Dirt poor?

[Slartibartfast]

Radar, some kids have parents that are dumber than blocks of wood. Their children wouldn't learn to read if it was not for public education obligating those parents to take their children to school. Even then, these kids struggle because at home, education is not given any respect. Your brand of crazy would give those parents the freedom to give their children NO education whatsoever. That doesn't fly in my book, even if I have to pay a tax to insure the system is in place to guarantee education is available to everyone. You want to home school or private school, fine, but there has to be a way to insure that ALL children get educated. Here we can argue if the childless should have to pay into this, but that does not change the fact that this should exist even if only parents were obligated to pay into it.

Then we have the issue the disabled, the sick, the elderly. The government (if it worked properly), is a safety net for these people. Your brand of crazy would say these people are fucked if they have no insurance or family. That doesn't fly in my book, even if I have to pay a tax to insure the system is in place to provide a safety net for those who need it. And this should not be an optional charity donation. Everyone runs the risk of falling into an illness where the cost to get out is insurmountable, so everyone should pay into this safety net.


I'm not saying this bloated, bureaucratic mess of a government is doing a great job in the above functions, but a more ideal government would provide these functions efficiently.

[wolf]

Originally posted by zippyt
Damn I started a shit storm !!!!!
Some body get Radar a cork for his mouth so it will quit raining shit !!!!

No, no, no!!! This is great.

I'm making popcorn!!

[blue]

GET THE FUCK OUTTA MY THREAD!!!

You bastards....last damn thread I start for you ingrates...I'm taking my ball and going home.

[wolf]

There is a fine, old, established cellar tradition of tread piracy.

Taxation and entitlements just happen to be a certain bull named Radar's red flag.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by blue58
GET THE FUCK OUTTA MY THREAD!!!

You bastards....last damn thread I start for you ingrates...I'm taking my ball and going home.

Well, there goes blue ball(s)

[Troubleshooter]

Whenever real change is necessary, one or two generations have to take it in the ass as payment for the following generations.

The trick is convincing those generations to bend over for it.

You also have to be sure that the price doesn't put the following generations so far back that they can't recover.

Originally posted by Troubleshooter
Whenever real change is necessary, one or two generations have to take it in the ass as payment for the following generations.

Er, might I ask what change you are referring to? (I always like to know the reason when someone walks up and wants everyone to take it up the poop shoot one more time)

[Troubleshooter]

Originally posted by marichiko


Er, might I ask what change you are referring to? (I always like to know the reason when someone walks up and wants everyone to take it up the poop shoot one more time)

I was of course speaking metaphorically, but say for instance that we all quit paying taxes.

When that source of funding dried up, and it would quickly dry up, we'd lose a bunch of the money going to education (as only one example). What would happen until something took up the slack?

We'd take it up the poop shoot as one of the sevices that, while they do suck, fills a necessary role is gone and then we end up with a generation of semi to non-literate, unskilled children to take up our banner into the next millenium.

Edit: grammatical issue corrected

[Elspode]

Originally posted by Radar


Life doesn't have safety nets and government isn't here to provide them. Some people act irresponsibly, and that's unfortunate. I think if young people see that you don't have a safety net and must rely on voluntary charity from your friends, family, neighbors, churches, and non-profit charities for health care, food, shelter, etc, they will be more apt to take their personal responsibilities more seriously.

People would only have to donate a fraction of what is currently collected in taxes to maintain the same or better level of assistance currently offered by government. As I mentioned earlier, government on average keeps 85 cents of every tax dollar marked for these charity (it's not charity if it's forced) programs and those in need get less than 15%. The opposite is true of private charities, which on average only require 12%-15% in overhead while 85% or more makes it to those in need.

So how about some historical citation about how the disabled or handicapped were better off before big Federal government?

And I disagree that people will eagerly rush to do more charitable giving if they aren't taxed. We may be generous, but are we consistent? And will anyone distribute relief funds without hanging some sort of philosophical or theological baggage on it?

No one gives something for nothing now, I don't see how a lack of taxes is going to change that.

[jaguar]

Now I'm a little more awake I feel I am going to have to call you on your dated theory. Doing otherwise I'm simply leaving the possability that others will fall from your simplistic understanding of economic texts that some feel were made a little to accessaible for those with not enough background.

What you are espousing is a very narrow view of an economic school of thought called monetarism that developed initially as opposition to Keynesian policies of demand management. This of course goes back further into older debates (Mercantilism vs Classical Economics in particular) but that's not relevant here. Of course even Friedman understood that the supply of money had to grow a little each year in line with the economy otherwise you get ickyicky deflation like Japan.

