Putting a face on tax increases

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I've seen the bake more pies argument before and it sounds good but you can't make more plum pudding pies if there are a limited amount of plums (natural resources, less demand, lack of investment capital) and you can't make them in the past. Last year X amount of pies were made. You can plan on making more pies this year but that doesn't change the amount of pies that were available during the previous year.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

Of course, you think that the government never did no thing for no body. Of course, you think that the government never did no thing for no body. My own experience testifies otherwise. If it were not for public healthcare, I would have died many times over in the past. If it had not been for government-subsidized loans, I would not have been able to attend university. If it had not been for public schools, I would not have attained any level of education.

What good is an education that amounts to little more than indoctrination. Whatever efforts this government loaned education made on your behalf, the critical thinking skill necessary for an informed decision making process are clearly lacking. Apparently an indoctrination so invasive that it has convinced you that the only reason you are alive today is because of tax paid "health care", it never even occurring to you that without such "assistance" you may even be healthier today than you all ready are. Nope, your "education" has assured you that you would be "dead many times over" if it were not for socialized medicine.

Further, your indoctrination certainly doesn't allow you to look at arguments made by those who disagree with you in any critical light, and instead teaches you to rely upon logical fallacies and making false claims such as "Of course, you think that the government never did no thing for no body." I argue that income tax in perpetuity should be abolished and your indoctrination has taught you to scream "Of course, you think that the government never did no thing for no body", then follow up such an absurd falsehood with sentimental stories of survival and "education". The problem is, since you cannot be honest about your opponents arguments, why should we believe that you're being honest about your survival due to socialized medicine?

I believe in an egalitarian society and I know that the welfare state brings us closer to it. When progressive taxes are applied, it works better. Notice that it worked best in the WWII and post-war years, when the highest marginal tax rate was 92%!

The gross police state, oppressive tyranny of legislatures and executive branches, and the whimsy of the judicial branch all came after this vaunted WWII and post war years where the dumbed down American apathetic stupidly acquiesced to a grossly expanding government leaving the consequences of such a dangerous beast to their children and grandchildren while they scream today: "Don't you dare touch my Social Security and Medicade!" Pffffffft...your delusions are yours, not mine.

Improving the livelihood of the poor and marginally decreasing the livelihood of the rich brings us closer together as a people, society, and civilization.

Time and time again I keep insisting that taxes used as legalized plunder with the pretense of an intent to distribute to the poor only creates more bureaucracy and a larger middle class in that more bureaucracy has been created thus more bureaucrats accepting tax supported pay checks. This you ignore, while smugly patting yourself on the back and pretending to be an advocate for the poor. You are an advocate for big government, this is true and obvious. Your pretense of advocacy for the poor rings hollow and false.

I think that the cost of being successful on the backs of others' hard work is that you have to pay more into the Public Trust than your lower employees do.

This is nothing more than Marxist dogma and offered up as reification. This is the product of your government loaned education, that the wealthy got so by living off of the backs of the poor. To even call such a claim educated would be a crime against academia if it weren't for the fact that academia has been gleefully and willingly paying its indoctrinators good money to spread that lie.

Your intellectual dishonesty speaks volumes to the very real problem with tax supported "education" programs.

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Originally posted by daskakik
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I've seen the bake more pies argument before and it sounds good but you can't make more plum pudding pies if there are a limited amount of plums (natural resources, less demand, lack of investment capital) and you can't make them in the past. Last year X amount of pies were made. You can plan on making more pies this year but that doesn't change the amount of pies that were available during the previous year.

The bake more pies analogy comes directly from the absurd attempt to reduce economies down to a pie chart. Attempting to place plums in a scarcity paradigm only heightens the absurdity of pie chart economies. There is not plum scarcity problem. Plums, as fruit, are subject to seasons and geographical environmental factors that will dictate the rise and drops of price in regards to plums, but you will not find any credible study to support your supposition that there are a limited amount of plums to go around. Indeed, credible studies abound asserting just the opposite, and that farmers are subsidized to not grow plums, creating an artificial scarcity. Farmers are paid to waste a tremendous amount of food that could very easily feed the world several times over, but let's not talk about that, right? Let's instead pretend that plums are a precious commodity that are limited in their production.

Economies can not be fairly represented by pie charts. Economies are not linear, and any measurement of them requires more than just a silly pie chart to fully understand why prices are what they are, and what this might mean for future markets.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


For someone claiming to be a writer you have an awful propensity for using run-on sentences and nonsensical mixed metaphors and analogies.

