Interpol doesn't not have its own officers making arrests, extraditions, etc--they are not a police force.
That we are aware of, and at this point in time, that is probably true. We can rest assured, however, that law enforcement agencies never have or create secret undercover departments or seek to expand their scope and power, so everyone can go back to watching American Idol.
This is part and parcel of the trans-national views held by many on the left that now find themselves with federal power instead of being relegated to moonbat status. They wish to reduce the US' sovereignty however they can, as they view the US as evil and rightly view it as *the* major threat to a trans-national world-government framework. They'd love to have Interpol investigate, and possibly extradite to the Hague under war-crimes charges, thorns in their sides like Dick Cheney among others, and possibly even Bush Jr. This is an incremental step in that direction.
You are crazy. I think you are going way over the top. You are proposing only those who pay taxes vote. You forgot the whole democracy thing, didn't you. You are assuming it will be better to keep the "freeloaders" from having a voice. Yet you fail to realize the "freeloaders" are people made up in your mind from certain individuals spilling hatred from their mouths day after day. My poor confused countrymen. Most of us "poor" folk, aren't freeloaders. We are a product of what you rich bastards have created. We work, we work harder than you do, and we still get the blame for everything. You are severely disillusioned with reality and need to come to your senses.
You've missed my point entirely. I do not wish to take away anyone's vote. The government should not be handing out money/entitlements as it has been doing at increasing rates since the New Deal. If the government isn't a huge grab-bag of riches to be plundered by whoever can put together enough votes, then who votes doesn't matter.
You have s choice.
You can choose to have the government be a grab-bag of goodies, in which case many people who do not contribute much wealth will choose to vote themselves free money & goodies until the system collapses unless you remove their ability to vote themselves a free lunch.
You can choose to not have the government be a grab-bag of goodies, in which case those who do not contribute significantly cannot vote themselves bread and circuses and everyone has an equal vote.
First of all, the tired old trope that somehow the wealthy will avoid a tax if we raise it is obviously specious.
To quote Barney Frank; "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
The rich are fleeing high-tax regions (see "The Donald"'s departure from New York along with many others). Wealthy corporations are fleeing/moving wealth to places like Ireland where corporate tax rates are among the lowest in the West.
Also, the reason you'll want to give everyone else the vote is that if we're denied the vote, and you get to sit pretty in your mansions while we starve due to neglect, we will kill you. Without legitimacy, a government is nothing more than a collection of thugs.
Well, currently we're increasingly living the "tyranny of the majority" where those who pay nothing decide how much to take from those who do pay simply because those who pay nothing have more votes. How is that any more fair? Are you going to make laws that people who leave the country can't take their money with them, or that they cannot leave at all? Will you imprison them if they stop creating wealth?
Margaret Thatchers' quote still stands. Redistribution of wealth will always fail every single time it's tried for the very simple reason that eventually there are no more "rich" left to confiscate wealth from. Then the system collapses and everybody starves and everybody is killing everyone else for survival.
The way to end these deficits is to increase government revenue by raising top-end incoming taxes to just levels.
This will not increase actual revenues. The rich will simply move their wealth to avoid taxation when it becomes too heavy-handed. The increased tax rates will simply devolve down the food-chain until it reaches those who can't afford to shelter/move their wealth. Throughout modern history, this has been what happens.
instate some correlation (but not an absolute one) between voting and tax paying, so non-taxpaying voters cannot establish claims on other people's tax money
Are you seriously proposing that the rich (who pay more taxes) have more votes than ordinary people?
Are you out of your blasted mind? Concentration of power in the hands of a monied few is the root cause of our present political disease.
First, I don't think he's proposing that only the rich vote, but those that pay taxes. He has a very valid point in that someone that doesn't pay for it would be happy to vote themselves free stuff.
Which is a major part of why the welfare state entitlements and other government largess has grown to ridiculous size and proportions over the last several decades. Politicians use this to gain and grow their power. They appeal to their non-tax-paying constituents to vote them in and increase their power in exchange for ever-greater amounts of bread and circuses, all at the expense of the most productive in our society.
Of course it's wrong if only the uber-wealthy could vote, but there must be some limit on the ability of non-tax-paying citizens to vote themselves free stuff and force those that work, create wealth, and pay taxes to foot the bill. Why should I work my butt off over decades to build a business and provide jobs when most of the wealth I create is confiscated to be given to those that choose not to work? Easier to sit back and join-in and belly-up at the government trough.
"The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money." -Margaret Thatcher
> So then you'd be fine with someone walking up to you and/or > someone you care about at random and killing you and/or them
Of course not. I'd expect the police to investigate that and hopefully prosecute the perpetrator.
What are the police going to do about it if the perpetrator is a non-US-resident foreign operator from a foreign-state-backed terror organization and he used a suicide bomb made with explosives supplied by the foreign-backed terror organization? Send a squad car to Yemen or Iran on a boat? When the police get there, how are they going to win against an organization that, on their home-turf, have access to full military weaponry including artillery, heavy automatic weapons, and rockets?
But I wouldn't expect the entire nation to shut down for three weeks and then impose severe restrictions on walking, in order to prevent anyone in the future from ever walking up to anyone else.
That's just being obtuse. How about treating the incident as an act of aggression by a foreign-state-backed terror organization, rather than denying reality and treating it as a common killing by the average lone street criminal?
One cannot solve a problem when one is unwilling to accept the true nature & scope of the problem.
Then there's that whole pesky problem of the Constitution...
You *are* kidding, right?
Politicians ignore the Constitution whenever it suits them. Nancy Pelosi, when asked by a reporter what in the Constitution gives Congress the right to mandate individuals must purchase health insurance, answered "Are you serious?".
Even the SCOTUS has bailed on the Constitution, as they've ruled that Eminent Domain can be used by government to confiscate private property from one citizen and give it to another citizen that it thinks may pay more taxes.
