Apples and oranges. An accidental bombing under the fog of war hardly compares to overrunning a foreign embassy and holding the people therein hostage for over a year.
It seemed to have been well underway a few months ago but the economic meltdown has put the brakes on it for the time being. It will be interesting to see how things shape up when the global economy recovers. Economic uncertainty is usually followed by geopolitical uncertainty and we have bigger toys to play with this time around.....
Well, maybe Canada hasn't, but both the US and Israel come pretty close
We've overrun embassies? Really?
Haven't heard much complaining about Pakistan lately (note: missiles and nuclear technology)
There isn't much complaining about Pakistan because they aren't threatening us or our allies. There is a lot of concern about Pakistan because of the unstable nature of it's government, the extremist problem they face and the fact that they have nukes.
enemy of the state #1 you know
What, you think he shouldn't be an enemy of our state? He murdered thousands of American citizens. He's murdered hundreds of people from other countries (in the 9/11 attacks and others) I make no apologies for any action my country takes to dismantle his network and find/kill him.
Please stop basing your world views on the propaganda spread by the US and all those other 'responsible members of the international community', your only fooling yourself. We are being lied to and told half-truths by our prime minister here in the Netherlands, who still refuses to acknowledge Iraq was invaded based on false intelligence, and is still desperately trying to prevent the truth being uncovered. And we like to view our country as one of the most democratic and free in this world.
Maybe, but this also shows how bad a state NASA is in. Despite years of experience, NASA seems to have collective amnesia in rocket design and just can't the next generation of launchers right
Maybe that has more to do with funding and less to do with any lack of talent on NASA's part? Think Teller could have built the H-bomb with a sawbuck just because he happened to be smart?
We have enjoyed a technological advantage over the rest of the world for a good while now but it is being eroded at a fantastic rate
Sounds like a reason to increase our funding of the science adviser guy at the expense of the elvis guy;) We'll just hide behind our nukes/great wall/united nations for a few turns while we fund him, then switch to fundamentalism and take care of those Persian bastards once and for all!
Our feud is so old that I think reconciliation may prove impossible
The GP didn't say reconciliation is impossible. The GP said that the Western world has a history of clashing with the Islamic/Middle Eastern World. I see nothing in human history to suggest that this will change soon -- if anything it's going to get worse as the competition for limited resources heats up.
Mind you, it won't start with bullets -- it will start with economics.
The Western nations have been at odds with Islamic nations for 1500 years, and with Persia for nearly 3000. That Persia now Iran is acting up again is hardly a surprise. One might surmise that in the grand scheme of things, this is just a conflict between ideologies and peoples and no one side is right, but the thing is, since most of us are westerners, we would prefer that our side prevail.
Well, for what it's worth we've prevailed more often than not. Persian aggression was what united the Greek city-states and arguably lead to the birth of Western civilization. Even when western civilization has been on the decline we've generally managed to hold the line. Every time they've had a chance to beat Western civilization they've failed.
To that end, I suppose that those who would argue that strategic missile defense cannot be built, or that militarization of space should be avoided, or that Iran is not a threat, need to rethink that.
If Iran demonstrates a workable launch system then it would seem to me to be the height of irresponsibility not to build a missile defense system. They aren't there yet and they still have to develop a miniaturized nuclear weapon (no small feat) but I hope that people are looking at missile defense differently now.
And similarly, those that would advocate war with Iran, might need to rethink that as well
I don't think people would be advocating war with Iran if Iran was a responsible member of the international community. They could demonstrate this by ending their support of terrorist organizations and toning down the anti-Israeli rhetoric. I doubt they are inclined to do this so we'll see what the next move on the chessboard winds up being.....
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now?
Canada is a responsible member of the international community that hasn't made threats to wipe neighbors off the map, allowed criminals within it's own population to overrun foreign embassies and supplied terrorist groups with financial support/weapons.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up member of the international community perhaps they could borrow a few lessons from our neighbors to the North? Besides which, ice hockey is way cooler than soccer anyway.
Britain in the 50s and 60s was poor because the US delayed intervention in WW2, hoping that this would result in the collapse of the British Empire, to the gain of the US
That's funny, I always thought it had to do with domestic political considerations. It is true that FDR hoped to end colonialism but I've never heard that used as an explanation for why we didn't intervene.
Government programs are there to accomplish what the private sector fails to accomplish.
