ParanoiA

Skeptic - I don't normally pester people about answering my posts. But, in this case, I'm intrigued by your wealth creation logic here and would like to understand it better. Could you entertain a fella?

So...how many apples and ears of corn would the respective farmers earn if they had to do the traveling? Wouldn't wealth be destroyed by the expense incurred to trade? And how did they hear about the possibility of trade? Doesn't the merchant fulfill a role to bring the two traders together? And doesn't that work have value? I suppose "doing work" isn't creating wealth, but wealth isn't doing any work without him. Exactly. That's why I said "some of the deals I make with the rich". Believe me, I'm no Ayn Rand. When I'm not bitching about government, I'm bitching about capitalists.

I guess I'm going to have to read some Ayn Rand. From what I've read of her on Wikipedia she was an objectivist that wasn't particularly fond of libertarians. Your last sentence though...it occurs to me that some of the deals I make with the rich leave me feeling better, like we both got a good deal - like Taco Bueno or 2x4's from Home Depot. Whereas all of my deals with government are bad ones - I never walk away with a damn thing, other than some piece of paper to complete a bureaucratic pie or a stickie to put on my license plate. I would certainly say the rich, middle and poor are far sight better than government.

Fair enough, but I was actually having more fun with it than it may have appeared.

No, I think you are misrepresenting bascule's position and being a bit of a tea bagger about it. jryan's opinion is not misrepresentation, it's his opinion. I share that opinion in this case, as I find the OP to be a transparent attempt to attack Newscorp, or really, Fox news.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'd add this book to my list of books I need to read...but that list is already unrealistically long.

Yes I do know what you mean. Thanks for handling my adolescence so calmly. And don't let the rich bashing bother you too much. I tried to include the better result of killing off the poor. As much as your assumptions are challenged, you would do well to challenge theirs.

I have written an article on dentistry by toothfairies. If you can't show why toothfairies can't clean and whiten teeth, then you must accept the content?

The thing that disturbs me most about this is this weirdo emotional appeal to betting against the american people, betting against the housing market. I'm not talking about the fraud, that's way out of bounds and people should go to jail for it. Money should be reimbursed, however feasible such a thing could be. No, I'm talking about that single emotional appeal. Only half of this is about fraud. The moral of this event, and what I believe Obama and company is going to run with, is that it should be illegal to make money off of the population losing value in their capital. And that's crybaby, hypocrisy stuff. I think people are so turned off by the idea of people making a killing off of the collapse of a market, effecting millions of people, that they think it should be illegal. They would never dream of coming to the defense of Joe Blow corporation when their stock plummets and investors get rich off of it. No, we only hear complaining when it's a market the masses are participating in - oh, suddenly it's just "intolerable" to a civilized society, blah blah blah. Making exceptions for ourselves, yet again. I look for legislation that supports that emotional offense, beyond the fraud prevention.

This is a good read too: http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/happy.htm And check this out: That would seem to suggest a closeness with god helps to create happiness. Makes sense too for those who believe in such things. So, are they happier and more afraid? And now, what's more important? Happiness that costs fear, or brevity at the expense of happiness?

It would make more sense to kill the poor. They're the ones that mismanage money. They're the weak link. Killing the rich would be killing those who manage money and direct it the most efficiently as measured by the public's mass capital trade for their product. The housing crisis would have been prevented if poor people didn't exist. If you kill the rich, then we kill off the most successful, the talented, the ones who are best fit to give the population what it wants the most. How do we innovate, and create new products and technology if we keep killing the winners of our society? Makes more sense to kill off the losers. The ones dragging us down. It's simple really. All humans are greedy, except for a select couple here and there. Particularly the people who bitch the most about the rich. We all pay the least amount of money we can for a product - that's the same as paying the least amount you can get away with for labor. We cancel and scale down services and monthly obligations when they get to be too much, or if we just want "more money", just like a corporation when they downsize or cut costs. We all do the same things. So killing the rich is goofy, because others will take their place - like you. And you are a greedy, selfish little human. I mean that, with love, of course.

Despite the obvious hypocrisy of a tea party obsessor and political provocateur actually possessing the nerve to complain about invective, it would only seem like a good idea if you adopted a multiple source mandate - at least 3. CNN and MSNBC aren't any better than Newscorp. I've seen more political hacks on those networks than anywhere else. That said, Newscorp has been, and is planning for a subscription based format. They don't like giving away news online and bending their model to fit in the modern world. Murdoch has stated this openly. I will link this interview tonight if anyone is the least bit interested in that. Point is, their time is likely limited for linking. Subscription based sources aren't the best for open forums. And their website is uber slow anyway. I have no idea what is going on in the back ground, but when you load of page of mainly text and it takes two minutes before you can even scroll, for crying out loud, then something is wrong. I'm getting the same thing at CNN too.

