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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3864)	1/16/2008 9:54:34 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Thanks for the thoughtful post. You are appreciated. "Unlike you, I'm not all that bothered by taxes." Taxes are a fact of societal life. I am not bothered by taxes, but by unreasonable taxation. The federal government taking 10% of my earnings and every other American's earnings does not bother me at all. As taxation increases from there it becomes more offensive. When it gets to 1/3 people start to flee to tax havens, mostly at this level it is by arranging their affairs to avoid US taxation through legal means but some people actually leave. When it gets over 1/2 the most productive people who create most of the jobs start to look for alternatives. When Britain had a 95% marginal tax reate they found that many of the most highly taxed permanently emigrated. "Nor do I worry about being spied on." Actually I tossed that in because most of the leftists when they are demonstrating their BDS complain about security measures that might infringe on their privacy. Obviously a person who uses the privacy argument blocking the government from protecting us from terrorists yet ignores the privacy aspect of socialized medicine is a hypocrite. "I would like my tax money to be spent wisely." About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government." "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." "From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years" "During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence: 1. from bondage to spiritual faith; 2. from spiritual faith to great courage; 3. from courage to liberty; 4. from liberty to abundance; 5. from abundance to complacency; 6. from complacency to apathy; 7. from apathy to dependence; 8. from dependence back into bondage" My comment is that Senator Clinton and Obama are fighting over who can make the most #7 like promises. Actually the whole debate over socializing medicine is a #7 like argument. "Entitlements are pernicious." Do ya think? Once established entitlements just grow and anyone wishing to make them more efficient is demonised. "I think all 'free' health care systems bring problems long term." The demand for 'free goods' is unlimited.