You probably didn’t read the linked article.
“The survey’s authors noted that charitable behavior is not correlated with wealth. Of the 20 countries that the World Bank ranks richest by gross domestic product, only five made it into the top 20 of the index.”
You previously said that we were less free because we are forced to pay taxes and America is more free because it doesn’t have to pay the same level of tax. Now you are saying that you cannot stop paying tax or you’ll go to jail. Clearly the two points don’t add up. So you’ve essentially confirmed my earlier point that Americans are in no way freer than we are. Indeed as I have stated I do not pay tax, and yet can still partake of the benefits of those that do, I’d say I [read that word carefully] am more free than you. Thus your earlier objection is erroneous.
But, you are just as capable of changing the regime you have, americans just choose not to, because they prefer to keep their money for other things. That’s your choice. But to argue our choice is inferior simply because it is not your choice is also inaccurate. It is different, but we freely chose it as much as you freely chose something else. Difference does not have to be measured on a scale of better or worse to be considered valid, or respected.
Thank you for clarifying that, I obviously missed that bit when I read it, and thank you for making the assumption that I didn’t read it, that was very generous of you. 
You’re inventing things. I never said that.
Only if you think that mooching off people makes you “free”.
My point was, that you are quite happy to buy in to a system that essentially does in microcosm what our system does, yet you object to our system and call it wrong. If you are happy to put your money into insurance, why do you not acknowledge that we are happy to put our money into our insurance?
Because it is forced vs voluntary. You don’t seem to understand the difference. Maybe it’s the European thing.
That, was insulting. I am not ‘mooching’, I am severely disabled. Are you going to refuse food to me because I cannot pay? There was one country in recent European history which starved its disabled citizens to death. The americans went to war with them over it. So clearly your fellow citizens don’t agree with you any more than mine do. I am forever grateful that they have believed in human rights sufficiently to vote and decree that society should not leave any man to go hungry.
And perhaps you’d like to go back and reread your own words.
*edited for grammatical error
If you were severely disabled in the US, you’d get your Medicaid - “free” medical insurance. And it may not be your fault, and you may not have another alternative but “mooch” is defined as:
“to live by relying on someone else’s generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost or responsibility”
Please point out exactly in which post you think I “said that we were less free because we are forced to pay taxes and America is more free because it doesn’t have to pay the same level of tax”. I’m curious.
Again you used the ‘forced vs voluntary’ argument, when we have said repeatedly that we choose. To choose between multiple options -or to abstain from them all, or even making a decision- is the very definition of voluntary. It’s called democracy. I an sure you are familiar with the term.
Medicaid does not cover every part of treatment from infliction to full recovery. Indeed until recently, neither did most American insurance companies. And it certainly doesn’t afford its users the same quality of treatment as those who can pay the highest possible level of insurance. As I said before, I get the same treatment as Prince Philip; from initial diagnoses through to complete recovery and after-care, and continued monitoring.
I do get tired of how issues like this are always framed as being about me-me-me and what should be done with my 1 individual’s-worth of tax dollars.
The social safety net operates on a macro scale. If we’re going to guarantee to hundreds of millions of people that the better part of their medical bills will be paid for throughout their retirement, we’re going to need to guarantee a large and steady steam of funding. Only government can do that.
But no one other than the government is doing that, and it is the government that very often defines the ethics and enforces them as laws. It is unethical to withhold your share of the funding for the agreed-upon effort of do-gooding. So unethical that you will be subject to legal penalties if you try to weasel out of it.
It’s worth pointing out that, apart from Social Security and Medicare, AFAIK, all other government spending items are all mixed together under federal, state, and local property tax revenue streams. It’s hard to imagine someone calculating just how much of their taxes go to food stamps and welfare payments and intending to give exactly that amount to charity if only they could get away with withholding it.
It’s much easier just to pretend that all your money is going to support the troops.
It’s that “we” thing. “We” choose to force “me” to pay when I don’t want to. That’s “forced”. Again, the inability to understand this concept seems to be a European thing.
Can you abstain from paying taxes?
If you agreed upon it, going back on that agreement is, indeed, unethical. If you didn’t agree upon it to begin with, it is supremely ethical.
It’s that we thing again. Yes it is, isn’t it. It’s a sense of social responsibility and community which believes that everyone in society counts, as opposed to ‘I’ and it all being about ‘me’.
We are going round in circles, you are repeatedly asking the same questions myself and others have already answered. For that reason I am “abstaining” from further comment for now. thank you.
I wasn’t thinking of the institutions that did the polling.
You might as well. It’s quite evident that the OP is unable to grok the concept of a solidary community where society provides more than food stamps and basic life-saving healthcare to those members who are unable to work for a living. However, thumping his chest about a poll claiming that according to one chosen metric, Americans are “the most generous people in the world” is quite tasteful. I guess it’s an American thing.
You see, someone wanting to feel holy and good by taking a small fraction of his/her disposable income and giving to charity is more ethical than a society that agrees on a system where everybody who has the means contributes a fraction of their income to supporting the invalid, sick or poor. Cite. And people relying on the social safety net are “mooching” rather than “needing” or “being provided to live a decent life even if they aren’t able to work for it”. I guess that, too, is an American thing.
See, this is hilarious. I guess it’s one of those “cognitive dissonance” things. You are convinced about something that just didn’t happen. Can you point to me “thumping my chest” about this poll (and I mean apart from posting the article about it, without comment, then commenting that the four of the top five are English-speaking)?
Make that “contributes” to be a more truthful “is forced to contribute” and your sentence would be correct.
Using emotively charged words, adhering to a disputed definition as if it was fact, and repeatedly arguing over the same solitary [and already refuted by not one but several contributors to the debate] semantic issue, has completely derailed the progress of this discussion. And deprived us of seeing where it might have led to or what conclusions could have been drawn if it had been able to continue sensibly. Sad. But nevertheless, thank you to Terr for having shared the link to begin with.
By engaging in economic activity in a particular jurisdiction, you implicitly agree to abide by the ethical guidelines concerning what portion of your income must be turned over to the government for use for the common good. You don’t get to pick and choose which ethics you want to follow based on what benefits yourself the most.
It wasn’t that long ago when it was considered unethical to avoid the military draft. Then again, a person could get himself classified as a “conscientious objector”. The bar was set pretty high, though, but we can toss out some suggestions for what the requirements should be for gaining conscientious objector status when it comes to paying your taxes.
And who, pray tell, is forcing you to stay in this country?