Never mind setting up a tax database information company to provide data for online merchants as was suggested elsewhere in this thread, the real money is going to be in selling torches and pitchforks in Washington D.C.!
If the government tries to force this upon online businesses, most smaller online businesses will close and the larger ones will relocate outside the country. Heh, maybe Amazon will relocate to the actual Amazon, and tax collectors will receive a poison blowgun dart for their trouble!
Thousands of Americans die every single day. And yet, somehow, the rest of us manage to go about our business most of the time, almost as if there were nothing spectacularly unusual about living in a world where everyone who is born dies sooner or later.
So then you'd be fine with someone walking up to you and/or someone you care about at random and killing you and/or them in some horrible manner when neither you nor the the person you care about personally have done anything to them?
What if it were a Christian extremist killing thousands of innocent civilians in the name of his religious beliefs? Would you feel different about that as opposed to an Islamic extremist killing thousands of innocent civilians for his religious beliefs? How about a radical atheist? Would any or all of those scenarios be no better or worse in your estimation than those that perish from old age, illness, accident, etc?
There is a fundamental moral & ethical difference between those that perish in the ordinary course of day-to-day living and killing thousands of innocent civilians intentionally in an effort to destroy an entire society. There is no "moral equivalency" there. If you cannot understand this, then your attitude & world-view is part of the problem and helps to empower and embolden those who turn to the murder of innocent people to achieve their political goals.
Thousands of people dying cannot reasonably be described as a "minor annoyance."
Yeah, but remember we're talking about thousands of *Americans* dying. To a large portion of the/. crowd and the self-hating, self-guilt-stricken liberals/progressives (and the two sets overlap significantly) that *was* only a minor annoyance, and that mostly because of the air travel hassles this caused everyone, not because American civilians died horrible deaths at the hands of suicidal murdering cowards.
If Freud were still alive, he'd have a field-day reading/. posts.
Yes, a mere 28 light years away. So all we need to do is get in the fastest spacecraft we've ever built and we can be there in just about 150,000 years.
Who's coming with me?!?!?
Elwood: "It's 28 light-years to 61 Virginis, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
And if the 75% or whatever percentage of "common schmucks" feel this way, how successful do you think any emission reduction efforts will be ?
That's precisely why government needs even more power to control every aspect of citizens' lives! They don't know what's good for them, those people in "flyover" country, and need progressive guidance and control. Why, some of those backwards yokels still believe in God and think private citizens owning guns is a good idea!! Flat-Earthers, all of 'em!
(For those with broken detectors, yes, that's sarcasm.)
People are more worried about the Hg splashed in their bathroom sink next to their toothbrush / kitchen next to their cutlery than the Hg spread around the atmosphere of the planet.
Those selfish SOBs! What's a little brain and central nervous system damage & psychosis to them and their kids/pets as compared to the will of the one true Gore?
Besides, I'm sure that at this very moment there's a new EPA CFL/Hg Spill Taskforce being planned behind closed doors to solve this health and environmental threat. They'll monitor residential areas by drone for Hg spills (among other things), swoop in, clean it up, and deliver the federal paperwork on the toxic spill costs & fines to the victi...err...owners of the CFL-upgraded property, and meanwhile deliver the drone surveillance recordings to interested police/drug enforcement agencies & TLAs. Make the surveilled help pay for their own surveillance! Brilliant!
As dime-store-novel as such a plot seems, the scary part is in these times with such blatant disregard the government exhibits toward citizens, it's nearly believable.
register FCC, NSA, and FBI, and various senators (sponsors of the DMCA in particular) IP addresses and see how fast the DMCA is repealed.:)
This is actually a very good idea IMHO. You might want to add a few Federal judges and maybe even a few Supreme Court judges. The LEO's and TLA's...maybe not such a good idea. They don't have a very developed sense of humor. Besides, I would think that they'd be more likely to try to keep it quiet, and public outrage by VIP's...preferably with some power to change things...was the point, no?
Bush cut taxes and jobs still went overseas by the millions and we ended up here. I'll grant that Reagan set it all in motion though and that Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr only extended the poor policy decisions.
Cutting one or two areas of taxes by nominal amounts while not being able/willing to control/cut spending, hugely increasing it as a matter of fact, and stifling regulation is why tax cuts in the relatively-recent past haven't had tremendous effects. If you give with one hand and turn right around and take with the other you haven't gained anything. Reagan was the only recent President that was able to secure both significant tax cuts and spending reductions, although he wasn't able to get Congress to rein in taxes and particularly spending on entitlements nearly as much as he wished.
Trickle down economics works on small scales where employers and employees actually know each other. I see this problem only getting worse as so far nothing is being done to radically change how we behave. The only solution to the crisis is less spending, not more! This of course has it problems as it will indeed depress the economy but it is the only way to get back on track fiscally.
Trickle-down does work, however you can't keep tossing in additional government spending as Congress loves to do, then claim it hasn't worked. If you give business tax breaks then increase their costs for labor, regulatory compliance, etc, etc then one shouldn't be shocked that the business sector and jobs sector doesn't grow as predicted by those who proposed the tax cuts.
Cutting government spending is always a good thing with the huge federal government we've saddled ourselves with. Government can not and does not create wealth. It can only spend wealth. That wealth doesn't magically appear, it comes from the nations' economy and causes myriad problems like sucking capital & credit for investment out of the private sector, causing inflationary pressure, and adding to the tax burden and debt. All of which are economic growth killers. Google for Japan's "Lost Decade" where they tried many of the things that have already been attempted and are being currently proposed here.
The idea that government can create jobs I consider a sick joke. Only the private sector, especially the small business sector, can create significant increases in employment, and bigger government is anathema to small business. The current administration is intent on massively growing government so it's no surprise they don't invite small business to their "Job Summits", as they know that small business will say they need less government and lower taxes to grow and create more jobs.
