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

To: geode00 who wrote (144668)	11/3/2008 2:51:49 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

"My main point - " most of government is not necessary in order to avoid the collapse of society" is a matter of opinion, but its also obviously true." That's the extreme version of what you have said but that isn't the argument you have been making. No its precisely the argument I've been making. When people bring up unrelated and mostly irrelevant points (which seems to happen with almost every reply to my posts here), sometimes I've responded to those points but my argument is "most of government is not necessary in order to avoid the collapse of society". I understand that you dislike support for milk producers but why do you dislike them? What are the consequences of having them and what are the consequences of eliminating them? Eliminating the milk compact would have the consequence of reducing rent seeking, increasing efficiency of milk production, and reducing by at least a bit the cost of living for the poor in the US (and to a lesser, perhaps insignificant extent reducing the cost of living for the non poor). Short term downside, some people that have come to depend on artificially high prices would feel some pain. --- "Wow, raise taxes and you can pay for the program." No, yet again, you are missing the entire point about SS. It is a self-funding program that has regressive taxation. We should not have regressive taxes. When that factor is eliminated, it is self funding as far as the eye can see. "Self funding" is essentially equivalent to "paid for by a tax with the same name". No large program of spending is truly self funding, because when you spend the dollar you don't get a dollar back. SS spending doesn't pay for itself, its paid for by SS taxes. Is the tax regressive? Yes (but the the benefits are also capped, the program gets pushed as "social insurance", if it is looked at as insurance the poor get a better deal from it than the rich). OTOH outside of payroll taxes, taxes in the US are highly "progressive". Just eliminating the cap to make SS "non-regressive", is adding a huge tax increase. And would clearly make the tax system in the US the most "progressive" out of the large wealthy countries in the world. "Highly progressive" means "punishing the creation of wealth". The other part of the argument is to consider demographics. The BB generation is huge but it is a specific event and not a cyclical one. The BB generation is the largest mid term problem, but even if it wasn't an issue, the program will become less and less affordable over time unless retirement ages increase to keep pace with extensions in life expectancy.