We have been doing the same thing for almost two years. We started with almost $60K in debt, mostly credit cards, then my wife lost her job, basically half our income. She was fortunate enough to not be on unemployment for too long, but until recently never made as much as she did. We cut out all non-essential spending, cashed in a couple 401K's and will pay off our last CC this year.
Sure we lost a little in retirement money, but with the market down, and paying almost $1K in interest every month the decision was easy. Now that my wife is employed again, we will be able to replenish that retirement money easily, and not have to worry about all that debt.
We have always bought used cars, and the next owner is the junk yard. New cars are a horrible waste of money. The newest car we have is a 2000 Audi, which we just bought for $16K (the sticker was $43K new!), with 45K, and still under factory warranty for 5K.
It amazes me how few people are either too vain or just don't realize the value. Of course if everyone stops buying new cars, I won't be able to get good deals.;)
The one thing CC's are good for, as long as you have the discipline, is to play the float. As long as you watch your spending and can pay the balance off every month CC's are better than debit cards. Most people don't have that discipline though...
As for money skills, I think it's deeper than that. My dad preached to me constantly about money, but it is too easy to get caught up in the buying frenzy and throw good advice out the window. A major problem in the US is the focus on spending, there is virtually no focus on saving.
The part I like is they are claiming that everyone else is wrong, and they are right.;)
I don't buy Cisco anymore for this very reason, it's not just their switches, it's on everything they make that has a NIC.
I deployed some CSS's, right after Cisco bought ArrowPoint, and they did auto correctly. Another client deployed some a couple of months ago, and auto was broken. Cisco is the Borg!;)
In most respects troff syntax is no less obtuse/difficult than XSL or CSS, and is mostly as functional.
In the early 90's I worked at Bell Labs and shared an office with one of the documentation writers on the team (not sure what psychological studies they were performing, putting a developer and doc writer in the same office). He would complain constantly about having to use Framemaker, and wanted to use troff.;)
Most big IT vendor's are very secretive about their future's. But having worked for large IT shops in the past I can tell you there's a little thing called an NDA. After you sign one of these, future's become clearer... sort of...
Most of the time you get a lot of information about a lot of future products. The problem is that somewhere south of 50% of those products ever see the light of day, and your left asking: "What happened to so and so product? I really liked that one" Usually the response is some unintelligable marketing babble, which amounts to: "That was too hard".
So be careful what you ask for, sometimes guessing what the future holds is easier than knowing what the future might hold...
I understand. I'm an SBC customer, used to be Ameriwreck. My quality of service has actually gone up, but that isn't saying much, horrible to tolerable isn't a great step, but at least it's progress.
The funniest part was they had huge a campaign here to stop the merger, using quality of service getting worse as the tagline. I asked one of the people that came to my door, "How could it get worse?". They left without saying a word, got the impression they had gotten asked that question a lot.
BTW the break up was in 1980 and there were 8 RBOC's at that time: Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis and US West. 4 RBOC's are left: SBC, Verizon, Qwest and Bell South.
GTE, Sprint, Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone (SNET) were all existing independent local exchange carriers at the time of the break up and are not considered RBOC's.
The problem with your definition is it's too general.
First of all ILECS not only own most of the facilities (the wires, switches, etc), but they also do billing, customer care, etc. Wasn't clear from your first post if you knew that.
Secondly there are two general types of CLECS: facility based and non-facility based. Facility based CLEC's have their own physical plant, sometimes only fibre/copper, but usually they own their own switches as well. Non-facilty based CLEC's simply lease space on the ILEC's or facility based CLEC's physical plant, and provide their own billing and customer care.
In the "middle of nowhere" phone service is usually provided by a local co-op, which technically is an ILEC, since they are the incumbent. ILEC isn't usually used to refer to these co-op's, since ILEC really only means something when a given area has competition ie a CLEC. In the middle of no where, there isn't a lot of competition.
RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Company) were a result of the 1980 break up of AT&T, which resulted in 8 RBOC's, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis and US West. Which are now 4, Verizon, SBC, Qwest and Bell South (and becoming what they were broken up for in the first place).
RBOC's and ILEC's are different (some people interchange them). RBOC's are ILEC's, but not all ILEC's are/were RBOC's. CincinnatiBell is a good example of this, CB is an ILEC, but not an RBOC.
I agree, NetBackup is the best for enterprise backups. I hope Symantec doesn't screw it up too badly.
I have always liked all of Veritas's SW, especially LVM and VCS.
Veritas's biggest problem is customer support, almost every problem I have ever called them for, I have ended up solving myself. Unfortuantely I don't see Symantec fixing this problem...
He wasn't on my precincts ballot. Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, a sticker indicating removed by court order (Nadar;) and Peroutka, where the only candidates on the ballot.
Which brings up an interesting point, since Cobb wasn't even on the ballot, why put any money into getting a recount?
That makes two, now if we could round up the other ~400K, like minded folks and get them to convince ~40 million of thier friends and family, we MIGHT have a chance.;)
You obviously don't know much about the LP party. The LP party has many local candidates on the ballot in many different local elections : http://www.lp.org/organization/state.html.
Plus many Libertarians currently hold office at the local level: http://www.lp.org/organization/officials.php
Badnarik is more a less a "loss leader", some states still require that candidates for office, be a member of a recognized party, and to be "recognized" often means running a presidential candidate.
The LP is very realistic, they know that in order to succeed, they have to have a grassroots effort, and theirs is very strong and getting stronger.
Sure, older people vote that way because when they were young they decided to go major party and not go the way they really felt. My guess, if you continue to always assume it is the "wrong" time to vote third party or you feel it is a wasted vote, when your 60+ you will be voting for a major party too.
Change takes time, and young people, that can still think for themselves, are the key to making that change happen. Voting for any party is NEVER a wasted vote, as long as you believe in the party you are voting for. The only wasted vote is one that is never cast, or one cast for someone you don't fully believe in.
Young people, like yourself, are the key to change, old people RARELY change.
Let me clue your in, the country is already screwed, and the Republican's and Democrat's are equally to blame for it. Voting for them really doesn't solve anything, and oh BTW, neither one of them is going to cause things to get significantly better or worse. Why not vote the way you really feel, and try to make something postive come from it. It won't happen this election, or next and probably not the one after that, but someday, if enough people vote for someone and not against someone, change can and will happen.
"It's hard to imagine two more completely opposite candidates than Bush and Kerry"
Actually both Badnarik and Peroutka are more opposite from Kerry than Bush is, by far.
Third parties have always had an influence on the major parties. Many of the major reforms in the US were third party issues that got taken up by one of the major parties. Third parties in the US know they have no chance of winning the presidency, that's not the point. The point is to show the major parties that they are not appealing to everyone. Even if they gain less than 1% of the vote, that is still a lot of people not being represented by a major party.
Voting for a candidate that doesn't even come close to your views, is actually wasting your vote! Some compromise is OK, but voting for Bush or Kerry compromises my views too much. Both the Republican's and Democrat's are sending this country down the preverbal tube and I for one am voting to stop it! Voting third party is currently the closest thing the US has to a no confidence vote, against the major parties, since not voting sends NO message.
" It is also a 'fact' that 90% of the KKK will vote for Bush"
Seems low, I can't see one KKK member NOT voting for Bush. He supports adding discrimination to the Consitution, what more could a good KKK member want?
Obviously we have different opinions on how to solve societies problems. Your arguements don't convince me, and mine don't convince you.
I really would like to know, what is wrong with killing criminals that can't seem to adjust to the rules of society? Why should any society continue to have to pay (in more than just money) for people who can't obey simple rules? BTW I hear myself say it ALL the time, and the more I say it the more I believe it! People that bring guns to a fight and use that gun in a fight should be made to face the consquences of using said gun, period. There are already plenty of laws about this, we just need to enforce them.
