And I suppose if the Dems lose again in the next election, this will give the left wing loonies another thing to blame instead of looking at their candidates and policies. It’s not fair!! It’s not fair!!
So remind me. The 'states that are net donors of federal funds: how did they vote?
And the net recipients?
Well, it hardly matters, does it? Since they are only fated to be crushed by the Libertarian Party’s rise to world domination.
By now, she’s got God locked in his bedroom crying his eyes out in boredom from listening to her recite all of the objectivist heroes’ strong-jawed soliloquies she never got to write in life.
I just wanted to pop back in and say thank you to Bricker for understanding where I was coming from. And with that, I’ll be backing out of the thread, as others have already stated much more eloquently and succinctly all that I feel remaining the rest.
I’m not a loonie for any wing, but I still can’t regardthis as anything but blatant political hotdogging. Trim wasteful goverment spending? Yes, please.
Going after public broadcasting is rankest political symbolism, nothing more. That’ll show those pointy-headed, effete parasites sucking the public teat.
What the fuck happened to that ‘big tent’? You know, the one with room and principles to spare for just a whole buncha folks?
Bah. Same old cynical political bullshit, spread wide to cover the lack of thoughtful, substantive reform that might actually dislodge a few deeply entrenched parasites. When in trouble, survey the herd, then name some of them ‘enemy’. Attack, loudly and with maximum hoopla, as a diversionary tactic.
Hope like hell all the possible targets left standing are too cowed to point out uncomfortable truths.
It’s a tactic both parties have used–and it purely sucks, no matter the political rationale–but the GOP happens to be in power right now. Responsiblity is the flip side of power. Can’t have one without the other. This is a drunk crook scrambling to finger a scapegoat when an audit goes sour.
OK. I was frothing at the mouth yesterday while writing, and perhaps that made my commentary a bit hard to follow. The same concept carries over BY ANALOGY to taxation, but not by direct application. As I have since clarified, I do not contend that each person should pay the exact same dollar amount.
As I acknowledged above and will acknowledge again below, there is at least some rationale for the wealthier paying more dollars into the system.
And that is the rationale. I agree.
Yes, my argument by analogy was not as clear as it might have been. I welcome this opportunity to clarify it.
I’d even be willing to consider a lower-end cut-off, to avoid the possibility above. Recognizing that taxing away core money would be a disincentive to work, I could get behind a system that calculated a minimum line below which no taxes were assessed, and a sharply gradiated range above that to bring the tax rate up to the standard rate.
When I moved out of my parent’s house, into my own place, my folks gave me a lawnmower. It was a nice gift, because I now had a lawn to care for.
But my folks sort of expected, I think, that I’d swing by and mow their lawn as well. (I lived only a mile away, and it made perfect sense).
So I was happy to get the lawnmower. But in a sense, it wasn’t a gift – it was given in expectation of getting something in return.
Now we consider the many benefits that spring from an organized society… and those benefits exist because of the marketplace. The marketplace creates those benefits by action of the invisible hand – no central authority crafts them; the simply spring into being as a natural consequence of free people buying and selling goods and services. And those benefits innure to the continuation f the marketplace.
Of course I could never have paid for college without a job. Should I be grateful to the business owners that “gave” me jobs? No. They acted in their own self-interest; they got competent labor at a fair price. Hell, I worked for less than minimum wage in one job, and that was my choice… I needed the money and that’s what the job was willing to pay. I had the choice, and I freely accepted. The employer gained my labor; I gained the wage.
What you, and others, are characterizing from society as a gift – the myriad opportunities that exist that allowed me to prosper and gain wealth – were not “gifts” at all. They were opportunities that flowed as a natural consequence of a bunch of people out for themselves. My employers would have loved to pay me less money than they did. But they couldn’t, because no one would work for them for less money. I would have loved for my employers to pay me more money, but if I demanded it, they’d replace me. As time went on in a particular job, the calculus changed a bit: now I knew enough about the job that replacing me would be a little loss to them; the new guy wouldn’t be as good at it, so I could safely demand and get more money.
You would have me look back at all the chances I had to earn money, and say, “Look how beneficent society is!”
That system - the free marketplace - is what makes “…a healthy society foster possibilites.”
Society didn’t give me a lawnmower as a gift. Society gave me a lawnmower because I was willing and eager to mow lawns. That’s not a gift – that’s an exchange entered into with an expectation for profit on both sides… and that, and ONLY THAT, is the mark of a health and free society.
Is this not the tax system we already have?
I think the one thing that bothers me the most, conceptually, about these sorts of debates is the focus of the Libertarian agenda. I can get behind the idea that forcing someone to pay for things that they don’t want or use because it is good for society is problematic for some. I don’t agree, but I can at least understand. An even more generous take on my part could be that they have fundamentally different ideas about what is good for society, and are willing to help pay for the things that they do consider to be to the good (like police thugs and soldier adventurers, apparently).
