Composite . . . rose . . . are we talking about Frankenstein’s Monster? 
I’m sure all the rational folk on these forums already know this.
Wow, you’re just about 180 degrees off from me.
I’m pretty liberal on social issues. Gay people want to marry? No skin off my nose- have at it! Abortion? Between them and their god, and ultimately none of my business. Ten Commandments at public buildings? Fine! We should also put some of the Torah there, some of the Koran and any other religious text/symbols you may think of. Atheist? No problem- just don’t be a dick and tell me I’m stupid for believing in a god.
But… I think that the Federal government should be more or less limited to the powers delineated in the Constitution. The “necessary and proper” and interstate commerce clauses have been horribly misinterpreted in order to give the Feds more power than they ought to have. The vast majority of legislation and decision making should be in the hands of the states.
I also don’t believe that conditions like poverty, disease, and stupidity will ever go away, and that they are probably best viewed as something to be managed instead of eradicated. It sucks to be someone living in the ghetto and learning the wrong things, but it’s not the responsibility of the government to remedy that; that sort of change has to come from within the families and communities affected, and there are plenty of historical examples to show that it can be done.
Taxation ought to be progressive, but EVERYONE ought to have to pay in- it should be a burden on everyone, relative to what they have, but nobody should be untaxed. That promotes a disengagement from the political process, and promotes “bread and circuses” type thinking, which is to me, a clear and present threat to our democracy.
I never understood the appeal of this thinking. Every state I’ve lived (with one possible exception) has been far less competent than the federal government and far less empirically rigorous with respect to policy. Part of the reason is that coverage of state and local issues is typically far more superficial than national ones.
Elderly poverty dropped following the introduction of social security. Disease crashed following the introduction of public health measures of the 1800s. Public education has advanced literacy. If you want to live in a world without an intrusive federal government, rural India is a good place to start.
More generally, your arguments have a strong ideological slant and a weak empirical grounding. They sound plausible on their face: in other words, they jive with part of the conventional wisdom of the day.
The poor pay sales tax and import tax. The working poor pay social security and medicare tax. The Wall Street Journal regularly and misleading publishes tables showing the income tax alone. But when all taxes are taken into account, the US’s system is only weakly progressive. At the high ends, it even turns regressive.
Tax expert Joel Slemrod contrasts the effects of considering income tax vs all taxes for 1985 data: Progressive Taxes - Econlib
Kevin Drum beats his head on the wall having to repeat this elementary point a bizillion times, using 2004 data: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_10/012212.php
Click the link to get the tables. Actually by some measures, we have a regressive system. Ignore employer paid social security and corporate taxes, since we really don’t know how that burden breaks down between income groups (though some assume that they hit the richer harder, admittedly.) Here are the breakouts, by income quaritile:
Bottom 20% 18%
Next 20% 14%
Middle 20% 16%
Next 20% 17%
Top 20% 19%
So taxes are regressive early on, then turn progressive. Within the top quartile they are regressive: the top 400 taxpayers shell out a lower share of their income than the remainder earning $75,000+. Click the links!
Quintile. 
It can’t be sextile? I’d be a lot more interested.
The thinking isn’t that the states make “more empirically rigorous” policy, it’s that they make it for THEMSELVES. I fail to see why we should have a one-size-fits-all policy for a nation of over 300 million people, when we have 50 subdivisions already in place to make localized decisions for them. In addition, the state legislator districts are a LOT smaller and a lot more responsive, especially in smaller states. Even in larger ones like Texas, the state House districts are 1/3 the size of the Federal House districts.
All I was saying is that the Federal tax system should be progressive. The taxes of the states shouldn’t be taken into account, because they’re not really germane to the situation of Federal taxes, precisely because there are 50 of them. This is one of those one-size-fits all things I was talking about above.
Income tax ought to be progressive, even strongly so, but there shouldn’t be a segment that doesn’t pay.