The difference is that the US is NOT a totalitarian socity and to even suggest that the early days of the US frontier west was anything but complete lawlessness is foollish on your part.
A society like the US has laws and procedures that must be followed before someone is put to death for a crime, unlike the societies in your example, and I am not suggesting that those be thrown out or bypassed. Quite the contray, fair due process is extremely important to a civialized society. Any society that denies a persons right to fair due process, before finding them guilty, is not a very civilized society.
As for everyone owning a gun, have you traveled much in the US west lately? Many, people still wear guns openly, and there isn't the total breakdown of society, as you suggest should happen.
The problems in South Central LA can be traced directly to gang activity and drugs. The war on drugs has caused much expense both in money and lives, and for what? Drugs are still easily available, and if anything the quality and supply has gone up. This is truly the most disasterous war in US history. Legalizing drugs will give the gangs one less thing to fight over. If they continue their illegal ways, then they should be rounded up and dealt with. Sure this will be expensive, but to have a proper society everyone in that society must respect the rules of that society, if they don't they should be shown the "door".
"It's going to be a lot more expensive and risky living in a Libertarian society of criminals who prefer to steal than to "work". Visualize the chaos before you start talking about the Libertarian armed vigilantes "controlling" these criminals (and the falsely accused). It's cheaper and safer to keep bums on welfare than to jail and kill them all."
First of all that seems like a paranoid assumption on your part. Since a truly libertarian form of government has never been tried, you have nothing to base your assumptions on. What we have doesn't work, let's try something different. The government is the worst organization to administer help to the needy, government's are too ineffienct to provide effective help.
As far as the jail thing, I am not a fan of jail's, there is very little evidence that jail's do anything but created hardened criminals. As for killing them, I have never understood the expense involved, bullets are cheap. As for the expensive of trials and appeals, that's easy to fix, one trial, one appeal, if you can't prove your case in two try's, game over.
As for corporate welfare, you better believe I dislike it. The governement has NO business supporting private/public businesses. If a business has a poor business plan and can't make a go of it, they deserve to go out of business. The big airlines where in trouble before 9/11 (9/11 just hurried the process along), the government should have never bailed them out, they ran their businesses poorly! The population of a country should not have to pay for poor decisions made in the private sector.
Welfare states are as bad corporate welfare. All governments should be required to live within their means. If they can't afford some service their population wants, then they either have to raise taxes or not provide the service, the federal government should not be bailing them out.
Every action has consquences, we deal everyday with the consquences of our poorly implemented system. You can't live paralized by the reality that trying something different has consquences.
"One could argue (and thereby taking up that notion of transferring the concept between different planes) that those ppl 'abusing' the system just adopted to it, as it is their 'natural' environment and they just follow natures inherent principle of energy saving. From that viewpoint the system is just poorly designed."
My point exactly, the US system is poorly designed. But even further to the point, the US government is the wrong entity to provide such support. The US government is a large, ineffienct entity, that wastes far more more than it provides in useful services to it's people. The Libertarian view (and mine) is that private organizations can provide these services more effiecently and with far less waste than a government entity, and do a better job of ensuring the correct people receive those services.
This already happens today, there are many church organizations and some private organizations that do a very good job providing these services, on very limited funds. If the US government got out of this business, and let tax payers keep that money, I'm sure these organizations would find their coffers heavier. Certainlty many people would keep the money and not contribute to or give more to these organizations, but many would contribute or give more. Ultimately it should be an individual's choice to give resoures to the needy, not their government, forcing them to do so.
As for crime rates increasing in the absense of a welfare system. First, all I am saying is the current system is broken, and I am tried of contributing my money to a broken system, let's try something different. Second, the US criminal system is far too lenient on criminals and especially repeat offenders. If a person is found to have problems adjusting to the rules of society, then thier "ticket" out of society should be expedited. Again, my tax dollars are being spent on a broken system that feeds and houses people who have problems adjusting to society.