Well also keep in mind that Fox news more or less signs on to the notion of god and religion, so there could also be a relaxed effect, since they aren't "driving the bus" so to speak. It could be that Fox news viewers are better able to handle the fears that us youngsters are creating in the elderly, because they believe in god and his plan. It could be that atheism is the cause, and not Fox news at all. After all, if I point out a spider and you jump, did I scare you, or did your fear of spiders scare you? Is there any way to distinguish the difference in a study?

Very true. We have to be honest about what we're fixing and what we're breaking. We'd be fixing a 3000 page tax code that people go to college just to understand, creating a whole 'nother freaking career out of just helping people pay taxes. We would be eliminating the loop holes of unfairness we can all lament about all day long in the current tax code. We would be eliminating the personal and private information required by all of us just to report our tax bill. We would be eliminating a major majority of the IRS, since "auditing" would likely be regulated to inspecting sales receipts at tax points as opposed to the threat of one on 330 million people. On the other hand, we will be introducing a whole new reason for black market products. People who buy black market, will know they are. So, if you thought you were getting wine and found yourself downing liquid draino - don't complain to us. And to counter some of that, legalization of some choice drugs could make a good point. Why would anyone want to go right back to buying pot, illegally, from some shaddy stoner out of his basement when you could drive up to the convenience store and pay the tax for the legal stuff? I'm telling you. Forget the VAT. Just legalize pot, tax it and prepare to be shocked at how many of your friends, co-workers, and neighbors have been little pot heads all of this time - and balance the budget.

Oh, I'm quite sure. And I'm not so sure on the shift. For one, if "essentials" are not taxed, and essentials includes food, clothing and maybe shelter - then what's left to tax from a working poor income? Most of what they buy will be merchandise to that end. Only when they splurge for fuel, a DVD player or a new cell phone would they have to pay taxes. The rich, however, if they are spending their money as opposed to investing it (which you wouldn't want to discourage), should be purchasing far more non-essentials than poor or middle class folk. Yachts, big ticket vacations, their planes and autos - all of this stuff gets taxed and none of it would be considered "essential" I wouldn't think, in anyone's tax code. What I'm getting out of that other thread, in conjuction with this one, is a distorted view of fairness that you get with envy and class warfare, which politicians just love. Humans are so absolutely gifted at lying to themselves to intellectualize exceptions to their principles to externalize their poor performance onto others - usually a minority group - that it's hard to distinguish legitimate logic from the delusional.

I still think the fairest tax system is a consumption tax. It requires no personal, private information. Certain products can be classified as "necessity", or some kind of title, to cover food, clothing, rent - so that they escape any taxation. This covers the poor and the middle class base budgets fairly well - pushing the tax burden onto "wants", which implies disposable capital as opposed to capital required to survive. In that way, the tax is still progressive, in that it applies to surplus beyond necessity, without unfairly moving the burden from one class to another - all classes enjoy the same tax free categories. The rate is the rate. If the administration wants to say they lowered taxes - a simple A and B comparison is readily available in one's own memory. We don't have to wade through 3000 pages of tax code to find out if that's true, or argue about the net difference between an increase on page 1735 and decrease on page 2254. By the way, the Fair Tax, being pimped by Neil Bortz and company is almost good...but then falls flat on its face. It tries to use "prebates" to cover "necessity". This is money that gets put in each taxpayer's account each month - like 500 bucks. That's supposed to cover all the consumption tax you would pay for food and stuff. That's effin stupid. Complicating the simple. They expect every tax payer to register - still (what's the point of shutting down the IRS just to reopen the building with a different name?). It's better than today, but it's still dumb. Stossel did a great show on taxes called "An Inconvient Tax" - taken from some documentary that's recently come out. I would link it, but as usual, I'm at work and they don't approve of youtube on the clock. (bunch of commies!)

