"Don't worry, you'll see all that being "tested" in the next war they buy."
I don't think it will be the next one but the next after that.
Did you notice they are photographs, not video there?
Why do you think that's the case? Maybe because it looks good enough while standing still but once you see it moving you understand there's no way the military would use it in real combat?
"If they have the right to vote then it's their democracy too."
Up to a point. Just for the sake of the argument, what if all ballot papers were in Klingon? Or what if the only ballot room were in Alaska? Hey, you still can vote, can't you?
It is not about the right to vote; it's about the right to vote *effectively*.
"English is the language of the USA. If you think otherwise, just TRY to get a law passed in any other. Moron."
I might be a moron, no doubt, but at least this moron retains intact his reading comprehension, much more than can be said of you, Bobb Sledd. I'll repeat:
"USA hasn't an official language so English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change."
Are you implying that passing a law for the Congress to be able to accept further laws in, say, Cantonese would need to ammend the Constitution? I don't think so. It might be the case that it wouldn't be needed any class of law changes to pass one in, say, Navajo should the notion arise and be supported by a majority (maybe a law about regarding some Navajo Nation interest or right).
"There isn't room for two languages [...] It's a completely asinine idea."
That's probably true... for your average Bobb Sledds' brains. On the other hand, EU manages to have 23 official and 4 working languages. Not saying they do it without a hassle, but certainly demonstrating it's doable.
"Arguing against an official language is in effect an argument for segregation."
That maybe the case. But, please, read my lips: I-am-not-arguing-against-an-official-language. I'm just stating the point that there is not an official language in the USA.
If by "these parts" you mean USA, no, I'm not. But please, enlighten me: how that does make what I said any wrong? You do really think it is impossible that in an unstated future English might pass away as the most used language within the territory? Absolutly?
"However, I can't think of a country remotely comparable to the size of the US (population or geographically) that is even officially bilingual."
True, it's not a country, but EU (similar to USA at least in population) has 23 official languages with 4 working languages and it aspires to become a (more or less) single political and economical entity.
"So why are "progressives" arguing for more segregation and ghettoization?"
I'm not arguing anything. I'm not even a US citizen. I'm just stating facts: that USA hasn't an official language and that, despite all the spoken discourses about integration and egalitarism reality has been far away from that.
"it does seem silly or unnecessarily contrarian to be motivated enough to demand participation in a country's political process without making even a cursory effort to learn the language in which all of its politics are conducted."
Quite an interesting point with regards what a Republic is about. Last I thought of it, it was the politicians, as citizenship representatives the ones that should do the effort to speak the language of their representees, not the other way around.
"If you can't communicate with the vast majority of your fellow citizens, you have no business voting."
Which makes my point even more prevalent:
"English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change."
Probably you'll be able to find towns in California, New Mexico or Texas where "your fellow citizens" will speak Spanish more than English so there might be a future where it is *you* the one with problems to communicate with your fellow citizens -will you remember by then, Mr. Englishspokenman your words about having no business to vote?
"Voter turnout in the US sucks, and it sucks that it sucks, and it needs to be fixed. I'm no expert on how to fix it"
For ballots that would populate a lot of chairs (i.e. Congress), blank/no one from the list will produce empty chairs; for ballots for a head (i.e: major), blank/no one from the list will make the previous one to stay in place (to avoid anarchy) or the ballot would be repeated if the last one can't continue.
"But he seems to have gotten elected by some right wing promises (kick out the muslims) but ALSO (and this is often overlooked) with a LOT (far more) LEFT wing promisises like no extension of pension age, fewer cuts in social spending etc etc."
Humm... Do you mean he is about xenophobic and social policies? I thought every German would know about, you know, National Socialism.
"What about a party that ends the party system?"
Humm... Do you mean kind of a party that would use the legal system to reach power and then would sanitize it from within? I thought every German would know about, you know, National Socialism.
"We might not like the system, but are we capable of going to a system that DOES work? Is the average voter for ready for REAL democracy?"
Do you know who else thought about that? I thought every German would know about, you know, some National Socialist leader.
Now, we don't want again neither the Spanish Inquisition nor the National Socialist party, do we?
"So how would one indicate a lack of confidence in the system, as opposed to the specific candidates? Abstaining is not simply a way of expressing apathy; it can also indicate that one finds the office itself illegitimate."
That's not the problem. The real problem is that under a representative democracy (or republic) you ended up putting the fox to take care of the hens in this issue.