I am all for a society where people respect and care for one another and above all have the right to make their own choices, but when people abuse that respect/rights or commit crimes against society they should be dealt with and potentially removed from society, permanantly.
While I don't subscribe to that largely racist belief, I do believe that society should not be forced to support people who are able to work, but refuse to.
The current US welfare system is widely abused and corrupt. People who are able to work and manipulate/defraud the current welfare system, taking money that is not intended for them, are not "fit" for society, and don't deserve to exist in it. This is what I meant by "survival of the fittest', sorry for any confusion.
First of all you are assuming that I agree that the US government has a consitutional right to impose an income tax on it's citzen's, I don't.
Society means different things to different people, you and I don't seem to have the same definition of a society.
As for the wage dropping... In the current world environment (US jobs moving over seas), maybe US wages and cost of living dropping wouldn't be such a bad thing.
My point about the government taking my money, isn't so much about how much less I have after they take it, as how poorly they use it. If the US government was run, like it forces all other corporations to run, it would have been out of business LONG ago. The US government, by far is not the best way to get money/support into the hands of the people that need it.
And as for leaving, I believe the US is a free country where I am allowed to believe (and for the most part say) what I want. I even have the right to politic/rally for a change in the way things are done. So if it's ok with you, I'll think I'll stick around for a while and see if I can influence any change.
As for your "corporate slave masters" comment, maybe it's time for a change of slave master's.
I agree we have fundamental differences in our views.
I view it as wrong for a government to take money, I earned, and give it to people that they choose. It's not their money, they didn't earn it, I did, and I should be able to decide how it's distributed. You obviously feel that it's ok for the government to take your money, and that's ok, everybody is entited to their belief's.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had some mod points for you.
;)
We have been doing the same thing for almost two years. We started with almost $60K in debt, mostly credit cards, then my wife lost her job, basically half our income. She was fortunate enough to not be on unemployment for too long, but until recently never made as much as she did. We cut out all non-essential spending, cashed in a couple 401K's and will pay off our last CC this year.
Sure we lost a little in retirement money, but with the market down, and paying almost $1K in interest every month the decision was easy. Now that my wife is employed again, we will be able to replenish that retirement money easily, and not have to worry about all that debt.
We have always bought used cars, and the next owner is the junk yard. New cars are a horrible waste of money. The newest car we have is a 2000 Audi, which we just bought for $16K (the sticker was $43K new!), with 45K, and still under factory warranty for 5K.
It amazes me how few people are either too vain or just don't realize the value. Of course if everyone stops buying new cars, I won't be able to get good deals.
The one thing CC's are good for, as long as you have the discipline, is to play the float. As long as you watch your spending and can pay the balance off every month CC's are better than debit cards. Most people don't have that discipline though...
As for money skills, I think it's deeper than that. My dad preached to me constantly about money, but it is too easy to get caught up in the buying frenzy and throw good advice out the window. A major problem in the US is the focus on spending, there is virtually no focus on saving.
OK, assuming you are correct, then why does every other NIC/switch vendor on the planet seem to have no problem with auto-neg and Cisco does?
I have never seen this problem with Foundry switches, only Cisco.
The part I like is they are claiming that everyone else is wrong, and they are right. ;)
;)
I don't buy Cisco anymore for this very reason, it's not just their switches, it's on everything they make that has a NIC.
I deployed some CSS's, right after Cisco bought ArrowPoint, and they did auto correctly. Another client deployed some a couple of months ago, and auto was broken. Cisco is the Borg!
Only partially joking...
;)
In most respects troff syntax is no less obtuse/difficult than XSL or CSS, and is mostly as functional.
In the early 90's I worked at Bell Labs and shared an office with one of the documentation writers on the team (not sure what psychological studies they were performing, putting a developer and doc writer in the same office). He would complain constantly about having to use Framemaker, and wanted to use troff.