And right there is another problem I have. If it isn't in the Constitution then it's not a job of Government. Liberals expand the Government every single chance they get and then are the first ones to whine when they turn around and discover that their civil liberties (except gun ownership of course, cuz those are dangerous) are being eroded. Just remember that a Government big enough to give you everything that you need is big enough to take away everything that you have.
Then you have a fundamental problem with the existence of a government, because all government spending is "wealth redistribution". It's still about taking a dollar from you and giving it to someone else, whether that person is a single mom or a police officer. In both cases, you're not guaranteed to get a dollar's worth of benefit, but you can expect to receive some amount of indirect benefit.
The police officer is providing a service and working a job. Lumping him in with the single mom who gets back my money from the EITC is disingenuous. She didn't work a job or provide any service to get that money. Somebody decided to take it away from me at gunpoint (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) and give it to her. You might not have a problem with that but I have a fundamental disagreement with the whole concept. If anybody besides the Government was doing it, it would rightfully be called "stealing" and I'd really like to know what my "indirect benefit" is in this case.
Let's say you did that, and productivity dropped so much -- due to, let's say, increased crime and illness -- that you were still paying 2/5 of your (lower) income in taxes. Would you be happy paying 40% of your income in that case?
Again, mentioning crime is irrelevant. Fighting crime is one job that even die-hard libertarians acknowledge is a proper role for Government, so I really don't see why you keep bringing it up. It doesn't take the current bloated Federal bureaucracy to fight crime. And far as health care goes, if we were to get Government out of the way I'd wager that you would watch prices drop like a stone. Ever notice how spending on health care keeps going up yet life expectancies don't? Ever consider the possibility that just throwing more money at our problems isn't the best way to address them?
How much to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States"?
Ah, the commerce clause. Used to justify everything from product regulation to the War on Drugs. Apparently if I grow a pot plant in my basement for my own personal consumption that's interstate commerce and the DEA can bust my front door down. Here you see the unintended consequences of your expansion of Government.
Interesting that you skipped over military spending
Providing for the defense of the several states is a proper role for the Federal Government.
I'm no fan of Bush calling it the "GWOT" (how do you declare war on a tactic?) but there's a big hole in lower Manhattan that suggests to me that our mission in Afghanistan is justified. We were attacked. It's the job of the Federal Government to disrupt the network that attacked us so they can't do so again in the future and to arrest/kill those who were responsible. Interesting that you can quote the commerce and welfare clauses to justify your nanny state but can't remember this one: The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion
If there were no taxes, and thus no government services, no courts or prisons, no highways, no public schools or libraries, etc., do you really think you'd be earning as much as you do now?
Give me a break. We are way past funding courts, prisons, highways and schools. If that's all my tax dollars were funding I wouldn't be complaining. Instead my hard earned dollars are taken from me to fund programs that have no benefit to me and questionable benefit to the community as a whole. Wealth redistribution from both ends of the scale (be it for the benefit of the working single mom or Lockheed Martin) also comes to mind as something that I have a fundamental problem with.
Since you favor a flat tax, presumably you have some idea in mind of the "right" tax rate. And presumably it's greater than 0% but less than 40%. So, what is it, and what makes it the "right" rate?
I don't pretend to know what the "right" rate is. I would start by cutting Government down to the size actually envisioned by the Constitution and seeing how much funding that would require. Given that entitlement programs represent the largest part of the Federal (and most States for that matter) budget I'm willing to guess we could cut that tax burden down to size.
What, you think Federal income/FICA taxes are the only tax burden we face? Try adding New York State income taxes, property taxes (county/town/village AND school), sales taxes, gasoline taxes and "vice" taxes (cigarettes/alcohol/etc) to your calculations.
I track every penny of money that I spend in financial management software and my combined tax burden last year came in at 39.8% So again I'll ask: WTF is wrong with that picture? 2/5'ths of the fruits of my labor are being taken from me.
I dunno. Congress has approval ratings around 20% (lower than GWB's you'll note) so I don't think you can say we don't berate them. Problem is that we keep voting the same bastards back into office.
or is this a case of "they are all crooks but my guy isn't"?
Well naturally. My Congressman is delivering much needed economic development to our district. Yours on the other hand is wasting our tax dollars on pork.
As a taxpayer, I want to hang the politicians that coughed up the money.
So you want to hang all politicians then?;)
Personally I wouldn't advocate hanging. It's kind of nasty and in the United States comes with negative connotations. Perhaps we could bring back tarring and feathering?