Solution (to your proposed problem): allow for a blank (or "no one of the above") vote. I don't know for the USA but a ton of countries allow for that option.
Why it doesn't work? Because your representatives don't want to lose the power your vote -or your no-vote give to them. That's why while a lot of countries allow for a blank vote, no one -that I know of, allow for those blank votes to hold representatives (as empty chairs in the representatives office). Politicians live quite a sweet life knowing that the more disconnected they are from the citizens they say to represent the easier for them to go after their own bussiness.
I wouldn't support dismantling government for too a high percentage of blank votes since that would lead to anarchy (see Irak or many African countries to see why anarchy is bad) but I certainly would favour for government going progressively into autopilot by means of blank votes leading to empty chairs.
In Spain for instance (and I presume it's more or less the same in USA) you need different majority levels for different kind of laws (like 2/3 in order to be able to ammend the Constitution, absolute majority for national budgets, simple majority for other laws...). Taking into account blank votes, then, first you wouldn't be able to ammend the Constitution, after that you wouldn't be able to pass yearly budgets (so you automatically would work on last years budget), then you wouldn't be able to pass any law: you would be forced just to be sit down and quiet in the Congress. Which can only make sense: if you didn't earn people's support you aren't entitled to govern the country -the less support you earned, the less important the changes you are allowed to introduce.
That's easy to acomplish and it would have the immediate effect that politicians would be *very* interested on gaining the attention and support of citizenship which would only be good for democracy. It's only that those in charge to pass such a law are the most interested on such a law never to be aproved.
"I think most who do not vote are either lazy (probably the majority) or don't feel they have enough understanding to make a serious choice. Or to paraphrase: most people don't deserve to have a government.;-)"
Hummm... no. It would be more "most people don't deserve a *democratic* government".
"Yet every damn government publication is produced in English and Spanish. What other country on this Earth would let that happen? Switzerland? They're small enough to get away with it."
There's quite a lot of countries with more than one official language. Spain, for instance, has four (while only one is official over the whole country). You can bet that if you go to, say, Euskadi, traffic signals, street names and official documents will be in the two local official languages.
"Generally speaking, hard to imagine being born and raised in the US without knowing to speak English...is kind of needed to really succeed and operate in this country."
Absolutly true. But I think this is more about the purity of the argument. Since USA hasn't an official language you could *in theory* live in USA without knowing English (not in practice, except on the most extreme examples).
"I'd not go to France and expect them to let me vote"
Then you'd be surprised. Once you are a resident you'll be able to vote on local (city level) elections (which IMHO makes perfect sense since you are being taxed there).
"or have everything labeled in English"
Probably not in France (those chovinists) but you can bet that if you go on holiday to Majorca (Spain) you'll read and hear more German than Spanish.
"Why do we make such (often expensive) concessions here in the US these days?"
Mexico, Spain or France have an official language that their respective citizens have the right to use and the obligation to know. That's not the case for the USA.
"It isn't racist to expect visitors to this country to follow the "when in Rome" type thinking, is it?"
It wouldn't be racist in any case, but it might be xenophobic (and despite its origins, it's not as if USA didn't have it before: "America for the Americans", you know).
"We are supposed to be ONE great nation, built upon the cultures and influences brought into this country by people that come here to be citizens. This model has worked pretty well until the past couple of decades."
I'll beg to disagree. USA has traditionally been a country of seggregation and ghettos and even citizenship (by means of the ability to cast a vote) hasn't been a thing for all till relatively recent.
"Who in their right mind would actually want to give power over the government to people who can't even be bothered to learn the language of their own nation?"
Where is it stated that English is the language of the USA? Last I knew about it USA hasn't an official language so English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change.
"Well, not for all cases. You have to base your price point on what people are willing to pay where you can still make money."
Not exactly. You just base your price tag on what people are willing to pay.
If that happens to be below your production costs you either don't go into market (so there won't be a price point) or you revisit your engineering till the production costs go below people's price tag*1, so no, you don't base your price point on your production costs but you set your production costs as a function of the people's will.
*1 Or, as the Apple case clearly shows, you go to marketing instead of engineering to "engineer" people so they become happy to accept a higher price tag (note that this isn't even always necesary: the marketing lore will remind you about the Haagen Daas case, where their market share skyrocketeed "just" because they put a higher price point to their products so they "seemed" to be better quality).
