To: bart13 who wrote (88481 ) 3/27/2012 3:39:14 PM From: Maurice Winn 3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217846 Bart, here's how to escape your racism. Punish crooks whether they are big or small. I agree with you that evil-doing 1%er white collar criminals do enormous harm to lots of people. They destroy lives as surely as breaking into somebody's home, attacking them physically and robbing them. They should be punished for causing such great harm. Bernie Madoff is in gaol for the rest of his life by the look of it. That's a fitting punishment [given the way people are punished]. Punishing all 1%ers because of the crimes of the few is racism by another name. There is probably a collection of 1%er genes which causes and enable them to become 1%ers. Punishing them all is evil. Punishing the actual crooks is the way to go. Taxing them all heavily to catch the few who are crooks is harmful. Consider Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for example. They have not robbed anybody. They earned their money the hard way, by doing things that produce enormous wealth for everyone. Microsoft has enormously helped me in my life and billions of other people too, even if they don't directly use Microsoft. Not only have they earned vast wealth, they have set about using that wealth in philanthropic ways which are of great value but don't get a direct return on investment to the investors in those activities. They could just give the money to governments to distribute but they have decided that they can do more good things by deciding how to spend that money without the envious voting to benefit themselves by voting to take that money from the government for themselves. If there were Tradable Citizenships, government money would be wasted less as people would vote for their citizenship to go UP in value rather than down. Then people might choose to leave their money to the government rather than reinvent the wheel with their own philanthropic trusts. When I was young, I didn't really mind taxes as they seemed to go to doing good things such as building dams, roads, and public assets. Almost nobody was on a benefit and unemployment was near zero. The few on benefits really had nowhere to go. The mentally and physically disabled needed support and they were few. Bludger was not far off a swear word. Now bludging is the norm in a vast tract of welfare and big government societies. But I soon learned that governments waste money by the ton and treat people are state-owned chattels. Turning it around so that citizens own the state, rather than the state owning individuals, is the next stage of history. I should drop a line to Fukuyama to add another chapter to his "The End of History" [or whatever it's called] Mqurice