There’s a difference between saying that something should be managed, and saying that something should be eliminated, or that thinking that managing something means doing nothing about it. I’m saying we should use the Pareto principle , but it seems like in a lot of cases, we’ve resolved the 20% that causes 80% of the problems, and are going after that remaining 20% much to our detriment overall.
I hear that Congressman Weiner is in the top sextile of twitter users.
I don’t think tastes for clean air vary that much by state. They do vary a little. But in practice leaving such matters to the states results in a race to the bottom. You get rivers catching on fire, filthy air, putrid food and patent medicine.
Wha? Sure, there’s scope for dividing the job among the levels of government. But when talking about a tax burden, you want to add all taxes. You would do this even if you had a libertine Federal government.
There isn’t – at least for all taxes. Some taxes aren’t paid by all members though. I don’t pay a tax on Tequila, because I don’t drink Tequila. Money if fungible though, so I do pay taxes on my expenditures and income.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. The federal government is basically a large pension plan that happens to have an army. The bulk of spending goes for the elderly and the military. The rest is barely more than a side show, in terms of spending.
You obviously have too many brain cells functioning too well.
Maybe you need to do more drugs.
Try reading The Economist magazine. It is smarter than most Republicans too but it is hard to find something that dumb but still readable.
psik
The Economist might be a little too “business-y” for most SDMB people to understand.
I don’t think so. I don’t much anymore, but I used to read The Economist regularly. Most of the news stories were just news stories, and there was plenty of non-business news inside, too. One thing I really appreciated was the non-US centric reporting and the articles on Europe and Asia that you don’t see much in American publications. That’s not so much a conservative or liberal thing, but is another reason to pick up The Economist if you can.
I would never subscribe since it’s outrageously expensive, but you can find it in most libraries. And then there’s always the Borders library…
I’m not disagreeing, but I thought I would lay out the costs. A year’s sub is about $2.50 per issue. Two years works out to $2.19 per. This news junkie opts for the 3 year deal – $2.13/issue. Amazon.com: The Economist : Magazine Subscriptions
Website: http://www.economist.com/
I was actually thinking of everyone else on the SDMB besides you and a few others. For a board porporting to “fight ignorance”, a lot of people seem to have this attitude that money is the root of all evil and therefore anything or anyone that makes a lot of money is inherently immoral.
Wealth carries with it an abundance of unearned privileges.
There is nothing immoral about a progressive tax system.
Crane
So what you’re saying is that if someone comes from the middle class, saves his money, becomes an entrepreneur, and actually is wildly successful, that a lot of what he has as a result of his business venture being successful is unearned?
You also then imply with your second comment that he ought to be leveled out with the rest of everyone, because it’s “unearned”… sort of an economic “Harrison Bergeron” situation, if you will.
I can’t get behind that. What reasons would people have to risk their capital, time and resources, if not to get rich?
What you’re saying seems akin to saying that we ought to castrate rock stars, because the sex they get is “unearned.” I got news for ya… people go into business to make money and get rich, and a lot of people go into rock and roll to get laid. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the big jackpot, etc… Very few people go into business for themselves to make a moderate amount of money and pay a shitload of taxes.
I think progressive taxation schemes are a good thing, if only because the rich can support a higher tax burden than the poor. Where I draw the line is with the concept that they should be taxed more because they’re rich and they didn’t earn it, and therefore should have it taken away.
That attitude is simply institutionalizing sour grapes to me.
Disliking something doesn’t mean you don’t understand it. I hate Windows, but it doesn’t affect my ability to operate it and software written for it.
Unless you mean Dopers wouldn’t like The Economist because they’ll disagree with its articles?
IMHO, the Christian Science Monitor is by far the most neutrally written US news source, and like The Economist its publishers actually own a globe.
All humans alive today have a single common female ancestor and a single common male ancestor.
Incorrect. We have a single common female ancester through our maternal line and a single common male ancestor through our paternal line. We have many male ancestors through our maternal line and many female ancestors through our paternal line.
Furthermore, mtDNA Eve and Y-chromosome Adam lived 10s of thousands of years apart.
Let’s say that what he leaves his son is unearned – by his son.