With all the "stimulus" bill and other federal jobs and economic growth programs, the only area of significant job growth has been in government jobs. I, for one, do *not* welcome our single-healthcare-payer, single-employer overlords regardless of party. If more jobs and economic growth is the goal, then get government taxes & regulation/restriction out of the way of small and medium sized businesses. Revenues to the treasury will increase. It has every time it's been tried.
Second, if the terms are so onerous that everyone walks away, explain to me how this treaty could possibly be all that good??
That all depends on the question; "good for whom?".
Of course they would consider it a matter of national security if they thought that the amount of power and money they were attempting to grab by bypassing many countries' legislative bodies via international treaty was extreme and might cause protests and riots if the details of what they were planning went public.
You have to remember that they consider only *themselves* as "the nation"; not you.
You are simply a source of wealth and power, like a herd of sheep, to advance their pursuit of greed & power-lust while simultaneously also a threat to that same wealth and power, so you must be kept uninformed and in check to protect themselves and their excesses.
A sheepherder does not make his flock aware of his plans for having mutton for dinner.
Well, as long as we'll be protected by the discretion of somebody whose job performance is evaluated on the basis of how many charges he brings, there should be no problem.
Just like here in the US where they told us; "Oh no, those Patriot Act powers are only for terror investigations, they won't be used for general domestic law enforcement or drug law enforcement!".
Lesson: Any law will sooner or later be abused or used outside of its' original intention to harass, punish, and censure people and ideas those with power dislike or fear if at all possible.
I really can't speak to the tea party rhetoric. I think it's the outcome of a Republican party that for years has focused on social issues without bothering to talk about financial ones.
Those joining the Tea Party movement are both Democrat and Republican. It's not just about taxes or Obama as many have tried to portray them and their motives. Listen to what they're saying.
They're tired of the corruption in both parties, and they're disgusted with how government and the power it wields has grown far outside of, and has made a mockery of, the Constitution. Things like using the Commerce Clause as an excuse to stick their greedy little paws into things that the Federal government has no business taxing, regulating, or passing laws regarding. They're angry with the gutting of many of our Constitutional rights.
Nixon started with a top marginal rate of 77%. Obama started with a top marginal rate of 35%. I find that major.
Dropping the progressive taxation system completely and abandoning using it as a social engineering tool in favor of a simple flat tax with a reasonable exclusion for income under a certain amount and the elimination of the IRS as we know it I would call major.
I'd personally prefer something Pro-business and pro-social programs (which actually can be the same thing, the number of companies that would become more competitive if they didn't have their health obligations is huge), plus responsible enough to raise taxes to take in the income we need.
No, it would kill businesses, especially small businesses, and jobs. You seem to think somehow they wouldn't pay for the "healthcare" plans now in Congress. The costs will be gigantic across the entire economy. The money will have to come from somewhere to pay for it, as the Chinese and Japanese are pretty much done loaning us money.
We already have the best health care in the world. Tort reform and allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines would greatly reduce costs of the care itself and would also insure healthy competition among insurance companies which is sorely lacking. Doing these two reforms alone would fix about 90% of the current health care problems without saddling the country in even more debt.
However, I'm convinced the current iterations of bills dealing with health care in Congress are about expanding the size of government and it's control over the people, and little to do with actually achieving their stated goals.
The whole thing is a con job, as they won't even be honest on the costs. Saying it costs 'X' over 10 years by counting the taxes to pay for it starting immediately, but the program's expenditures don't start for 5-6 years is totally dishonest and an insult to the intelligence of every American.
Never mind that current iterations will actually cause premiums to go up and quality and availability, especially to the poor and the aged, to go down. It will also kill jobs and necessarily cause taxes to be raised across the board as the rich simply don't have enough money to pay for it, even at a 100% tax rate. Particularly when this and other things being proposed are doing their best to reduce the number of "rich" and drive jobs and investment overseas.
The term "reset" has become popular political jargon lately, and I believe that's what needs to happen to the entire government. It has far exceeded the powers granted in the Constitution and regards the people with contempt. It's far past time for the people to stand up, take back control, and force the government to adhere to the Constitution and live within our ability to pay for it without debt or confiscatory taxation rates.
Wow. I never would have thought someone would post something like this on slashdot other than Archer.
Congrats to both you and Thomas for not switching to the name calling that usually surfaces. The whole exchange was very refreshing.
Thanks, Jackie.
People can disagree without being disagreeable. Resorting to crass insults and name-calling simply indicates one hasn't the ability to use logic & reason to back up their viewpoint. I don't personally hate progressives, I simply think most that aren't cynically using liberalism as a means to gain political power and wealth are misguided. You don't convince anyone of anything with attacks and insults.
If someone wishes to engage in a respectful, reasoned, and reasonable debate...great! Others I won't waste my time with and/or stoop to their level. It's a waste of time and makes me no better than the name-callers.
I respect Thomas, as he is simply debating on the facts & merits as he sees them and not engaging in crass insults and ad hominem attacks. Those in Washington and the various political groups on both sides would do well to emulate this atmosphere of reasonableness.
Because that's all we've been doing. We've had major tax decreases for years.
All we've been doing!?!? For *years*!?!? Apparently you're living in a different country than I am. There have been a few piddling and mostly temporary tax cuts but nothing I'd call major.
We can't cut entitlement programs, because Americans won't save.
They will if they know that they can't live off of someone else' money taken by force and given to those that didn't earn it. If they still refuse to save, then the results are their own fault. Why should I pay for your irresponsibility? Dependence on government is the reason the economy sucks and the means by which the government gains ever more power over ever more details of people's lives. I don't want or need a nanny, thanks.
"Progressiveism", which is a PC name for Liberalism, which in itself is nearly synonymous with socialism, has failed everywhere and every time it's been tried. Look at Detroit where the "Progressives" have been in charge for decades. It's a shanty town now and about to declare bankruptcy. Same with California. Yet people like you can't wait to turn the entire country into California writ large.
That's because the majority of the military's budget comes outside the budget so people don't balk at the cost.