Everyone knows print technology peaked with troff.
Most big IT vendor's are very secretive about their future's. But having worked for large IT shops in the past I can tell you there's a little thing called an NDA. After you sign one of these, future's become clearer... sort of...
Most of the time you get a lot of information about a lot of future products. The problem is that somewhere south of 50% of those products ever see the light of day, and your left asking: "What happened to so and so product? I really liked that one" Usually the response is some unintelligable marketing babble, which amounts to: "That was too hard".
So be careful what you ask for, sometimes guessing what the future holds is easier than knowing what the future might hold...
I understand. I'm an SBC customer, used to be Ameriwreck. My quality of service has actually gone up, but that isn't saying much, horrible to tolerable isn't a great step, but at least it's progress.
The funniest part was they had huge a campaign here to stop the merger, using quality of service getting worse as the tagline. I asked one of the people that came to my door, "How could it get worse?". They left without saying a word, got the impression they had gotten asked that question a lot.
BTW the break up was in 1980 and there were 8 RBOC's at that time: Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis and US West. 4 RBOC's are left: SBC, Verizon, Qwest and Bell South.
GTE, Sprint, Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone (SNET) were all existing independent local exchange carriers at the time of the break up and are not considered RBOC's.
The problem with your definition is it's too general.
First of all ILECS not only own most of the facilities (the wires, switches, etc), but they also do billing, customer care, etc. Wasn't clear from your first post if you knew that.
Secondly there are two general types of CLECS: facility based and non-facility based. Facility based CLEC's have their own physical plant, sometimes only fibre/copper, but usually they own their own switches as well. Non-facilty based CLEC's simply lease space on the ILEC's or facility based CLEC's physical plant, and provide their own billing and customer care.
In the "middle of nowhere" phone service is usually provided by a local co-op, which technically is an ILEC, since they are the incumbent. ILEC isn't usually used to refer to these co-op's, since ILEC really only means something when a given area has competition ie a CLEC. In the middle of no where, there isn't a lot of competition.
RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Company) were a result of the 1980 break up of AT&T, which resulted in 8 RBOC's, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis and US West. Which are now 4, Verizon, SBC, Qwest and Bell South (and becoming what they were broken up for in the first place).
RBOC's and ILEC's are different (some people interchange them). RBOC's are ILEC's, but not all ILEC's are/were RBOC's. CincinnatiBell is a good example of this, CB is an ILEC, but not an RBOC.
I agree, NetBackup is the best for enterprise backups. I hope Symantec doesn't screw it up too badly.
I have always liked all of Veritas's SW, especially LVM and VCS.
Veritas's biggest problem is customer support, almost every problem I have ever called them for, I have ended up solving myself. Unfortuantely I don't see Symantec fixing this problem...
He wasn't on my precincts ballot. Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, a sticker indicating removed by court order (Nadar ;) and Peroutka, where the only candidates on the ballot.
Which brings up an interesting point, since Cobb wasn't even on the ballot, why put any money into getting a recount?
That makes two, now if we could round up the other ~400K, like minded folks and get them to convince ~40 million of thier friends and family, we MIGHT have a chance. ;)
You obviously don't know much about the LP party. The LP party has many local candidates on the ballot in many different local elections : http://www.lp.org/organization/state.html.
Plus many Libertarians currently hold office at the local level: http://www.lp.org/organization/officials.php
Badnarik is more a less a "loss leader", some states still require that candidates for office, be a member of a recognized party, and to be "recognized" often means running a presidential candidate.
The LP is very realistic, they know that in order to succeed, they have to have a grassroots effort, and theirs is very strong and getting stronger.
Sure, older people vote that way because when they were young they decided to go major party and not go the way they really felt. My guess, if you continue to always assume it is the "wrong" time to vote third party or you feel it is a wasted vote, when your 60+ you will be voting for a major party too.
