Man, I wish the poor would stop whining...Follow

Not at all. I was making a point. We don't ban those things (usually), not because they'd be any less effective at preventing financial cost to "the system", but because it's an obvious an universal reduction of liberties. Even if you don't surf, the fact that it's made illegal very clearly restricts your own behaviors. Prior to the ban you *could* surf if you chose to. Now you can't. It's very easy for everyone to see that they're losing something.

That's the "cost in liberty". When it's obvious and seems to affect everyone, "the people" tend to balk at it (with some exceptions that I'll mention).


This is why taxation (especially highly progressive taxation) is the preferred method. It's harder to see taxes as a reduction of liberty. It's also easier to see it as non-universal. Why do you think so much rhetoric from the left focuses on "taxing the rich" and "making the rich pay their fair share"? From a mathematical perspective, it's pretty clear that the rich are paying more then their "fair share", in pretty much every possible way you could count it. So why present the rhetoric that way?


Because it scapegoats one smallish group of people. If you don't like them, it's ok to reduce their liberties for the good of everyone. It's easier to get the public to buy higher taxes if they think it's just hurting a group of people who are bad anyway. Thus, "the people" don't see the cost of liberty they're paying. That is why it works better to collect taxes to say pay for preventative health care, then pass laws to make high risk activities illegal. You could argue that banning the activities would be more effective. It doesn't actually cost much (or any) money. But the people don't like it as much...


And for the record. You can ban activities, it just takes a lot more work. You have to lay the groundwork in advance and get the PR campaign going to demonize the activity you want to legislate against. It takes decades, but you can do it. If your government spent a few decades convincing people that surfers were all troublemakers, and then pushed forward a campaign showing the cost surfing was imposing on the medical fields (all those surfing injuries!), it would not take much to first get the people to think of themselves as surfers and non-surfers, then to be willing to punish that one group for being bad people by limiting/bannning surfing.


It just takes a bit longer. It's easier and more productive to just demonize rich people and push higher taxes on them. Just one group to attack then...

You missed the point. It's "better" only because what would actually be cheaper and more effective isn't an easy "sell" to the populace. We could likely "prevent" more cost to the medical care system by rigidly controlling the actions of all citizens then we could gain by taxing. Taxing is just easier...



Lighthearted example aside, it would still be quite effective. And if you grew up in a society with those rules, you'd likely never know you were missing anything. Imagine if you lived in a completely sterile environment, where you're not allowed to go outdoors, everyone walks around in skintight water-and-germ-proof clothes, and the halls are lined with nerf material. Imagine you're never allowed to handle anything sharp or dangerous (in fact you've never seen such a thing).

The health rates in a society like that would make the best nation in the world look like a disease ridden place in comparison. Medical costs would be cheap because barring the occasional rare injury or rare genetic disorder (and maybe we could screen for those too!) you'd never need any. All the saved money could be spent on the free housing, super safe homes, and nerf lining on the walls.


Perfect utopian future? Or distopian horror setting? I think the latter. I think most of us would agree. But that would be by far the most efficient way to keep a whole society healthy. 10 times more effective then allowing us to run around in the dangerous environment of the real world and then paying for health care after the fact. What you call "preventative" really isn't preventative enough. We could prevent people from ever being exposed to things that might make them sick or hurt. That would be true prevention, right?




No. That's not the difference at all. I know quite well there will always be people who are at the bottom of the pond. The difference is that I don't think we actually help them much by simply making the bottom of the pond more comfortable.

Your way, they're still at the bottom of the pond. And they'll likely stay there for their entire lives. And their children and grandchildren likely will as well.

My way? The bottom of the pond sucks. Most people wont stay there. And since we haven't taxed the rich people who are the ones who create jobs, they have greater opportunity to improve their lives and get off the bottom.


Your way sounds like it's good, but it's really a trap. You're not decreasing poverty. You're increasing it, while making it more comfortable. My way, poverty still sucks, but there are fewer poor people (and fewer still who stay poor generation after generation).




