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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (65)	9/27/2000 5:21:21 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

Now your reading in what you think I said to expound on your favorite subject. I'm finding what you can't see and is the only thing worth seeing. When I pointed up that the middle class were the biggest beneficiaries from social spending I was doing so to point out that the largest percentage of tax dollars spent on social programs goes right back to the middle class, not to the lower 10% as KB had implied (or maybe he was implying that the politicians were saying that to shake us down some more). It's immaterial where how much goes. If he implied that the middle class is taxed to support the lower class, then I would say that that is better than having it merely go back to the middle class. In any event this is purely subjective. The true point is that government takes from the middle class and pays out in ways individuals wouldn't. This makes all the difference. I was not in any way stating that the government knows how to spend our money better than we do. You can't see that taking by government does exactly that because the government amasses the money taken in a communal way. The money then loses its preferential differentiation. This is equivalent to the unimodal product offerings under socialism. You walk into a store and everything is labelled generically. There is no product price differentiation and so there are no choices. No choices means no improvement. The same is the case you raised. The money goes into general revenues which are sent to purposes opposite of the intent of the taxed. Those purposes can be so destructive that given free rein they could pull the whole society down and that is exactly what almost happened. In spite of history you want to preserve what doesn't deliver. It's difficult, if not impossible to say if people would spend it more to their benefit. What's a better benefit? This is why free market capitalism has had such a difficult time for the last 200 years at least up to the Japanese. You have to trust your fellow man in order for free market capitalism to work. You have to trust in the democracy of free markets. No one wants that because their perceived benefits disappear, their right to steal from someone else disappears, and in a world based on fairness, that isn't acceptable no matter how much wealth it would bring. Certainly I've heard of enough people going out and blowing that 401k roll out that was suppose to support them in their old age, but then maybe they do it because they know they are gonna get bailed out by the government later. Please tell me how they know that except by the system you extol. The money is stolen from one and doled out to another by government. The people blame capitalism. The way I like to look at it is as a very large incentive trap. If you pay in and don't receive back you are getting taken and the sum of what is paid out is going to be billed to you anyway so in order to not get taken you have the incentive to pay in as little as possible and try to receive back as much as possible. Problem is that everyone else is doing the same thing. The trap just gets bigger and bigger until it can no longer be supported by those suckers that haven't figured out they are getting taken. Best way to deal with an incentive trap is to opt out and not play.....if you can. So KB was right. You admit that this intrinsically dishonest system is a shuck, but at the same time you have to bleed a little to perpetuate it. Your comments show mistrust of others and gallows humor. Is this the system that you find equitable in that it gives back to the middle class what it takes? Or have you contradicted yourself like anyone would who would attempt to support a lie?