Change takes time, and young people, that can still think for themselves, are the key to making that change happen. Voting for any party is NEVER a wasted vote, as long as you believe in the party you are voting for. The only wasted vote is one that is never cast, or one cast for someone you don't fully believe in.
Young people, like yourself, are the key to change, old people RARELY change.
Let me clue your in, the country is already screwed, and the Republican's and Democrat's are equally to blame for it. Voting for them really doesn't solve anything, and oh BTW, neither one of them is going to cause things to get significantly better or worse. Why not vote the way you really feel, and try to make something postive come from it. It won't happen this election, or next and probably not the one after that, but someday, if enough people vote for someone and not against someone, change can and will happen.
"It's hard to imagine two more completely opposite candidates than Bush and Kerry"
Actually both Badnarik and Peroutka are more opposite from Kerry than Bush is, by far.
Third parties have always had an influence on the major parties. Many of the major reforms in the US were third party issues that got taken up by one of the major parties. Third parties in the US know they have no chance of winning the presidency, that's not the point. The point is to show the major parties that they are not appealing to everyone. Even if they gain less than 1% of the vote, that is still a lot of people not being represented by a major party.
Voting for a candidate that doesn't even come close to your views, is actually wasting your vote! Some compromise is OK, but voting for Bush or Kerry compromises my views too much. Both the Republican's and Democrat's are sending this country down the preverbal tube and I for one am voting to stop it! Voting third party is currently the closest thing the US has to a no confidence vote, against the major parties, since not voting sends NO message.
Tokens. Colin for one definately seems to be on the outside looking in.
" It is also a 'fact' that 90% of the KKK will vote for Bush"
Seems low, I can't see one KKK member NOT voting for Bush. He supports adding discrimination to the Consitution, what more could a good KKK member want?
Sounds like a potential plan, just don't EVER come for my guns!
Obviously we have different opinions on how to solve societies problems. Your arguements don't convince me, and mine don't convince you.
I really would like to know, what is wrong with killing criminals that can't seem to adjust to the rules of society? Why should any society continue to have to pay (in more than just money) for people who can't obey simple rules? BTW I hear myself say it ALL the time, and the more I say it the more I believe it! People that bring guns to a fight and use that gun in a fight should be made to face the consquences of using said gun, period. There are already plenty of laws about this, we just need to enforce them.
The difference is that the US is NOT a totalitarian socity and to even suggest that the early days of the US frontier west was anything but complete lawlessness is foollish on your part.
A society like the US has laws and procedures that must be followed before someone is put to death for a crime, unlike the societies in your example, and I am not suggesting that those be thrown out or bypassed. Quite the contray, fair due process is extremely important to a civialized society. Any society that denies a persons right to fair due process, before finding them guilty, is not a very civilized society.
As for everyone owning a gun, have you traveled much in the US west lately? Many, people still wear guns openly, and there isn't the total breakdown of society, as you suggest should happen.
The problems in South Central LA can be traced directly to gang activity and drugs. The war on drugs has caused much expense both in money and lives, and for what? Drugs are still easily available, and if anything the quality and supply has gone up. This is truly the most disasterous war in US history. Legalizing drugs will give the gangs one less thing to fight over. If they continue their illegal ways, then they should be rounded up and dealt with. Sure this will be expensive, but to have a proper society everyone in that society must respect the rules of that society, if they don't they should be shown the "door".
"It's going to be a lot more expensive and risky living in a Libertarian society of criminals who prefer to steal than to "work". Visualize the chaos before you start talking about the Libertarian armed vigilantes "controlling" these criminals (and the falsely accused). It's cheaper and safer to keep bums on welfare than to jail and kill them all."
First of all that seems like a paranoid assumption on your part. Since a truly libertarian form of government has never been tried, you have nothing to base your assumptions on. What we have doesn't work, let's try something different. The government is the worst organization to administer help to the needy, government's are too ineffienct to provide effective help.