I have no idea how you got this scarcity argument from my post. Do you only read a handful of sentences out of context when you skim posts? I plainly said that

Congressman Fleming makes over $11,000 a week. Is he going to suffer if that decreases to $10,500 a week? No, no he is not. . . $500 a week is extremely substantial to the poorest citizens.

Do you not understand how $500 can be a substantial amount of money for someone who makes minimum wage?

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


You know that pies are tools of simplification just like old christmas carols. I think I was clear in saying that plums represented things that are limited for whatever reason, including economic growth itself.

Artificial scarcity is a perfect example of this. They just won't let you make more pies.

And before you ask who they are, they are the same ones "paying farmers to waste a tremendous amount of food that could very easily feed the world several times over."

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

I have no idea how you got this scarcity argument from my post. Do you only read a handful of sentences out of context when you skim posts? I plainly said that

Your deflections and obfuscations are pathetic. It does not matter what you said about Congressman Fleming, this does not mean you are not attempting to hawk scarcity paradigms. You are. You are attempting to present economy as a pie, and that there are only a limited amount of slices to that economy, and that if one person gets more than everyone else of that economic pie this is unfair to the rest. This paradigm is not at all rooted in reality, and certainly has nothing at all to do with some lame Congressman.

Further, you deceitfully imply, and quite expressly so with this implication, that if Congressman Flemming were taxed $500 dollars more this would go directly into one poor persons pocket. You have nothing but lies and fictitious tales to tell, but none of it has anything to do with reality.

reply to post by daskakik


You know, attempting to simplify the complex for the simple minded never really works. Offer up a pie chart to simplify an economy, and before you know it the simple minded everywhere are screaming that the rich ate up all their pie.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Now, while we're on the topic of delusion and obfuscation, do you care to explain to me how you know more about my medical history than I do? What exactly do you think I mean when I say that public health care saved my life multiple times? Think hard for just one second. Could it possibly mean... that my family was dirt poor with awful credit, unable to pay any kind of medical bill, and my life-threatening illnesses were treated at no charge to us? Oh, no, it's just another myth that I have been indoctrinated with! After all, if I hadn't been to public school, I would have known the terrible truth; that the doctors did not actually save my life at no charge to me and my family, they actually made me sicker when they cured me!

What kind of world do you live in where debating style and rhetoric is more important than addressing the content of something?

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

Now, while we're on the topic of delusion and obfuscation, do you care to explain to me how you know more about my medical history than I do?

This is beyond rich. You hope to frame me as an obfuscator and delusional by yourself obfuscating. I never claimed to know a damn thing about your medical history, but certainly did make the salient point that since you refuse to be honest about your opponents arguments, why should anyone believe your claims of socialized medicine bringing you salvation several times over?

Oh, no, it's just another myth that I have been indoctrinated with!

You have most assuredly been indoctrinated to supplant the word lie or falsehood with myth, and use the word with careless and reckless abandon, and no concern at all for how this use of the word myth only serves to undermine the power of mythology and the truisms rendered by mythology. The mythic hero has been used for thousands of years to inspire humanity to become better people, but you have gleefully joined in with the rest of the dumbed down masses to dismiss this understanding of myth, and instead use its absurd basterdized version, and why? God only knows why, and I can say with out any fear of recourse or contradiction that you have no idea why you chose to use the word myth as a replacement for falsehood or lie, and you want to know why? You've been indoctrinated!

What kind of world do you live in where debating style and rhetoric is more important than addressing the content of something?

What kind of world do we live in that people who absolutely refuse to address the content of an argument turn around and pretend lamentation of their opponents committing their crimes? Is this your strategy? Deceive, lie, deceive some more, and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't stop lying. Just stand your ground and declare that this is your story and you're sticking to it...even if that story keeps changing from post to post, you're sticking to it.

Here is the content of my argument: You have no right to use government as a thug like group to plunder others on your behalf. It matters not that it is done, murder, rape, theft, and all other sorts of lascivious crimes are done too. The fact that they're done does not legitimize them. Your arguments for a perpetual income tax on people is an argument for oppression. This is the content of my argument. All your "Congressman Flemming" and "I was really sick" protestations are nothing more than obfuscation.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Well if last years GDP was 14.5 Trillion and the bottom 25% (around 50% of working adults) get about 1.3 trillion, what are they to think happened to the rest?

Originally posted by daskakik
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

Well if last years GDP was 14.5 Trillion and the bottom 25% (around 50% of working adults) get about 1.3 trillion, what are they to think happened to the rest?

