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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: alan w who wrote (3940)	6/30/2001 3:27:14 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 93284

Unfortunately, we have some democratic congressmen that are socialists. Taxation rates at +50% are socialist in my opinion. I read somewhere that we pay more than 50% of our income to some sort of tax. I don't believe the "US" as you put it is more socialist than the UK or those others on the list. However, some of our lawmakers are. Many moons ago I made a point to McGowan that tax rates, as an isolated statistic isn't very important. All industrialized countries have taxes and more than likely will continue to do so. Salaries are derived to some extent by tax rates; an indirect factor of cost of living. A software engineer makes significantly more money in Northern VA than he would in Southern Ohio. IMO, what's the more important number is the residual buying power. That takes into consideration taxes, cost of living etc. The phrase "I pay too much taxes" is readily accepted by everyone; Along with "the cost of products is too high"; along with "I don't get enough vacation", etc. I hear lots of people claim that purchasing over the internet should be free of any sales tax? Why? So they don't have to pay sales tax. It's very easy to be a Congressional member on that issue; especially since it's the States that loose the revenue. If I was a politician and said housing is too expensive, I'm sure I'd get a standing ovation from the crowd. Taxes were "too high", in the 1700s, the 1800s and the 1900s. If I cut the taxes in half this year. I could say that taxes were too high next year and everyone would cheer. McGowan returned with a response to my post that it was his "gut" feel that told him taxes were too high; and he would go think about it. I never heard back from him on the subject. Back to taxes and socialism. Socialism is a way of governence and is not defined by tax rates. It works very well for the Catholic Church. But for the industrialized countries that's something different. Of the industrialized countries, I can't think of one that is "Socialist". There may be socialist aspects to them, but they all seem to have characteristics that are more democratic than socialist. One indicator of democracy "might" be whether the country has national referenda. To me that is an indicator of how the government relates to the people and how much trust they put in the people. I imagine that if one doesn't want national referenda, it would be quite easy to come up with a demeaning slogan about them. I could say, "National referenda are socialist". Say it to the people 1,000 times over the course of the year and 2/3 of the population will believe national referenda are socialist. A hypothetical. Suppose I instantly reduced real estate taxes to zero. That would stimulate demand in the housing market which would result in higher prices. We don't know exactly where they would end up, but it's a reasonable notion that they would rise sufficiently to fill the artificial gap that was created. Until there is a balance of supply and demand. So what have I gained? My residual buying power after taxes and housing expenses is unchanged. I no longer complain about taxes being too high, so I complain about housing costs being too high. Now how do I pay for those government services that were covered by real estate taxes? To me, the better questions are: What is my standard of living and my quality of life. Are we getting the government services that the people want and are those services being done efficiently? jttmab