WOW! You guys both have to know that this is B.S.

What about welfare? Is this also a price I pay for civilized society and protection? The government holds a gun to my head, steals my money, and then gives it to someone else.

Also, the government actually makes the people less safe - particularly ours. All our government does is station troops in 700 bases all over the world and just flat out (*)(*)(*)(*) everyone off in the process, provoking world-wide american hatred. Why do you think things like 9/11 happen? They hate us. And its the government making us less safe.

Governments are backed by violence, so the less government you have, the more "civilized" the society becomes.

It would be better to know what you are talking about. Just saying...

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A minimum wage is not a living wage. If you want wages you can live on then, sorry to break the bad news, you need to get an education or a skill. However, if we switched to a flat tax you could argue that cost of living would go down because of a simplified (thus easy to comply with) tax system. Still, doesn't it make you wonder why the government needs so much of your hard earned money?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/802372/posts

"Suppose that every day 10 men go to a restaurant for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If it was paid the way we pay our taxes, the first four men would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59."

The 10 men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." Now dinner for the 10 only costs $80. The first four are unaffected. They still eat for free. Can you figure out how to divvy up the $20 savings among the remaining six so that everyone gets his fair share? The men realize that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33, but if they subtract that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal.

The restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same percentage, being sure to give each a break, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so now the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of $59.

Outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," complained the sixth man, pointing to the tenth, "and he got $7!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!"

"That's true," shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor."

Then, the nine men surrounded the tenth man (the richest one, paying the most) and beat him up. The next night the richest man didn't show up for dinner, so now the nine men sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They were $52 short!

"And that, boys, girls and college instructors, is how America's tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table any more. There are lots of good restaurants in Switzerland and the Caribbean."

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"...I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no
pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism
can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy."

Abraham Lincoln