No, Scylla, what I am doing is pointing out is that in a market economy with externalities and items subsidized in various ways, various people are subsidizing various other people’s choices all the time. I would support the elimination of these subsidies if they are not well-justified. And, in the case of gasoline, I think they most assuredly are not justified.
There have been various studies estimating the effective subsidies (including externalized costs) associated with automobile usage in terms of how much they are per gallon of gasoline and, while it is admittedly an inexact science with numbers over a fairly broad range, the low end of that range is subsidies around $1.50-2.00 per gallon. [On a personal note, I’ll just say that, as a way of trying to internalize at least the low-end range of these costs in my own life, I have since the beginning of 2000 imposed a 100% gas tax on myself. I.e., I keep track of what I spend on gasoline and at the end of each year I give as a special contribution to an environmental group. The yearly amount for each of the past three years has been roughly in the range of $350-450.]
As per your other questions, I don’t think the externalized costs associated with computers, stereos, and TVs are as great (although I would strongly support bills to include disposal costs in the price of these products). I have a computer and stereo. My TV is a vintage 1960s black-and-white which I turn on maybe once every several months and don’t even keep plugged into the wall. I don’t have an air conditioner in the apartment where I live.
In general, I don’t support telling people what they can or cannot buy but I do support measures to make them pay the full costs of their choices, either through taxes or (in a more indirect way) through regulations such as CAFE standards.
I also strongly support making people aware of the impacts of their choices so they don’t go around lambasting other people who they feel they are subsidizing through their taxes while ignoring the ways in which their lifestyle choices are being subsidized by others.
I’m assuming that everyone hear who favors minimal or no social safety net programs also favors consfiscatory taxes on inherited wealth. It is only fair. After all, we support the children of the wealthy by allowing them access to outsize portions of our economic output just because they won the lucky sperm lottery. Why should they have any more claim on our largesse than some ambitious poor person trying to work their way through college?
I would say they have considerably less.
We should be cranking inheritance taxes to the max, not reducing them.
What right does the son of genius have to the good genes that gave him higher than average intelligence?
Why does he have it, and some poor stupid guy doesn’t.
You are acting as if the role of government and society is to make life fair. It’s not.
Why shouldn’t we all be born with the same strength intelligence and looks?
Besides, there is no law that says the decedent needs to pass on the estate to the children. It’s the decedent’s money, and the decedent’s choice what to do with it. It’s certainly not your business or anybody else’s to lay claim on an asset you have no rights to.
Yeah, but isn’t the whole basis of your complaint that it’s not fair of the government to use your tax money to support good-for-nothing student families?
Why shouldn’t we all be born with the same strength intelligence and looks?
Don’t get me started on that fucking bastard God! After what he done to me in terms of intelligence and looks, he oughtta be ashamed to show his face ANYWHERE!
Seriously, yes, life and the universe are unfair – are you seriously proposing that as an argument supporting unfair government policies? So, if the government decides to kill every firstborn, they can say, “Hey, natural selection is unfair too!”
It’s the decedent’s money, and the decedent’s choice what to do with it.
It’s the decendent’s money so long as he and his wife live. After that, it’s just money.
It’s certainly not your business or anybody else’s to lay claim on an asset you have no rights to.
I have as much right to it as some lucky sperm lottery winner who never did a damn thing to earn it except sit in the lap of luxury and suck on his or her silver spoon. More, because I had a depraved childhood and deserve some sort of recompense.
Perhaps. Personally I believe they have insufficient data on the circumstances and motivations behind my family’s decisions to make such a value judgement(as, my friend, do you ;)). Moreover they seem to have continued their poor reasoning habits by extending their value systems, which clearly seem to hold money and/or material wealth in extremely high regard, onto me and judging what little they know of my circumstances from within that framework. Had they full knowledge of all the circumstances surrounding the conception of our second daughter and our son, they would still have to understand the value system under which my wife and I made the decision to understand if it was irresponsible or not. Given Scylla’s demonstrated inability to consider factors other than his own viewpoint and value system when making judgements about the circumstances/decisions of others I feel justified in saying that, he at least, is eminently unqualified to determine if our decisions were irresponsible. Clearly they aren’t the ones he believes he would have made. I guess that is enough for him.**
I happen to agree with Scylla here minty. He was in no way that I can see suggesting that the children should suffer for the decisions of the parents. The “failure” or “irresponsible decisions” were made by the parents.
