Socialism's Eventual Result

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
281

[quote]phaethon wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
You totally missed the point. In a subsidy, the gov’t takes money from you & I and gives it (unearned) to another entity. In a tax-break, the money was earned by the entity that is “allowed” to keep it. As most tax money is wasted anyway, letting them keep more of the money does no ijury to any other party.[/quote]

You are twisting definitions. I know there is a difference between a tax break and a subsidy. But often a subsidy can come in the form of a tax break. Its as simple as that.[/quote]

No it’s not. It is only the same to the gov’t and to the company receiving the benefit. It is not the same to the rest of the tax-payers. If it’s my tax money going into the subsidy, then it punishes me. If it is a tax break, then it only effects the gov’t and the company receiving the benefit, it has no effect on me. A subsidy and a tax-break are two very distinct and different things and you are twisting the definition by trying to blur them into one.

282

[quote]garcia1970 wrote:

Love it. You know his kind probably have their property around their trailer mined. All types of guns, knives, and a copy of The Turner Diaries.[/quote]

Narrow minded liberal’s never cease to amaze me. These are the very people who cry out to us not to stereotype, and to keep an open mind. But as soon as the heat is turned up on their groundless arguments they quickly run to stereotypes.

Just like your hero Obama who said of Pennsylvania voters; “they cling to their guns and their Bibles.”

Pathetic “professor”

283

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
Now if a group chooses to pool their resources and provide that, all well and good.[/quote]

Exactly. That is called government, and it’s exactly what happened.[/quote]

That is not only not a justification, it is also historically wrong.

Why not just give up?

You want to force people for their own good, just admit it and move on.

[/quote]

They can’t admit it and move on. That would be admitting their entire argument is fruitless and you know they can’t do that.

A better question to ask them is this: How long would their socialist utopia last without hard working men and women to support it? You know the kinds that garcia makes fun of.

They’re running a sham and while they’ll never admit it, deep down I think many of them know it.

284

[quote]ZEB wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
Now if a group chooses to pool their resources and provide that, all well and good.[/quote]

Exactly. That is called government, and it’s exactly what happened.[/quote]

That is not only not a justification, it is also historically wrong.

Why not just give up?

You want to force people for their own good, just admit it and move on.

[/quote]

They can’t admit it and move on. That would be admitting their entire argument is fruitless and you know they can’t do that.

A better question to ask them is this: How long would their socialist utopia last without hard working men and women to support it? You know the kinds that garcia makes fun of.

They’re running a sham and while they’ll never admit it, deep down I think many of them know it.[/quote]

Zeb, I’m not sure if you’ve been following this from the beginning, but I am not at present talking about (or arguing for) any kind of socialist utopia. Orion and I are talking about the basic necessity (or lack thereof) for government and therefore for some kind of taxation.

I know very well that you are against the redistribution of wealth. That said, I suspect that you agree with me with regard to the need for, at the very least, basic government oversight of contemporary society? And that, furthermore, if it is needed, one is justified in providing it?

285

[quote]smh23 wrote:

I know very well that you are against the redistribution of wealth. That said, I suspect that you agree with me with regard to the need for, at the very least, basic government oversight of contemporary society? And that, furthermore, if it is needed, one is justified in providing it?[/quote]

Small government, yes. Income tax’s at the level they’re at, no. There are better ways for the system to work.

286

The question here is really if the state is a exploiter and if taxes is the means of explotation.
I would say it is both and yes and no answer to this.

From a historical point of wiew the state is a explotier or a tool used by an exploiter class.

If we use the middle-east as an example of this, the exploitiv nature of the state is wery clear.
Many states that where born in the ancient middle-east, where born out of invasion and occupation of
an alien group of people. Just think of the accadian nomadic people who invaded and took over the sumerian
civilliation, or the arameic people from the arabian dessert who did exactly the same later with the assyrian. Or the arabs who invaded and took over the eastern parts of Byzantin and the persian empire. And we can aslo
add in the mongols adn later the turks who took over the middle-eastern area. What all of this different cultures did was removing the former aristocracy and taking their place. From their they would use the state to collect taxes. Not only did they collect taxes from the folks living there, they also took their science and
knowledge and used it for their own good. This can also serve as an picture of how empires rise and fall and how culture and science evolve, but since this is about the exploitiv nature of the state and taxes I am not going to expand on the latter. This shows that historically the state have been an alien entity for the general population and with the purpose of exploit them on the behalf of the ruling class( the group of people controling the state ).

But the purpose and understanding of the state have changed. During the 1600s and 1700s, a bunch
of intellectuals created an idea of an new form of state, that had the purpose of repressenting and protecting
the general population. This new state ideal is in oppostion to the descriptive picture of the ancient
state, wich in is pure form was an violent machine serving the few. Terms like the social contract and no taxiation without repressentation illustrates this new state ideal. And with the burgeouis revolution and later progressive reform movements, we have in the west buildt a state on the basis of the ideals of the 1700`s.

