by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday July 28, 2011 @11:08AM (#36908524)
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
Too bad government isn't voluntary, or the national debt would be a small fraction of GDP.
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
If you love water so much, why not move to the middle of the Atlantic?
The problem is not government in general. The problem is TOO MUCH government, and too much CENTRALIZED government. You have much more power influencing your local and state government than you will ever have trying to influence the federal government. This should be obvious when you consider that 48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state.
If we had more local control over our lives, your argument would carry much more weight. You could say, "If you hate government so much, move to Mississippi. Seriously." and you would know that the person you are talking to could truly move to Mississippi. Of course, if they are already in MS, you could tell them to keep their noses out of your state's business.
It's all clearly explained in the 10'th Amendment. Unfortunately, all three branches of our government seem to ignore it, even though they've all taken an oath to defend it. Clearly, the 10th Amendment means SOMETHING. I mean, the founders wouldn't have put in there for nothing. It's not like they had nine amendments and said, "Let's make up one more to make in an even 10."
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
Exactly. People will bitch and moan about the government all day but then they get to drive to work on paved roads with traffic moderation and other amenities. There are several superfund sites in my state left over by the mining industry when it was policing itsself for years and years. Now who has to clean the mercury out of the aquifer so these ignorant a-holes can drink clean water? It isn't the company that created the mess I can tell you that for sure and it isn't the state government. The Federa
Exactly. People will bitch and moan about the government all day but then they get to drive to work on paved roads with traffic moderation and other amenities.
The Interstate Highway System was created to move military equipment around. It serves a military function and should be funded through the military. The fact that civilians may use it daily is an added perk. All other roads should be purely state funded. That would cut our federal highway budget by a substantial amount. Of course, states would have to raise taxes to pay for the building and maintenance of state highways, so it would end up being a wash to the taxpayer. The difference is that my tax d
My state pays more to the government than it collects as do 90% of the blue states in the union. I also happen to work for the state so I know the limits of what the state is allowed to do. So in your model, a company from Va. comes to my state and mines gold then leaves a huge mess to clean up. The company then leaves a huge toxic mess and goes back to Va. My state goes after said company for the cost of the cleanup. There are 2 scenarios here under your schema:
1. Said company cannot be pursued beca
How is the "Big Dig" a "very needed purpose" in my life? I've never seen it. I'll never drive through it.
There's a very good chance that someday you or someone you care for will be treated by a doctor who had to commute that route to one of the huge number of medical schools in the Boston area. He'll have retained more of the material due to the extra half hour per day he spent catching up on sleep instead of sitting behind a wheel listening to WAAF. Also, anything you ever purchase that had to travel that route will potentially be cheaper due to lower transportation costs.
I agree with ArcherB; when people complain government is too big, immediately people jump into Washington Monument Syndrome and claim that shrinking government will take away the really valuable things that most people want... but more than that, it conflates different kinds of tax revenues and where and how they are collected and what they are used for.
If you take a look at the huge debate going on in Washington right now, you don't hear people complaining about gasoline taxes - which is what is supposed t
Because different local populations all have their own brand of stupidity. Countless times the Feds have saved states from the consequences of bad policy, just as countless times state governments have stayed bad policies coming from Washington. Having the two systems offers another check and balance. One system harnesses the best the country has to offer to find the best overall policies. The other harnesses the region-specific knowledge to adapt those policies locally.
Number 1, just moving taxes to the state level (or even the county/city level) is not going to fix the budget problem. It just means someone else is responsible for it. Number 2, a significant number of states manage to have a balanced budget only because of help from the federal government for infrastructure, health care, education and security. Increasing their budgets while reducing their revenue is going to make the problem worse. Number 3, there is the impl
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
Well put! The programs that are Constitutional should not be slashed. The programs that are not Constitutional need to be eliminated.
Government has a purpose. Our government's purpose is spelled out plainly in the Constitution. Anything beyond that violates the Constitution per the 10th Amendment. However, I do believe that the government should not be limited to what's currently in the Constitution, but if it needs to do more, there is an amendment process that will allow for whatever expanded powers
Really? Do I really need to enumerate for you the virtually endless list of hyper-corrupt small governments? Oh. I get it. You're just trolling. Cool. (No one could be that full of BS.)