Clearly action needs to be taken to ensure the ability of people to become a burden on the taxpayer through poor choices and/or accidents is kept to an absolute minimum. I like Scylla’s analogy to military boot camp. Once you begin drawing from taxpayer-funded coffers you immediately lose many of the priveleges and civil liberties that people who can afford to pay for their own food and medical care are entitled to.
The first step is obvious. Forced sterilization of welfare recipients. It sounds harsh, but protecting the taxpayer’s dollar is paramount. Since no birth control method is 100% foolproof, we can’t be sure that simply criminalizing procreation while on welfare would be adequate. Once a person is off welfare they should be able to have the surgery reversed if they choose to have children on their own nickel. You want kids? Well, think of it as incentive to get off the teat. Only fully self-sufficient citizens are allowed the privelege of procreation.
The next step is equally obvious. Each welfare recipient will be evaluated by a doctor to determine their nutritional needs. Their activity habits will be tracked to determine the proper rate of caloric intake based upon their level of physical activity. Food stamps will be allotted on an individual basis and will be sufficient to cover a basic, although bland, assortment of genericly-branded foods adequate to keep their body running at peak efficiency. Not a single calorie above your basic needs will be paid for by those hard-working citizens of our fair state of whom YOU, as a welfare recipient, are clearly not one of. There will be not be a single gram of fat gained by a recipient of welfare. Their absolute base needs will be met and not a single calorie more.
Another obvious step deals with the reduction of potential medical costs. Each welfare recipient will be required to show up for a bi-weekly delousing in which all their bodily hairs will be shaved to reduce the risk of contracting lice and helping reduce their chances to they will be given an extensive regimin of enemas(to keep their system flushed out and avoid the extremely costly treatment for impacted bowels) and oral antibiotics. Each of the welfare recipients will occasionally be required to “donate” blood to the local blood bank as part of a recriprocal program in which they recieve the “donated” blood and they provide some basic services such as screening for potential genetic diseases and STDs. This leverages one of the few resources the welfare recipients have and keeps the costs of the services of the blood bank personnel off the shoulders of the taxpayer. As noted above, the taxpayer’s costs must be kept to the absolute minimum. Welfare recipients are not allowed to refuse to “donate” at their appointed time. They are second-class citizens and shall not be allowed to forget it.
A couple of non-obvious measures spring to mind as well. Welfare recipients shall not be allowed to vote in local or federal elections. These people have already demonstrated a lack of civil responsibility by not properly providing for themselves(which, given the robust economy and full employment, can only be attributable to irresponsibility with their finances) so it follows naturally that they are unfit to fulfil that most important civic duty of selecting representatives. After all, beggars can’t be choosers.
The population-based representation in local and federal congresses shall be based upon total constituent numbers LESS two-fifths of the subset of the constituents on welfare. This will help ensure local governments take the problem seriously. The more second-class citizens(welfare recipients) a state has, the less its influence will be in the governmental sphere.
I’m sure more measures can be devised. The paramount consideration is not the health, happiness, or freedom of a citizen on welfare. They abrogated all their rights to such things the instant they started drawing monies from taxpayer-funded coffers. The paramount consideration in the design of all welfare programs is to simultaneously provide incentives for them to become fully self-supporting and to punish them for their irresponsible choices which led them to the point where they actually needed help. A carrot in one hand and a stick in the other.
In any event, the primary consideration in any citizens decision-making processes should be the financial impact. We’ve given decent standards of living to people on welfare long enough. They have been allowed to retain some dignity and still exercise their priveleges and civil liberties as they see fit for too long. It is time we put the “suffer” back in “sufferage.” All hail the almighty mother fucking dollar.
That sounds like a very modest proposal. Its concern for both taxpayers and subhumans is commendable. Thank you for sharing your unique perspective on this delicate matter.
This is incorrect. I am not imposing my value system upon you. By forcing society to support your children you are imposing your value system on others.
**
I guess within the framework of your value system I am unqualified, nor am I considering “other factors.”
I think a value system that does not include providing for your children sucks, and you’re right. I am inflexible on this.
I see the quality of your reasoning has improved not one iota. The failures of your logic are matched only by your ignorance of the circumstances under which the decisions you condemn were reached. Your fallacy is noted.
I’d like to just dispute the fact that sperm is the determining factor in the distribution of wealth. First of all there’s ova ;)–but that’s not my point either.
