Text 3358, 133 rader
Skriven 2006-07-05 11:37:00 av Robert E Starr JR (3831.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
=================================
  * * * This message was from Carl to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *   
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
            -----------------------------------------------             

@MSGID: <7r6dnW2XmcfpgzbZnZ2dnUVZ_s-dnZ2d@comcast.com>
@REPLY: <kurtullman-54586A.23282630062006@news.west.earthlink.net>

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dk2ma2pl8g6arsnivujnsa058tjd38d3gu@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 3 Jul 2006 23:34:29 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>

>>> I don't think either is true. The government can take all your money,
>>> if it does so in a lawful manner
>>
>>Which would be creating a slave.
>
> No, a slave is owned.

Distinction without a difference; all of the benefit of your work goes to 
someone else that determines and gives you what you "need."  Work harder, no 
difference.  Almost like a king deciding that the peasants didn't actually 
own anything...that there were no private property rights and everything 
could be taken as the property of the realm.  Hey...didn't we fight against 
that attitude once before?

The govt that tried to take all of our money wouldn't last long.

<snip>

>>No, but in previous discussions with you, you often make reference to
>>wealth that a person doesn't "need."  Since I have a life of my own and
>>don't *need* the money, would you then say the govt should take it all?
>
> No, I'm simply pointing out that the money the government /should/
> take isn't needed and so will cause no hardship.

Which is saying the govt should take as much as it can without causing 
hardship?

> That's a very
> different statement, and a basic consideration in most of the tax
> codes of which I'm aware. For example, we accept the fact that we
> can't tax a poor man the same amount as a middle class or rich one. He
> just doesn't have the money to pay.

One thing that strikes me about your arguments Josh is that you *seem* to 
want to use taxes for social engineering and you seem less concerned with 
what they're used for.  I'm not saying that you don't care, but you seem 
content to tax for the sake of taxing too. There are absolutely plenty of 
good uses and plenty of things that could be done... but you seem to want to 
tax first and figure it out later.

Wouldn't it be fair to look at what we want to accomplish, figure out how to 
do it (particularly if an existing program could be done better), figure how 
much it's going to cost and then figure out how to pay for it?


BTW...a short side topic....

There's also a lot of other money to be had by removing waste and fraud. 
Wouldn't it be better to eliminate the waste and fruad and better use that 
money that we've already  collected through taxes first?

Check this out:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-welfare1jul01,1,5796307.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1


or...to summarize:

"Welfare Fraud costs L.A. County millions

Welfare recipients and their friends and relatives could be defrauding 
taxpayers of $500 million a year through the county's child-care programs, a 
grand jury report concludes.

According to the report, released Thursday, some county employees estimate 
that half of the $1.1 billion in funding for the CalWORKs program is lost to 
fraud because the Department of Public Social Services doesn't verify that 
welfare-to-work recipients meet the requirements for child-care payments."

And that's one program in one county.  There's also a bridges to Alaska and 
all sorts of other pork projects that exist. I'm not suggesting that's 
enough to do what we want/need to do, but we could certainly improve some of 
the programs we have with this money without having to increasing taxes.

Right now everone has their own pet projects... and figures that we can 
raise taxes or generate revenues for their project in isolation.
What if we actually made a list of national priorities... in priority order? 
Not everything  is #1.

How do the people here prioritize the various programs we have in the govt?

Education
Welfare
The environment
Health care
Defense
<Fill in your own favorites>

This...chaos...of govt spending seems crazy to me...and just saying raise 
taxes because someone has some extra and there's something that needs doing 
seems insane.   Doesn't anyone want to see a real plan any more?  Does 
ANYONE want to actually improve the 81 welfare programs we have... or is 
simply throwing more money at it good enough?  What about the education 
system.  Does anyone think it will take more than money to fix it?  Are we 
so locked into the current system that it's blaspemy to suggest something 
else?  How much would something else cost?

I think you'd probably be able to get people to be much less resistent to 
tax increases if ***anyone*** had a real clue as to how it would really make 
things better (not just maintaining the status quo).

Okay... end of rant.



>>> This from someone who a few posts back called me a Communist?
>>
>>
>>************* Check again...that wasn't me. *****************
>>
>>Good time to stop. :)
>
> Oops -- many many apologies. Guess I was so fatigued after a day of
> frantic typing that all I saw was the "C," "a," "r" and "l" . . .
>

Just wanted to be clear. :)
                                                        
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)