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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (144254)	10/30/2008 2:54:02 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Breathing is involuntary Taxes are as well. If you think they are voluntary, try contacting the IRS about how you aren't going to pay any taxes for the next couple of years and then follow through on your plan. You pay taxes in order to maintain your lifestyle in society. No, you pay taxes because the IRS makes you pay them, at least if you earn more than a certain amount. You earn more than a certain amount to maintain your lifestyle, but once you do so you don't have a choice about the taxes. The only way the taxes are connected to being able to maintain your lifestyle is that a certain amount of taxes are necessary to avoid anarchy, secure the country, and provide for minimal infrastructure of types where there is probably no workable private business model to provide (such as roads other than local courts on one end and limited access roads with at least moderately high traffic on the other). The portion of government spending needed to maintain those things is fairly small, certainly much less than a half, likely less than a tenth, possibly even a lot less. I keep telling you to get off the grid. Why should I care what you tell me to do? If the choice is to be moderately poorer because the government takes my money, or to be desperately poor because I refuse to work any on the books job, I'll take slightly poorer. That doesn't mean that its voluntary except in the very general sense that any decision you make is voluntary, even voluntary in a sense if the alternative is death (after all you could choose death), but in the normal use of the term, if you have to die or become totally impoverished to avoid something it isn't considered voluntary. How do you define entitlements? For a formal definition look up the federal governments definition. For a quick and dirty definition, its a program that automatically pays out, indefinitely, unless its canceled by law, because it doesn't have to be reauthorized each year. Is the bail out of WS an entitlement? I'd say no. There is no permanent program, authorized by law, for esssentially forever. There where at first some operations by the Fed, and then specific bailout related laws with specific amounts of money. Why not get rid of all the subsidies for everyone? Why not indeed. That is what I suggested, or at least very close to it. I say "most subsidies", so as not to have to examine all of them in detail to determine that each and every one should be canceled. That's probably an impossible thing for one person to do in his spare time. But if the choice is all or nothing, I'd go for eliminating all. If problems are caused we can deal with them if and when they come up. Let's send a bill for $125 billion to AIG. The majority of that money is from when AIG got a large loan which it wouldn't have normally have qualified for, in exchange for a big chunk of AIG. The smaller but still very large later payment was more of a straight handout. But if you give someone money, that doesn't entitle you to bill them for it later. You could say "no more AIG type bailouts", but once they are done they are done, just as if I sent you a check for $1000 without your prior agreement to pay it back or perform some service or transfer some good to me. I wouldn't legitimately be able to bill you for it. "And it should be reluctant to take on any new areas of responsibility" Like bailing out WS? Yes.