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Pastimes : My House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (3467)	11/2/2002 1:39:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7689

"What keeps my relationship with the government from being arbitrary? Well to a large extent it is. The government is limited by the constitution and by its own laws" The complete opposite of arbitrary. Nice out of context quote. Full quote - "What keeps my relationship with the government from being arbitrary? Well to a large extent it is. The government is limited by the constitution and by its own laws and by the posibility of a negative popular reaction to its ideas but the constitution and the laws are often bent out of shape without the courts or the people seriously objecting. As long as the government's new steps are at least somewhat popular it often can get away with doing just about whatever it wants to do." Changing the law and the Constitution is not arbitrary. Changing the law to something unconstitutional but then being able to get away with it allows for arbitrary government. One not limited by its highest law which supposedly gives it it's authority. "People use their equal voices in a free society and then those who disagree with the minority decision get the majority opinion force on them" Only if they are criminals. Most people who disagree with one of myriad details of social life still honour their commitment to the democratic process which, ipso facto, entails both agreement and disagreement. You can call anyone who violates any law a criminal, but violating an arbitray or unjust law should not carry with it the normal conotations of the word criminal. Also if they are compeled by force or threat of force to go along with the law, and they do, they are not even nominally criminals but they are still forced. "If you take from those who work and/or invest and give to those who don't you lower the incentive to create wealth. Of course some people can't work but you can have some form of safety net for those people without having an extensive welfare state." That is wild! How do you have a safety net without the complicity of those who work?! And how does providing a safety net lower the incentive to create wealth?? I didn't say you could have a safety net without the complicity of those who work I said you could have a safety net without an extensive welfare state. It is the extensive welfare state that lowers the incentive to create wealth because the tax required to support it reduces the rewards from creating wealth, and it reduces the penalty of not creating wealth for the marginal worker. I thought you understood that the same percentage is not fair. Not at all, or at least not unfair for an amount past the most bare necessities of living and those who do not make more then that amount do not pay income taxes or pay a negative income tax. "Yes, she faced no coercion" Hell is not coercion?? Then why keep threatening it?? Not giving generously from her meger wealth would not have caused her to face hell. But in any case I am talking about coercion from the government or force applied against her to compel obedience not her internal religious beliefs. Tim