Trump Brings Back Keynesian Economics

I agree, and would also add that it's immoral for any group of individuals to do so.

The state is a group of individuals. Each individual is responsible for the morality of his actions.

 

Nope. If you don't think that the $1000 becomes his property, try stealing it from him and see what happens. You will be arrested and charged with stealing his property.

I am well aware of the fact that income is taxable. I am giving my reason for why I think such taxation is immoral and should be discontinued.

 

We have a tripartite system of governance that works very well. (The Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers.)

An executive trying to usurp powers will be brought to task by the Supreme Court, if the case can be made there.

The same is true for the Executive veto power, which can be overturned by Congress (a two-thirds vote in both houses, which is difficult).

You are beating a dead-horse with your one-liners that are not substantiated by fact ...

 

It's the law. Period.

There are a great many aspects of this country that are truly "immoral".

The greatest of them is an upper-income taxation at a flat-rate of 30% (actually much lower between 15 and 20%), that results in the Gross Disparity of upper-income that afflicts America today, as shown here:

 

He thinks possession equals ownership(in which case there's no such thing as theft).

He thinks any act is right if done by a government(in which case there's no such thing as morality).

When someone considers all injunctions commanded by a Supreme Authority as morally just and binding on all other than that Supreme Authority which, itself, cannot be bound by moral obligations or prohibitions because it is the source of The Good, you know you're dealing with religious conviction.

We can't expect much in the way of reason from religious zealots when defending their faith based convictions, which is why we so often see them affirming that might makes right and telling you to get out if you don't like it.

 

Slavery was the law at one point also. Laws can change when people realize that they're immoral.

I agree that taking people's property is immoral, especially when the amount of property taken represents a full 30% of his income for that year.

 

It's the law, period. If you don't like it, get out.

 

As with Longshot, you both believe that Income should not be taxable.

You are deluding yourselves in thinking that is your "property". It isn't until you pay taxes on it, and the taxes are necessary for a set of Government Services.

Those government services are shown here in terms of the Discretionary Budget Pie:


So, where do we start cutting? How about the DoD?

Whaddaya think ... ?

 

Actually when you get paid, the money paid to you does actually become your property. If you doubt this, try robbing someone who has just received their pay. You will go to jail for stealing their property.

I think the concept you are trying to wrap your head around is that, while income does become the property of the receiver, the fact that income was received results in a corresponding liability to pay taxes for that tax year. However, having a liability doesn't mean that one doesn't actually own one's property.

 

Silly nonsense.

How many times must you be told that the law states that income is taxable, and as such is not "yours" until taxes are paid. Just as much as the sales-tax diminishes your "property" (called a bank-account).

Nope, it's just the law, and has been the law since 1913. Let's learn to live with it because the total array of taxation is, in fact, like this:

 

I am "out", so take a pill and read on.

Yours is not exactly the most exalting advice I have seen related to the "democracy" in which we live. The American people have just shafted themselves because they don't understand how manipulative the Replicants are as a party.

And the infographic I posted above explains greatly why they are manipulative. Because the unfair low-taxation of upper-incomes is the real and only reason. And, what is the consequence?

We have created EXACTLY the kind of monarchic regime that we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of in 1776.

Which means, I figure, we need another one ...

 

Obama has been denied by the courts...

 

Herein lies your error:

The state exists to administer well-ordered relations (rule of law) between self-interested individuals within the state; responsibilty for 'morality' is shared by both the individual and the state, as shown in the opening gambit of the US Constitution:

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.

Note: a more perfect union.

Thatcher's proposition - that there exists only individuals - is false.

 

Rule of law - established out of necessity to enable well-ordered relations between self-interested individuals - recognises the necessity, ie, morality of taxation.

[I forsee a day when states' public sectors will be authorised to print the funds required for ensuring the common well-fare, existing alongside private sector activity which would no longer have to be taxed. A true win-win situation. But a well-functioning international system will need to be in place before that can eventuate.

Keynes was well along the way to describing such a system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. That his ideas were rejected, out of US self-interest -ofcourse-is beside the point. Effective administatration of international rule of law - far from present reality, but nevertheless achievable - changes everything].

 

I'm not sure how you have determined my support for that proposition.

I most definitely do not agree that taxation is immoral, and neither do most people, as the old adage shows: two certainties in life - death and taxation.

In fact many people - out of a moral position - would prefer to pay more tax, putting the lie to Longshot's theories.

 

Do you mean "comprehension"? Your dismal attempt at ad hominem is noted.

Robin Hood was likely not terribly real, but a conglomeration of myths about outlaws at the time. Just as the Sheriff of Nottingham under John does not at all match the sheriff of the times. So he stole from the rich, who, at the time, were granted fuedal rights by the monarch. In other words, they were beneficiaries of the state.

Not all those who are rich today are of that status because they engage the state in crony capitalist schemes or work directly for the state. To think they are all the same is your own bias. I know many very wealthy people who have nothing to do with government. They create products and services that people want.

