Friday, February 04, 2005

Dooh Nibor Taxes

Taking from the poor and giving to the rich, tra-lah.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can't cut taxes on people who don't pay taxes. What the article is really advocating is an increase in wealth redistribution. Classical class warfare rhetoric. Take from those who earned it and give to those who did not. It is the kind of armed robbery that communists are famous for. Is that really what you support?

Kendall Miller said...

Communists! Communists! The favorite battlecry of the rich and privileged. That the people of great wealth have actually earned it is a crock. Are Bill Gates, George Soros, and Richard Mellon Scaife really that much smarter and worthy to be rich than other skillful, smart, and hardworking people? Warren Buffet readily admits that he is a beneficiary of the "birth lottery". He recognizes that he was lucky to be born with certain advantages in a financial system with certain advantages and he has benefited from that luck.

While you can't cut taxes on people who don't have money, those some people can't pay taxes either. The government needs money to do the things a government is obligated to do. Those who benefit most from the financial system are obligated to bear a proportionate share of the burden.

But then if your rich enough you really don't have to care about anyone else. You got yours and God gave to you and you have a God-given right to keep it.

Anonymous said...

Communist is not just a derogatory epithet to throw around. It is a word properly used to label those who embrace the economic and political principles underlying it. If you wish not to be labeled as such, then you had best quit advocating the very things upon which the label depends. Otherwise, admit what you are.

The government has only one moral obligation and that is to protect and defend the individual rights of persons. Period. That's it. And it does not take a lot of dollars to perform that duty. As a matter of fact, it doesn't require taxation at all. After all, taxation is at its core a violation of the mandate to protect individual rights because the government must violate rights in order to collect it.

Kendall Miller said...

You must really hate it here where there are people advocating a shared stewardship for the common good. We have all seen what the product of lasseiz-faire absence of regulation brings about. Wealth and power becomes more and more consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Greed and insecurity become the common moral currency. Corporations become large enough to squelch competition. The markets are gamed by the likes of Enron to fleece the little guys and enrich the big guys.

When individual rights go unrestricted the only right people have is to be shafted by the next person. You may consider it Nirvana but I call it Hell. I never dreamed I would witness our country lose its moral vision as it has these past few years.

Anonymous said...

What you condemn (and rightly so) is NOT the result of laissez-faire, but rather a variation of its antithesis. It could more correctly be called crony capitalism or just plain government corruption. The point is that the perversions are an artifact of the government meddling, rather than the free market at work.

As for your version of hell... What a perverted morality you have embraced when you find it hellish to be prevented from initiating violence to dictate your whims, desires and values on others.

I don't suppose it ever occured to you that when you move to restrict or limit the individual rights of others -- you are simply in the wrong. In order to accomplish your vision of restriction and regulation, you must become the aggressor, the criminal. Of course, you are free to believe in such evil. That is your right, just as it is the right of Nazis to believe what they do, no matter how ugly. It is when you move to put your malignant beliefs into practice by imposing them on others that you have crossed the line and no longer act by right.

Kendall Miller said...

Thanks for correcting my spelling. My French is rusty.

And I don't suppose that the extremity of your position has occurred to you.

I'm glad you don't drive. It would probably give you a conniption to be forced to drive on the same side of the road as everyone else or the let some silly light bulb tell you whether to stop or not. That would just be such a violation of your individual rights and would be so wrong. Not to mention the jail time that could be yours for endangering the lives of those other folks on the road.

Anonymous said...

Extreme? Of course my position is extreme! That is also called "consistent." I refuse to compromise away my principles. I will not endorse or embrace evil just so I can exude false compassion. I agree with Barry Goldwater. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Yes, I do drive. And I would MUCH rather the roads were privately owned and I only had to pay for that which I use, rather than subsidizing all of the government corruption and boondoggles that our taxes go for.

Here's the thing. If you feel like you aren't paying enough taxes, then PAY MORE! Nobody is stopping you. But, that's not your thing at all. It's not that YOU want to pay more. Your thing is that you want to stick a gun in my face and make ME pay more. Like I said earlier, your position is founded on violence.