Here you go with your pie charts again, this time revealing your obsession with bottoms. Simplifying economies is not going to give real answers or solutions to the complex problems that come with complex economies. Just as the O.P. thought, apparently you think you can post some numbers and this will serve as some sort of mystical ooga booga incantation to vilify your mystical beliefs.

The problems with just the U.S. economy alone run deep and go far, far back in time. Today, American's live in an Orwellian doublespeak world where the heavily regulated, incorporated, and licensed market place is commonly referred to - and quite mindlessly so - as a "free market". There is nothing at all free about the U.S. market. It is a closed market, and its entropy may or may not be by design, but that such a system would tend towards entropy was easily predicted.

For God's sake, we live in a world where even the poor have bank accounts! Banks can only possibly provide two services as a contributing factor to an economy. They are the storage and protection of wealth, and loan making. Poor people have no wealth to store, and most have no hopes of ever receiving a loan from a bank, and yet they have a bank account! Why? To cash their paychecks, of course! Banks have become infamously stubborn in their refusal to honor the checks of the employers who have issued paychecks, even if those employers bank accounts have more than enough money in them to cover the checks, the banks will lie, cajole, and do whatever else they have to do to convince poor people that the only way the can successfully get through "the system" is by paying banking fees to bankers for no good reason other than extortion.

None of that very real problem and arguably crime is reflected in the numbers you posted, is it? The banking issue, and the very, very, incredibly slight example I used in regards to banks, is just the tip of the iceberg. But you really do not want to get down to the root of problems, do you? Wouldn't you rather post numbers and declare victory, or pretend that plums are precious commodity and are scarce the world over in order to keep believing that plundering other people is an acceptable form of government?

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I didn't say anything about pies in my last post. Just pointed out that the amount payed to workers making less than 25,000 a year was less than 10% of the GDP.

You're wrong the crime you posted about is reflected in those numbers. What else would you call it?

I don't think I can get down to the root of the problem. Doesn't mean I have to believe people that say the rich are deserving of their riches because our capitalist system self regulates so that everyone gets what they work for. You said it yourself "there is nothing free about the US market".

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


So the only content of your argument is that because you have decided that I am dishonest in one way, I must be absolutely lying about absolutely everything? Answer this. Is it inconceivable that someone could have been cured by a doctor and that the treatment was covered by universal health care? ANSWER A QUESTION FOR ONCE INSTEAD OF CRITICISING THE LANGUAGE USED IN IT.

reply to post by daskakik

I don't think I can get down to the root of the problem. Doesn't mean I have to listen to people say the rich are deserving of their riches because our capitalist system self regulates so that everyone gets what they work for. You said it yourself "there is nothing free about the US market".

Yes, this is what I said, but you seem to miss the point. There is certainly no self regulation going on since it is not a free market, and the whole notion of "self regulation" is grossly misrepresented by the anti-free marketeers. No government regulation does not translate to no regulation, the difference becomes that the regulatory actions are done directly between buyer and seller. Sellers who, under this system, "self regulate" do so so as to not lose the business of their customers, who under a free market system where massive competition is the norm can very easily find a competitor to please them if that seller fails to do so. A business selling tainted food will not last any longer under a free market than it will under a heavily regulated market, and it is arguable that this business has a better chance of survival under a regulated market after selling tainted food, than under a free market.

The closing and regulation of markets only shuts the poor out of the market place, forcing them to accept employment instead of competing with businesses that can afford all the incorporation, licensing fees, and regulatory schemes that become far too cost prohibitive for a start up business with only a minimal amount to invest. I live in the City of Los Angeles, and this city has come to believe they have the lawful authority to prohibit street vending within its borders. Of course, the resourceful poor pay no attention to this bogus ordinance, and simply just play a game of cat and mouse with police officers who instead of upholding their oath of office, have become like the Pinkerton agents of old, acting as thugs for the well heeled and oiled, using threat of violence and a gang to keep the poor from starting up their own business outside of this dubiously regulated marketplace.

None of this is reflected in the numbers you posted, and certainly the fact that poor people who have no real need for banks are forced to do business with banks, and thereby pay the fees that come with doing business with a business that can offer them nothing more than frustration and more fees. It is quite delusional to think that the numbers you posted reflect this. They are only numbers, the problems that exist are far more than numbers.

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

So the only content of your argument is that because you have decided that I am dishonest in one way, I must be absolutely lying about absolutely everything? Answer this. Is it inconceivable that someone could have been cured by a doctor and that the treatment was covered by universal health care? ANSWER A QUESTION FOR ONCE INSTEAD OF CRITICISING THE LANGUAGE USED IN IT.

