So are you arguing people should voluntarily donate more, or people should be involuntarily donate (taxed) more?
Who gets to pay 15,000 on 100,000 of income? In CA, at $100,000/year you’re looking at:
4% SS
9% state
28% federal
1.5% Medicare
So you’re already looking at $42,500 in taxes before paying sales tax, property tax, tree-hugging tax, etc.
Here’s the thing: trying to determine X dollars is enough for any one person is immoral. Why does anyone get a say in how others live their lives?
[quote]hlss09 wrote:
Orion, I really like your points, I just think you’re misinterpreting the message.
First, would you say that we are obligated to save the baby from drowning?
Second, my claim is that we DO have the responsiblity and duty to help others. That’s my opinion, end of story. I think our duty to one another goes further than just ‘not hurting people.’ I value free market ideologies and making your own destiny, etc. But I also think that if you have the means, than there is a moral obligation to help. Beneficence and fellow-feeling are important virtues, IMO, but I’d argue all day long that we do have a duty to help others.
Now, I think that duty is limited. I recently read a bunch of responses to consequential arguments that I liked. One such argument talked about how people don’t have to spend their lives maximizing the good. For example, if a mafia dude comes up to you and says: “You either shoot this guy in the head, or I shoot 3,” then you’re faced with a dilemma. Do you go against your virtues (not killing others for starters) and kill the one guy in order to bring about the better state of affairs in which 2 survive. On balance, that appears to be better. But that brings up all kinds of shit, and I don’t think that we can say that anybody has a moral duty to kill or harm others, or even go against virtuous actions in order to bring about a better outcome.
That being said, I do think that we should give more to those in need. I don’t think that our entire life mission has to be geared towards the end of helping others (like some of my bleeding heart friends think) but rather that we owe it to/are morally obligated to give more and help more. And I’m not saying we should go overboard and permit free riders to take advantage of our charity, but rather that we should give out time and money to those in legitimate need. The how’s would be a whole different argument (how to give the money, who it goes to, etc). For the point of my argument I just want to say that we are morally bound to give more and help more.
BTW I’ve read some Rand and although she is interesting, I’ve recently changed some of my opinions on her stuff. She talks about altruism as if it is the worst thing ever. I think that it is fine to work hard, and I understand her argument that money is the root of all good. Yes, money and free market capitalism make people work hard to secure the best life for themselves, but at a point it always seems to lead to the state of affairs the USA is in today, namely an economic situation in which there’s a ‘1%’ and everybody else. It seems that capitalism leads inevitably to this severe split in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And although Rand had some brilliant points, I don’t think her idelogies are realistic.
Another thing that I have trouble with is the idea of all the rich/industriout just leaving in Atlas Shrugged. She essentially states that rich and talented will just leave if they are not given their due. This is the argument that the richest of the rich give in the USA. A lot of the uber rich here say that if they’re taxed more, then they will just leave. They’ll essentailly pull a John Galt. I call BS. I don’t think that taxing 1.5% more (I beleive that’s what Obama wanted, right?) would make the top 1% just up and leave the country, lol.
But this is not the point. All I’m trying to say is that we DO have a moral duty to those in LEGITIMATE need. [/quote]
What does it help you?
You might define “legitimate” one way, I might define it another.
However, as long as you dont make me pay for what you deem legitimate I have no problem with it.
You would have to start in Africa though, compared to them practically no one in the US has a legitimate need, and if they had your money it would still be better spent in Africa because it goes a longer way there.
If we want to be all utilitarian and stuff.
Also, the thing about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is nonsense and the most superficial analysis should reveal that.
We don’t owe anyone anything. No one has a legitimate claim on what is mine, and no one has a legitimate claim to take it from me without my consent, through force. I do think however that if you are, for example, a trained medic and you see someone choking then you have a responsibility to help. But it’s one that you’ve chosen and it’s not a duty you’re born with.
Also, the rich are already paying a vastly disproportionately large amount of taxes:
“The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI equal to or greater than $154,643), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 31.7 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.”
Source: Tax Foundation
They also hire and provide jobs for all the people who think they should pay even more in tax.
The argument revolves around a false moral dichotomy. Just like universal health care. You take something that sounds all good in sentinment without realizing how it is implemented, the efficiency of implementation, and stack it on the house of cards morality known as government.
