[JacobAziza]

Unchoosen:

the number one expenditure of government is welfare spending, which you failed to mention completely.

Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2009

Define "Welfare"
If you choose to count SS as "welfare", maybe, but the benefits people get from it are directly proportional to what they paid in. Same goes for unemployment. If you don't work, you don't get social security or unemployment. These things are revolving funds which legally the government doesn't get to spend (although they do anyway). Part of the category of human services also includes education. Education is an investment that pays for itself by having an educated workforce. Veteran's benefits, which should properly be classified as military expense, are also lumped here.
Most of all, medical payments is counted under the same category, which I addressed earlier, and is by far the 2nd biggest sub-component after SS.
Yes, if you count all of those things as "welfare", then it adds up to more than the military.
But if you are looking only at direct AFDC payments to poor families, it is less than 1% of the budget.
If you have a source that says otherwise, please feel free to share it.

Military spending only makes up 1/3 of all government spending. With the expenditures lately. . .its not even remotely close to 1/3.

If you remove SS (which is a trust fund, not a government handout) from the budget, "national defense" come to well over 1/3. Check the numbers at the link I provided above if you don't want to take my word for it.

Ford never asked for any money. You lose all credence when you post overt fallacies.

Ford's bailout plea to include pledge for smaller cars

Ford CEO on bailout opposition: Past is past - CNN.com

Back to the top, you can throw all of those things the government provides away and allow for the private sector to pick them up. Bodyguards pick up where police forces are useless.

So, in other words the wealthy should be protected, and no one else should. I didn't say it was unviable.
What I said was, in the absence of law, body guard = mercenary. Whoever has money can buy guns and take what ever they want from those who can't afford a mercenary force. I'm not saying it is impossible, I'm saying that isn't a world any of us want to live in.

Look at situations in which there is no military to speak of. Rich families in Mexico have their own para-military body guard service. They pack automatics body armor and bullet proof vehicles. They don't hold trials and they don't take prisoners.

Yeah. Exactly. That's my point. Besides, there IS a military and police force in Mexico. The Federales carry sub machine guns and ride around in pickups with 6 guys in the back.

A justice system that provides quick and immediate punishment to murders, thieves and what the CIA classifies as "abrasive" crimes or "assualt" crimes typically has fewer of them and it costs far less. I don't have to hold criminals in jail for months before trial feeding them and I don't have to put up with appeals and other issues. If someone breaks into my home there will not be a trial. I might have to go into a civil case with their surviving family but as I live in the south I know my local judges will throw it out and the appelate judges will also throw it out.

Sounds like someone hates America. There is this thing called the "constitution" - they put it there for a reason. Thing is, sometimes innocent people are accused accidentally. You do realize that, right? And sometimes people accuse the innocent on purpose, out of spite, or to draw attention away from themselves. Trials are not to coddle criminals. Trials are to determine the facts as best as possible so that the wrongly accused aren't punished.

Adam Smith did not argue that the government was out to protect the poor from the rich. If you read your quote again he said that government is necessary to protect those who have(corporations) from those who dont(employees).

He didn't say it was "necessary". He said that's what actually happens. He was not suggesting it was a good thing.

At Smiths time the East India Trading company were a racketeering organization that stole from honest traders by imposing their own taxes on their goods so that they wouldn't be attacked by privateers. Smith was against this practice.

Exactly. He further suggested that corporations only exist because governments create them, and that they are inherently anti competitve.

He obviously was not against a corporation in and of itself because he had his own.

An individual can not have a corporation. Their is a difference between a corporation and a company.

I won't repeat all the points about how libertarians distort Smith's work, because someone has already done it for me:
The Betrayal of Adam Smith
SimpleUtahMormonPolitics.com: Adam Smith Hated Corporations

Jacob do you honestly believe that taxing one person 80% is fair and one person 10%?

That was an example to show the numbers involved.

If you do I'm leaving Ecomodder. What you are saying is. . .because I work 2 full time jobs and 2 part time jobs I should only be allowed to have 2x as much as someone who works never and gets a welfare check? I put in 80 hours a week(2 full times) I mow for 6 hours a week and I work for a neighbor for about 5 hours a week. You are saying that some slackass that works 0 hours deserves the same amount of money I get when I work vastly more hours than he does(90 compared to 0 and he gets the same amount as me)?

That's not what I am saying at all. First of all, someone who works 0 hours pays 0 taxes, no matter what the tax rate is. Someone who works 2 (or 4) jobs likely does not make that much per hour (or else why would they be working so much?) and so isn't going to be in a top tax braket no matter what.
What I am saying is NOONE earns a million dollars a year through working. It can't be done. You have to understand just how rich the rich are. There was a guy who owned a chain of casinos who made one million dollars an hour on average for a year. He didn't have to work. He added nothing of value to society. He didn't build the casinos. He didn't even pay to have most built, he bought them. So he didn't earn that money, which means he didn't "deserve" any of it. Bill Gates took open source (free) software, made a few minor changes, and patented it. He was not an innovator. He was a predatory businsess man who made exclusive deals with hardware manufacturers in order to form a monopoly. Now he pays other people to come up with (often inferior) software, and he gets to skim some of the profits. He is not creating jobs. If Microsoft weren't there, those same people would be working at smaller companies.

The market does not assign wages based on how valuable the work done is to society. Consider an ad company executive. The ad company has big clients which don't make the best or cheapest product, but have momnetum on their side. The ad companies job is to convince people to buy their products. This in no way betters society as a whole, but its valuable to the corporation that hired them. So they make big bucks. Meanwhile someone who does a job that actually creates something valuable, say the day laborer that builds a house, a auto plant assembly line guy, a public school teacher, makes a tiny fraction of what the ad guy makes.

Damn straight I think people who work hard for little pay should be taxed less than someone who makes their money on the stock market, or by being a landlord, or any other job where you make a lot of money without doing any actual work!
I think you should pay less taxes.
I think anyone who makes over 200k a year or has more than 2 million in assets should pay more taxes.

We are totally high jacking this thread.

I could get so much more into it, but maybe I'll just reference some of the stuff I wrote on the topic in the past:
The root of the problem - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

Black Friday - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

Anarchy VS Capitalism - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

Predictions - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

Global Warming vs. Fascism; or, why NASA wouldn’t have stopped Apophis - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

Free Market VS. Democracy : (1-0) - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com)

In responce to my last entry - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

In Which a progressive writes an article about the economy: - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

29; My neigbor is a Republican (who lives in a tiny trailer) - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com)

24; Taxes, and the contribution to society of the wealthy - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com

22; Wealth should be taxed - Bakari's Personal Blog - Powered by Doteasy.com