[citation needed]
There is some of that going on, but not nearly to the breadth and scale of the rest of the national budget. Especially when it comes to the healthcare bills currently in Congress.
Perhaps what we really need are targeted tax hikes. If you make over $200k per year, you get a 50% tax rate. You can lower that by actually investing in business. You can lower that by proving you're using it to actually hire people. You can lower if by buying 10 economy cars rather than 1 ferrari. If you're just squireling it away, we'll go ahead and take it. That way we could actual prove that trickle-down was working rather than just taking it as an article of faith.
Why don't we just cut to the chase and just have the government decide how much we make and how we spend every dollar we earn? From each according to their ability, to each according to their need as decided by some politician or bureaucrat in Washington. Spread the wealth around, right?
This has been tried repeatedly and has utterly failed every time. Government isn't the solution, it's the problem. It's a necessary evil to maintain order, a civil society, and protect the country. The less government and government power, the better off and more free people are. With freedom, however, comes responsibility and that's what scares many like yourself who are too frightened to risk taking responsibility for your own life and welfare.
Politicians have been feeding this fear and using it to make people ever more dependent on the government and therefor becoming ever-more controlled in every facet of their lives for decades. They remove ever more people from the tax rolls and even encourage illegal immigration to use them to demand ever more entitlements as they don't have to pay for them.
It's always those "evil rich" that pay. Until there aren't any more jobs being created by, or sufficient taxes paid by, these "evil rich" to pay for the entitlements. Not even taking 100% of the entire Fortune 500's income can pay for the current entitlements and the interest on the debt, let alone reduce the debt's principal.
This is their goal. Total control of the people. They are currently employing the Cloward-Piven Strategy in an attempt to collapse the system and rebuild it with them in absolute control. To "fundamentally transform America" as Obama put it. He was telling the truth but nobody understood just how much of a transformation he and his masters had in mind. If anything resembling the current healthcare bills along with cap & tax and proposed tax hikes pass, this countries' economy will collapse in short order.
Hopefully the Tea Party movement is signaling an awakening of the people, and th
And yet when we taxed the super rich at 60-70% we had investment.
That was during JFK's term, and we had a problem with too little investment. That's why JFK lowered it. JFK would be considered a neocon by today's standards.
You're taking it on faith that if we raise taxes it will make things worse.
No, just the opposite. Every single time taxes have been lowered investment, actual revenue to the treasury, and jobs increased. Every Single. Time. If you want less of something, tax it.
In any case. The one thing we agree on is that we need responsible leaders,
Agreed, though we probably have completely different ideas on what constitutes "responsible leaders".
and we're going to have to raise taxes across the board to pay for what we spend. Either that or just completely get rid of the military to service the debt.
Why not lower tax rates so there is more actual revenue to the treasury instead of raising them and killing jobs and business? In every case that I know of, when we've lowered tax rates actual revenues have increased.
As to cutting the military, it only constitutes roughly 16% of the budget. Entitlements are the lion's share of spending and where spending must be reined in. Even eliminating the military completely wouldn't solve our budget problems, as entitlement spending continues to grow as more people start collecting Social Security, meanwhile COLA's and similar mandated rate increases grow that entitlement percentage. We need to grow and expand wealth to maintain our lifestyles and provide jobs, and higher taxes and larger government is anathema to this.
That's just because we don't tax properly. You're going to go into debt if you don't take in enough money. Reinstate the capital gains and something more sensible on the super-rich, like 60-70% and we'll be back down to a managable number in no time.
Even if we taxed everyone that made over $250,000/yr at 60-70% it would take something on the order of 120-145 years to pay down the debt, and that doesn't count interest on the debt. Meanwhile, you've taken away all incentive for investment of capital in businesses, especially small businesses, so there go all the jobs. Particularly if you reinstate the capital gains tax. Anyone or any corporation that was able would also flee the country to avoid the confiscatory taxes. Our currently second-highest corporate taxes have also greatly helped spur the outsourcing of jobs, investment, and wealth-creation to other countries.
The answer isn't to hike taxes, it's to reduce the size and cost of government and halt any further deficit spending. Currently, the area of greatest job growth is in government jobs. Those are paid for by taxes. What happens when there isn't enough private sector wealth left to tax because there simply aren't enough privately-employed people & private corporations with enough money left to tax sufficiently to pay for them?
Government growth doesn't create wealth or jobs.
It destroys them.
The last 5-10 years or more (yes, W is also at fault...BHO is simply shifting it into high gear) has been a giant experiment in Keynsian economics coupled with the practices of the Vimar Republic in printing money with no additional wealth to back it. The Fed is printing and loaning money to itself. There's no way this can end well. The dollar has lost 16% of it's value just since March of this year. The government has effectively taken 16% of everyone's money by reducing it's value by printing money with no backing.
If current trends and practices continue, the US will be in default and the dollar along with the economy will collapse in the next 5-10 years. Read up on what's occurring in Dubai.
It's either massive stupidity and greed, or the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Take your pick.
Either way, it's time we "throw the bums out" from both parties and elect some representatives and leaders with some sanity & integrity. For a change.
Most people are already thousands of dollars in debt. They don't even have to pirate a film to achieve that little bit of stupidity!
It's far, far worse than that. A newborn baby is born already owing in excess of $184,000 USD. Much more by some estimates. The government is currently working hard to dwarf this number. I should invest in a wheelbarrow manufacturing company, as demand will skyrocket...a wheelbarrow will soon be needed to transport enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread at the rate that money is being printed and thus devalued. It didn't work out so well for the Vimar Republic.
Slashdot Mirror
Interpol doesn't not have its own officers making arrests, extraditions, etc--they are not a police force.
That we are aware of, and at this point in time, that is probably true. We can rest assured, however, that law enforcement agencies never have or create secret undercover departments or seek to expand their scope and power, so everyone can go back to watching American Idol.