The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
Well, that is what happens when you kill the government, isn't it? Reverting to tribalism or feudalism. The secret hope of right-leaning anarchists is simply that they would come out on top and fill the local warlord position. The secret hope of left-leaning anarchists, on the other hand, is so utopic, that you gotta view Marx as a stone-cold realist in comparison.
Left leaning anarchists (e.g. Bakunin) predicted the tyranny that would follow if a Marxist revolution ever occurred. I'd say that makes them at least a bit more realistic than Marx was.
The secret hope of left leaning anarchists is little more than seeing todays successful democratic socialist governments taken to their logical conclusion. More direct democracy and more direct ownership of the means of production.
Well, the thing with taking democratic socialism to its conclusion is along the lines of Schumpeter then, I guess. That's one of the brighter projections of the future, indeed. I have to admit that I am not that versed in the classic theory of anarchism, I was working from my experience with current examples that I had met. I don't know much about Bakunin, in particular I have no idea how he would ensure that his egalitarian anarcho-socialist utopia would stay stable. How do you prevent concentration of pow
has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved.
The way I read Somalia's history, they have never moved out of tribal law. When the supposed Somali government's power was at it's peak, there were huge areas of Somalia that they didn't control. No governmental body has ever really ruled in that land. At best, they ruled Mogadishu and surrounding areas, and made a show of force in outlying areas. At worst, the capital experiences running gun battles round the clock.
England left Somalia because they were ungovernable nomads. Nothing has ever changed, t
The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
Slavery is banned by the Constitution so the feds could get involved.
All power to the Counties! All power to the Cities! All power to the neighborhoods!
What is the deal with States, that they're so awesome? Maybe it's because I live in Oklahoma at the moment, but I'm just not seeing it. When we talk about mobility, you have to remember that the reason it's relatively (not absolutely, by a long shot) easy to pick up and move between states is that there's a certain amount of standardization provided by the federal government. Even something as simple as "states must recognize
States' rights sound awesome, but what would you *do* with that power and granularity, that can't or shouldn't be done at a higher or lower level?
Well, whatever you want. Your state could legalize marijuana. Your state could legalize gay marriage. Your state could ban abortion. Really, it's whatever your state wanted to do.
However, you are correct that their are limits. Part of the 10th Amendment states that duties of the federal government are the fed's job, not the states. Coining money, for example is a federal job. States may not coin their own money. Also, states may not violate Constitutional rights. For example, an Oklahoma policeman
But that still doesn't answer why the State is the ideal layer for this to happen. It's arbitrary. Sure, we can quote the Constitution, or bring up the Founding Fathers, to justify doing things "by the book", but why? Just because that's the way some dead guys designed the system? Including dead guys who felt they had very little right to tell the next generation how to run the show? So then it just becomes an argument about either doing things by the book, or rewriting the book. Which is fine and dandy, bu
Why can't I make prostitution illegal on my plot of land? Ultimately, shouldn't I be able to decide? And I'm sure anti-abortionists would feel that banning it in some states, and not in others, is akin to having slavery in the state next door: morally unjustifiable. We clearly recognize that there are basic human rights -- and some less obvious -- that deserve upholding both here and abroad.
Actually, you may make prostitution legal if you want... in Nevada. Laws against prostitution are state laws. If you want to make it "illegal" on your land, say, in a state where it is legal, than you may. It's your land. If you don't want someone paying for sex on your land, then kindly ask them to leave. If you want to be a pimp, and do it legally, you may petition your local state legislature to make prostitution legal or move to a state where it already is (Nevada is the only one).
The 10th has been effectively trumped by the Interstate Commerce Clause. Which is probably the single largest reorienting of power in the country's history. If anyone realized what was happening at the time, it should have started a revolution.
I wonder if that was the intent of using the ICC, or if that's just how it has turned out; but the federal consolidation of power is absolutely been garnered by the expansion of that power beyond it's clear intent.
