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I think that's what is intended when we elect our government representatives to decide what "we the people" want to do in these respects, or if not by legislation passed by Congress, just how do we "let the people decide" about ANY or ALL spending?
No, it isn't. There is no authority by which federal elected officials can confiscate some individuals' earnings to redistribute to those who haven't earned it. That, in and of itself, is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
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For education, for our military, for the space program, social programs, etc?
Education? No. That's a state issue, not federal. National defense? Yes, that has a Constitutional mandate. The space program insofar as it relates to a national defense objective also has a Constitutional mandate.
Additionally, those who receive federal tax dollars in the capacity of national defense have EARNED it. It's not a direct transfer of wealth taken from some and given to them just for merely existing as is the $1+ trillion spent on means-tested public assistance programs.
Not always. IL, for example, built a new N/S expressway west of Chicago and because taxes were/are insufficient to fund the construction, it's a toll road. Don't want to pay the toll? Don't drive on the toll road. Take the old route which has frequent stoplights, etc., and takes MUCH longer to get from point A to point B. Your choice.
In Europe too, not too long ago I chose to drive through the tunnel and pay the toll rather than drive the much longer windy road over the mountain. I get that makes sense in some cases, but to make tolls the manner in which we pay for all our driving infrastructure? I think federal funding makes more sense all considered, and/or the combination of the two as appropriate.
Potential Advantages of Tolling
Today, many state transportation agencies see toll facilities as a way to close funding gaps for transportation projects in a time of constrained public resources. Specifically, tolling can promote the following benefits in transportation spending:
Fostering public-private partnerships by attracting private capital
Drawing on the public's willingness to pay direct user charges
Leveraging new sources of capital, such as additional debt
Freeing up traditional public resources for non-revenue-generating projects
Allowing additional transportation facilities to be developed more quickly than would be possible under conventional public procurement, funding, and ownership
Facilitating road pricing as a demand management tool (congestion pricing)
Potential Disadvantages of Tolling
Toll facilities were traditionally associated with long queues and high emissions at collection points, but these disadvantages are disappearing with electronic toll collection at toll booths or in overhead gantries and/or the pavement. Still, toll roads and bridges face other challenges, including:
Costs of borrowing capital
Restricted availability because of the distance between access points Disproportionate impacts of tolls on low-income motorists and associated equity issues
Negative public opinion that views tolls, on top of fuel taxes, as double taxation
This in bold is again what this thread tends to be about. Do we broaden the distance between the "haves" and "have nots" and is this altogether the best thing to do for America in general all considered?
I think that as long as there's a minimum standard of living (no families dying of frostbite in the street gutters), who cares about the wealth gap.
- Affordable food (this does NOT require food stamps!!)
- Affordable shelter and heat in winter (by way of reducing government regulations)
- Necessary healthcare
- Honest legal/justice system (yeah, I'm dreaming here lmao)
That's all people really need. Wanting more than that for free is entitlement, imho.
Defense spending is less than that, and yes, national defense is a Constitutional mandate. Means-tested public assistance programs are not. Eliminate them and fund them via voluntary donations, only. Society can choose whether it wishes to financially support them or not.
society says your view is the extreme outlier.
Even with the stunning power of the internet to amplify outlier views, hardly anybody agrees with your extreme outlier views. it is noise blocking signal.
That is just the way it is and will remain for the foreseeable future, you may as well be saying everyone should wear chairs as pants and walk around on their hands instead of their feet.
you are effectively trying to get people to believe the earth is flat, witches float and such like.
Not only is nobody buying what you are selling, nobody is even in the market.
I can't stand your condescension. Who the hell are you to tell us what we value is right or wrong? ...
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
So be it. NO ONE has the authority to impose values on society.
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Originally Posted by lifeexplorer
Are you? I am still waiting for the answer to my question. Who the hell are you to decide what the "the big needs in society" are? If you say, the people decide. If people vote with their wallet to fund whatever they like, haven't they already decided that your "the big needs in society" are not important to them?
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Originally Posted by lifeexplorer
Are you God or a slave master? Only they can tell people what to do.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
You didn’t know? FirebirdCamaro gets to decide what’s truly important.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
I think this shows the problem of authoritarianism. ... Bottom line for me is that you respect everyone’s rights as a human being. No authoritarian schemes.
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Who are you to say? No one has the authority to pass said judgment on anyone.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
Sounds like another no mo guboment slogan, but really?
Again I truly marvel at people who seem to think they need to explain to ANYONE in this forum that NO ONE gets to decide ANYTHING for ANYONE else in this forum. Can't control what people think either! Who needs such a thing explained to them?