This is part and parcel of the trans-national views held by many on the left that now find themselves with federal power instead of being relegated to moonbat status. They wish to reduce the US' sovereignty however they can, as they view the US as evil and rightly view it as *the* major threat to a trans-national world-government framework. They'd love to have Interpol investigate, and possibly extradite to the Hague under war-crimes charges, thorns in their sides like Dick Cheney among others, and possibly even Bush Jr. This is an incremental step in that direction.
Strat
You are crazy. I think you are going way over the top. You are proposing only those who pay taxes vote. You forgot the whole democracy thing, didn't you. You are assuming it will be better to keep the "freeloaders" from having a voice. Yet you fail to realize the "freeloaders" are people made up in your mind from certain individuals spilling hatred from their mouths day after day. My poor confused countrymen. Most of us "poor" folk, aren't freeloaders. We are a product of what you rich bastards have created. We work, we work harder than you do, and we still get the blame for everything. You are severely disillusioned with reality and need to come to your senses.
You've missed my point entirely. I do not wish to take away anyone's vote. The government should not be handing out money/entitlements as it has been doing at increasing rates since the New Deal. If the government isn't a huge grab-bag of riches to be plundered by whoever can put together enough votes, then who votes doesn't matter.
You have s choice.
You can choose to have the government be a grab-bag of goodies, in which case many people who do not contribute much wealth will choose to vote themselves free money & goodies until the system collapses unless you remove their ability to vote themselves a free lunch.
You can choose to not have the government be a grab-bag of goodies, in which case those who do not contribute significantly cannot vote themselves bread and circuses and everyone has an equal vote.
You cannot have both.
Choose.
Strat
Appropriate/topical /. MOTD: "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." -- John Cage
First of all, the tired old trope that somehow the wealthy will avoid a tax if we raise it is obviously specious.
To quote Barney Frank; "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
The rich are fleeing high-tax regions (see "The Donald"'s departure from New York along with many others). Wealthy corporations are fleeing/moving wealth to places like Ireland where corporate tax rates are among the lowest in the West.
Also, the reason you'll want to give everyone else the vote is that if we're denied the vote, and you get to sit pretty in your mansions while we starve due to neglect, we will kill you. Without legitimacy, a government is nothing more than a collection of thugs.
Well, currently we're increasingly living the "tyranny of the majority" where those who pay nothing decide how much to take from those who do pay simply because those who pay nothing have more votes. How is that any more fair? Are you going to make laws that people who leave the country can't take their money with them, or that they cannot leave at all? Will you imprison them if they stop creating wealth?
Margaret Thatchers' quote still stands. Redistribution of wealth will always fail every single time it's tried for the very simple reason that eventually there are no more "rich" left to confiscate wealth from. Then the system collapses and everybody starves and everybody is killing everyone else for survival.
Strat
First, let me address a previous post.
The way to end these deficits is to increase government revenue by raising top-end incoming taxes to just levels.
This will not increase actual revenues. The rich will simply move their wealth to avoid taxation when it becomes too heavy-handed. The increased tax rates will simply devolve down the food-chain until it reaches those who can't afford to shelter/move their wealth. Throughout modern history, this has been what happens.
instate some correlation (but not an absolute one) between voting and tax paying, so non-taxpaying voters cannot establish claims on other people's tax money
Are you seriously proposing that the rich (who pay more taxes) have more votes than ordinary people?
Are you out of your blasted mind? Concentration of power in the hands of a monied few is the root cause of our present political disease.
First, I don't think he's proposing that only the rich vote, but those that pay taxes. He has a very valid point in that someone that doesn't pay for it would be happy to vote themselves free stuff.
Which is a major part of why the welfare state entitlements and other government largess has grown to ridiculous size and proportions over the last several decades. Politicians use this to gain and grow their power. They appeal to their non-tax-paying constituents to vote them in and increase their power in exchange for ever-greater amounts of bread and circuses, all at the expense of the most productive in our society.
Of course it's wrong if only the uber-wealthy could vote, but there must be some limit on the ability of non-tax-paying citizens to vote themselves free stuff and force those that work, create wealth, and pay taxes to foot the bill. Why should I work my butt off over decades to build a business and provide jobs when most of the wealth I create is confiscated to be given to those that choose not to work? Easier to sit back and join-in and belly-up at the government trough.
"The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money." -Margaret Thatcher
Strat
> So then you'd be fine with someone walking up to you and/or
> someone you care about at random and killing you and/or them
Of course not. I'd expect the police to investigate that and hopefully prosecute the perpetrator.
What are the police going to do about it if the perpetrator is a non-US-resident foreign operator from a foreign-state-backed terror organization and he used a suicide bomb made with explosives supplied by the foreign-backed terror organization? Send a squad car to Yemen or Iran on a boat? When the police get there, how are they going to win against an organization that, on their home-turf, have access to full military weaponry including artillery, heavy automatic weapons, and rockets?
But I wouldn't expect the entire nation to shut down for three weeks and then impose severe restrictions on walking, in order to prevent anyone in the future from ever walking up to anyone else.
That's just being obtuse. How about treating the incident as an act of aggression by a foreign-state-backed terror organization, rather than denying reality and treating it as a common killing by the average lone street criminal?
One cannot solve a problem when one is unwilling to accept the true nature & scope of the problem.
Strat
Then there's that whole pesky problem of the Constitution...
You *are* kidding, right?
Politicians ignore the Constitution whenever it suits them. Nancy Pelosi, when asked by a reporter what in the Constitution gives Congress the right to mandate individuals must purchase health insurance, answered "Are you serious?".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OnFYXTM1BA
Even the SCOTUS has bailed on the Constitution, as they've ruled that Eminent Domain can be used by government to confiscate private property from one citizen and give it to another citizen that it thinks may pay more taxes.
Never mind setting up a tax database information company to provide data for online merchants as was suggested elsewhere in this thread, the real money is going to be in selling torches and pitchforks in Washington D.C.!
