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

And taxes are voluntary?

No more than anything else. Your "rights" are protected by a governement that exists only because you pay taxes. The two are inextracibly linked, you couldn't have "rights" without taxes.



Absolutely, these are choices you make in a society. But suggesting that, say, higher taxation on certain financial transactions in order to fund healthcare is a violation of "porperty rights" is ridiculous.

Meh, don't get me wrong. I think everyone is entitled to a piece of the pie to live on and develop. I just think our criterion for deciding how it gets divvied up are pretty crazy when you look at things in perspective.

we should always be careful about how much we're taxing and for what purpose we tax.

I agree. Wasting it on pointless wars to benefit Iran probably isn't a great idea.

Hell, though, you're happy to pay your $27,000 share of that burden, right?

It's the $100 to feed starving people you quibble with.

Makes sense.

Really!?



In the pursuit of the defence of the realm, for sure.

Aggressively invading and occupying a non-threatening nation, costing trillion(s) of dollars of tax-payers money to the benefit of Iran doesn't bother you....as a tax-payer I mean. (We already know that you don't care about the amount of people maimed tortured and killed). But surely you must have some concerns as to where all the money is going?

I would have thought that 'fiscal responsibility' was a basic cornerstone of all that conservatives hold dear.....

But i forget...you are a Republican, wich as we all know, is not the same as being a 'conservative', any more.

See. I guess I just look at it differently. I divide my list up into two areas: Things that government *must* do (because if it doesn't, society doesn't function), and things that government *may* do (which are all optional). We have an obligation to pay taxes for the first list. We may choose to pay taxes for the second, but are also certainly free to argue about them.


It's not about a moral decision about the specifics. It's about the types of things you're being asked to pay for.


My list of "musts" is very short. National defense. Head of state (someone has to represent us to other nations). Management and support of trade both internationally and domestically. This can include things like road building and tariffs. A set of laws.


That's about it. Everything else is a "nice to have", and is negotiable.

Well we all known that education as perpetuated by the government is really just the indoctrination of the youth into the liberal agenda of godlessness and hedonism; true education can only come from the private citizenry who are free to raise their children as they wish, such that all children are free to choose to do exactly what their parents wish of them.

Didn't you read the homeschooling thread?



The government exists to coerce us into doing things that help us out a lot more than we often realize. One example is schooling; schools would not even need to exist if all humans just had some natural inclination to pick up the books and learn away. I can count on one hand the number of people that I knew in high school who even took interest in the course material; the rest of the @#%^ers were content to just get by (or fail) while they were off in the bushes ******** like rabid dogs and having babies and smoking weed and sh*t. Even I, who enjoyed every minute that was in the classroom, would coast by on my natural intuition and paying attention in class rather than ever doing homework. Even now, much later, I'd much rather play Morrowind or something than pick up Hegel and do the reading that I need to have done: Hegel is as @#%^ing hard as he is awesome, whereas the hedonistic distraction of a game is a sweet siren call, but i do the reading because I've willingly placed myself in a situation (taking a class) that gives me incentives to do it.

Taxes versus charity is much the same as Hegel versus Morrowind: I don't see many people abandoning a game for a book like that unless they have some compulsion.

That is admittedly a rather pessimistic view of the natural state of humans, and I'm lifting much of it straight from Augustine (granted). It (the position) just seems to make sense though. Even if all humans were to be blessed with some ability to intuit laws and reason and make something of themselves, few probably will. It is out of an almost stupidly idealistic compassion that we attempt to make this governmental structure force individuals into compliance of supporting these systems. You really don't have to participate; you have the ability to find a little corner of a mountain and really see what living on your own, with no coercions and no crushing weight of society forcing you to do anything, but you'll probably either die or live an extremely simple life that involves eating deer sh*t and @#%^ing rabbits.

***

The following might go for me too (if you change 'optimism' to 'pessimism' and vice versa) and it's not an argument, just an entertaining of an idea.

It's interesting (at first glance) to compare the world-view which informs your social policy and foreign policy. You've always seemed so abysmally pessimistic about other countries and people in terms of war; it's violent, messy, and we have to have an aggressive defense of the country to protect ourselves from the inherent selfishness of human nature. Yet, in terms of social policy you seem to pull a total 180 and expect everyone to be compassionate to the poor such that they are taken care of.without needing governmental intervention. I'm not sure that such views are very compatible.

Edited, Apr 15th 2008 11:05pm by Pensive

I'm interested why this is on your list of 'musts'.

Care to explain?

I think they are called 'contractors' nowadays. Mercenary has such bad connotations...

I liked the rest of what you said tho....

I guess the difference between me, and people whose priorities are similar to Gbajis can be defined by what they see as priorities when it comes to where our energies and cash are spent.


Health, education and living environment (and I DONT mean nebulous concerns about global warming), as opposed to international image and military presence/power projection.