You going to ask everyone who wasn’t in the military to pay more as well? How about Social Security, Medicare (both of which are even larger chunks of the budget) or the various other social type programs in the budget? If you use them you should pay more, or if you don’t use them you should pay more?
That’s not a bad idea. Veterans such as myself get a slight break on property taxes here in Wyoming- that should be extended to all taxes. I sometimes think college-educated veterans should be the only people allowed to vote, but that’s an issue for another thread.
Social security and medicare are more like insurance. We should pay for them even though we might never use them.
The slur “redistribution of wealth” has nothing to do with the legitimate operation of the government. (meaning applying the law equally to raise revenues, and using those for authorized functions of government). It means the democratic process of the many, saying hey dude, let’s raise the tax rate for those few people more than what we pay, and give that stolen loot to someone else. So, in post 24 when he said “Tax is inherently redistributative”, I was arguing that point. Taxing, in and of itself isn’t redistributive as the phrase is used, to include using the funds for authorized uses. Of course when it goes out of the treasury, it goes out to trade for other things and services, but unless you’re talking about government projects with no purpose, this isn’t what is meant by the phrase.
Reminds me of the sign “They [the right wing] only call it class warfare when we fight back.”
Class warfare is when people pit their own economic interests against everyone else’s. It’s often actually real, and not just an empty slogan.
Uh, yeah.
Anyone making the “the poor shouldn’t complain, they have it better than cavemen argument” should think about life 200 years from now. We’ll live to 300, have perfect eyesight, all have 12 inch schlongs (even women - equality!) have houses that clean themselves, have intelligent digital assistants who can answer any question, and all have perfectly prepared food. So our rich should feel miserable, being poor relative to 200 years from now.
So you are right, it is all about relative wealth, and all about reality, not fantasy. I did not feel at all underprivileged from not having YouTube in 1959.
I already have at least one of these.
Siri’s pretty nifty, isn’t it ? 
Don’t have a smartphone at all.
My food is horrible too and my house is a mess.
Yes, it will, if the screaming leads to something more than just screaming.
The good money is in work done by educated people, while manufacturing has been exported to cheaper nations. Screaming about class warfare and class separation won’t help a high school graduate make more money, and it won’t bring down the wealth level of the Silicon Valley and Wall Street millionaires and billionaires.
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Why do people want to bring down other people’s wealth levels? I would submit that if people really cared, their time and energy would be better spent trying to bring poor people’s wealth level UP. But about all I see here is envy and schemes to screw other people out of what is theirs.
And the GOOD money is having your money work for you while you’re on the golf course…Just an opinion.
Today I thought about the US Presidents of the last 100 years who were college-educated veterans. There were the Bushes, Carter, Kennedy, Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt. They are an extremely mixed bag including the best and worst. It made me think the idea of restricting voting to college-educated veterans is not good at all.
Are you being wilfully dense or something ? I’m running out of ways to tell you, man. That is only one (1) (uno) usage of the phrase and one (pretty damn biased) definition of the concept. It’s not its only usage, or the “one proper” usage of the phrase either. Wiki it or something, I dunno.
It’s like you’re insisting that no, blue means royal blue, and when people say the sky is blue they are making a mistake because the sky is not royal blue.
Totally wrong. I can choose not to pay taxes very simply, by not taking advantage of government services, including not taking advantage of currency. (Yes, technically they’ll try to tax me on barter–but you show me someone who uses no tax-dollar-supported services who gets audited, and I’ll back down). You can freely choose not to pay taxes much more easily than you can freely choose not to pay for food.
Thing is, whether or not you trade for food, you either eat or you die. So if you don’t trade for food, using the government-supported services such as currency and police protection of property, then you take food, using the state-of-nature methods everyone’s born with. And if you go for the state-of-nature method, the government cracks down on you for stealing.
The free market is a government construct, supported by many different government programs, but most especially through police protection of property and a stable currency. Taxes are the price you pay for using the government-created free market.
Not true. You can be taxed for not having health insurance. Remember?
How are you going to avoid paying property taxes on the house you bartered for?
Regards,
Shodan
Live in a rented place or motel room ?
I do. Do you remember the exception for folks earning less than a certain amount, an exception that will surely apply to anyone not taking advantage of the government service called “currency”?
Shodan, I repeat: show me anyone who’s been audited despite not using currency, and I’ll back down. Otherwise, you got nothin, even with your house example.
The point, of course, is that we all use government services, every single freakin’ one of us. The government sets up the tent for the supposed free market. Taxes are the rent you pay for working under that tent.
This message beautifully highlights the difference between the way Conservatives and Liberals think. You see the government as something higher than the people - it is the provider of infrastructure and grants and many other good things, to which we are indebted. We use what it gives us, therefore we must pay our share of whatever ‘government’ decides it needs.
To me, that’s turning the relationship between man and the state on its head. The government does not rule us, it serves us. It did not build the infrastructure - we did. We the people who chose the careers and educations that gave us the skills that other people need. We then entered into contracts to provide those skills for a wage.
Recognizing that we do need a commons, and that it must be paid for, we agree to give up some of our property in exchange for access to the commons. And aside from the literal cost of the infrastructure, who we ‘owe’ for getting us where we are is our choice, not yours and not the government’s.
Democrats talk about tax cuts as if they are gifts to the people. They’re not. A tax cut is the people’s way of saying, “we’ve decided not to let you spend this much of our money, because you don’t seen to be doing a very good job with it.” It’s the people’s money, not the government’s. Liberals think that the government should have it unless a strong case can be made that some of it should be turned over to the people. Conservatives and Libertarians see it as money that belongs to the people, and it’s up to the government to justify spending every nickel of it.
Nonsense. We ARE the government. WE are the ones who created the “free market” that you use. WE are the ones who create the currency that you use. And WE are the ones who get to set the entrance price for using these services.
But you’re right that it does illustrate the difference between progressives and some conservatives: progressives never forget that the government is the people, whereas conservatives seem to think it’s an alien entity.
Otherwise, your post was nonresponsive. The central point is that the state creates the very institution of private property via police protection, and facilitates its movement via currency. Without police protection, you own things only until someone else–often someone from among the have-nots (think Visigoths, Mongols)–takes it. Our system uses carrots and sticks to prevent this natural transfer of wealth from happening. The stick consists of the police. The carrot consists of Aid to Families with Dependent Children.