If the government tries to force this upon online businesses, most smaller online businesses will close and the larger ones will relocate outside the country. Heh, maybe Amazon will relocate to the actual Amazon, and tax collectors will receive a poison blowgun dart for their trouble!
Strat
Thousands of Americans die every single day. And yet, somehow, the rest of us manage to go about our business most of the time, almost as if there were nothing spectacularly unusual about living in a world where everyone who is born dies sooner or later.
So then you'd be fine with someone walking up to you and/or someone you care about at random and killing you and/or them in some horrible manner when neither you nor the the person you care about personally have done anything to them?
What if it were a Christian extremist killing thousands of innocent civilians in the name of his religious beliefs? Would you feel different about that as opposed to an Islamic extremist killing thousands of innocent civilians for his religious beliefs? How about a radical atheist? Would any or all of those scenarios be no better or worse in your estimation than those that perish from old age, illness, accident, etc?
There is a fundamental moral & ethical difference between those that perish in the ordinary course of day-to-day living and killing thousands of innocent civilians intentionally in an effort to destroy an entire society. There is no "moral equivalency" there. If you cannot understand this, then your attitude & world-view is part of the problem and helps to empower and embolden those who turn to the murder of innocent people to achieve their political goals.
Strat
Thousands of people dying cannot reasonably be described as a "minor annoyance."
Yeah, but remember we're talking about thousands of *Americans* dying. To a large portion of the /. crowd and the self-hating, self-guilt-stricken liberals/progressives (and the two sets overlap significantly) that *was* only a minor annoyance, and that mostly because of the air travel hassles this caused everyone, not because American civilians died horrible deaths at the hands of suicidal murdering cowards.
If Freud were still alive, he'd have a field-day reading /. posts.
Strat
Yes, a mere 28 light years away. So all we need to do is get in the fastest spacecraft we've ever built and we can be there in just about 150,000 years.
Who's coming with me?!?!?
Elwood: "It's 28 light-years to 61 Virginis, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
Jake: "Hit it."
Strat
Oops. Brain-fart. That's Q- 36.
Strat
Be honest, you just wanna see a huge kaboom, like everyone else here!
Not just any kaboom, it's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
But- "That creature has stolen the Illudium 236 Explosive Space Modulator!" -Marvin the Martian in "Hare-Way to the Stars".
Strat
And if the 75% or whatever percentage of "common schmucks" feel this way, how successful do you think any emission reduction efforts will be ?
That's precisely why government needs even more power to control every aspect of citizens' lives! They don't know what's good for them, those people in "flyover" country, and need progressive guidance and control. Why, some of those backwards yokels still believe in God and think private citizens owning guns is a good idea!! Flat-Earthers, all of 'em!
(For those with broken detectors, yes, that's sarcasm.)
Strat
People are more worried about the Hg splashed in their bathroom sink next to their toothbrush / kitchen next to their cutlery than the Hg spread around the atmosphere of the planet.
Those selfish SOBs! What's a little brain and central nervous system damage & psychosis to them and their kids/pets as compared to the will of the one true Gore?
Besides, I'm sure that at this very moment there's a new EPA CFL/Hg Spill Taskforce being planned behind closed doors to solve this health and environmental threat. They'll monitor residential areas by drone for Hg spills (among other things), swoop in, clean it up, and deliver the federal paperwork on the toxic spill costs & fines to the victi...err...owners of the CFL-upgraded property, and meanwhile deliver the drone surveillance recordings to interested police/drug enforcement agencies & TLAs. Make the surveilled help pay for their own surveillance! Brilliant!
As dime-store-novel as such a plot seems, the scary part is in these times with such blatant disregard the government exhibits toward citizens, it's nearly believable.
Strat
register FCC, NSA, and FBI, and various senators (sponsors of the DMCA in particular) IP addresses and see how fast the DMCA is repealed. :)
This is actually a very good idea IMHO. You might want to add a few Federal judges and maybe even a few Supreme Court judges. The LEO's and TLA's...maybe not such a good idea. They don't have a very developed sense of humor. Besides, I would think that they'd be more likely to try to keep it quiet, and public outrage by VIP's...preferably with some power to change things...was the point, no?
Strat
Bush cut taxes and jobs still went overseas by the millions and we ended up here. I'll grant that Reagan set it all in motion though and that Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr only extended the poor policy decisions.
Cutting one or two areas of taxes by nominal amounts while not being able/willing to control/cut spending, hugely increasing it as a matter of fact, and stifling regulation is why tax cuts in the relatively-recent past haven't had tremendous effects. If you give with one hand and turn right around and take with the other you haven't gained anything. Reagan was the only recent President that was able to secure both significant tax cuts and spending reductions, although he wasn't able to get Congress to rein in taxes and particularly spending on entitlements nearly as much as he wished.
Trickle down economics works on small scales where employers and employees actually know each other. I see this problem only getting worse as so far nothing is being done to radically change how we behave. The only solution to the crisis is less spending, not more! This of course has it problems as it will indeed depress the economy but it is the only way to get back on track fiscally.
Trickle-down does work, however you can't keep tossing in additional government spending as Congress loves to do, then claim it hasn't worked. If you give business tax breaks then increase their costs for labor, regulatory compliance, etc, etc then one shouldn't be shocked that the business sector and jobs sector doesn't grow as predicted by those who proposed the tax cuts.
Cutting government spending is always a good thing with the huge federal government we've saddled ourselves with. Government can not and does not create wealth. It can only spend wealth. That wealth doesn't magically appear, it comes from the nations' economy and causes myriad problems like sucking capital & credit for investment out of the private sector, causing inflationary pressure, and adding to the tax burden and debt. All of which are economic growth killers. Google for Japan's "Lost Decade" where they tried many of the things that have already been attempted and are being currently proposed here.
The idea that government can create jobs I consider a sick joke. Only the private sector, especially the small business sector, can create significant increases in employment, and bigger government is anathema to small business. The current administration is intent on massively growing government so it's no surprise they don't invite small business to their "Job Summits", as they know that small business will say they need less government and lower taxes to grow and create more jobs.