If we had more local control over our lives, your argument would carry much more weight. You could say, "If you hate government so much, move to Mississippi. Seriously." and you would know that the person you are talking to could truly move to Mississippi. Of course, if they are already in MS, you could tell them to keep their noses out of your state's business.
And that works not at all for the three things our federal government spends >75% of its budget on: defense, health care, and social security. Is
Rightists and leftists are indistinguishable to me. Both sides of the aisle have bought into globalism, and both sides serve Corporate America, rather than the constituents who elect them. So - don't point fingers at the righties. The lefties are just as bad.
Why is it that all of a sudden reducing government (which has only grown over the years) is tantamount to becoming anarchy? Some nutjobs do believe in almost no government, most of us believe in a weaker federal government because what people in California want doesn't matter to people in Ohio, and what people in Ohio want doesn't matter to people in Florida. Example: Federal law has it that we can't use marijuana for medicinal purposes. California is in violation of that law, but most Californians don't care, and a lot of people outside of California would like to move there specifically for that. Wouldn't it make sense that people outside of California not have a say in what happens in California? This kind of bullshit happens all the time. It's about granularity. Small democracies work way, way better than big ones. It makes no sense to have the biggest, most diverse, least related group of voters doing the most powerful governing.
The federal government, as the least representative government of any specific person does a whole hell of a lot it was never intended to do. It's not a matter if government should do it, it's a matter of if a government so far removed should do it. If every single person in Montana wanted to opt out of Social Security in favor of their own locally run version, where do the assholes in the rest of the states get off telling them how to run their lives? If you want to be a dictator to the minority, instead of respect differences of opinion, maybe you should leave. Your ideas of how the government should be run are further out of touch with our laws than small government fans. You obviously don't have the support to change the laws or the constitution would have been ammended to make a lot of these illegal, overreaching programs legal, so you get out. There is nothing stopping any state from implementing any of the federal programs for themselves, they just want to impose it on everybody else whether they agree to it or not so they can get the benefit of other state's resources. That is the evil of strong central government, that is the purpose of the electoral college, and that is why changes to the constitution require more than a simple majority. But you can get around all of that by simply ignoring the constitution, and that's what we as a country have done. Somehow the people that don't support it want to send us back to a third world country? No, not at all. But I guess it's easier for you to cover your ears and scream than to challenge your own beliefs.
This is an utterly stupid argument. Some level of government is necessary for collective action. The small government argument is not that there should be no central government, or that society should be so fractured that each faction has its own government and laws and otherwise lives in a state of nature with the other factions. Instead, the small government argument is that our government does too much, and has so extended its authority as to be destructive of its primary end of protecting our rights of
Unfortunately, the argument that the current federal government should be cut to 1% of its current size amounts to exactly that - no federal government. Heck, it wouldn't even be able to fund the various military branches at that level. Heck, $40 Billion won't even fund NASA and the Department of Justice. You'll fund a bit of administration, a couple of foreign embassies and a small army that is less than 1/10 of what it is now (just going by budget figures). Furthermore, lack of a central authority will re
That's assuming an equal cut. Stating that we need to reduce Federal government and including the caveats of making it do what it should be doing and stopping it from doing what it should not be doing, means that we'll be getting rid of entitlements, putting infrastructure and other projects at the State level, and leaving the defense of the country (and world) and how to pay for that at the Federal level. Certainly, we can't go back to the late 1700's and early 1800's where we figured out some things real
The point you're missing is that $40 Billion doesn't even buy you the government of a small state like Norway or Belgium. It buys you the government of a state like Vietnam. And putting things at the state level doesn't mean squat. Who suddenly pays for the much larger state budget? The same taxpayer who was paying the federal government. Except now, you're doing it with less economies of scale and less standardization.
That's a great idea to turn the US into a Banana Republic.
Oxygen toxicity shouldn't be a problem until the partial pressure of oxygen exceeds 1.4 atm. Flash point of common materials becomes a problem much sooner.
In an oxygen-rich environment, the LEL is lower, the UEL is higher, and the autoignition temperature is lower. The flash point does not change.