The theory goes that if you do that, market forces will solve pretty much everything else. Nice idea. Pity it never worked and certainly doesn't today. It was very trendy for a while, particularly around the early 1980s resulting in overanalyisis of every new money-supply stat for intel of interest rates movements.

The problem with this theory is relies on the basis that the relationship between money supply, nominal GDP and therefore inflation is stable. This is simply not the case in the real world. Velocity of circulation can simply change too rapidly and this can have a significant impact on the way money supply affects prices and output making it a very hamfisted approach.

There is a good reason central banks the world over dropped this policy in favor of simply setting target rates of inflation.

You would be well advised to look up more recent comments by Friedman in particular who admitted in 2003 that targeting money supply had not been a success. In particular:

'The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success.' He added: 'I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.' (FT, 7 June 2003).

I can understand how you became attached to the passion of Friedman in particular but that's no excuse for expousing economic theory from the 70s, let's keep retro to flares thanks.

(edited for typos and clarification/extension of a couple of points)

[Brigliadore]

Wow, I didn't check this thread all day yesterday and today, and man a lot of stuff went down. I am enjoying the exchange on this thread a great deal.
I just want to point out one little insignificant detail.

The Postal System is a self funded entity of the government. They take no tax or government money of any kind, and have been that way for a number of years now. While they don't get any money from the government they still have to ask congress if they want to raise the cost of stamps. In 2002 the Postal System went into the red with their finances. They asked congress for money to help them out of the red, and were turned down. They then asked congress if they could raise the cost of stamps a few cents to help them out of the red. Congress told them to reorganize there budget, because there would be no raise on the cost of stamps.

Like I said, an insignificant detail, but I just wanted to point out that the Postal System does not need government money to function.

[Undertoad]

Remember the names of these people who disagree with you Radar: they are called voters and governing them without their consent is the worst foul possible in politics.

Originally posted by jaguar
...
I can understand how you became attached to the passion of Friedman in particular but that's no excuse for expousing economic theory from the 70s, let's keep retro to flares thanks.

JAAGUAR! JAAGUAR! JAAGUAR! (Cheering loudly and jumping to her feet with arms over head, applauding wildly)

Thank you for the expert rebuttal of Libertarian economic so-called thought.

And to the poster who pointed out the way in which the postal service actually works these days, its not a minor point. If one is going to debate an issue, one better get the facts straight from the outset in order to make rational statements and conclusions.

I would also like to note that Radar is dead wrong about the funding of your local public library. As a former professional librarian I can state for a fact that public libraries are funded almost exclusively by the communities they serve. The amount they get from the Federal government is negligible. When a public library feels the need to increase the size of its collection or build a branch to serve a growing area of the community, the library board has to put the added expenditure to a vote of the people. If the community votes to tax itself for library services, it gets them. If not, it doesn't.

Libraries are a wonderful example of representative democracy at its finest. Go down and check yours out. The books on its shelves YOU paid for (if you want more, vote in an increase in the library's budget). YOU paid for the public internet service the library offers, YOU pay the salary of the person at the desk. The Feds don't. If you got a beef, you can go talk to the director or board yourself. YOU and every other voter in your town directly approved the existence of this building with all its books and tapes and videos and CD's. The public library is a far cry from government theft. If voters at the local level didn't approve it, it wouldn't be there.

Get your facts straight, Radar.

[jaguar]

marichiko

I should point out I'm not formally trained in Economics (to any degree of completion anyway), my experience is largely practical with most of the deeper theory coming later. For me this kind of theory is useful insofar as it helps me understand the logic of the day behind the moves and shakes of central banks.

I always assumed library funding was federal. I'm now wondering what it is in Australia (or Switzerland for that matter).

From exhibit A here it appears libertarians main platform is recycling outdated grandiose ideas that have no place in the real world as a moral platform.

I dug out some old textbooks on Keynes and others out of curiousity about a couple of points to do with this and I found this gem from Keynes himself:

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually slaves of some defunct economist"

Need I say more?

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by Radar
The America I'm talking about was a reality for more than 100 years and it will be again.

Well after we ALL are dead. You honestly think that the US government is suddenly NOW, after all this time having such power, is going to give that up??? Please. They are drunk with the power that they hold, and no one is going to "make" them give that up.

I have other things to worry about than to dream that this country is going to change THAT dramatically.