With all the "stimulus" bill and other federal jobs and economic growth programs, the only area of significant job growth has been in government jobs. I, for one, do *not* welcome our single-healthcare-payer, single-employer overlords regardless of party. If more jobs and economic growth is the goal, then get government taxes & regulation/restriction out of the way of small and medium sized businesses. Revenues to the treasury will increase. It has every time it's been tried.
Strat
Second, if the terms are so onerous that everyone walks away, explain to me how this treaty could possibly be all that good??
That all depends on the question; "good for whom?".
Of course they would consider it a matter of national security if they thought that the amount of power and money they were attempting to grab by bypassing many countries' legislative bodies via international treaty was extreme and might cause protests and riots if the details of what they were planning went public.
You have to remember that they consider only *themselves* as "the nation"; not you.
You are simply a source of wealth and power, like a herd of sheep, to advance their pursuit of greed & power-lust while simultaneously also a threat to that same wealth and power, so you must be kept uninformed and in check to protect themselves and their excesses.
A sheepherder does not make his flock aware of his plans for having mutton for dinner.
Strat
Well, as long as we'll be protected by the discretion of somebody whose job performance is evaluated on the basis of how many charges he brings, there should be no problem.
Just like here in the US where they told us; "Oh no, those Patriot Act powers are only for terror investigations, they won't be used for general domestic law enforcement or drug law enforcement!".
Lesson: Any law will sooner or later be abused or used outside of its' original intention to harass, punish, and censure people and ideas those with power dislike or fear if at all possible.
Strat
I really can't speak to the tea party rhetoric. I think it's the outcome of a Republican party that for years has focused on social issues without bothering to talk about financial ones.
Those joining the Tea Party movement are both Democrat and Republican. It's not just about taxes or Obama as many have tried to portray them and their motives. Listen to what they're saying.
They're tired of the corruption in both parties, and they're disgusted with how government and the power it wields has grown far outside of, and has made a mockery of, the Constitution. Things like using the Commerce Clause as an excuse to stick their greedy little paws into things that the Federal government has no business taxing, regulating, or passing laws regarding. They're angry with the gutting of many of our Constitutional rights.
Nixon started with a top marginal rate of 77%. Obama started with a top marginal rate of 35%. I find that major.
Dropping the progressive taxation system completely and abandoning using it as a social engineering tool in favor of a simple flat tax with a reasonable exclusion for income under a certain amount and the elimination of the IRS as we know it I would call major.
I'd personally prefer something Pro-business and pro-social programs (which actually can be the same thing, the number of companies that would become more competitive if they didn't have their health obligations is huge), plus responsible enough to raise taxes to take in the income we need.
No, it would kill businesses, especially small businesses, and jobs. You seem to think somehow they wouldn't pay for the "healthcare" plans now in Congress. The costs will be gigantic across the entire economy. The money will have to come from somewhere to pay for it, as the Chinese and Japanese are pretty much done loaning us money.
We already have the best health care in the world. Tort reform and allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines would greatly reduce costs of the care itself and would also insure healthy competition among insurance companies which is sorely lacking. Doing these two reforms alone would fix about 90% of the current health care problems without saddling the country in even more debt.
However, I'm convinced the current iterations of bills dealing with health care in Congress are about expanding the size of government and it's control over the people, and little to do with actually achieving their stated goals.
The whole thing is a con job, as they won't even be honest on the costs. Saying it costs 'X' over 10 years by counting the taxes to pay for it starting immediately, but the program's expenditures don't start for 5-6 years is totally dishonest and an insult to the intelligence of every American.
Never mind that current iterations will actually cause premiums to go up and quality and availability, especially to the poor and the aged, to go down. It will also kill jobs and necessarily cause taxes to be raised across the board as the rich simply don't have enough money to pay for it, even at a 100% tax rate. Particularly when this and other things being proposed are doing their best to reduce the number of "rich" and drive jobs and investment overseas.
The term "reset" has become popular political jargon lately, and I believe that's what needs to happen to the entire government. It has far exceeded the powers granted in the Constitution and regards the people with contempt. It's far past time for the people to stand up, take back control, and force the government to adhere to the Constitution and live within our ability to pay for it without debt or confiscatory taxation rates.
Strat
Wow. I never would have thought someone would post something like this on slashdot other than Archer.
Congrats to both you and Thomas for not switching to the name calling that usually surfaces. The whole exchange was very refreshing.
Thanks, Jackie.
People can disagree without being disagreeable. Resorting to crass insults and name-calling simply indicates one hasn't the ability to use logic & reason to back up their viewpoint. I don't personally hate progressives, I simply think most that aren't cynically using liberalism as a means to gain political power and wealth are misguided. You don't convince anyone of anything with attacks and insults.
If someone wishes to engage in a respectful, reasoned, and reasonable debate...great! Others I won't waste my time with and/or stoop to their level. It's a waste of time and makes me no better than the name-callers.
I respect Thomas, as he is simply debating on the facts & merits as he sees them and not engaging in crass insults and ad hominem attacks. Those in Washington and the various political groups on both sides would do well to emulate this atmosphere of reasonableness.
Strat
The State has tasted real power and will not stop until citizens start throwing Tea in Harbors again.
I thought the President's name was Obama?
Just sayin'
Strat
Because that's all we've been doing. We've had major tax decreases for years.
All we've been doing!?!? For *years*!?!? Apparently you're living in a different country than I am. There have been a few piddling and mostly temporary tax cuts but nothing I'd call major.
We can't cut entitlement programs, because Americans won't save.
They will if they know that they can't live off of someone else' money taken by force and given to those that didn't earn it. If they still refuse to save, then the results are their own fault. Why should I pay for your irresponsibility? Dependence on government is the reason the economy sucks and the means by which the government gains ever more power over ever more details of people's lives. I don't want or need a nanny, thanks.