I work for a large urban school district. I see poverty. Lets just say there are alot of parents that take their SSI checks and use them to buy and sell drugs, while keeping their kids in deplorable conditions.
Should these kids be helped? Absolutley. No, working hard wont fucking cut it. They dont have the same tools as you and I. But are taxes going to solve that problem? No, see the previous example of SSI benefits providing…benefit.
You personally want to help? Go be a mentor, be a Big Brother, volunteer for inner city youth programs, if you dont have the time, then donate to charities with your own money that do that sort of thing. Long story short, be a fucking compassionate human being instead of a gullible feel good twat who actually thinks his higher taxes are going to a good cause so he doesnt have to actually face the problems in this world. And I am willing to be your GSI has not spent one IOTA of his time ever doing the above.
[quote]hlss09 wrote:
@ Dixie: No, not at all. Basically, anybody making enough to live comfortably has a moral obligation, IMO, to help out. This doesn’t mean tax the top 1% like the ‘occupyers’ say, or tax the uber rich. It means anybody making enough to not ‘suffer’ if they were taxed a bit more should give more away.
[/quote]
So someone who is doing well has an obligation to give money away and not do as well?
I will let orion handle this one, I’m not able to keep up with this thread lol.
I haven’t read not a single reply and just scanned the OP.
But I can predict the replies you will get and to those leaning “right” I’ll say this; until you wake up and realize that we all share this world, country, state, city, town, neighborhood - and that when one is doing bad we are all in some measure (sometimes greater or smaller) doing bad, you just don’t “get it”.
Those that are prospering or doing well, do not live on an island (well, some do lol).
If you make it okay to be poor that is exactly what most people will be. You are removing incentive to be producing and removing the consequences of not being productive. What do you think will happen?
But regardless of what your morals are and who you think needs or doesn’t need help, it doesn’t give you the right to take money from others through violence.
We should be as legally responsible, financially, for our fellow citizens as they are legally responsible to us in their private (presently) conduct. It is one thing already to demand ‘charity.’ It’s another to demand charity for a class of people who are unaccountable to the taxpayer, increasingly self destructive, and very often despise the idea that THEY in turn are accountable to society in action if not financially.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
Every MMORPG need a level and/or stuff reset from times to times, to allow newbies/casuals to compete with older players/hardcore gamers.
Maybe the USA mmorpg need such a reset too.
It’s pretty easy to achieve : 100% inheritance tax during a few years (20 years for example)
After all, these transfers distorts the free market. [/quote]
No, they dont.
Removing one of the main incentives for people working hard however would. [/quote]
That’s what many game developpers think too. “Oh no, all our players will ragequit and cancel their accounts if we do that”… until they actually try.
Now, if we speak about the real world
you keep forgetting that, past a certain level of (perceived) social inequalities, people feels they have no more incentives for working hard either.
Once that happens, people start wearing ridiculous clothes, saying meaningless bullshits, occupying the wrong streets for months.
In short : they become essentially useless.
If this is not adressed, various political troubles start plaguing your country, and its economy.
Sooner or later, the “reset” happens. Usually violently.
Mark 12:41-43
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Mark 12:41-43
[/quote]
Mark 14:7
Matthew 25:40
2 Corinthians 9:7
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Chinese proverb. Author unknown. Often misattributed to Laozi or Kongzi.
When you two are done quoting scripture regarding private charity, would you care to join us in the discussion about taxation and redistribution?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
When you two are done quoting scripture regarding private charity, would you care to join us in the discussion about taxation and redistribution?[/quote]
<---- Disappoint
Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion , for God loves a cheerful giver.
2 Corinthians 9:7
It’s not about what you give, under compulsion or not. It’s about what you owe to others.
Not the same thing.
We understood your answer is “nothing, but i will give what i want, cheerfully”. Some of us still disagree.
Hey, I did say those scriptures involved actual charity. Private charity.
[quote]kamui wrote:
It’s not about what you give, under compulsion or not. It’s about what you owe to others.
Not the same thing.
We understood your answer is “nothing, but i will give what i want, cheerfully”. Some of us still disagree. [/quote]
<— Not always cheerfully.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Hey, I did say those scriptures involved actual charity. Private charity.[/quote]
Yup, I just wanted to hammer the point home that you cannot use the bible to argue for more taxes to feed the poor.