; environmental regulations designed to ignore the actual environment, but require million dollar studies so that small companies cannot enter; etc.
How I see it is a little different:
Conservatives want to make the pie bigger, without regard to how the pie is divided.
Liberals want to divide the pie equally, without regard to how big the pie is.
The reason I can not vote for a liberal is that they are saying that they will act against their own best interest - they say that they will act to move money from themselves to the poor. I doubt them when they say that...
On the other hand, a conservative says they will act to make the total available bigger. I believe them when they say that because it is in their best interests - they take a percentage off the top. Eventually everyone else is made better off through trickle-down effects, but at least we are not relying on a politician being honest about harming his own self-interest...