"It costs $1000 because they had to custom-design a lot of internal parts and do stuff to make everything fit."
Nope. It costs $1000 because they know that not only their customers will pay for it but that their customers even *want* to pay for it (their marketing people has been working for long years in order for that to happen).
Hint: you never base your price tag on your building costs but on what your customer is willing to pay.
"it's well documented that staying active in the workforce is good for the brain"
And this has to do with Sweden exactly, what?
Sweden, you know, is one of those old European countries USA people would tell as communist as old Soviet Union if some from its life style would be tried in America. Swedish oldies have no problem to retire and they do on average at 61 with all Swedish residents entitled to a state-financed guaranteed minimum pension from the age of 65, which is the standard retirement age over there.
"todays 70-year-olds are smarter.... because most of them can't afford to retire."
Again, USA is not the all and everything of the world.
No, you are not an ignorant. You are a willingly ignorant, a different beast.
It took me about two minutes to find the figures that made you look funny (it took quite more to write down this):
Moon volume: 2.1958 × 10^10 km^3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon) Total world mass moved by mining per year: 17.8 Km^3 (from the first match on Google for "overall world mass moved by mining": http://www.maden.org.tr/resimler/ekler/9fde5402cbc75ae_ek.pdf)
So you'd need more than 10 million years to move just 1% of Moon volume at current Earth's minery rates (and please pay attention that just moving lands from here to there within the Moon won't affect gravity; just the material you get away from the Moon would do it, which would be something like 1:1000 to the overall moved land, best case scenario).
Unless you are younger than, say, 10~12 years (which by your ID number, you aren't) all the knowledge you needed to spend two minutes testing your idea by yourself as suspicious were the knowledge of the Moon being really, really big for human standards, not like something too esoteric.
"1. Corporations do NOT pay taxes... People do. Corporations are legal fictions and when taxed do one or a combination of 3 things: Lower dividends to investors, lay-off workers or, more often than not, increase the price of their product. A corporation is therefore NOT a tax payer... it is a tax COLLECTOR!"
That's the smokedream of Mr. Adam Smith where every business plays on open ground and their rivals compete in such a way that profit margins stay low and are solely due to the hindrance of the service they are offering.
In the real world, corporations can do a lot more than you say. For instance: 1) Reduce their profit margins 2) Pay less to their corporate officers 3) Focus more on their internal efficiency and expenditures in order to be able to provide product/services at lower operational costs.
A real example: BP oil doesn't seem to be any more expensive now than it was prior to their Gulf accident while the contention and retaliation expenditures worked against them exactly the same as a "Mother Nature tax". How is that possible within your theory?
"So fracking what the rich guy lives in a mansion... who was paid to build the mansion?"
The society as a whole (including, of course, the rich guy itself). The rich one wouldn't be able to stand on his standard of living unless the society he lives within support for that, so it's fair that he returns a part of his earnings to help building the society he lives within. And it seems fair the he pays for such society building *at least* as much as the next guy, never less.
"You see? Just because a person has a large amount of wealth associated with their name does NOT mean they are greedy and others are not benefiting from it."
Truly. But such a person didn't get the money out of thin air. And *if* such a person made his money out of a business that managed to sustainedly get above 15~20% net profit margins, even Mr. Adam Smith knew something is smelling fishy and such enrichment must be suspiciously looked at.
"Even if they do use so-called loopholes to get around taxation - they've gotta spend their money somewhere!"
Quite truly -again. But if they use their privileged position so that they get to spend their money in an uncompetitive way (ability to find holes to evade taxes, tycoon-like practices so they get even richer while their workers stay just a step above slavery...), that again smells fishy and earns a second, suspicious look.
Nice you asked. Since you are lurking Slashdot instead of having a nice day at Bahamas I bet, no, people doesn't say you should pay more.
"Yes, somewhere there are mustache-twirling slumlords, but they are a minority."
Yes, but such minority controls roughly 90% of GDP
"Yes, somewhere there are poor people who would be better off but for an act of malevolence, but that too is a minority."
Yes, but such minority of relative poverty means about 13~17% of American population, with more than one out of two expected to spend at least a year of their lives below the relative poverity treshold. Not exactly the same kind of problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't worry, you'll see all that being "tested" in the next war they buy."
I don't think it will be the next one but the next after that.
Did you notice they are photographs, not video there?
