When is it ok to hate someone for their politics?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


...and also a "Life Practices" course...or some such...to teach kids how to read contracts, write checks, etc.

I have a step niece who was delighted she was getting 18% on her credit card when she couldn't get more than 3% on her savings account. This was the same one who desided she couldn't afford her car payments, so she went out a bought a cheaper car...but didn't trade in the first one.

I hope she is good looking, she needs every advantage she can get.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap




The rich remain rich. What "punishment" is being taken? If they were being "punished", they would be stripped of their wealth and made poor.

And certainly prograssive taxes help move along a socialist agenda, one in which all human beings are given equal access to basic necessities, like health care, housing, food. I personally think it morally preverse to allow homelessness, hunger, and people dying of simple preventable and curable diseases in a society more than wealthy enough to irradicate those problems.

You are a f*****g dumbkopf aren't you? What the goverment does with its money to take care of the needy, etc., has nothing to do with socialism. That preceded socialism, and as LoTM has pointed out, was the liberal response to socialism.

Progressive taxation, on the other hand, exists for reasons other than raising revenue. It is there to punish the rich, to take their wealth, to impoverish them as much as a democratic society will tolerate. As the Laffer Curve illustrates, and as Kennedy (not Ted the Philanderer, your hero) said, the confiscatory tax that FDR gave us harms the economy and retards the growth in tax revenue.

Your absolute unwillingness to acknowledge this is not however surprising. Not at all.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap


There is no such thing as an ordinary person.

Any person with common sense exists in what you call the Nediverse, or whatever. In commie land, lies are the truth.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sikander


I hear that they invented a cure for mental retardation and circumcision.

Remove their heads?

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Ned]Imran, you of course know that concern for the poor is a Christian value. Traditional, not socialist, "liberal" have been trying to do something for the less fortunate for 2000 years.[/q]

Yes, I can see that by all the poor relief that happened in the early to mid 19th Century. Concern for the poor, by letting them rot in the streets .

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Ned


But why dress them like Vikings or Nazi's or the like. Why not dress them like their real tormentors, the commies.

East german women's weightlifters are a buzz kill when it comes to erotisicm.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Ned


If this is not punishment of the wealthy, I would like to know what is.

A central problem with socialism is not its concern for the poor, but its concern for the wealthy. Christianity had long developed our concern for the poor. Socialism added nothing new here. But socialism inspires and is based on hatred of the rich.

Punishment of the wealthy would mean stripping them of their wealth such that they are poor. To equate the current progressive income tax system in the USA to that is ludicrous.

How is taxing inheritance punishing the wealthy? The wealthy person is DEAD - the tax is on the estate. It impacts their heirs, who didn't earn the money.

Let's say that my family is wealthy. Let's also say there is no estate tax. I inherit millions of dollars. I can now sit around and live off of the interest. Meanwhile, someone who had the misfortune of being born the son of a poor person inherits nothing. They did nothing wrong. I did nothing right. I'm rich. They're poor.

I'm in favor of the current estate tax, which IIRC is 50% on estates over $1 million. This is not going to leave the children of the rich destitute or anything, Ned.

-Arrian

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Ned
Progressive taxation, on the other hand, exists for reasons other than raising revenue. It is there to punish the rich, to take their wealth, to impoverish them as much as a democratic society will tolerate. As the Laffer Curve illustrates, and as Kennedy (not Ted the Philanderer, your hero) said, the confiscatory tax that FDR gave us harms the economy and retards the growth in tax revenue.

Why is it that people who bring up the Laffer Curve seem to always forget that it is, in fact, A CURVE? They also tend to forget, or just flat out not know, that it's almost impossible to pinpoint the optimal point on the curve in any given economy. It's says nothing about progressive tax rates, instead laying out the basic premise that at some point, a higher marginal tax rate is a disincetive to work. Some economists have even put this as high as 65-80%.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ned

Progressive taxation, on the other hand, exists for reasons other than raising revenue. It is there to punish the rich, to take their wealth, to impoverish them as much as a democratic society will tolerate. As the Laffer Curve illustrates, and as Kennedy (not Ted the Philanderer, your hero) said, the confiscatory tax that FDR gave us harms the economy and retards the growth in tax revenue.

No it doesn't. Taxation is the way that all societies deal with market failure. The market is spectactularly bad at providing many of the basic goods we need, therefore we fund them collectively because it is more efficient than letting the market provide it.

That is the principle on which all modern societies are based. It's also something you would learn in an introductory economics course. This has very little to do with either socialism or communism, both of which are abolitionist when it comes to the market.

Oxheaded....

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ned
Progressive taxation, on the other hand, exists for reasons other than raising revenue. It is there to punish the rich, to take their wealth, to impoverish them as much as a democratic society will tolerate. As the Laffer Curve illustrates, and as Kennedy (not Ted the Philanderer, your hero) said, the confiscatory tax that FDR gave us harms the economy and retards the growth in tax revenue.

If we never implemented an income tax we would have a tax revenue level comparable to that of the 1800s.

Come on Ned, get a clue.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Ned


Imran, did you know the NAZI's created the world's first universal health care system?

As a logical result universal health-care must be evil.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Ned


In Commieland, white is black. Truth is false. Good is evil.

Wow, you Americains realy are hiped-up on "communism is evil".

I tought that was just a stereotype.

I mean where I come from comunism isn't considered inherently bad, if it had been executed like the Bolshevik goverment promised to the sailors at Kromstad. A true union of soviets basicaly a direct democracy (what the soviets where in the begining).

The "Evil" came from the notion of the dictatorship of the party. The Revolution went bad (like the second part of the French revolution), the only difference was that Lenin didn't go try conquer Europe, so no-one stoped him like they did Napoleon. And if it was just Lenin it would not have been that bad, but then came Stalin and his little "Animal farm" expansionistic Soviet Union.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by _BuRjaCi_


Wow, you Americains realy are hiped-up on "communism is evil".

Well, you know Americans. They see one bad communist and think that they are all that way.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Ned


No it doesn't, Flip. Lack of mobilty is central to socialist thinking. This thinking was created at a time when there were legal restrictions on moving from one class to another.

For example, the economy of Europe for a very long time depended upon land. Land was held by the "nobility." Everyone else paid rent. One could not become an landowner if one was not the first son of a landowner. Land was not alienable. The law of primogeniture prevailed.

Now consider Marxism's call to the worker to cast off his "chains." What does that imply?

True, we describe relative states of income by class. But the use of the term in modern parlance is not the same as the use of the term by socialists. They use it in the archaic sense.

You completley ignored my post about the time when the Communist manifest was published didn't you.
You are talking about the ideas some of the "Utopic socialists" that came before Marx and Engels, who said that society is divide on the productive class
(workers,capitalists) and on the unproductive parasitic nobility and beurocracy who only exist because of unfair feudal restraints (but those authors existed in a time when legaly enforce stratification was there, not in Marxes time).

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Ned


No doubt.

But that does not mean they could become rich because wealth depended upon land ownership and land ownership was reserved to the landed class. See my earlier post on "primogeniture."

Yes, but then stop refering to legal obstacles that prevent passage from one class to the other.

In most countries of that time it was theoreticaly possible to be born poor and die a rich man, just like today; just theoretical.