Flash point is the temperature at which a flammable liquid (at STP) releases a flammable vapor (Wikipedia says "the lowest temperature at which [a volatile liquid] can vaporize to form an ignitable mixture in air").
Now, for a short quiz to verify that you understand the concept of f
Because the percentage in the air is enough. Because your house would be a firebomb waiting to go off. Because it would cost a bunch of money for an unnecessary expense. Because it would kill you.
Great Depression is your answer to what? Because Great Depression was created by the Fed, who monetized UK debt (yeah, English debt). Fed was printing obscene amounts of greenbacks and buying UK debt to prevent UK from defaulting (sort of like Germany is doing with Greece).
The 1921 saw a depression that had higher unemployment than what is observed today, but by 1923 that depression was over. The difference? Government spending was cut by 70%.
1925 US Fed started monetizing UK debt, this inflated the agricul
I know in the past I've argued with you over politics, but damn if you don't make a lot of sense in this story. It's a damned shame that your extremely interesting and informative posts are sitting at +1, when inane comments with nothing but strawmen are sitting at +4.
People originally wanted to escape the corruption, massive taxes, distant and uncaring government, and miles of paperwork and red tape that existed in Europe. We have become that which we fought so hard against.
Except that there is no place to escape to any more. I'm not trying to be fatalistic, so much as if there was a solution that easy, half of the people in the World would be trying to take advantage of it as well. So we have to start cleaning it up. And grabbing back po
Please don't mention Switzerland. Despite living there, you have no clue what "economic freedoms" means. The only economic freedom you care about is the one to reduce the taxes you pay.
Not exactly true. The only "economic freedom" roman is caring about, judging by his posting history, is the freedom to shit on his fellow man from a high perch, unchecked and unchallenged.
Not exactly true. The only "economic freedom" roman is caring about, judging by his posting history, is the freedom to shit on his fellow man from a high perch, unchecked and unchallenged.
I don't know what roman was referring to, but if you think "keeping what I earned through my own labor, innovation and investments" = "shitting on my fellow man from a high perch," then I'd love to shit on you all day, every day.
You mean keeping what you earned by benefiting from the whole society around you, all the infrastructure and background services it provided you? No, cannot be, it is all YOURS, you are the sole prodigy that came up out of nothing with no help at all, so you are DESERVING to KEEP IT ALL! Right? But thanks for making it clear. The mentality of a sociopath.
You mean keeping what you earned by benefiting from the whole society around you, all the infrastructure and background services it provided you? No, cannot be, it is all YOURS, you are the sole prodigy that came up out of nothing with no help at all, so you are DESERVING to KEEP IT ALL! Right? But thanks for making it clear. The mentality of a sociopath.
In trade, both parties are enriched, as they both find a greater value in what they got than what they gave. Trade, in itself, automatically benefits society.
Background services? I would voluntarily trade, and pay for such services as I require or see fit. I do so on a daily basis. The fact that the government runs some of these, and so claiming that I would not pay for them because I object to taxation, is a strawman. The government doesn't need to run things. Roads can be privatized (and some are) and I w
Your ideas are based on the one single ideology to leave the unfortunate to rot in the streets - and to gleefully watch over it. You made that abundantly clear in hundreds of posts. Me, I am just insulting you. I know what you are. You have no ideas worth discussing, because your frame of mind is lightyears outside of civilization. Equating me insulting you with you wishing to cancel the social contract is just one more example for how far you are disconnected from humanity.
Yeah, that summarizes it, doesn't it? The mere presence of anyone dissenting from you, it hurts, no? Your callousness, your open disregard for anyone else, your barely concealed hatred for anyone that does not operate on your "give me mine, fuck yours!" attitude. As long as some of us are around that are not like you, you are constantly reminded that your attitude is sociopathic. And that burns in that small remainder of your consciousness. It burns, no? But be at peace, if you get yours, we will finally di
Ah, the classic libertarian/randian fallacy: that everything you achieve in life is 100% due to your own actions, and no one else's. If that were truly the case, you could live like a king in the various places in the world that lack anything like a central government. I'm still waiting for you to move to any one of them and fulfill your dream (hint: Switzerland is not it. It's pretty much the opposite of it).