Why do you think that's the case? Maybe because it looks good enough while standing still but once you see it moving you understand there's no way the military would use it in real combat?
"If they have the right to vote then it's their democracy too."
Up to a point. Just for the sake of the argument, what if all ballot papers were in Klingon? Or what if the only ballot room were in Alaska? Hey, you still can vote, can't you?
It is not about the right to vote; it's about the right to vote *effectively*.
"English is the language of the USA. If you think otherwise, just TRY to get a law passed in any other.
Moron."
I might be a moron, no doubt, but at least this moron retains intact his reading comprehension, much more than can be said of you, Bobb Sledd. I'll repeat:
"USA hasn't an official language so English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change."
Are you implying that passing a law for the Congress to be able to accept further laws in, say, Cantonese would need to ammend the Constitution? I don't think so. It might be the case that it wouldn't be needed any class of law changes to pass one in, say, Navajo should the notion arise and be supported by a majority (maybe a law about regarding some Navajo Nation interest or right).
"There isn't room for two languages [...] It's a completely asinine idea."
That's probably true... for your average Bobb Sledds' brains. On the other hand, EU manages to have 23 official and 4 working languages. Not saying they do it without a hassle, but certainly demonstrating it's doable.
"Arguing against an official language is in effect an argument for segregation."
That maybe the case. But, please, read my lips: I-am-not-arguing-against-an-official-language. I'm just stating the point that there is not an official language in the USA.
"Your not from these parts I reckon.."
If by "these parts" you mean USA, no, I'm not. But please, enlighten me: how that does make what I said any wrong? You do really think it is impossible that in an unstated future English might pass away as the most used language within the territory? Absolutly?
"However, I can't think of a country remotely comparable to the size of the US (population or geographically) that is even officially bilingual."
True, it's not a country, but EU (similar to USA at least in population) has 23 official languages with 4 working languages and it aspires to become a (more or less) single political and economical entity.
"It's a significant logistical challenge."
I wouldn't deny that: it is. But it is doable.
"So why are "progressives" arguing for more segregation and ghettoization?"
I'm not arguing anything. I'm not even a US citizen. I'm just stating facts: that USA hasn't an official language and that, despite all the spoken discourses about integration and egalitarism reality has been far away from that.
"it does seem silly or unnecessarily contrarian to be motivated enough to demand participation in a country's political process without making even a cursory effort to learn the language in which all of its politics are conducted."
Quite an interesting point with regards what a Republic is about. Last I thought of it, it was the politicians, as citizenship representatives the ones that should do the effort to speak the language of their representees, not the other way around.
"If you can't communicate with the vast majority of your fellow citizens, you have no business voting."
Which makes my point even more prevalent:
"English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change."
Probably you'll be able to find towns in California, New Mexico or Texas where "your fellow citizens" will speak Spanish more than English so there might be a future where it is *you* the one with problems to communicate with your fellow citizens -will you remember by then, Mr. Englishspokenman your words about having no business to vote?
"Voter turnout in the US sucks, and it sucks that it sucks, and it needs to be fixed. I'm no expert on how to fix it"
For ballots that would populate a lot of chairs (i.e. Congress), blank/no one from the list will produce empty chairs; for ballots for a head (i.e: major), blank/no one from the list will make the previous one to stay in place (to avoid anarchy) or the ballot would be repeated if the last one can't continue.
Done.
"But he seems to have gotten elected by some right wing promises (kick out the muslims) but ALSO (and this is often overlooked) with a LOT (far more) LEFT wing promisises like no extension of pension age, fewer cuts in social spending etc etc."
Humm... Do you mean he is about xenophobic and social policies? I thought every German would know about, you know, National Socialism.
"What about a party that ends the party system?"
Humm... Do you mean kind of a party that would use the legal system to reach power and then would sanitize it from within? I thought every German would know about, you know, National Socialism.
"We might not like the system, but are we capable of going to a system that DOES work? Is the average voter for ready for REAL democracy?"
Do you know who else thought about that? I thought every German would know about, you know, some National Socialist leader.
Now, we don't want again neither the Spanish Inquisition nor the National Socialist party, do we?
"So how would one indicate a lack of confidence in the system, as opposed to the specific candidates? Abstaining is not simply a way of expressing apathy; it can also indicate that one finds the office itself illegitimate."
That's not the problem. The real problem is that under a representative democracy (or republic) you ended up putting the fox to take care of the hens in this issue.