See, that's exactly what I'm saying though padren - all of these problems you listed are a combination of expectation and assumptions based on them. And that is where the problems are at in this country. It is our belief, that we have to re-sell the liberty belief because we're wholesale trading liberty for security, and have been for about 100 years. So all of our solutions seem weird or neglectful - largely because we shrug at your insistence that they are government problems to begin with. We think differently than you. We never make the assumption that one should be dreaming up ways to interfere in every problem we have - but you do, in comparison. On: "specific issue like catching Wallstreet crooks selling fraudulent packages before they explode" - if they're fraudulent, then that's that - it's fraud. You think fraud means something different to a libertarian than everyone else? Yes, we're against that. And if that package is fraudulent, then we would be for punishing them for it. What laws do we have against fraud? Bunches. Do any of them cover this fraud? If not, why not? It's just simple logic, we only ask to work within the confines of the constitution. On: "how to balance taxes to for the best revenue and grow the GDP?" Here's where we have a different expectation than you. We would ask the question, what is the fairest way to obtain sufficient revenue for our government? We don't ask, oh gee, how can we maximize the property we confiscate from the people. WTF is that? We don't assume it's the government's role to centrally manage and manipulate the GDP - we say WTF to that too. This is what I was trying to convey earlier. Our solutions and our message is largely about questioning your goals to begin with, the motivations for those goals and how they reconcile with larger, more important philosophical "truths" like personal liberty, equality, government subordinate to the people. We see more fatal danger with thinking around those "anachronistic" principles based on what history has taught us and what our founders warned us about. This is where many say we're not practical or current, and only have lofty ideals to share - because they reject our assumptions. Well, we reject your assumptions, and that's why you don't understand us or perceive that we don't share real solutions for a real world. We do, but we don't think like you, so it's not readily obvious. In short, we don't make the assumptions that you make. You may see a "problem", and we see "oh, you don't like the way that guy is using his freedom...gee, that's sad for you". We follow through on the hippy message, and the modern conservative message of free thinking and personal choice. Stop with the drama. Stop with the empire. Stop with the international domination. Scale it back to manageable size, rediscover the value and quality of life when individuals can live it the way they want. Stop actively interfering in everyone's business with this drama queen act, appeals to imperfection to justify cancelling personal choice. Here's the crux: In the face of modern politics and assumptions, our positions are more effectively argued as principles since many problems are either A) not for government to fix B) not improvable without a cost to liberty. Otherwise, our positions and solutions will come across as dismissive and overly simplified. This is because we value liberty over performance and problem solving, since it's more important than performance or problem solving.

Well like I said in my second sentence..."The only way I could go along with that game is if someone could give me a clue as to how you come to "suspect" someone is an illegal immigrant, a crime, that doesn't essentially rely on gut suspicions and racial harassment." I'm down with probable cause. I'm challenging visual scrutiny of ethnicity as a constitutional application of probable cause. What is an example of constitutional probable cause to demand identity and detain for questioning? All the examples I think of involve other crimes, which is already in place in Arizona. How about immigration status?

The governor can say all she wants as the law, at least according to the Wall Street Journal and legal experts, approves stopping people solely to prove their immigration status. The only way I could go along with that game is if someone could give me a clue as to how you come to "suspect" someone is an illegal immigrant, a crime, that doesn't essentially rely on gut suspicions and racial harassment. Alternatively, I do see how you do this with employers using information from arrested illegals. Since they would be suspected of a crime, auditing their paperwork for their workers should be perfectly ok. A citizen should not have to give up private information upon demand of a government agent without probable cause. And apparently they can already do this when they are suspected of committing a crime, probable cause, which is absolutely fair. This is not something we let slide. We punch this right square in the throat. All it takes is another terrorist attack and Newt Gingrich to win in 2012 and we could easily be profiling and demanding papers everywhere. I think focus should be on the border, perhaps closing some of these military bases we have all over the world could help make it budget neutral. And then of course employers, and making it not worth it to take advantage of a person's illegal status to pay them beans. Active investigation of illegal immigration crime is totally legitimate, but we have to work around civil liberties. I don't have a problem with deportation one bit, but we just can't harass citizens to get there.

Yes, good point. And to be clear, when I say charges, I mean charges. Maybe I'm getting a little dramatic here, but this is generally unfair wage practice made possible with this illegal status which removes the protections and rights that we, citizens, all enjoy. That makes the illegals helpless to exploitation and abuse and we know that goes on. I don't mean to imply there aren't decent people hiring illegal immigrants - I woudn't be surprised if some of them still pay them very fairly, sympathizing with their plight and work ethic. But that's a small percentage. And while still illegal, I would like not to bring the hammer down so much on those folks. Ah, excellent. I'll bet you're right.