PBS is a wonderful example. Friend Bricker mentioned some posts back folks that he know that are earning good money, yet are still living from paycheck to paycheck because they have terrible consumer habits. Now, to my mind, there is inherent value in having programming that is commercial free because it can be one of those things that help prevent turning out people like this. Given that advertising is designed, in many cases by child psychologists, to encourage kids to want things that they don’t need and to get into the habit of doing so throughout their lives, I would say that there is inherent value it a media that is commercial free. This is to say nothing of the benefits to attention span and so forth.
What I don’t get is why they are so quick to condemn things like welfare, PBS, Head Start or the arts and yet are deafeningly silent (with a few notable exceptions) on issues like war. In my darker moments, I tend to suspect that it is a matter of expediency and cowardice. Basically, that they are supporting thugs because they are going after weak targets that fit a narrow part of their agenda. I would simply remind them that if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
Glad I’m not the only one thinking this. Are we being whooshed or something?
No… although it’s closer than I care to admit.
I’m not a either, and I agree 100% with that and have already said so in this thread. In fact, I think it’s politically foolish for the Pubs to go after PBS because their motives are so transparent and it simply makes them look petty and mean spirited.
They can’t hide under the cloak of fiscal responsibility on this, given their track record for the last 4 years and the fact that there are plenty of other, better areas to cut if cutting is the motivation.
However, that still doesn’t alter the fact that I personally think funding CPB with federal tax dollars is unnecssary. Note that my post which you quoted was in response to EC who made the wild claim that the rest of the press is incapable or unwilling to air stories that PBS/NPR does.
You just wait. The Libs may have gotten only .3% of the vote in '04, but they’re well on their way to getting .4% in '08!
Just to clear up a possible misconception. The last line in the above comment is entirely irrelevant. Canadian taxpayers are concerned about corporate welfare and taxation and personally watch and support PBS just like you Americans.
I think you’ll find that many (not jsut a few) of the “libertarian types” have been against the war all along. I have. Folks like **Bricker **and Sam Stone do lean heavily to the libertarian side, with the one exception that they are much more hawkish on defense. When you say “issues like war” you really mean only one war-- Iraq. Do you think those guys would support an attack on Iran right now? Might it not be that they really thought they were protecting the interest of the US by attacking Iraq? I don’t agree with that reasoning, but I can see where they might have come to that conclusion.
But I’m sure **Bricker **can speak for himself on this.
Defense good. Aggression bad.
The whole thing can be cleared up with a few minor reforms.
Big Bird must, repeat, must cease and desist warping our children with his socialist agenda. He may continue to advise that “sharing is nice, so long as it is not coerced by a collectivist governance that refuses to recognize the moral primacy of property rights.”
Minor alterations to the Coulter Report. The Friday discussions that currently include radical Freedom-hater Mark Shields will elminate his clearly biased viewpoint. David Brooks will represent the left, Sean Hannity the center, G. Godron Liddy on the right. Fair and balanced.
Nova will continue pretty much as it is, so long as it recognizes that the Copernican System is “only a theory”.
As I said, just a few minor reforms to bring PBS in line with the vast majority of Americans.
I really don’t get where this “PBS is biased to the left” comes from. Sure, they have left leaning shows or hosts for shows, but they have right leaning ones as well. I think the News Hour **is **one of the best news show around, and that NOVA is by far the best science show (which is why I am happy support PBS with my own $$).
But I don’t see why PBS **must **remain comercial free. Sure, I’d hate to see commercials on NOVA, but then I can just up my donation if it really bothers me that much. They accept corporate sponsors, and they actually do have commercials of a sort (before and after programs), so maybe they jsut need to think outside the box on this whole commercial thing. Maybe they add more “real” commercials to the begining of shows if they don’t want to interrupt the flow. They can’t be worried about the corrupting infuence of corporate sponsors, since those already exist. And they’ve had their share of tussles with the gov’t over programming already.
Actually, I am not just talking about this particular war. In a larger sense I am talking about the seeming willingness to fund a war-like footing (both at home and abroad) with no seeming limit on the extent. However, I do get what you are saying.
I think that it boils down to a question of interests. Folks that lean libertarian, as far as I can tell, have no issue with the use of force if it serves the economic interests of the USA. Using that as a springboard, it seems to me that they are willing to pay taxes for the things that they think are important and cry foul for things that they think are not. I don’t have a problem with that, hell I do it myself.
The difference, I think, is that they seem to like things that are fundamentally more selfish than the things that I like. Moreover, they seem to have devised this grand philosophy to explain how being selfish is somehow good.
What I would like to see is just a touch more honesty when folks are thinking and talking about these things. For example, I get vocal and upset when the arts or PBS are targeted for funding cuts because I think that these things add more value to society than they take, I grew up with them and don’t mind paying for them. On the other hand, even though I know that it can be devastating to whole communities, I tend to have to make an effort to give a shit when military bases are closed because I do not find any value in them and, as far are I am concerned, the current incarnation of our military takes more from society than it gives.
This lack of empathy is not something that fills me with pride, but it is something that I am at least aware of, make no excuses for and have not tried to devise some grand philosophy to explain.
I touched on this point a little while ago, but for me there in a great deal of value in entertainment that is free of comercials. To be honest, the comercials between shows represents a great loss to me and I would be pretty pissed off if they were during shows.