So, what you want is more politicians.

Sure. When is it objectively moral to attack the state?

 

You realize that Obamacare is hardly the first set of regulations affecting healthcare? US healthcare has been progressively more regulated since the end of WWII. "Wildly out of control" costs is subjective, and your own particular bias. The US is the wealthiest nation on Earth. Is it immoral for people to want to spend more on their care? Or must the be subject to your moral agenda and ruled over by the ambivalent parasitical bureaucrats and politicians who shove your morals down their throats on your behalf?

I already posted an infographic. Please share yours, and then give me an objective definition of "abnormally higher."

What is the objectively morally appropriate wage below which it is criminal for a laborer to accept? Or is it that the offer of a wage is criminal and the laborer a dumb, helpless victim who needs you and your violent proxies to come to the rescue?

 

You are refractive of the truth as shown in the statistical data, resulting for international studies.

One of which, and a key study from the OECD, you can read here: Why is Health Care So Expensive in the US? (see infographic), excerpt:

And, here from the Atlantic: Why Is American Health Care So Ridiculously Expensive?, excerpt:

And, here (a PDF): Health at a Glance 2015 How does the United States compare?

You may be kidding yourself, but nobody else ...

 

No, I believe that in any nation on earth, if its Defense is a national burden that must be shared equitably by all, then so is the National HealthCare System as well as Secondary & Tertiary Education*.

Which (along with the statistical data sustaining the contention) I keep repeating and repeating and repeating - ad nauseam.

Until the Effing Truth Sinks In to the knotheads on this forum who believe the opposite ... !

*Amongst a list of a great many others, but I refrain from going overboard in this comment.

 

That is a curious cause and effect, and you accuse me of all sorts of things. That's just about the nuttiest correlation I've heard yet. Trump Derangement Syndrome is as bad for you as Obama Derangement Syndrome was on the right.

What gives you the idiotic idea that I supported or voted for Trump? If you think that my opposition to your particular views means that I am in the Trump camp, then you are right, stupid is as stupid does. Stupid people think there are only two ways to think, or I should say, not think just parrot as you seem to do.

 

"For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed between all the citizens, according to their ability to pay."

How does your proposed system match this declaration?

 

Your post shows that analogies will likely be seen through the prism of any particular bias, rendering them (the analogy) meaningless as a debating tool.

I'm confident I have demolished Longshot's original simplistic propostion that taxation is immoral (in my post # eighty-eight).

As well i have shown that assignment of morality, as it relates to possession, is complicated by issues of means (abilty to pay) compared with necessity (see post #74).

 

Bollocks to that notion.

The stats, which you have steadfastly refused to acknowledge, show that HealthCare costs are wildly above those of all other countries. And the reason is twofold:
*First, the other countries where HealthCare is nationalized "negotiate" the cost of all pharmaceuticals employed - which is why these companies just try to break-even in Europe before going off to the US to gouge the American sick.
*Secondly, total healthcare expenditures in Europe are covered by the National HealthCare Services, meaning doctor fees are also set by the NHS. Which is why doctors in France make only half what a practitioner in the US makes today - that is, $190K (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics - check it out!) And that is a damn fine salary for accessing a clientele that is 95% of the French population, but doctors are told where to open their practice to assure uniform national coverage.

 

Well put.

Note: "Promote the General Welfare", which can mean many things to many people. I happen to think it means free HealthCare and Free Primary/Secondary/Post-secondary Education. (

And there are likely a great many (of those who voted for Donald Dork), who would agree. But, you see, in the last days of run-up to the vote, a Replicant Attorney General threw a monkey-wrench into the campaign.

How nice for Donald Dork - totally unprogrammed, of course ...

 

You are right. The Pestilential Right on this forum are seeking to defend indefensible political reasoning - simply because it might destroy the status-quo of an Unfair America that benefits their party stalwarts.

One that they have built since Reckless Ronnie was allowed (under a Democrat Congress for two terms) to institute a flat-rate taxation of upper-incomes that provoked the swell of Income-up-into-Wealth.

One that the Rabid Right seeks mightily to defend. So, they can enjoy a luxurious lifestyle whilst 15% of American men, women and children (a state-population of California and Idaho combined) try to survive below the Poverty Threshold. And the argument for the super-rich is, "Because they deserve to be there! We earned it"

In two and a quarter centuries that we, the sheeple, have spent promoting "democracy", all we have to show is a return to a monarch-type hegemony on the National Wealth that will be (due to low inheritance taxes) sent down the lineage to those who never worked a day in their lives to earn it.

We have reinstituted a Monarchic Dynasty in a supposedly Democratic Nation.

What colossal stoopidity on the part of the American people (and an Electoral College)... !

*It does not please me in the least that the Electoral College is employed as a device to bend the "popular vote" into a "winner take all" for the presidency. This anti-democratic. The Electoral College should be perfectly proportional in representation. Better yet, it should be done away with, such that the electorate votes directly by means of a popular vote.