Of course you are. Assuming you're telling the truth about being "rich", the system you live in benefits the wealthy far more then the poor. Not in terms of benefits, but in terms of status. You get to stay in a smaller and more "elite" class and feel good about yourself "helping the unwashed masses".

When you look at a chart of the income spread of a country like yours in comparison to the US, there's a startling fact you'll see. If you put earnings on one axis (up and down) and order the population by percentile ranked by earnings along the bottom, the US chart looks like a nice smooth slope, gradually moving from bottom left (poor) and upwards through the middle class, and then upwards more to the wealthier folks. When you look at your country, you see a higher level at the far left, but then the chart is nearly flat for about 75% of the population. Almost no upward mobility for most of the people due to the artificial shift in the "floor". Then somewhere between 75-90% the slope sharply shifts upwards to include the small percentage of wealthy and "rich" people.


Ask most people which economy they'd rather live in, and which economy represents opportunity, and they'll point at the US chart every single time. Ask which one looks like the "haves" and "have nots" are more sharply divided, and they'll point at yours. The system you use isn't created out of the goodness of the wealthy European heart. It's been created out of a desire to recreate economically in modern European democracies what has existed for centuries in European Feudalisms. A small "noble class" with most of the wealth providing for a large "peasant class" with a tiny amount floating in between.

That's the model you're using. It's not good for the poor. It's just another means of control. Another way to keep the unwashed masses at the bottom of the economic scale with almost no way to advance.

But you keep pretending that you're somehow socially and morally superior...




Of course. Your "people" will handle the details of handing out the portion of your wealth to keep the rabble working the lands happy.




No. Not everyone has the same capacity to succeed. But everyone has the capacity to succeed. Perhaps not the same capacity, but they can succeed (rare highly disabled people excepted). I believe that it's important not to create artificial obstacles to their chances to succeed. Taxes of any type hurt those trying to build wealth more then they hurt those who already have it. Thus, despite the claims of goodness, most "taxes on the rich" don't hurt the rich at all. They can afford the taxes. But they do make it darn hard for any of those working and middle class folks to get ahead. Effectively, the rich stay rich and everyone else ends up "poor" with about the same standard of living and reduced opportunities across the board.




Wait. So me wanting to keep what I earn is selfish, but someone else wanting to take that which he didn't earn *isn't* selfish?

You have a strange definition of selfish.



Yup. And I believe that humans are most free and free to flourish in an environment where their government is not imposing artificial blocks to advancement and providing artificial cushioning for failure. Those combine to reduce the likelihood that most people will ever make anything of their lives.

You consider it "empathy" to make poverty more comfortable. I consider it "empathy" to make poverty more avoidable in the first place.




It really depends on whether you believe in people or a system. If your goal is to build a perfect "system", you're correct. But if your goal is to provide people with the most freedom they can have, you're absolutely wrong.





What makes you say this? Assumption?e

His tax breaks were instrumental to the recovery of the US economy after the techbubble burst from the 90s and 9/11. It's hard to see how Gore's policies had he been elected could possibly have done as well.

Additionally, those tax cuts did *exactly* what they were supposed to do. They increased GDP growth rate, which in turn increased total taxable revenue, which in turn reduced the deficit first generated by cutting the taxes in the first place. End result is a government doing roughly the same amount of "work", and generating the same adjusted amount of revenue, but taxing about 2% less of the GDP in the process (meaning a higher sustained growth rate in the future).


The problem you have is that you assume that all that matters in economics is how the pie is sliced up. Some of us understand that not taking as much pie in the first place is also a factor on the table to weigh.


I also can only assume you have a completely different definition of "small government" then I, Bush, or most Republicans do. Guess what? The war in Iraq is not a violation of small government. Neither is the foreign surveillance stuff. We can debate things like the patriot act, but I honestly believe that had a Democrat been in office, that act would have been much more forceful in terms of restrictions on US citizens.