Once again you willfully lie, and once again I will state for the record that the content of my argument is that income taxation in perpetuity is bad governmental policy, and immoral. No person, rich or poor, should be taxed in perpetuity on the income they earn. This is my argument. This is what you steadfastly ignore, while posting your lies.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I didn't miss the point. I'm agreeing with you. The fact that half the work force gets 10% of the GDP and the other half get 90% is an indicator of how unfree the market is. If there was a real free market that gap would be smaller.

Sure they are just numbers but they back up what we are both saying so why do you keep trying to descredit them?

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


No. It is you who explicitly ignores my testimony and arguments. I acknowledge your argument. I disagree with it and have outlined my opposing view. I believe that progressive tax is just because I believe in civic duty over property rights. You have categorically stated that nothing that I say is true, that none of my evidence is valid, and that nothing I say to support my central argument can ever be taken as fact by anybody.

You repeatedly ignore direct questions posed to you. You repeatedly deny my arguments based entirely on rhetorical style and not on the substance of what I am saying. How do you justify this? You claim that I am spewing "propaganda!" With that one-word slur you try to delegitimise everything that I say as though my passion for it is evidence that I'm lying! This is not rational debate. This is not honest debate. This is sophistry, this is masturbatory semantic dispute.

Answer this question. Is it conceivable that someone with a life-threatening illness could be successfully cured by a doctor under a universal health care system?

This question is of vital importance. If you agree that it is possible then you acknowledge my central claim about the efficacy of the welfare state. My central claim is based on my personal experience of its success and my personal experience of my own willful contribution to the system that saved my life. If you disagree that it is possible then you are saying something that is plainly false to anybody with a lick of sense. I can see why someone as obsessed with "obfuscation" as you would refuse to answer this simple question! So answer it, one way or the other, answer it or I will call your credibility into account, because you sound much more like a spoiled middle-class brat to me than a poor person.

Originally posted by daskakik
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I didn't miss the point. I'm agreeing with you. The fact that half the work force gets 10% of the GDP and the other half get 90% is an indicator of how unfree the market is. If there was a real free market that gap would be smaller.

Sure they are just numbers but they back up what we are both saying so why do you keep trying to descredit them?

edit on 23-9-2011 by daskakik because: (no reason given)

I am not trying to discredit any numbers. I am insisting that these numbers do little to getting down to the root of the problem and how we fix that problem. The numbers are too often used to continue the class divides that do nothing at all to fixing the problem of economy and only serve as political fodder for ambitious politicians.

This battle is not between the rich and the poor, it is not between Marxists and Capitalists, it is a battle between the rightfully free and the suppressive tyrants who wish to end freedom. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, and not everyone has to be one, but we cannot keep growing and expanding as a nation of employees. Some of us are going to have to be willing to create businesses that actually provide goods and services that supply a demand, or at the very least, be prescient enough and have enough capital to create a supply side until a demand can be created.

Regulatory schemes are often sold as a necessary part of economy, as if without them buyers would not be protected from fraud, unscrupulousness, or any other factor that regulations purport to prevent and deal with in the face of them. If regulatory schemes did all their advocates claimed they did, terms such as iatrogenocide wouldn't even exist. Death by doctoring, in spite of the heavily regulated market place of health care, is the third leading cause of death for Americans. That is regulation at work, and that reflects just how well it works. It has also driven up the cost of health care to the point that it generates a national discussion, but the problem with this discussion is that health care now becomes equated with insurance schemes, and all are expected to join in this discussion as if we are actually having an intelligent discussion.

Get the government to back the hell out of the health care field, and let buyers decide if they want insurance schemes or not, and watch the prices go back down. Certainly certain technologies will cost money, but this is the deal with technologies, in their infancy they are expensive and available for only just a few. If they have a universal applicability, that price will naturally go down, provided that there is not some oppressive government keeping the prices inflated.

Do you understand how citing numbers from the GDP do nothing at all to illustrate the very real problem and nasty web we've weaved for ourselves?

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
I am not trying to discredit any numbers. I am insisting that these numbers do little to getting down to the root of the problem and how we fix that problem. The numbers are too often used to continue the class divides that do nothing at all to fixing the problem of economy and only serve as political fodder for ambitious politicians.

Fair enough. Nothing I have ever seen really gets to the root of the problem and fixes it.

To be honest the numbers don't cause the class divides. The reality those numbers are based on cause them.