Of course you have nothing to say. We knew that. By the way, asshole, this is an insult, not an ad hominem. We are not saying "roman is an asshole, therefor his arguments have no merit", we are saying "roman's arguments are prima facie worthless, but, as he won't engage his two remaining braincells at any time, he is an asshole." Just plainly insulting you - that's not a fallacy, that's a rhetorical tactic. For the lulz.
Then please move to Cyprus. Or are you saying that you like all the social stability and safety that the Swiss regulations buy you? Like, for example, the various minimum wage agreements hashed out between trade unions and employers in various sectors of the economy, and enforced by the government?
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started. In the 20th century we became a super power due to massive infrastructure investments giving us our highway system and DARPA helped us build the Internet as we know it today. Sorry, government played a huge part in all of that. Everything from establishing minimal wage to setting fire codes help improve the way of life of every American and not just the robber barrens of the 19th century.
I don't see anyone leaving this country because they feel the government is too oppressive, if they did I'm not sure where they would go since Europe has a lot of the same policies, Asia is even tighter on freedom of expression and Africa is filled with strike. I guess that leaves Australia? While full of nice people and hot aussie chicks, they too have been spying on their citizens and doing the same things as our government including failed regulation leading to a massive oil spill off of their shores. So I guess that leaves Antarctica? Of course there are our dear friends to the north but Canada has its problems too, the grass is always greener on the other side. So I guess I have trouble picturing what a freer nation is. There aren't many nations out there where you will pay less in taxes, usually twice as much and don't forget the artificially low cost of gas here.
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started.
It appears that roman_mir's idea of utopia is based on the few robber barons of the 19th (and early 20th) century who managed to amass great fortunes by running rampant over man and beast. It's a narrow reading of a small portion of history.
The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century was capitalist free market and industrialization, which only became possible because the US was so free to do business in because the government was so limited, so small and so insignificant.
My, you are persistent. No, the reason that the US became the wealthiest country in the world is that it was able to harness enormous amounts of cheap resources without much interference by neighboring countries nor effective resistance by the native populations. The resources of the Western US (and various marine bodies) untapped (except by the locals who were rather quickly marginalized).
This behavior also had a number of deleterious effects - raping of resources, the environment (would you want to live in a 19th century urban environment?) and impressive social inequities.
So, government did step in and attempt to mitigate the hellbent robber baron / beggar they neighbor system. It was partially successful. Yes, we have problems that stem from going the other way - to much regulation, too much governmental control. But your slavish devotion to an anachronistic and time limited system (not much of the West available for plunder at bargain prices) suggests you really haven't looked at some of the finer points in American history.
- well, I am not your president, so what do you care?
raping of resources
- I don't see raping, I see people developing their economy. Everything else is secondary to that until the point is reached, where there is enough wealth to start caring about the environment. Just ask the people in the poorest nations what is the most important thing - environment or food? Only wealthy economies with large amounts of wealth and production can start caring about anything beyond food and minimum comforts.
If you don't' see a way to perform a peaceful revolution in the United States, then you are advocating anarchy, in my opinion. The peaceful transfer of power has been a staple of the government and rights of US citizens. We are fortunate that when we cast our vote, we should not have fear of retribution for our vote (freed black panthers situation is noted). The winners do not round up the losers and take them out back to never be seen again.
If things are not going your way, convince enough people to
This is one of those forwards that your crazy uncle sends you all the time. Unlike "Lets not buy gas on 9/11", this one actually makes a bit of sense. - 1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. [You are paid X for being in 'full session'. If you show up to 50% of sessions, you get 50% pay.]
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
... the result being that Congressmen will be people who either are independently wealthy, or are doing backdoor deals which will get them lots of pay, benefits, and retirement money.
Of course that happens anyway, but you really don't want to encourage it even more.
Start giving law enforcement bonuses for every politician they throw in prison. That approach works so well in the private sector I'm sure that there could be no negative effects if we include it in law enforcement.
