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I told you to stop making up stuff. At no point have I EVER stated there should be no government, and further, I have CLEARLY stated repeatedly, that one of the few morally defensible functions of government is to defend property and our rights.
Why do you liberals ALWAYS resort to untrue arguments? Is it that you believe your morality is so superior that lies and untruth are justified to win?
It sure seems that way.
Well, pnwmdk. Frankly, the interchanges you've had with other posters have been too painful for me to wade through - as I suspect ours has been for them. And so I could not resist typing out a response if only out of curiosity.
Clearly, we have failed to communicate although if judged by the vehemence of your final (and actually only words to me for I've only posted once) you seem a tad upset.
I haven't seen a single liberal seriously put this forward. This is the internet, so I have seen some crazy ideas proposed, this included, but in the U.S. anyone who really believed this would be voted out of office faster than their opposition could even challenge them.
I had hoped none would. I was far more interested in the second question, which is the WHY. I wonder why I have to repeat this statement over and over and over, and yet we are blessed with the tripe below.
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Personally, I would not support this because this is a ridiculous, impractical, and rather heartless idea that would solve nothing. Of course, I am sure you still believe the majority of liberals think like this, yet I haven't seen any Democrat propose more than a small tax hike on the wealthy.
Like the liberals before you, you still believe in confiscating other people's money, but just not any amount that seems "obscene" to get the things you want them to fund. You know, kind of the "it's not theft if I mean well and don't get carried away with how much I take" kind of rationalization.
If you could vote to confiscate everything and all the money that the top 1% (in terms of being rich) have, would you? And why or why not?
Think about this carefully before you answer, please.
No, I wouldn't confiscate "everything" from rich people.
But I think that if we're going to be a society where a small elite increasingly have everything and everyone else has nothing because all of our jobs are rendered obsolete by robots and cheap third-world labor, then it is a natural progression that tax burdens on the wealthiest will tend to go up, not down. And even as the tax burdens go up, those rich will be increasingly richer than every in the past with more money than they could burn in ten lifetimes. It isn't ideal (ideal would be decent jobs for what used to be called the middle class), but then again neither is asking everyone other than a chosen few to starve. There's a morality question for conservatives.
I had hoped none would. I was far more interested in the second question, which is the WHY. I wonder why I have to repeat this statement over and over and over, and yet we are blessed with the tripe below.
Plenty of people, including me, explained why. You found none of them satisfactory, including the oneswho said so merely for morality reasons.
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Originally Posted by pnwmdk
Like the liberals before you, you still believe in confiscating other people's money, but just not any amount that seems "obscene" to get the things you want them to fund. You know, kind of the "it's not theft if I mean well and don't get carried away with how much I take" kind of rationalization.
Then this line of thought forbids taxation, because that is taking other people's money.
Then this line of thought forbids taxation, because that is taking other people's money.
Yet another person who carefully constructs a lie, seeking to win an argument by deception.
Nowhere have I said that you cannot tax. But it seems that the intellectual effort you have used is concentrated on the idea that this is a popularity contest, and how I have to be personally damaged, and not one whit over the question of whether or not you have a right to control someone else's money and property.
Several responses were about not wanting to live in a country without a lot of things mandated that other people provide for them. Since when have you a right to demand your neighbor provide something for you, without any value in trade on your part?
We all agree (except for anarchists) on the need for certain roles for government - we need defense, we need a justice system, there must be foreign policy, etc. The founders delegated those roles to appropriate governments. We have to have taxes in order to pay for those things.
But along come some other people, who insist that there are wide array of material benefits that they want, but claim they can't afford. Vacation, health care, etc. And that they insist that it be paid for by arbitrary rules, choosing segments of the population to fund them, and the same tax code which hands said tax dollars directly to other people.
Further, they claim that a certain class of people should be handed a number of material benefits - health care, food, housing, transportation, education, etc, paid for by someone else. The reasoning is, that it's immoral that those people don't have it. Mind you, I'm all for helping people out. What I'm not for, is claiming that my judgment of whether people have enough is justification for arguing that some need more taken from them to fulfill a "wish list".
Powers delegated to the state (government, generically) have inherent obligations. I am obligated to pay taxes because certain powers have been delegated to pay for defense, for instance. But that obligation is between me and the state. But those powers delegated are delegated from the powers of the individual. I have the power to hire someone to defend my property. I don't have the power to insist that you guard my property for me. Nor can I delegate the responsibility for paying for that guard to you. I don't HAVE it, therefore, I cannot delegate it.
This idea and argument in and of itself is very clear and pretty much without dispute. However, it rules out what a lot of people want for themselves. Like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, they blurt out "but I was getting it for you!". No, you were not getting it for me, you were getting it for you, but got caught and tried to justify it with claimed intentions.
Someone argued early on that ownership was depriving someone else. Taxation is also deprivation. If I work for $1000, but am taxed 250 of it, I am deprived of 1/4 of my own labors. Do you have a right to deprive me of what I work for, for your WISH LIST? Some will argue that the need justifies the act. Or, the ends justify the means. Most of those people would NEVER consider voluntarily funding what they claim people should have. Why? Because they do not wish to personally sacrifice their labors, they wish to sacrifice what others have to make themselves believe they're moral.
It revolves around the presumption that I have a right to demand you fulfill my moral imperatives. But it's immoral to make someone work for your interests. It's slavery.
There are many pretty lies (some very ugly, but that's another story) told to excuse away or obscure the moral implications of demanding someone else fund your conscience. "It's society's rules". "That's the rules, if you don't like it, leave". "Majority rules".
This whole question revolves around a moral concept of owning yourself, your property, what is your property, and who has the moral authority to control you. I've seen some really artful nonsense about "disparity of wealth" being an economic danger. It's wholly nonsense. But, when you have no moral foundation for your demands (and it is clearly immoral) then you have to invent a crisis GREATER (in your mind) than the moral violation of the individual and try to force people to accept a "lesser of two evils" which always revolves around the empowerment of government to do as it wishes in order to solve a "moral" problem.
The same people who insist that morality compels them to demand government force you to fund their handouts, will, at the same time, insist that they "give enough". It's YOU they want to control.
If you could vote to confiscate everything and all the money that the top 1% (in terms of being rich) have, would you? And why or why not?
Think about this carefully before you answer, please.
Nope, because I believe in capitalism and while I do agree with having social programs to help those in need I believe all tax payers should pay their fair share. We are not now and never will be a Communist Nation no matter how much some may claim, and that is what would require such a move, which by the way would destroy the economy.
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