Tax the Rich, Kill the Poor, and Everything In Between

Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:

The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight

Gonna
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight

~Dead Kennedy's~

Meddle With the Market at Your Own Peril:

Capitalism, since it was spawned in the Enlightenment, has achieved one success after another. Standards and quality of living, following millennia of near stagnation, have risen at an unprecedented rate over large parts of the globe. Poverty has been dramatically reduced and life expectancy has more than doubled. The rise in material well-being – a tenfold increase in global real per capita income over two centuries – has enabled the earth to support a sixfold increase in population.

~Alan Greenspan~

Self Reliance

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

The Affluent Society

In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.

~John Kenneth Gailbraith~

Minority Report

A society made up of the individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic.

~H.L. Mencken~

Dissertations and Discussions

When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.

~John Stuart Mill~

Wealth of Nations

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

~Adam Smith~

We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.

~Woody Allen~

The Law

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

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The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.

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No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).

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But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

~Frederic Bastiat~

Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord with the law.

~Napoleon Bonaparte~

Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk.

~Bertolt Brecht~

The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.

~Calvin Coolidge~

There ain't no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.

~Davy Crockett~

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection, it is plunder.

~Benjamin Disraeli~

No Such Thing As Society

They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.

~Margaret Thatcher~

Walden

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellows

~Henry David Thoreau~

Walden Two

But don't be misled, the control always rests in the last analysis in the hands of society.

~B.F. Skinner~

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.

~Frederick Douglas~

Essays: Civil and Moral; Of Friendship

For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast.

~Francis Bacon~

Th e Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

~Will Durant~

Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co.

Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundations of the government. If the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an Act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness.

~Justice Stephen J. Field~

Great thread!

S&F

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, "No capitation or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration..."

... and that's all I have to say about that.


David Grouchy

reply to post by davidgrouchy

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, "No capitation or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration..."

... and that's all I have to say about that.

Sadly, when it comes to the so called "Personal Income Tax" so much more needs to be said:

Sixteenth Amendment

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co.

But it clearly results that the proposition and the contentions [240 U.S. 1, 12] under it, if acceded to, would cause one provision of the Constitution to destroy another; that is, they would result in bringing the provisions of the Amendment exempting a direct tax from apportionment into irreconcilable conflict with the general requirement that all direct taxes be apportioned. Moreover, the tax authorized by the Amendment, being direct, would not come under the rule of uniformity applicable under the Constitution to other than direct taxes, and thus it would come to pass that the result of the Amendment would be to authorize a particular direct tax not subject either to apportionment or to the rule of geographical uniformity, thus giving power to impose a different tax in one state or states than was levied in another state or states. This result, instead of simplifying the situation and making clear the limitations on the taxing power, which obviously the Amendment must have been intended to accomplish, would create radical and destructive changes in our constitutional system and multiply confusion.

Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.

But, aside from the obvious error of the proposition, intrinsically considered, it manifestly disregards the fact that by the previous ruling it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged

The so called "Personal Income Tax" is not a direct tax on income, but rather an indirect tax upon some specified taxed activity and income is merely used to gauge how much is owed...that is, when it is being properly enforced....

See the clues in my signature to find my opinion on the matter.

Truth is the only real currency.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I honestly have to say that is one of the best groups of quotes I've read in a while.

To see what the people have allowed to be accomplished, through no fault but their own apathy, seems almost well-deserved, in that the people in power take advantage of the weak or poor.
Maybe we have been mis-directed, distracted, brainwashed, or just out right lied to.
But I see a nation, built on a solid pathway to success, who cares not about how it was founded and the principals in which it should of fought so hard to protect, being lead down a path to serfdom.
Modern serfdom.


So, in my humble opinion, over decades of self-indulgence and a passionate chase of the ever elusive "Dream", we have completely avoided or ignored everything that the people we "elect" are hiding behind closed doors and through layers of complex language, passing through Congress. The very things our founding fathers warned us against, yet most people completely avoid this history, as if it's unimportant.
But our parents told us the oven is hot, don't touch it.
We touch it anyways.


All these things that continually layer away our individual rights, like peeling an onion.
And its burning my eyes.





Great thread.

Great collection of quotes.
Particularly,

Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk. ~Bertolt Brecht~

HOPE for CHANGE but we should SACRIFICE while acknowledging the Constitution is OUTDATED and blah blah blah.
Poly Ticks indeed.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Good thread - Bad plan.

I don't think your sole survivors...the rich, are going to be all that happy about you taxing them.

If they are all that's left of society, why bother?

They can pay for government (if they so choose) themselves.

But they can't fix the roads, grow or serve your food or fly the planes.

You need your poor - or you run out of slaves to do the grunt work.

what a cool thread.

~Napoleon Bonaparte~

Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk.

I like this quote so much. Thanks


'Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and they are beginning to know it.' -Oscar Wilde