"Progressiveism", which is a PC name for Liberalism, which in itself is nearly synonymous with socialism, has failed everywhere and every time it's been tried. Look at Detroit where the "Progressives" have been in charge for decades. It's a shanty town now and about to declare bankruptcy. Same with California. Yet people like you can't wait to turn the entire country into California writ large.
That's because the majority of the military's budget comes outside the budget so people don't balk at the cost.
[citation needed]
There is some of that going on, but not nearly to the breadth and scale of the rest of the national budget. Especially when it comes to the healthcare bills currently in Congress.
Perhaps what we really need are targeted tax hikes. If you make over $200k per year, you get a 50% tax rate. You can lower that by actually investing in business. You can lower that by proving you're using it to actually hire people. You can lower if by buying 10 economy cars rather than 1 ferrari. If you're just squireling it away, we'll go ahead and take it. That way we could actual prove that trickle-down was working rather than just taking it as an article of faith.
Why don't we just cut to the chase and just have the government decide how much we make and how we spend every dollar we earn? From each according to their ability, to each according to their need as decided by some politician or bureaucrat in Washington. Spread the wealth around, right?
This has been tried repeatedly and has utterly failed every time. Government isn't the solution, it's the problem. It's a necessary evil to maintain order, a civil society, and protect the country. The less government and government power, the better off and more free people are. With freedom, however, comes responsibility and that's what scares many like yourself who are too frightened to risk taking responsibility for your own life and welfare.
Politicians have been feeding this fear and using it to make people ever more dependent on the government and therefor becoming ever-more controlled in every facet of their lives for decades. They remove ever more people from the tax rolls and even encourage illegal immigration to use them to demand ever more entitlements as they don't have to pay for them.
It's always those "evil rich" that pay. Until there aren't any more jobs being created by, or sufficient taxes paid by, these "evil rich" to pay for the entitlements. Not even taking 100% of the entire Fortune 500's income can pay for the current entitlements and the interest on the debt, let alone reduce the debt's principal.
This is their goal. Total control of the people. They are currently employing the Cloward-Piven Strategy in an attempt to collapse the system and rebuild it with them in absolute control. To "fundamentally transform America" as Obama put it. He was telling the truth but nobody understood just how much of a transformation he and his masters had in mind. If anything resembling the current healthcare bills along with cap & tax and proposed tax hikes pass, this countries' economy will collapse in short order.
Hopefully the Tea Party movement is signaling an awakening of the people, and th
And yet when we taxed the super rich at 60-70% we had investment.
That was during JFK's term, and we had a problem with too little investment. That's why JFK lowered it. JFK would be considered a neocon by today's standards.
You're taking it on faith that if we raise taxes it will make things worse.
No, just the opposite. Every single time taxes have been lowered investment, actual revenue to the treasury, and jobs increased. Every Single. Time. If you want less of something, tax it.
In any case. The one thing we agree on is that we need responsible leaders,
Agreed, though we probably have completely different ideas on what constitutes "responsible leaders".
and we're going to have to raise taxes across the board to pay for what we spend. Either that or just completely get rid of the military to service the debt.
Why not lower tax rates so there is more actual revenue to the treasury instead of raising them and killing jobs and business? In every case that I know of, when we've lowered tax rates actual revenues have increased.
As to cutting the military, it only constitutes roughly 16% of the budget. Entitlements are the lion's share of spending and where spending must be reined in. Even eliminating the military completely wouldn't solve our budget problems, as entitlement spending continues to grow as more people start collecting Social Security, meanwhile COLA's and similar mandated rate increases grow that entitlement percentage. We need to grow and expand wealth to maintain our lifestyles and provide jobs, and higher taxes and larger government is anathema to this.
Strat
That's just because we don't tax properly. You're going to go into debt if you don't take in enough money. Reinstate the capital gains and something more sensible on the super-rich, like 60-70% and we'll be back down to a managable number in no time.
Even if we taxed everyone that made over $250,000/yr at 60-70% it would take something on the order of 120-145 years to pay down the debt, and that doesn't count interest on the debt. Meanwhile, you've taken away all incentive for investment of capital in businesses, especially small businesses, so there go all the jobs. Particularly if you reinstate the capital gains tax. Anyone or any corporation that was able would also flee the country to avoid the confiscatory taxes. Our currently second-highest corporate taxes have also greatly helped spur the outsourcing of jobs, investment, and wealth-creation to other countries.
The answer isn't to hike taxes, it's to reduce the size and cost of government and halt any further deficit spending. Currently, the area of greatest job growth is in government jobs. Those are paid for by taxes. What happens when there isn't enough private sector wealth left to tax because there simply aren't enough privately-employed people & private corporations with enough money left to tax sufficiently to pay for them?
Government growth doesn't create wealth or jobs.
It destroys them.
The last 5-10 years or more (yes, W is also at fault...BHO is simply shifting it into high gear) has been a giant experiment in Keynsian economics coupled with the practices of the Vimar Republic in printing money with no additional wealth to back it. The Fed is printing and loaning money to itself. There's no way this can end well. The dollar has lost 16% of it's value just since March of this year. The government has effectively taken 16% of everyone's money by reducing it's value by printing money with no backing.
If current trends and practices continue, the US will be in default and the dollar along with the economy will collapse in the next 5-10 years. Read up on what's occurring in Dubai.
It's either massive stupidity and greed, or the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Take your pick.
Either way, it's time we "throw the bums out" from both parties and elect some representatives and leaders with some sanity & integrity. For a change.
Strat
Most people are already thousands of dollars in debt. They don't even have to pirate a film to achieve that little bit of stupidity!
It's far, far worse than that. A newborn baby is born already owing in excess of $184,000 USD. Much more by some estimates. The government is currently working hard to dwarf this number. I should invest in a wheelbarrow manufacturing company, as demand will skyrocket...a wheelbarrow will soon be needed to transport enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread at the rate that money is being printed and thus devalued. It didn't work out so well for the Vimar Republic.
Strat