They have a history of being crushed by their neighbors and suffering disproportionately for it. They have 1.2 billion Chinese to the West, 100 million Japanese to the West
Finlandization was a pretty dark time for your people but it beat the hell out of what happened to Poland. I still think you have a lot to be proud of. It's a shame that the geopolitics/geography didn't work out differently -- you might not have needed to cozy up to the USSR -- but given the hand that Finland was dealt I think you did better than most other nations would have.
A small country can do things about a larger country invading, or planning to invade.
Yes, they can fall into the orbit of that larger countries enemy and become a de-facto puppet state totally reliant upon that larger country for support. The Cuban example is not one that I would be particularly eager to follow. The Finns actually managed to pull it off without becoming anyones puppet.
You say you have a fundamental problem with wealth redistribution, but in fact do you? You have a problem with the government redistributing your wealth, but do you have a problem when it is private persons doing is? For their own gain?
The market surely is a wealth redistribution system, but it is not perfect and prone to abuse, as can be seen currently even though in many cases it does work well.
The difference between "the market" and government is that people typically have a choice of whom they do business with in the market. Whereas the government uses the power of the state (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) to take your money away from you and use it to fund whichever programs currently happen to have the most political support.
I for one, am glad that there are people in government that are willing to temper our tendency to idolize the market. Not to dismantle it, put to prevent power being concentrated in those that abuse it.
I'm not a free market purist and made no comment on the regulatory structure. My post was aimed at the GP whom implied that anyone who disagrees with his ideas about taxation is a racist who is driven by a hatred of welfare.
Slashdot Mirror
Part of that is the medium itself, where you're often essentially talking with bored middle-aged men about nothing
So it's basically like IRC was back in the day? ;)
Apples and oranges. An accidental bombing under the fog of war hardly compares to overrunning a foreign embassy and holding the people therein hostage for over a year.
It seemed to have been well underway a few months ago but the economic meltdown has put the brakes on it for the time being. It will be interesting to see how things shape up when the global economy recovers. Economic uncertainty is usually followed by geopolitical uncertainty and we have bigger toys to play with this time around.....
May we live in interesting times indeed....
Well, maybe Canada hasn't, but both the US and Israel come pretty close
We've overrun embassies? Really?
Haven't heard much complaining about Pakistan lately (note: missiles and nuclear technology)
There isn't much complaining about Pakistan because they aren't threatening us or our allies. There is a lot of concern about Pakistan because of the unstable nature of it's government, the extremist problem they face and the fact that they have nukes.
enemy of the state #1 you know
What, you think he shouldn't be an enemy of our state? He murdered thousands of American citizens. He's murdered hundreds of people from other countries (in the 9/11 attacks and others) I make no apologies for any action my country takes to dismantle his network and find/kill him.
Please stop basing your world views on the propaganda spread by the US and all those other 'responsible members of the international community', your only fooling yourself. We are being lied to and told half-truths by our prime minister here in the Netherlands, who still refuses to acknowledge Iraq was invaded based on false intelligence, and is still desperately trying to prevent the truth being uncovered. And we like to view our country as one of the most democratic and free in this world.
Please stop bogarting that pipe ;)
Maybe, but this also shows how bad a state NASA is in. Despite years of experience, NASA seems to have collective amnesia in rocket design and just can't the next generation of launchers right
Maybe that has more to do with funding and less to do with any lack of talent on NASA's part? Think Teller could have built the H-bomb with a sawbuck just because he happened to be smart?
We have enjoyed a technological advantage over the rest of the world for a good while now but it is being eroded at a fantastic rate
Sounds like a reason to increase our funding of the science adviser guy at the expense of the elvis guy ;) We'll just hide behind our nukes/great wall/united nations for a few turns while we fund him, then switch to fundamentalism and take care of those Persian bastards once and for all!
Our feud is so old that I think reconciliation may prove impossible
The GP didn't say reconciliation is impossible. The GP said that the Western world has a history of clashing with the Islamic/Middle Eastern World. I see nothing in human history to suggest that this will change soon -- if anything it's going to get worse as the competition for limited resources heats up.
Mind you, it won't start with bullets -- it will start with economics.
Twenty years after the revolution, they tried peace overtures
By funding Hezbollah? Interesting peace overture.
And speaking of Israel: when they behave all might is right, others are going to try to acquire might to counter that.
Good luck with that. Even the Iranians aren't crazy enough to provoke a nuclear war with Israel.