Solution (to your proposed problem): allow for a blank (or "no one of the above") vote. I don't know for the USA but a ton of countries allow for that option.
Why it doesn't work? Because your representatives don't want to lose the power your vote -or your no-vote give to them. That's why while a lot of countries allow for a blank vote, no one -that I know of, allow for those blank votes to hold representatives (as empty chairs in the representatives office). Politicians live quite a sweet life knowing that the more disconnected they are from the citizens they say to represent the easier for them to go after their own bussiness.
I wouldn't support dismantling government for too a high percentage of blank votes since that would lead to anarchy (see Irak or many African countries to see why anarchy is bad) but I certainly would favour for government going progressively into autopilot by means of blank votes leading to empty chairs.
In Spain for instance (and I presume it's more or less the same in USA) you need different majority levels for different kind of laws (like 2/3 in order to be able to ammend the Constitution, absolute majority for national budgets, simple majority for other laws...). Taking into account blank votes, then, first you wouldn't be able to ammend the Constitution, after that you wouldn't be able to pass yearly budgets (so you automatically would work on last years budget), then you wouldn't be able to pass any law: you would be forced just to be sit down and quiet in the Congress. Which can only make sense: if you didn't earn people's support you aren't entitled to govern the country -the less support you earned, the less important the changes you are allowed to introduce.
That's easy to acomplish and it would have the immediate effect that politicians would be *very* interested on gaining the attention and support of citizenship which would only be good for democracy. It's only that those in charge to pass such a law are the most interested on such a law never to be aproved.
"I think most who do not vote are either lazy (probably the majority) or don't feel they have enough understanding to make a serious choice. ;-)"
Or to paraphrase: most people don't deserve to have a government.
Hummm... no. It would be more "most people don't deserve a *democratic* government".
"Yet every damn government publication is produced in English and Spanish. What other country on this Earth would let that happen? Switzerland? They're small enough to get away with it."
There's quite a lot of countries with more than one official language. Spain, for instance, has four (while only one is official over the whole country). You can bet that if you go to, say, Euskadi, traffic signals, street names and official documents will be in the two local official languages.
"Generally speaking, hard to imagine being born and raised in the US without knowing to speak English...is kind of needed to really succeed and operate in this country."
Absolutly true. But I think this is more about the purity of the argument. Since USA hasn't an official language you could *in theory* live in USA without knowing English (not in practice, except on the most extreme examples).
"I'd not go to France and expect them to let me vote"
Then you'd be surprised. Once you are a resident you'll be able to vote on local (city level) elections (which IMHO makes perfect sense since you are being taxed there).
"or have everything labeled in English"
Probably not in France (those chovinists) but you can bet that if you go on holiday to Majorca (Spain) you'll read and hear more German than Spanish.
"Why do we make such (often expensive) concessions here in the US these days?"
Mexico, Spain or France have an official language that their respective citizens have the right to use and the obligation to know. That's not the case for the USA.
"It isn't racist to expect visitors to this country to follow the "when in Rome" type thinking, is it?"
It wouldn't be racist in any case, but it might be xenophobic (and despite its origins, it's not as if USA didn't have it before: "America for the Americans", you know).
"We are supposed to be ONE great nation, built upon the cultures and influences brought into this country by people that come here to be citizens. This model has worked pretty well until the past couple of decades."
I'll beg to disagree. USA has traditionally been a country of seggregation and ghettos and even citizenship (by means of the ability to cast a vote) hasn't been a thing for all till relatively recent.
"Who in their right mind would actually want to give power over the government to people who can't even be bothered to learn the language of their own nation?"
Where is it stated that English is the language of the USA? Last I knew about it USA hasn't an official language so English is a matter of social custom and, as such, open to change.
"Well, not for all cases. You have to base your price point on what people are willing to pay where you can still make money."
Not exactly. You just base your price tag on what people are willing to pay.
If that happens to be below your production costs you either don't go into market (so there won't be a price point) or you revisit your engineering till the production costs go below people's price tag*1, so no, you don't base your price point on your production costs but you set your production costs as a function of the people's will.
*1 Or, as the Apple case clearly shows, you go to marketing instead of engineering to "engineer" people so they become happy to accept a higher price tag (note that this isn't even always necesary: the marketing lore will remind you about the Haagen Daas case, where their market share skyrocketeed "just" because they put a higher price point to their products so they "seemed" to be better quality).