Although it’s notoriously hard to quantify, the opportunity to accumulate wealth has a great deal do with non-biological factors: ranging from parental upbringing, culture, education, environmental impact (look at the studies now being released on levels of asthma among poor minority children in NYC), to something as simple as being in the right place at the right time. For all of these reasons there is even more justification for the argument that wealth (both its accumulation and its maintenance) is subsidized socially. That is, it the kind of society that we have is conducive to allowing some people to thrive and perpetuate themselves as big winners. To a large and underrecognized degree, taxpayers subsidize that ability: everything from police protection (which disproportionately benefits those who have the most to lose), to bail-outs of corporations, corrupt banks and hedge funds. (Take a look at the economic benefits of the war on Iraq for a very specific example of how a government policy that is presumably being conducted in the interests of all is being financially shouldered by the many while enriching a tiny few).
BTW, MTGman a lot of your “modest” proposals were being seriously debated at the turn on the century in both Britain and America (probably in the rest of Europe too though I know less about that). I wish I had time to summarize but I don’t.
Tit for Tat Scylla. You’ve summarially dismissed my right to make a decision to exercise a fundamental human right based upon factors other than financial concerns. Now it’s my turn. I dismiss your criticism of the decision because it is founded in ignorance of the concerns upon which the decision was actually made. Once again, the dollar is not the paramount concern in all value systems. Were you to give some of these value systems a fraction of the creedence you give your own we wouldn’t have the problem we apparently have here.
Oh, and most of your “difficult questions” were thinly veiled attempts at character assassination. Why should I answer your loaded questions like “Why did you get to start your family early and be with the ones you love at the expense of me doing so?” when it is so clearly of the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” variety? I reject your fallacious questions. Come up with relevant ones and I may consider them but I am in no way obligated to continue this discussion, especially since it has apparently become about me as opposed to the effectiveness of social programs in general.
As I’ve noted, by this definition, there is lots of people imposing their value systems on others going around. You seem to choose to overlook the ones that occur in the marketplace even when the market failures are obvious.
Besides, as Mandelstam has pointed out, the decisions we have made in terms have how to run our economic and political system have also imposed values systems on people. For example, our choices to allow corporations to have a huge amount of economic power has imposed a value system allowing the huge accumulation of wealth by a small few. To draw lines in the sand and say “this is imposing one’s value system on others and this isn’t” in the way that you do, Scylla, is arbitrary.
The point, Scylla, is that you haven’t got the slightest clue what the relevant circumstances were for the additions of those children to Mtgman’s family. There are any number of circumstances where reasonable people would agree that having children was a right and moral thing to do despite the necessity of seeking outside assistance to provide for them.
Couldn’t you even be bothered to ask what the circumstances were before jumping to the conclusion that Mtgman and his wife are irresponsible leeches? Or are you content to rely on your own preconceptions and prejudices as a basis for condemning anyone other than yourself?
Untrue. I have not dismissed your right to procreate. I simply think it behooves you to take responsibility for your own decisions, and provide as necesary for the children you choose to have.
It’s your story. If you told it incompletely that’s your fault, not mine. By all means fill in the details.
**
It has nothing to do with the dollar. I couldn’t care less if you lived on a collective in South Dakota, as long as you were making provisions to provide for the basic needs of your children.
You keep saying that apparently you have some other value system where taking responsibility and providing for the basic needs of your children is not a concern.
If it’s not your concern, why should it be anybody else’s?
minty, exactly! It’s the “didn’t even bother to ask” that is really the sticking point. This is what I refer to when I assert that Scylla fails to step outside his own worldview and by not doing so often remains ignorant of many of the considerations in the decision-making processes of others. To him owning a Viper means you can’t possibly be handicapped(although he has no knowledge whatsoever about the actual physical condition of the owner). Being able to take a flight of stairs in a short burst means you can’t possibly need that electric scooter at the park(although the information he had on the person he saw perform this feat was limited to a handful of minutes of observation at a distance). Having a child when you’re, even temporarially, on some form of welfare means you’re a selfish leech. I would have thought he would have learned from the drubbing he’s recieved from the pit threads on the first two issues. Apparently not.
As of now I am extremely wary of revealing further personal details, especially to Scylla. He apparently feels it is perfectly reasonable to take a couple of facts, fill the rest in with assumptions of his choice, and then make moral judgements, particularly damning and hurtful moral judgements BTW. Many of his assumptions are flat out wrong, but he seemingly has no interest in reserving judgement until he actually has the facts. Winning the arguement is, seemingly, more important than understanding the situation.
Enjoy,
Steven
PS. Hey, minty check your email. It looks like we’ve had a communication breakdown of our own