We'll just protect ourselves like we always have.
Sincerely, The Jews
Good luck with that.
Sincerely,
The Babylonians/Persians/Macedonians/Romans and Ottomans
(Did I miss any? And before I get modded troll, I'm only jesting, my people have been conquered a few times too ;)
The Western nations have been at odds with Islamic nations for 1500 years, and with Persia for nearly 3000. That Persia now Iran is acting up again is hardly a surprise. One might surmise that in the grand scheme of things, this is just a conflict between ideologies and peoples and no one side is right, but the thing is, since most of us are westerners, we would prefer that our side prevail.
Well, for what it's worth we've prevailed more often than not. Persian aggression was what united the Greek city-states and arguably lead to the birth of Western civilization. Even when western civilization has been on the decline we've generally managed to hold the line. Every time they've had a chance to beat Western civilization they've failed.
To that end, I suppose that those who would argue that strategic missile defense cannot be built, or that militarization of space should be avoided, or that Iran is not a threat, need to rethink that.
If Iran demonstrates a workable launch system then it would seem to me to be the height of irresponsibility not to build a missile defense system. They aren't there yet and they still have to develop a miniaturized nuclear weapon (no small feat) but I hope that people are looking at missile defense differently now.
And similarly, those that would advocate war with Iran, might need to rethink that as well
I don't think people would be advocating war with Iran if Iran was a responsible member of the international community. They could demonstrate this by ending their support of terrorist organizations and toning down the anti-Israeli rhetoric. I doubt they are inclined to do this so we'll see what the next move on the chessboard winds up being.....
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now?
Canada is a responsible member of the international community that hasn't made threats to wipe neighbors off the map, allowed criminals within it's own population to overrun foreign embassies and supplied terrorist groups with financial support/weapons.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up member of the international community perhaps they could borrow a few lessons from our neighbors to the North? Besides which, ice hockey is way cooler than soccer anyway.
Britain in the 50s and 60s was poor because the US delayed intervention in WW2, hoping that this would result in the collapse of the British Empire, to the gain of the US
That's funny, I always thought it had to do with domestic political considerations. It is true that FDR hoped to end colonialism but I've never heard that used as an explanation for why we didn't intervene.
Government programs are there to accomplish what the private sector fails to accomplish.
And right there is another problem I have. If it isn't in the Constitution then it's not a job of Government. Liberals expand the Government every single chance they get and then are the first ones to whine when they turn around and discover that their civil liberties (except gun ownership of course, cuz those are dangerous) are being eroded. Just remember that a Government big enough to give you everything that you need is big enough to take away everything that you have.
Then you have a fundamental problem with the existence of a government, because all government spending is "wealth redistribution". It's still about taking a dollar from you and giving it to someone else, whether that person is a single mom or a police officer. In both cases, you're not guaranteed to get a dollar's worth of benefit, but you can expect to receive some amount of indirect benefit.
The police officer is providing a service and working a job. Lumping him in with the single mom who gets back my money from the EITC is disingenuous. She didn't work a job or provide any service to get that money. Somebody decided to take it away from me at gunpoint (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) and give it to her. You might not have a problem with that but I have a fundamental disagreement with the whole concept. If anybody besides the Government was doing it, it would rightfully be called "stealing" and I'd really like to know what my "indirect benefit" is in this case.
Let's say you did that, and productivity dropped so much -- due to, let's say, increased crime and illness -- that you were still paying 2/5 of your (lower) income in taxes. Would you be happy paying 40% of your income in that case?
Again, mentioning crime is irrelevant. Fighting crime is one job that even die-hard libertarians acknowledge is a proper role for Government, so I really don't see why you keep bringing it up. It doesn't take the current bloated Federal bureaucracy to fight crime. And far as health care goes, if we were to get Government out of the way I'd wager that you would watch prices drop like a stone. Ever notice how spending on health care keeps going up yet life expectancies don't? Ever consider the possibility that just throwing more money at our problems isn't the best way to address them?
How much to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States"?
Ah, the commerce clause. Used to justify everything from product regulation to the War on Drugs. Apparently if I grow a pot plant in my basement for my own personal consumption that's interstate commerce and the DEA can bust my front door down. Here you see the unintended consequences of your expansion of Government.
Interesting that you skipped over military spending
Providing for the defense of the several states is a proper role for the Federal Government.