"It costs $1000 because they had to custom-design a lot of internal parts and do stuff to make everything fit."
Nope. It costs $1000 because they know that not only their customers will pay for it but that their customers even *want* to pay for it (their marketing people has been working for long years in order for that to happen).
Hint: you never base your price tag on your building costs but on what your customer is willing to pay.
"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!"
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
"it's well documented that staying active in the workforce is good for the brain"
And this has to do with Sweden exactly, what?
Sweden, you know, is one of those old European countries USA people would tell as communist as old Soviet Union if some from its life style would be tried in America. Swedish oldies have no problem to retire and they do on average at 61 with all Swedish residents entitled to a state-financed guaranteed minimum pension from the age of 65, which is the standard retirement age over there.
"todays 70-year-olds are smarter.... because most of them can't afford to retire."
Again, USA is not the all and everything of the world.
"No, I'm not joking - I'm ignorant."
No, you are not an ignorant. You are a willingly ignorant, a different beast.
It took me about two minutes to find the figures that made you look funny (it took quite more to write down this):
Moon volume: 2.1958 × 10^10 km^3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon)
Total world mass moved by mining per year: 17.8 Km^3 (from the first match on Google for "overall world mass moved by mining": http://www.maden.org.tr/resimler/ekler/9fde5402cbc75ae_ek.pdf)
So you'd need more than 10 million years to move just 1% of Moon volume at current Earth's minery rates (and please pay attention that just moving lands from here to there within the Moon won't affect gravity; just the material you get away from the Moon would do it, which would be something like 1:1000 to the overall moved land, best case scenario).
Unless you are younger than, say, 10~12 years (which by your ID number, you aren't) all the knowledge you needed to spend two minutes testing your idea by yourself as suspicious were the knowledge of the Moon being really, really big for human standards, not like something too esoteric.
"In a sense, he [the CEO]'s a hostage"
Except that it seems it tends to be the other way around. Golden parachutes, anyone?
"1. Corporations do NOT pay taxes... People do. Corporations are legal fictions and when taxed do one or a combination of 3 things: Lower dividends to investors, lay-off workers or, more often than not, increase the price of their product. A corporation is therefore NOT a tax payer... it is a tax COLLECTOR!"
That's the smokedream of Mr. Adam Smith where every business plays on open ground and their rivals compete in such a way that profit margins stay low and are solely due to the hindrance of the service they are offering.
In the real world, corporations can do a lot more than you say. For instance:
1) Reduce their profit margins
2) Pay less to their corporate officers
3) Focus more on their internal efficiency and expenditures in order to be able to provide product/services at lower operational costs.
A real example: BP oil doesn't seem to be any more expensive now than it was prior to their Gulf accident while the contention and retaliation expenditures worked against them exactly the same as a "Mother Nature tax". How is that possible within your theory?
"So fracking what the rich guy lives in a mansion... who was paid to build the mansion?"
The society as a whole (including, of course, the rich guy itself). The rich one wouldn't be able to stand on his standard of living unless the society he lives within support for that, so it's fair that he returns a part of his earnings to help building the society he lives within. And it seems fair the he pays for such society building *at least* as much as the next guy, never less.
"You see? Just because a person has a large amount of wealth associated with their name does NOT mean they are greedy and others are not benefiting from it."
Truly. But such a person didn't get the money out of thin air. And *if* such a person made his money out of a business that managed to sustainedly get above 15~20% net profit margins, even Mr. Adam Smith knew something is smelling fishy and such enrichment must be suspiciously looked at.
"Even if they do use so-called loopholes to get around taxation - they've gotta spend their money somewhere!"
Quite truly -again. But if they use their privileged position so that they get to spend their money in an uncompetitive way (ability to find holes to evade taxes, tycoon-like practices so they get even richer while their workers stay just a step above slavery...), that again smells fishy and earns a second, suspicious look.
"And people say I should pay MORE?"
Nice you asked. Since you are lurking Slashdot instead of having a nice day at Bahamas I bet, no, people doesn't say you should pay more.
"Yes, somewhere there are mustache-twirling slumlords, but they are a minority."
Yes, but such minority controls roughly 90% of GDP
"Yes, somewhere there are poor people who would be better off but for an act of malevolence, but that too is a minority."
Yes, but such minority of relative poverty means about 13~17% of American population, with more than one out of two expected to spend at least a year of their lives below the relative poverity treshold. Not exactly the same kind of problem.