Yes, this is absolutely "show me your papers" stuff. I strongly disagree with that part of the law. Forcing people to carry their documentation is a proven slippery slope. And it's a total offense to a freedom loving society. I don't have a problem with investigating employers to verify they have received proper documentation from their workers and pressing charges for "soft slavery" if they haven't and are not paying their share of taxes - funding the government. In some measure, I may have to concede some level of investigative technique to verify a person's legal citizenship, but it should be done through a respectful, civil due process of law. How do I prove I'm a citizen? Do I carry my birth certificate around everywhere I go? Or do I get a pass because I'm caucasian? There are plenty of caucasian immigrants so it's not like it clears me from possible illegal status. What exactly is it that governs the discretion of who needs to carry papers and who doesn't? The idea that only immigrants are required to carry such, is inconsistent with common sense - how do you know I'm an immigrant in order to demand my paperwork? Very oppressive. Insulting. I like controlling the border. I don't have a problem with militarizing it either. I don't care what "message" that sends. I do care about harrassing the citizenry for on-the-spot documentation on mere suspicion. Unacceptable. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Yes. No. I can't speak for them, I suppose. But I don't see the conflict in controlling our borders and not dolling out citizenship to illegal immigrants. They're illegal, and should be deported. Employers should be charged - with fines that equal the taxes that should have been paid if they had hired legally and paid them fairly. I realize we're in 2010, but that's no reason to ditch the fundamental freedom of movement that we enjoy and expect here. I shouldn't have to carry one iota of identification of any kind. Only if I'm operating a motor vehicle should I be required to show a license that I can operate it. The authorities have a right to identify me if I'm being investigated in a crime where I am a suspect. If we suspect someone is guilty of illegal immigration, then how about we go to the trouble to use the same tools we use in any suspected criminal behavior? Their documentation to prove their status would be a natural consequence of such investigation, and steers us clear of harrassing folks based on their skin color, presumably anyway.

Well it's no more absolute than any other principle we freeze into place, like equality or free speech. We say absolutely that our republic hinges on free speech and without it, we can't possibly be a free state or even a republic for that matter. Well, how else can man shed the need for government unless that end is actively pursued? Generally, as our children get older, we reduce their rules and increase their responsibility don't we? We understand, intuitively and by experience, that to negotiate freedom they must have freedom, in some form, slowly and cautiously introduced throughout their first approximately 18 years of life. I'm suggesting the same on a societal level. To design governments symmetrical to our current evolutionary disposition, actively pursuing total liberty as we evolve "fit" to negotiate it. And my qualifier, albeit located in the final paragraph, is an appeal to pragmatism. I wouldn't pursue my ideal government at the expense of the ostensible purpose of government to begin with - to regulate the misgivings of man until he can do so himself. Law and order. But if we don't pursue that principle, at all, and instead put our hopes in government and evolve and grow that system instead, then man is destined to always need the threat of force and exploitation of power over others. History demonstrates incredible abuses and institutionalized bigotry and shame when force is the ruling tool. Even without history repeating itself, it still ultimately that means people will be forced to live their lives counter to their own will, lowering the quality of life and full potential of happiness. Maybe it's because many of us fall back on the idea that we strike down certain, major laws that we feel infringe rights and then observe and absorb the results. Then on to the next one. For instance, instead of making believe that we can accurately predict the result of total drug legalization in America, we back off on marijuana and some designer drugs and then observe and absorb that change. If it's too much, and it threatens the basic function of law and order, then we roll it back in. If we prove to have handled the freedom generally well, then we can take another step. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't know exactly how much freedom we can handle and still function as a country. I don't believe we can know really. We are so fully invested in the opposing direction, that any prediction would be a stab in the dark. As far as libertarian economics, I think it's more a question of expectation in performance than high level truths that claim it will work itself out in the end. Sure it will work out, it always did, even in the free banking era. But if your expectation is a bumpy free economy, then I think it's unrealistic. You don't get that with a centrally managed and planned economy either. And look how much it costs to do this, together with the - once again - power, exploitation and corruption components of consolidated power into small groups of men. I think that's a bit down the road though. I think the main reason why we talk past each other (and why I still feel like I'm not answering your points very well) is that we see economic and social liberty similar to how you might view equality. Consider slavery. Do we really care about the economic cost of freeing the slaves, if that institution still existed today? Would we make appeals to "planning and mitigation" as the result of emancipation? I think we would only consider such things in the most extreme of results - total collapse and chaos of the country. But if it caused life to suck and be hard on more people as the result? No. Because the principle matters more, even if it costs us superpower status. That's how libertarians think about our principles. The bad results we may get, are all worth it, because the morals and ethics are more important. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I don't, but I'm working on it. I want this too. I'm sure it's tied to the introduction of the income tax and the shift from majority of taxes going local, to national. That shift happened throughout the 20's and 30's, which coincides with the world wars and federal response to them.

I don't know. I've always advocated a national sales tax in place of an income tax and the compelling exception for the poor, to me anyway, was the exclusion of food, clothing, and maybe shelter. That way it's even handed, in that everyone enjoys that exception instead of a privileged minority, though obviously helping the poor the most since it directly effects their necessities. If they were to offer that exception, I could see it gaining momentum.

That was my reaction to jackson's comment that "...in the US there would be a need to START with a 20% VAT...anything less than 20% would be progressively meaningless to the increased revenues required." The rest of my post is directed toward the proposal.