Our founding fathers established our three branches of government to establish exactly that authority to broker and establish what "we the people" want according to exactly that sort of judgement, by way of a democratic, representative process.
What else is the exchange of opinion in this forum about if not about that?
The thread topic is how to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Any effort on the governmental or programmatic level has to take into account there are at least two almost diametrically opposed philosophies here in the United States. Many of the arguments to close the gap may be heard as attempts to dictate morality or to "pass said judgment." This, in turn, needs to be heard by social reformers and not dismissed if only because what's decided in the end is by way of a democratic, representative process where votes count. These issues drive deeper than mere semantics.
subsidies are like a drug, millions are hooked for a pittance of money, used to keep them out of the way of the well-to-do.
They're also used to buy votes. Democrats are using taxpayers' own money against them to buy votes that conflict with taxpayers' best interest. 2/3 or more of those receiving public assistance benefits are Democrats while only 1/4 or less are Republicans. And LBJ KNEW that when he implemented the public assistance programs. The entire point was to capture a large swath of votes for the Democrats of which a highly disproportionate percentage would be minorities.
... To even mention Euro-States is disingenuous and propagandistic.
Education existed at the time of the Constitution, but the Framers chose to make it exclusively the purview of the States and not the federal government.
Obviously, you've never read the committee meeting notes, because none of the Framers supported federal control of education for the most obvious reasons.
It is improper to compare homogeneous nation-States who are organized as unitary States with a heterogeneous federal republic, like the US.
There are three governmental systems, a unitary State, a confederation and a federation, and the Framers of the Constitution ignored the unitary State for obvious reasons, namely, that unitary States are only successful when the population is homogeneous.
The US was never homogeneous. Even before colonists arrived, the US had a heterogeneous population. ...
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
I simply can't get into what the framers of our constitution where dealing with then vs what we are dealing with now, and that's another debate that tends to go nowhere. We have the constitution. We have what we have in the way of government now, according to that constitution, and that includes all we're considering in real terms today, including public education, health care, our space program and all the rest our founding fathers did not really have to think about like we must today.
Though I would just love to hear their thoughts today! Have their guidance. Don't get me wrong...
My daughter is working towards a degree in social work. Last night, I started flipping through her text on social welfare policy. Damned if it didn't start (sort of, chapter 3) with the constitution, analyzing both it and subsequent legislation for what they said about the American attitudes that, in the end, determine what happens today.
It added another tidbit to my earlier thread comments on American political culture. Agriculture. Individualism. Attitudes towards the poor. In contrast to Europe, most early settlers had access to land with former indentured servants pushing west. The Jeffersonian democratic concepts so often quoted today are based on perceived values from that time. There was work for those willing to seek it. The farmers themselves were early capitalists of sorts. That individual farmers today might comprise single digits - if that - of the total American population may make these observations appear completely irrelevant. And maybe they are for this thread - until they show up in a ballot box in 2019.
One other "social worker note." An extremely conservative friend completed her MSW. Decades later, she's still infuriated at the teachers who she perceived were teaching that her values were wrong ... that her thoughts were in error. My assumption is that the professors were trying to impress on the students that they could not impose their judgments on another population IF they were to be effective change agents.
And yet, as one who has remained childless by choice, I am forced to pay hefty property taxes towards the public school system. All of the time, our governments (federal, state and local) force us to pay for services we don't use or need.
In MA, our Mass Pike (a road that only goes from east to west) tolls were used to help cover the Big Dig project for depressing the elevated Expressway that cut through Boston from north to south.
Because you are without child does not mean you don't benefit from children born and educated before and after you...
You might have helped pay for my son's education, for example, now a Civil Engineer working on improving the safety of that bridge you cross on a regular basis. That worth nothing to you?
How entirely self-centered and/or myopic can people be?
If I could get back every dollar for government services I don't use, I'd get quite the refund check, and no doubt I'd get a lot back for military expense in parts of the world where much of that money has been misspent and/or wasted (IMHO), but that system that allows us to pick and choose how our tax dollars are spent is not yet available I don't think. Anywhere ever on this planet!
One day the left will realize that the biggest reason the gap even existed is due to too government intervention. When you subsidize the babies of America’s poorest citizens, there is no financial to climb the laddder of social mobility.
And why would they? America has richest the poor people of any western country.
Don't expect that one day to arrive anytime soon, because waiting for so many people to believe in such nonsense takes a very long time...
It's not an issue. There's nothing to fix. There will always be poor and wealthy people.
Tends to be a bit of an issue for the poor people I think, and that's a lot of people. A serious problem...
Let them eat cake?
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