But offcourse you can say that in reality the state is still a exploiter or a tool for an exploitv class and
that the ideals of the peoples state is just an illusion to keep us servile. The biggest proponents
of this wiew are marxists, anarchists in their various forms and some classical liberalists. offcourse
they differ from one another on how the state is exploitiv and who is the exploitiv class, but they all
agree that the state is a negative, but a necessary negative from a marxist and liberalist point of wiew. The
anarchists find it just negative and not necessary at all offcourse.

Then again you have the centrists( leftliberals, moderate socialists, europeen conservatives ), who
would say that aslong as the state is democratic/republican( not the partyes ), then its actions are
not against the people, it be taxation, regulation etc. Because the people decide what the state should do,
and what its restrictions should be. So they dont wiew the state as an alien entity, but as the servant of the people.

So there you have the different wiews of the state, and I hope I was able to show the complexity of the matter
and btw I dont have an answer to the question: “if the state is an exploiter” and if “tax is an means of exploitation”.

ps. I guess its lots of misspelling in my rant, so here is an apology in advance.

florelius.

287

Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).

Democracy theoretically circumvents this problem because we are in effect taking from ourselves…which is not theft by any definition of which I’m aware.

Now, the realities of governance in an overcrowded, sweeping behemoth of a state have spawned enough byzantine government convolution to dirty the neat little picture I just painted. But, in my mind at least, an democracy riddled with flaws is better than no democracy at all.

288

[quote]smh23 wrote:
Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).[/quote]

Weren’t you the same cat who wrote,“Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.” But now you agree that it is theft?

Democracy is just the majority stealing from the minority, in both theory and in practice.

Which is why the US was established, not as a democracy, but a representative republic.

289

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:
Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).[/quote]

Weren’t you the same cat who wrote,“Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.” But now you agree that it is theft?
[/quote]

You really seem to just jump right into arguments without understanding what people are saying.

I say here that any tax-dependent form of governance other than democracy is, ipso facto, theft. This has nothing to do with any preceding argument I made, because, as far as I remember, this is the first time I have referenced taxation in a non-democratic system of governance.

290

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:
Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).[/quote]

Weren’t you the same cat who wrote,“Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.” But now you agree that it is theft?
[/quote]

You really seem to just jump right into arguments without understanding what people are saying.

I say here that any tax-dependent form of governance other than democracy is, ipso facto, theft. This has nothing to do with any preceding argument I made, because, as far as I remember, this is the first time I have referenced taxation in a non-democratic system of governance.[/quote]

I just thought I’d point out tha apparent contradiction.
-Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.
-stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property

291

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:
Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).[/quote]

Weren’t you the same cat who wrote,“Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.” But now you agree that it is theft?
[/quote]

You really seem to just jump right into arguments without understanding what people are saying.

I say here that any tax-dependent form of governance other than democracy is, ipso facto, theft. This has nothing to do with any preceding argument I made, because, as far as I remember, this is the first time I have referenced taxation in a non-democratic system of governance.[/quote]

I just thought I’d point out tha apparent contradiction.
-Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.
-stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property
[/quote]

If you read my post you will see that I explicitly dealt with this exact apparent contradiction: “democratic government theoretically circumvents this problem because no definition of theft of which I’m aware would include the taking of one’s property by one’s self.” Something along those lines.

292

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:
Well said, florelius.

I would say that, on paper, any form of governance other than self-governance is ipso facto exploitative. When a monarch levies a tax, he is stealing from “his” people…even if the taxes are ultimately designed to benefit the people upon whom they were originally imposed (stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property).[/quote]

Weren’t you the same cat who wrote,“Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.” But now you agree that it is theft?
[/quote]

You really seem to just jump right into arguments without understanding what people are saying.

I say here that any tax-dependent form of governance other than democracy is, ipso facto, theft. This has nothing to do with any preceding argument I made, because, as far as I remember, this is the first time I have referenced taxation in a non-democratic system of governance.[/quote]

I just thought I’d point out tha apparent contradiction.
-Since we are the benefactors, and the recipients of the services, we pay the money.
-stolen property spent for the benefit of he who has been stolen from is still just that: stolen property
[/quote]

If you read my post you will see that I explicitly dealt with this exact apparent contradiction: “democratic government theoretically circumvents this problem because no definition of theft of which I’m aware would include the taking one’s property by one’s self.” Something along those lines.[/quote]

And democracy is only the majority stealing from the minority.

293

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
No it’s not. It is only the same to the gov’t and to the company receiving the benefit. It is not the same to the rest of the tax-payers. If it’s my tax money going into the subsidy, then it punishes me. If it is a tax break, then it only effects the gov’t and the company receiving the benefit, it has no effect on me. A subsidy and a tax-break are two very distinct and different things and you are twisting the definition by trying to blur them into one.[/quote]

This is getting tiresome. Lets pretend the government has a budget of $100. It will raise this via taxes or borrowing. This spending is not tightly coupled to taxation. It will borrow any difference.

