The Republican Party is Changing

[_krose]

As far as you being highly taxed, maybe I was incorrect in my assumption that you are living in the tax-phobic USA. Perhaps you live somewhere like Denmark or Sweden, where taxes are actually high (as opposed to fantasy-high).

Here in the USA, taxes are the lowest they have been in nearly 60 years. They are also lower than almost anywhere in the world (Mexico and Turkey are lower, but that's about it).

[Guest]

As far as you being highly taxed, maybe I was incorrect in my assumption that you are living in the tax-phobic USA. Perhaps you live somewhere like Denmark or Sweden, where taxes are actually high (as opposed to fantasy-high).

Here in the USA, taxes are the lowest they have been in nearly 60 years. They are also lower than almost anywhere in the world (Mexico and Turkey are lower, but that's about it).

This is simply either a flat footed prevarication or a sign of the most abject ignorance imaginable. A call for a CFR here would produce exactly what I know it would produce. This claim can only be sustained if taxes are looked at as a percentage of GDP. However, when the actual rates people pay at various points in the productive processes of the economy are at issue, and their actual effects on economic behavior are taken into consideration, the entire situation changes.

Government is now spending 25% of GDP, an all time high. That money has got to come from somewhere. As we are borrowing some 40 cents of every dollar spent, the answer is clear. But this is only federal taxation. To understand how really stratospheric the destruction of wealth has become (alongside the destruction of the value of our money) through American rates and forms of taxation, one has to look at all forms of federal taxation, including income, dividend, capital gains, death taxes, the AMT, and marriage penalty etc, and then look at all levels of state and local taxation. Then their are employer based taxes above and beyond general corporate or personal income taxes, including the supplying of medical insurance to employees and unemployment compensation funding. One then must look at the compliance and administrative costs of the vast regulatory apparatus of the federal government, including agencies such as the IRS, EPA, OSHA, and many others, all of who's regulatory activities comprise a vast plethora of taxation, or overhead, on private economic activity. Government sponsored general inflation is also an effective tax on economic activity.

[_Droopy]

Trying to ensure that everyone is provided for, even at meager levels, seems very just.

But only seems, as what always happens (and must happen) in the end is that everyone ends up poor and meager.

On the other hand, its opposite is where everyone looks out for only themselves and ends up with enabling the enrichment of a few at the expense of the many.

Sounds like the average socialist society from roughly 1917 to the present.

Centuries of the Western Religious Tradition have promoted a values system in which we are duty bound to care for those other than ourselves and thereby become an interested party to their welfare.

Yes, each one of us, as an individual, has that mandate.

Capitalism turns the values of this Western Religious Tradition on its head. It introduces the antithetical concept that greed is good and must be allowed as a measure of freedom.

Pure Marxist/utopian socialist twaddle. If it makes you feel morally superior to contemporary conservatives and libertarians and gives you comfort, by all means hold to such phantasmic ideological fables and falsifications of history, but when the point comes at which you attempt to impose those wonderful pseudo-moral ideals on your fellow citizens through the mailed fist of the state, you should be prepared for stiff resistance, if only for the reason that all such attempts in the past have resulted, not only in the poor getting poorer (as well as losing their freedom in the bargain) but in everyone sharing in the misery.

You see, the truly moral do not support socialistic welfare schemes, just as the truly moral do not believe either that the mass legal theft of the property of others is the answer to poverty, or that the forcible confiscation of other people's property to be transferred to those to whom it does not belong fulfills their Christian obligation to give alms to the poor.

[_Bond James Bond]

As far as you being highly taxed, maybe I was incorrect in my assumption that you are living in the tax-phobic USA. Perhaps you live somewhere like Denmark or Sweden, where taxes are actually high (as opposed to fantasy-high).

Here in the USA, taxes are the lowest they have been in nearly 60 years. They are also lower than almost anywhere in the world (Mexico and Turkey are lower, but that's about it).

And our corporate effective tax rate (taxes after loopholes and credits) is even lower, around 18-20%.

[_ajax18]

I wish they were even lower. I wouldn't shed any tears if every one of those government programs were abolished. It'd certainly make me feel better about having to work overtime every day. The 40 hour work week is one of those reforms that seemed to disappear as well.

[_krose]

I wish they were even lower. I wouldn't shed any tears if every one of those government programs were abolished. It'd certainly make me feel better about having to work overtime every day. The 40 hour work week is one of those reforms that seemed to disappear as well.

Fortunately, you are part of a small minority of Americans.

But keep your chin up. Perhaps Peter Thiel will let you and Droopy come and live on his libertarian island, which will have no laws, no taxes, no regulations... no government. I'm sure you would be much happier fending for yourselves there, keeping all your paychecks and not being "forced" to pay for things that benefit others. Of course, you'll have to hope that you never fall into any circumstances that might make you the one in need of help. And good luck getting "luxuries" like clean and uncontaminated water, air and food.

As for me, I'm glad that we have some government programs that provide valuable protections and help people who need it. And I will continue to work for more and better government programs, such as true universal health care. I want no part of a YOYO (you're on your own) society. I prefer one where the prevailing attitude is that we're all in this together.

[_ajax18]

Of course, you'll have to hope that you never fall into any circumstances that might make you the one in need of help.

I'm confident if I ever truly needed help, which I already have, I would not be eligible under the rules and social prejudices of our "great society." If you think you'll be eligible, I think you're mistaken, unless you have some card you can play that I don't.

I'm sure the people in Russia have never felt more on their own than they have under government mandated socialism, a.k.a. communism. Trust me, you're on your own. And you always will be on your own as long as you're living in this telestial world. But it's worse than being on your own. It means becoming helpless. It means the only right you'll have, is the right to go to your job and do other peoples work. Everything you once had while you were on your own, your time, your ability to work, will be taken from you as well.