We spend more on the Department of Defense
Again, you fail.
and the "Global War on Terror"
I'm no fan of Bush calling it the "GWOT" (how do you declare war on a tactic?) but there's a big hole in lower Manhattan that suggests to me that our mission in Afghanistan is justified. We were attacked. It's the job of the Federal Government to disrupt the network that attacked us so they can't do so again in the future and to arrest/kill those who were responsible. Interesting that you can quote the commerce and welfare clauses to justify your nanny state but can't remember this one: The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion
If there were no taxes, and thus no government services, no courts or prisons, no highways, no public schools or libraries, etc., do you really think you'd be earning as much as you do now?
Give me a break. We are way past funding courts, prisons, highways and schools. If that's all my tax dollars were funding I wouldn't be complaining. Instead my hard earned dollars are taken from me to fund programs that have no benefit to me and questionable benefit to the community as a whole. Wealth redistribution from both ends of the scale (be it for the benefit of the working single mom or Lockheed Martin) also comes to mind as something that I have a fundamental problem with.
Since you favor a flat tax, presumably you have some idea in mind of the "right" tax rate. And presumably it's greater than 0% but less than 40%. So, what is it, and what makes it the "right" rate?
I don't pretend to know what the "right" rate is. I would start by cutting Government down to the size actually envisioned by the Constitution and seeing how much funding that would require. Given that entitlement programs represent the largest part of the Federal (and most States for that matter) budget I'm willing to guess we could cut that tax burden down to size.
What, you think Federal income/FICA taxes are the only tax burden we face? Try adding New York State income taxes, property taxes (county/town/village AND school), sales taxes, gasoline taxes and "vice" taxes (cigarettes/alcohol/etc) to your calculations.
I track every penny of money that I spend in financial management software and my combined tax burden last year came in at 39.8% So again I'll ask: WTF is wrong with that picture? 2/5'ths of the fruits of my labor are being taken from me.
I dunno. Congress has approval ratings around 20% (lower than GWB's you'll note) so I don't think you can say we don't berate them. Problem is that we keep voting the same bastards back into office.
or is this a case of "they are all crooks but my guy isn't"?
Well naturally. My Congressman is delivering much needed economic development to our district. Yours on the other hand is wasting our tax dollars on pork.
As a taxpayer, I want to hang the politicians that coughed up the money.
So you want to hang all politicians then? ;)
Personally I wouldn't advocate hanging. It's kind of nasty and in the United States comes with negative connotations. Perhaps we could bring back tarring and feathering?
They have a history of being crushed by their neighbors and suffering disproportionately for it. They have 1.2 billion Chinese to the West, 100 million Japanese to the West
Japanese to the West huh?
Certainly if I were a shareholder I'd want to handsomely reward any executive who could look after the company's interests so well.
And as a taxpayer you'd probably want to hang them from the nearest lamppost
Finlandization was a pretty dark time for your people but it beat the hell out of what happened to Poland. I still think you have a lot to be proud of. It's a shame that the geopolitics/geography didn't work out differently -- you might not have needed to cozy up to the USSR -- but given the hand that Finland was dealt I think you did better than most other nations would have.
I guess I should have said 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Maybe that would have mollified the AC.
And if the USSR took Finland seriously, then the Russians would have easily taken over Finland.
They sent a million men into Finland. How much serious do you think they could have been?
Perhaps the sarcasm in my post wasn't sufficiently telegraphed?
A small country can do things about a larger country invading, or planning to invade.
Yes, they can fall into the orbit of that larger countries enemy and become a de-facto puppet state totally reliant upon that larger country for support. The Cuban example is not one that I would be particularly eager to follow. The Finns actually managed to pull it off without becoming anyones puppet.
You say you have a fundamental problem with wealth redistribution, but in fact do you? You have a problem with the government redistributing your wealth, but do you have a problem when it is private persons doing is? For their own gain?
The market surely is a wealth redistribution system, but it is not perfect and prone to abuse, as can be seen currently even though in many cases it does work well.
The difference between "the market" and government is that people typically have a choice of whom they do business with in the market. Whereas the government uses the power of the state (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) to take your money away from you and use it to fund whichever programs currently happen to have the most political support.
I for one, am glad that there are people in government that are willing to temper our tendency to idolize the market. Not to dismantle it, put to prevent power being concentrated in those that abuse it.
I'm not a free market purist and made no comment on the regulatory structure. My post was aimed at the GP whom implied that anyone who disagrees with his ideas about taxation is a racist who is driven by a hatred of welfare.