There are 3 people in this economy. Jane, Bob, and Steve. Normally Jane pays $30 in taxes, Bob pays $15 in taxes, and Steve pays $40. The other $15 is borrowed at 10% interest.

Jane works towards the nations interests and so the government wants to encourage her via either a tax break or a subsidy. The government is trying to decide if it is fairer to implement a subsidy or instead give a tax break. They think her contribution should be reduced to $20 either way.

Option 1: A tax break.

The government tells Jane that because she is so awesome she only has to pay $20 instead of $30.

They make up the $10 deficit by either borrowing $10 at 10% interest or by making Bob and Steve pay higher taxes.

Option 2: A direct subsidy.

Jane still has to contribute her $30 to the government. However, from the $100 slush fund the government will give her $10. If spending levels, outside of this subsidy, do not change then the government still has a $100 budget but now only have $90 (i.e. a $10 deficit).

They make up the $10 deficit by either borrowing $10 at 10% interest or making Bob and Steve pay higher taxes.

Outcome: The exact same.

The only way there can be a difference is if the government reduces spending after offering a tax cut or after offering a subsidy but not in both cases. Historically, and realistically, this is not the case.

294

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

And democracy is only the majority stealing from the minority. [/quote]

It seems to be the best we’ve got.

295

[quote]phaethon wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
No it’s not. It is only the same to the gov’t and to the company receiving the benefit. It is not the same to the rest of the tax-payers. If it’s my tax money going into the subsidy, then it punishes me. If it is a tax break, then it only effects the gov’t and the company receiving the benefit, it has no effect on me. A subsidy and a tax-break are two very distinct and different things and you are twisting the definition by trying to blur them into one.[/quote]

This is getting tiresome. Lets pretend the government has a budget of $100. It will raise this via taxes or borrowing. This spending is not tightly coupled to taxation. It will borrow any difference.

There are 3 people in this economy. Jane, Bob, and Steve. Normally Jane pays $30 in taxes, Bob pays $15 in taxes, and Steve pays $40. The other $15 is borrowed at 10% interest.

Jane works towards the nations interests and so the government wants to encourage her via either a tax break or a subsidy. The government is trying to decide if it is fairer to implement a subsidy or instead give a tax break. They think her contribution should be reduced to $20 either way.

Option 1: A tax break.

The government tells Jane that because she is so awesome she only has to pay $20 instead of $30.

They make up the $10 deficit by either borrowing $10 at 10% interest or by making Bob and Steve pay higher taxes.

Option 2: A direct subsidy.

Jane still has to contribute her $30 to the government. However, from the $100 slush fund the government will give her $10. If spending levels, outside of this subsidy, do not change then the government still has a $100 budget but now only have $90 (i.e. a $10 deficit).

They make up the $10 deficit by either borrowing $10 at 10% interest or making Bob and Steve pay higher taxes.

Outcome: The exact same.

The only way there can be a difference is if the government reduces spending after offering a tax cut or after offering a subsidy but not in both cases. Historically, and realistically, this is not the case.
[/quote]

Your argument assumes a fixed economy, which is false.
A. Jane is given a tax break so she keeps more of what she earns which encourages her to make even more and the size of the pie increases. Bob and steve’s taxes are allowed to remain the same.
A1. Jane takes the extra money she has earned and uses it to purchase items which increases the money in the economy helping the size of the pie increase.
A2. Regardless oh tax breaks, a business must deliver a wanted product or they will fail. Which will make way for a business that is able to deliver a wanted product.
B. The gov’t pays Jane a subsidy to help make her business profitable. She realizes that good decisions and hard work have a lesser impact than gov’t subsidies, so rather than work harder, she just collects the govt check. The size of the pie does not grow.
B1. Bob and Steve now have less money to invest in their business or hire people. There is less money in the economy and the size of the pie shrinks.
B2. The gov’t subsidy skews the market, keeping failing business alive that should fail. We end up paying farmers not to grow crops and pouring milk into the garbage.

A tax break and a subsidy in no way produce the same result.

296

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

And democracy is only the majority stealing from the minority. [/quote]

It seems to be the best we’ve got.[/quote]

Aside from a constitutional republic…

297

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

And democracy is only the majority stealing from the minority. [/quote]

It seems to be the best we’ve got.[/quote]

Aside from a constitutional republic…[/quote]

I dunno, there is a case to be made for constitutional monarchies.

298

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
Now if a group chooses to pool their resources and provide that, all well and good.[/quote]

Exactly. That is called government, and it’s exactly what happened.[/quote]

I don’t know how your government works, but I sure as hell didn’t sign up for mine.

299

A constitutional monarchy can easily best democracy. Democracy pretty much blows and is a bad idea.

300

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

And democracy is only the majority stealing from the minority. [/quote]

It seems to be the best we’ve got.[/quote]

Aside from a constitutional republic…[/quote]

I dunno, there is a case to be made for constitutional monarchies.
[/quote]

I’d say that depends on the ‘constitional’ part, but sure.