It's all relative. I find it amusing that liberals attempt to attack Bush for "not being conservative enough on small government", yet when the Dems won congress 2 years ago, all they've done is fight for a succession of massive spending increases (and silly attempts to withdraw from Iraq). Gee. If Bush was such a big government guy, why is Rangle chomping at the bit to expand so many programs and talking about how they've been neglected.


You have to put Bush in the context of how a Dem president would have done things. Do that and the differences on "tax and spend" becomes really really obvious...




[/quote]

Sure. Total over 5 years. That's what? 100B per year?

Dems would increase more then that easily, and it wouldn't just last until Iraq was stabilized. We'd be paying eternally...

When I get home I'll ask my cleaner (single mum, works 3 part-time jobs) if she thinks that she would be better off if her free health care, child-care, state-provided visits to the hair saloon (sic) and help with rent and child-support was withdrawn, whilst my own tax burden was reduced. I'm sure she will initially say that she would miss those benefits.

But I'm sure that once I've read your post to her (she prolly can't read, the poor love) she will come around to your way of thinking, and will immmediatly start planning her meteoric rise from the silt to become a fully paid up member of the 'top 5%'!

Feel free to ask what we're getting with all that money Smash cause that's what I ask all the time...

Lots of things we need and some we don't. I think we're probably good with corn and wheat subsidies at this point, for instance.

As opposed to the right, where supply side economics in every republican presidential administration since Reagan has resulted in a continual rising budget deficit since they don't slash the budget, just taxes?

But it's not us who keep increasing the spending.

Of course it is. Republicans have done no better cutting spending when in power than Democrats. It's a flat out lie to imply otherwise. They've cut spending to certain programs while increasing overall spending dramatically.



And if you're honest, ask yourself which you'd rather: to have a deficit because your government cut taxes, or have a deficit because your government increased spending?

I don't know, would you rather be in debt because you bought too many things or because you took a pay cut?

Apparently, you'd prefer the pay cut.

Nice bait and switch there Smash.

I said that "it's not us who keep increasing the spending. You responded that Republicans don't "cut spending" anymore then Democrats, almost as though I didn't just spend 3 paragraphs explaining how it's almost impossible to "cut spending". All one can really do is "not increase spending as much".


Democrats increase spending by vastly greater amounts then Republicans do. That's the significant measurement.





False analogy. Cutting taxes isn't the same as a "pay cut", and it's bizarre for anyone to even suggest that it is...

False analogy. Cutting taxes isn't the same as a "pay cut", and it's bizarre for anyone to even suggest that it is...

It's exactly the same, idiot. When the government cuts taxes, it takes a pay cut. Right wing nutjob logic about it increasing total revenues *which it never has* notwithstanding.

You're unfairly looking at one time cost decreases and increases and ignoring ongoing changes. Clinton gutted the military in the 90s. Defense spending went from 4.8% GDP to 3% GDP during his watch. Between 2001 and 2005, Bush increased that spending up to 4% GDP, still not as high as it was before Clinton took over (and we're actually fighting a war or two!).

Uh huh. So it's not cutting spending that's the problem, it's cutting spending on programs you don't like.

Thus we come full circle to what I stated hours ago.

Good work.

Sure. But the programs I don't like are the ones that have automatic legislatively mandated spending increases built into them.


See how that works?


I also tend to "like" spending on things that I've already explained in a dozen threads before this one are "necessary" for government to do. Defense is necessary. A government that doesn't defend its citizens isn't meeting it's obligation as a government. The kinds Dems tend to like are the "optional" things. Things that are nice to do perhaps, but don't have to exist for the nation to survive.


Odd that the former group ends up being "discretionary" spending, while the latter is often "mandatory" spending. You'd think we'd do it the other way around, right?...

Since this thread is still on the first page, and at one point, the discussion did involve CEO salaries, I thought this might be of interest:

http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9935026-60.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc



My god...