As far as the jail thing, I am not a fan of jail's, there is very little evidence that jail's do anything but created hardened criminals. As for killing them, I have never understood the expense involved, bullets are cheap. As for the expensive of trials and appeals, that's easy to fix, one trial, one appeal, if you can't prove your case in two try's, game over.
As for corporate welfare, you better believe I dislike it. The governement has NO business supporting private/public businesses. If a business has a poor business plan and can't make a go of it, they deserve to go out of business. The big airlines where in trouble before 9/11 (9/11 just hurried the process along), the government should have never bailed them out, they ran their businesses poorly! The population of a country should not have to pay for poor decisions made in the private sector.
Welfare states are as bad corporate welfare. All governments should be required to live within their means. If they can't afford some service their population wants, then they either have to raise taxes or not provide the service, the federal government should not be bailing them out.
Every action has consquences, we deal everyday with the consquences of our poorly implemented system. You can't live paralized by the reality that trying something different has consquences.
"One could argue (and thereby taking up that notion of transferring the concept between different planes) that those ppl 'abusing' the system just adopted to it, as it is their 'natural' environment and they just follow natures inherent principle of energy saving. From that viewpoint the system is just poorly designed."
My point exactly, the US system is poorly designed. But even further to the point, the US government is the wrong entity to provide such support. The US government is a large, ineffienct entity, that wastes far more more than it provides in useful services to it's people. The Libertarian view (and mine) is that private organizations can provide these services more effiecently and with far less waste than a government entity, and do a better job of ensuring the correct people receive those services.
This already happens today, there are many church organizations and some private organizations that do a very good job providing these services, on very limited funds. If the US government got out of this business, and let tax payers keep that money, I'm sure these organizations would find their coffers heavier. Certainlty many people would keep the money and not contribute to or give more to these organizations, but many would contribute or give more. Ultimately it should be an individual's choice to give resoures to the needy, not their government, forcing them to do so.
As for crime rates increasing in the absense of a welfare system. First, all I am saying is the current system is broken, and I am tried of contributing my money to a broken system, let's try something different. Second, the US criminal system is far too lenient on criminals and especially repeat offenders. If a person is found to have problems adjusting to the rules of society, then thier "ticket" out of society should be expedited. Again, my tax dollars are being spent on a broken system that feeds and houses people who have problems adjusting to society.
I am all for a society where people respect and care for one another and above all have the right to make their own choices, but when people abuse that respect/rights or commit crimes against society they should be dealt with and potentially removed from society, permanantly.
While I don't subscribe to that largely racist belief, I do believe that society should not be forced to support people who are able to work, but refuse to.
The current US welfare system is widely abused and corrupt. People who are able to work and manipulate/defraud the current welfare system, taking money that is not intended for them, are not "fit" for society, and don't deserve to exist in it. This is what I meant by "survival of the fittest', sorry for any confusion.
First of all you are assuming that I agree that the US government has a consitutional right to impose an income tax on it's citzen's, I don't.
Society means different things to different people, you and I don't seem to have the same definition of a society.
As for the wage dropping... In the current world environment (US jobs moving over seas), maybe US wages and cost of living dropping wouldn't be such a bad thing.
My point about the government taking my money, isn't so much about how much less I have after they take it, as how poorly they use it. If the US government was run, like it forces all other corporations to run, it would have been out of business LONG ago. The US government, by far is not the best way to get money/support into the hands of the people that need it.
And as for leaving, I believe the US is a free country where I am allowed to believe (and for the most part say) what I want. I even have the right to politic/rally for a change in the way things are done. So if it's ok with you, I'll think I'll stick around for a while and see if I can influence any change.
As for your "corporate slave masters" comment, maybe it's time for a change of slave master's.
I agree we have fundamental differences in our views.
I view it as wrong for a government to take money, I earned, and give it to people that they choose. It's not their money, they didn't earn it, I did, and I should be able to decide how it's distributed. You obviously feel that it's ok for the government to take your money, and that's ok, everybody is entited to their belief's.