SWATH
09-29-2007, 11:39 AM
I am getting so bewildered at some of the arguments that come from so-called freedom-minded people who oppose Ron Paul and his views that I decided to start this thread as a catharsis. Post short snippets of arguments from other forums here, I'll start.
On Iraq:
Always preaching the doom and gloom. He sounds like a lib half the time
Why? Because he doesn't want to baby-sit Iraq? Let the fuckers kill themselves.
'Letting the fuckers kill themselves' would be disasterous for our national security & for the global economy....
Ron votes like a lib half the time too...
Like most Big-L Libertarians (as well as Communists, and every other utopian governmental system ever devised) he lives in a dream world that cannot exist in reality...
That's the trouble with utopias - they just don't pass a reality check...
P.S. Before someone accuses me of comparing the IDEALS of Libertarianisim to Communisim, note that I did not do that AT ALL.... I simply pointed out that they are both UTOPIAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES that ignore the corrupt nature of mankind and thus cannot work in the real world... That fatal flaw is the only similarity between the two...
And bitching about what I write won't make said fatal flaw go away....
On Taxes:
Why we need personal taxation
This isn't about 'FairTax' vs 'FlatTax' vs 'PresentTax'...
This post is about the absolutely absurd notion that an environment of NO PERSONAL TAXATION would work in the present day, and that it is a good idea....
Why?
Simple economics:
We all know that price, supply, and demand interact to give us the cost & availability of products....
For a universally consumed product with no substitutes....
If the price is high, demand falls....
If the price is low, demand goes up...
But what if the price is effectively ZERO? E.G. What if SOMEONE ELSE BESIDES THE CONSUMER pays the price?
You get infinite consumption and demand!!!! In general, this scenario leads to demand exceeding supply, and an ever-increasing cost for the good in question....
Some real-world examples of this would be health care & colligate education,...
Because of student aid (college) and employer-funded group-plan health insurance, the consumers of health care and higher education are free to demand more and more of both, without having to pay the price directly.... Consequently, there is little to no downward economic pressure on the price, and it keeps going higher & higher....
SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TAXES AND GOVERNMENT???
Well, Government supplies every resident of the domain it controls with a package of services....
In the case of an elected government, the content of said package is controlled - directly or indirectly - by the residents - the folks who consume said package...
Under INDIVIDUAL TAXATION (eg an income, sales and/or property tax) the consumers pay the majority of the bill for the service they consume.... They are thus motivated to at least try to restrain the cost of government, and limit the services government provides to what they actually can afford.
Under INDIRECT NON-INDIVIDUAL TAXATION (eg tariffs, corporate capital gains taxation, etc) the consumers do not pay a penny out of their own pockets for the services they consume and thus they have no incentive to limit the services provided by the government, or the cost of said services....
The end result of indirect non-individual taxation is rampant socialisim, as the people (most of whom do not understand economics, and thus do not realize that the cost of taxation would reach them eventually through higher commercial product prices) would be free to vote themselves even MORE benefits than they do now..... After all, they don't think it's costing anything....
So even without getting into the economically destructive impact of tariffs (trade wars aside, tariffs encourage foreign countries NOT to do business with you, and are a self-defeating measure in terms of revenue) and taxation of corporate profits (gee, great way to reward economic success & innovation)....
INDIRECT TAXATION IS A STUPID IDEA BECAUSE IT ENCOURAGES THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT, BY ALLOWING THE CONSUMERS OF GOVERNMENT TO CONSUME AS MUCH AS THEY WANT WITHOUT PAYING A PENNY FOR IT.....
(P.S. The concept of allowing people NOT to pay income tax due to a low income is one of the greatest flaws in the current system....
It is bad enough when non-taxpayers vote themselves bennies from the public dole under our present system...
HOW BAD WILL IT GET WHEN NO PRIVATE CITIZEN IS A TAXPAYER????)
On Iraq:
Always preaching the doom and gloom. He sounds like a lib half the time
Why? Because he doesn't want to baby-sit Iraq? Let the fuckers kill themselves.
'Letting the fuckers kill themselves' would be disasterous for our national security & for the global economy....
Ron votes like a lib half the time too...
Like most Big-L Libertarians (as well as Communists, and every other utopian governmental system ever devised) he lives in a dream world that cannot exist in reality...
That's the trouble with utopias - they just don't pass a reality check...
P.S. Before someone accuses me of comparing the IDEALS of Libertarianisim to Communisim, note that I did not do that AT ALL.... I simply pointed out that they are both UTOPIAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES that ignore the corrupt nature of mankind and thus cannot work in the real world... That fatal flaw is the only similarity between the two...
And bitching about what I write won't make said fatal flaw go away....
On Taxes:
Why we need personal taxation
This isn't about 'FairTax' vs 'FlatTax' vs 'PresentTax'...
This post is about the absolutely absurd notion that an environment of NO PERSONAL TAXATION would work in the present day, and that it is a good idea....
Why?
Simple economics:
We all know that price, supply, and demand interact to give us the cost & availability of products....
For a universally consumed product with no substitutes....
If the price is high, demand falls....
If the price is low, demand goes up...
But what if the price is effectively ZERO? E.G. What if SOMEONE ELSE BESIDES THE CONSUMER pays the price?
You get infinite consumption and demand!!!! In general, this scenario leads to demand exceeding supply, and an ever-increasing cost for the good in question....
Some real-world examples of this would be health care & colligate education,...
Because of student aid (college) and employer-funded group-plan health insurance, the consumers of health care and higher education are free to demand more and more of both, without having to pay the price directly.... Consequently, there is little to no downward economic pressure on the price, and it keeps going higher & higher....
SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TAXES AND GOVERNMENT???
Well, Government supplies every resident of the domain it controls with a package of services....
In the case of an elected government, the content of said package is controlled - directly or indirectly - by the residents - the folks who consume said package...
Under INDIVIDUAL TAXATION (eg an income, sales and/or property tax) the consumers pay the majority of the bill for the service they consume.... They are thus motivated to at least try to restrain the cost of government, and limit the services government provides to what they actually can afford.
Under INDIRECT NON-INDIVIDUAL TAXATION (eg tariffs, corporate capital gains taxation, etc) the consumers do not pay a penny out of their own pockets for the services they consume and thus they have no incentive to limit the services provided by the government, or the cost of said services....
The end result of indirect non-individual taxation is rampant socialisim, as the people (most of whom do not understand economics, and thus do not realize that the cost of taxation would reach them eventually through higher commercial product prices) would be free to vote themselves even MORE benefits than they do now..... After all, they don't think it's costing anything....
So even without getting into the economically destructive impact of tariffs (trade wars aside, tariffs encourage foreign countries NOT to do business with you, and are a self-defeating measure in terms of revenue) and taxation of corporate profits (gee, great way to reward economic success & innovation)....
INDIRECT TAXATION IS A STUPID IDEA BECAUSE IT ENCOURAGES THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT, BY ALLOWING THE CONSUMERS OF GOVERNMENT TO CONSUME AS MUCH AS THEY WANT WITHOUT PAYING A PENNY FOR IT.....
(P.S. The concept of allowing people NOT to pay income tax due to a low income is one of the greatest flaws in the current system....
It is bad enough when non-taxpayers vote themselves bennies from the public dole under our present system...
HOW BAD WILL IT GET WHEN NO PRIVATE CITIZEN IS A TAXPAYER????)