The Economist - "Inequality or middle incomes: which matters more?"

I am talking a libertarian govt not a Somalia govt. Do you understand the difference??

 

no opposed to majority rule with guns, when it is not necessary, in a free county. Do you understand that in a Republican govt the minority has rights???

 

try collecting taxes without guns. Amazing you didn't see that coming. Wonder what else you don't see coming?

 

and if they are more or less free to all who need them soon enough all will need them!

 

only if they are services that reasonable people wish not to pay for but are forced to at liberal gunpoint.

 

Here's the thing... Republican with an "R" is the Republican party, with a "r" it's a form of government.

Why?

Because, in a Republican government the rights of the minority are invariably crushed.

Please inform me of any government function whatsoever that, at the end of the day, does not use a "threat" to achieve the collective end.

 

You mean like the "liberals" running the White House, the Congress, most governors, and most state legislatures?

Ho does Brownback collect taxes in Kansas?

 

The words of the U.S. Constitution, like any written document, can be interpreted quite differently if one does not take into account the meaning of the words at the time they were written.
Much change in how our government is run today has come about as a result of the application of eisegisis to the text.

The word 'welfare' occurs but twice in our Constitution, once in the preamble and again in Section 8 of Article 1.

Preamble:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Article 1, Section 8:
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

Webster's 1828 dictionary:
WELFARE
n. [well and fare, a good faring; G.]
1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.
2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity.

The intent of the Constitution was NOT to create a Unitary Sovereign State but only to unite the individual States primarily for defensive purposes and to ensure fair treatment between the individual States.

Note that Article 1, Section 8, which refers to the means by which the Congress is given the power to collect revenue by which the Federal government is funded, employs the word 'provide' with application to the 'general welfare' of 'the United States' not the people.

The progressive movement, which began in the late 19th century, seems to have exacerbated the problems they set out to eliminate and Wilson in 1913 laid the groundwork allowing Roosevelt and Johnson to not let a crisis go to waste further increasing the powers of our Centralized Federal government over both the States and the people.

Politics has become the new religion.

 

You're kidding, right?

1) Tacit consent is a myth.
2) Natural rights are not inherited.

Government is the most evil and insidious creation that man has ever devised. It has unjustly killed more people than anything that man has created. It has raped, pillage, enslaved and murdered. It is invariably created for the "common good" but invariably ends as corrupt and working for a few elite in power. It can not be kept in check and those that think it can are fools.

This "great experiment" has failed. Clinton, Trump, Obama...Whitehouse, The Hill or the black robed ring wraiths that pass judgement on us all through via usurped power never intended for them...it matters not. All evil, terrible people.

 

You said: "Yet taxes harm everyone who has to pay them. If it didn't, they wouldn't need to be forced. They would gladly volunteer."

You implied that people are perfectly rational. You implied people always has all of the information they need to make decisions that are good for them. You implied that people never put their own short-term best interests over their long-term best interests. Then you finished it off with a little question begging.

I simply turned around your statement to show you how silly it is.

If something is bad, there's no reason to force people not to do it, because if it's bad they would gladly volunteer not to do it.

The reality is, everyone acts in their own self-interest.

The problem with your statement is that a person can agree that taxes are good when other people pay them but find some rational that they should not have to pay them. Anyone who can't see the positives in a little self-sacrifice for the greater good is selfish. Course, some people think that's a virtue.

 

You said no stealing was going on. I asked then why do they use guns. you then change the subject? care to answer the question?

 

Government evil? If this is so it leaves liberals totally and completely at a loss because they lack the IQ to understand anything other than wonderful magical government can make all good things happen

 

Conservatives really are no different. Both political parties in America are authoritarian.

 

Totally mistaken of course because conservatives are for limited government and thus antiauthoritarian

 

The first time Republicans seriously proposes a bill to withdraw all military from foriegn lands and eliminates the vast amounts of military spending I may believe conservatives might be for so-called "limited government". "Limited government is just a catch phrase that Republicans use to dupe their followers. They use it to justify waging unneeded wars like Iraq.

 

More one-liner sarcasm. Most of us Left-wing Knotheads actually like to work for a living! We just don't like getting ripped-off for the effort we make.

This is a debate-forum. You may be looking for a Message Board to spill your bile ... ?

 

More one-liner sarcasm.

Your definition above exists nowhere on this planet - but the country that comes closest is the US of A. Which also has the highest level of Income Disparity of any developed nation on Earth. (A value roughly equivalent to that of China.)

The Gini Index demonstrating Income Disparity internationally:


Note how all "modern" democracies have lower Gini Indexes than "Uncle Sam" ...

 

"if you want to pick and choose which laws you want to obey" your words, not mine

I'm not saying that they are 100% libertarian. No country currently is. I'm saying that they are the MOST libertarian. They have the most limited government, most secure property rights, greatest individual liberty, and freest markets.

 

I'm just pointing out the economic reality that people have preferences, and want to use their scarce means to achieve their preferences. If you take their scarce means to provide something else, then you are necessarily making them worse off than if they had been able to purchase what they actually wanted instead.

 

I was using the State of World Liberty Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_World_Liberty_Index). The US ranks 19th on that scale. Pretty libertarian, to be sure, but not as libertarian as New Zealand, Switzerland, and Canada.

 

Let's try this like this.

Do you think it's possible a person can claim to desire something, but not understand the best way to actualize that desire?

So in light of that desire, there are objectively best ways to achieve it. There may be more than one way, but the point is, some ways are better than others.

Now, do you think that the average person is going to have the knowledge it takes to understand the 10's, perhaps 100's of thousands of decisions that need to be made in society to achieve the desires the average person claims to want?

Thus, it's possible that a person can claim to want something but because they don't fully understand it, can fail to actualize what they say they want and never even realize it. In some cases, people can be convinced to support ideas that are in direct contravention of desires they claim to want.

So then it's possible that keeping your scarce means might make you believe you are better off when in reality, based on the desires of the average person, they might, in fact, be worse off.

However, it appears to me that you believe that people should either become experts at literally everything or that you value people's subjective feeling of "better off", rather than the objective reality that they are better off, even if they don't understand it.

You seem to be saying that what's most important is how a person feels about their situation, not the objective reality of it.

 

yes liberals are destroying the principles of America (they spied for Stalin and HItler and gave Stalin the bomb while he was slowly killing 60 million- whoops) but still we are less statist than most countries, although we don't know how long that will be true.

 

When Ideology becomes theology.

Step back into the real world and out of your fantasyland.

 

if you disagree say where and tell us why if you are up to it. Thanks

 

Yeah. 5 EU members and 1 associate in the list. According to yours the EU is somewhat less than "libertarian."

Not to worry, you still have Somalia if you want to pick and choose which laws you want to obey.