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Old 05-30-2009, 08:15 PM   #71 (permalink)
JacobAziza
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I'm somewhat looking at it as likely as a small business owner.
Laws which help corporations and the wealthy hurt small business owners.

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The moment someone says they want 60% of my income I'm working to profit you not me and I'm going Galt to get under your tax bracket and I won't make a dime more.
Tax rates apply to a bracket of income. a 60% tax bracket does not mean they take 60% of your income. It means they take 60% of what you make over a certain amount.
It a bit like people saying its not worth in to win a lottery because the government takes 2/3rds. That means you keep 1/3. Thats better than not having 1/3.
If you don't want to work anymore because you feel its too high a rate, fine. Why is that a problem?

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Our military is very streamlined as far as how it manages cost effectiveness.
I won't dispute that, because I know nothing about it. I am saying its total size is unnecessary, regardless of how efficient it is. It is also the largest single expense, and so where we could save the most.

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And honestly do you want them cutting money from the system that protects you
What are they protecting me from? The "terrorists" want to steal my old 1983 truck? They want to force me, personally, to become Muslim? We have only had one foreign terrorist attack here - ever. The last time a country attacked us was at Pearl Harbor.
Our military budget is 5 times larger than the 2nd highest country in the world. We have nukes. We have unsurpassed technology. We are capable of doing more with a dollar of spending on military than any 2nd or 3rd world country (read China and the Middle East). I can see no justification for spending as much as the entire rest of the world combined unless we plan to literally invade every country in the world at the same time.
The military budget is about imperialism, diplomacy via unspoken threat, predatory free trade, and protecting corporate interests abroad. To tie this back to the original thread, the taxes you pay is what keeps our gas prices so low (again, US troops protecting pipelines in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

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or from the system that allows people to sit around and do nothing?
I already addressed this. 1) AFDC makes up about 1% of the budget (vs over 33% for the military). Cutting it won't make a dent in government spending. 2) welfare recipients can not sit around doing nothing. Finding work is MANDATORY. If you aren't actively looking, you get cut off. There is no exemption for students. I know this because my mother was cut off when she, a single mother, was working towards a masters degree from UC Berkeley and refused to cut classes to attend their job training seminars. No matter what happens, they cut you off after 2 years.



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If a private sector had to make a road its like a nuclear power plant, its very expensive up front and it takes a good bit of time to pay for it, but after that its dirt cheap.
The ancient Roman and German roads you mentioned were all built by government.
No nuclear plant has ever been built that was not heavily government subsidized. Private industry will not go into something with such a high initial investment which takes such a long time to show any return. Why would they, when there are so many other more profitable opportunities? A corporation is not concerned with what happens in 400 years. It is concerned with the quarterly report and shareholder dividends.


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Social security is a ponzi scheme. Its not an investment. I have several relatives now drawing social and they are going to draw far more than they ever put in even with inflation and whatever else.
An investment means you can draw more than you put in. Its called interest. In addition, baby boomers not-withstanding, it is generally a valid assumption that there will be more workers each year than the one before, so the pool should consistently grow.


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If you fired all the bureacrats, didn't pay all the politicians
I posted a link to federal spending. You can check exactly how much is spent on various things, and therefor how much could be saved by cutting any particular thing.

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and just made the tax code simple(and fired all IRS agents)
see example above of what happens with a flat tax.

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you would be taking one huge leap towards reducing deficits. If you then took another leap and cut any form of social safety net systems
Good way to create a whole lot of desperate people who will do anything to survive. You can either spend a little on education, job training, unemployment, and healthcare, or spend a bunch more on police and prisons. This has nothing to do with morality or personal responsibility, it is just a straight forward realistic cost/benefit analysis.

Places with more of a social safety net have lower crime.

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the private sector could do everything else more cheaply.
I am not totally anti-private sector. From what I have read education would be greatly improved and the costs reduced by privatization. However with healthcare, every other 1st world nation has universal healthcare, and most have both higher quality care and more simplicity, yet the US spends more per person. There are some things the private sector is good for, and some it isn't.



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can make a profit much easier and are able to sell their products for less.
why would anyone sell their products for less?

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Some things in effect will cost the same whether its a tax or a toll, but I would bank on the service always being superior(go to a DMV).

haha, granted!


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In some cases though(maybe in alot of cases) the toll would be less than the tax and the service would still be superior.
I would agree with "some".
But I don't think money is the only issue.
The real reason government is necessary is the phenomenon called the "tragedy of the commons"
The classic example is a lake open to the public. It has 1000 fish. If everyone just takes 1 every once in a while, no problem. They breed and replenish. But how long is "once in a while?" How many people are there? What if I take 2, one for me and one for my family? No one person is responsible for taking an unreasonable amount, but sooner or later, there are no more fish.
The free market can not responsibly allocate a finite amount of resources in the long term w/ no external regulation. The free market leads to massive environmental degradation, massive wealth inequalities, and a disregard of the value of anything other than money.
Consider the formula from "fight club", for decideing whether to do a recall for a fatal design flaw:
"Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
This is a real job. There is actually a specific dollar value attached to a human life (if I remember correctly, it is generally around 2 million)

I don't mean to say I support everything about the current US political system - not by a long shot.
I just think total deregulation and total trust in a market economy will make things worse than they already are.

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Originally Posted by Piwoslaw View Post
A few months ago I returned home just as my neighbor pulled into his driveway. It was cold (around freezing) with some rain and sleet, and he yells to me: You rode your bike? In this weather?!?

So the other day we both returned home at the same time again, only now the weather is warm, sunny, with no wind. And I yell to him: You took the car? In this weather?!?

Last edited by JacobAziza; 05-31-2009 at 10:14 AM..
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