Yeah, I think Congressmen make more than the average salary. Independently wealthy would have to take a pay cut to get in there, most average people would get a pay raise.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
They've been doing this since the 80's. Not sure if I see the point in having Congressmen who paid into the previous system get switched at this late date; it disrupts predictability (people planned for their retirement according to assumptions that you'd now retroactively upset), and many of them are probably retired from Congress already, so it's not as though this can be used to pressure them into doing anything to help everyone who pays into Social Security out of self interest.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Let's really go for representation. Why not get rid of the election of representatives. *gasp* What you say. Anti-democratic. You betcha!
Democracy is 51% telling the other 49% what to do, a.k.a. two wolves and a sheep deciding who will be dinner. Liberty being a well-armed sheep. Anyways...
Instead of voting, we draft people to Congress. Similar to jury-duty. For 2 years you find yourself serving the people for a reasonable stipend. 2x avg salary should suffice.
Social Security has long ago been reduced to a line on paper. Our Government currently cooks the books and manipulates the fund to make it appear as if it's not broke. Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and knowing their disdain for Rome and its history of corruption, I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it. (the fall of Rome can be attributed to the same pattern of social and military over-spending and lack of leadership)
Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers... I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it.
So? I don't want to live in a country that is governed by long dead patricians. I'd rather that the living run things, and in the here and now, Social Security seems to be well liked and useful (if not implemented as well as we might hope). I don't have a problem with its existence.
The issue isn't any of that stuff that you posted. It's that Goverment Pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and Interest on the Debt account for almost 100% of our current budget. That leaves only 25 billion (less than 1.5%!) for our entire defense department, military, and, well, literally thousands and thousands of programs and agencies. Until we get rid of these four items, we're broke. We could cut the military to $0. Kill off every single social spending program. Get rid of student aid. Stop patrolling our borders. Stop foreign aid. Close down NASA. None of it would make any more difference than spitting on a bonfire. Those four items alone are literally killing our nation, and until we get rid of them entirely, we are doomed.
Well, you seem to be ignoring half of the picture. Why have you forgotten about raising additional revenue? (Which is not to say that we should not address some of our current spending priorities)
We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away. We have four single items out of thousands that are enough to cripple us. If we count the military, we'd have to raise taxes by almost 30% to just cover those five items. And none of that includes welfare or unemployment programs and the like. If we dropped the entire defense bu
"Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people"
This section makes no sense whatsoever.
Which "American people"'s policy would they have to abide to, by law? In what world do you live that you think there is a common healthcare policy for all of the people across the land? If you want to be in the business of writing policy, learn how a basic contract works, first.
There are some things that we need that you cannot trust the individuals to properly fund... Most of us doesn't really understand how expensive stuff is or why it is so expensive, and just assume that someone is ripping us off. If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused. Managers on top of managers all making sure each other isn't abusing their own p
Actually, it's the other way around. If there's less money available to be handed out to political allies and cronies or to buy votes, the amount of graft and corruption generally goes down. The layers of overhead and oversight and management generally do not serve to reduce graft and corruption, despite the best of intententions, but they do increase cost by orders of magnitude. I've been working with the Federal government for years as a contractor, and I assure you that there is no way in which managers
If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused.
Up to a point, auditors and inspectors pay for themselves. We haven't reached that point yet and entrenched interests constantly fight to prevent us from reaching it. Worse, leaders do not have the will to deal with the steady trickle of scandals uncovered by auditing anything the size of the US Government.
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion. No? Didn't think so. Please stop parroting stuff you've heard parroted by various Fox News personalities. Simplistic "solutions" like this sound attractive until one spends more than ten seconds thinking about them. Then their absurdity becomes obvious. And no, I don't mean fiscal responsibility is absurd. I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue. Not even close. So this suggestion, one that is near and dear to Tea Bagger hearts everywhere, is nothing but an absurd distraction from the critical process of meaningful reform, reform that actually has a chance of solving the very real problems we are facing. It is the folly of indulging this absurd distraction that Senator McCain refers to, and (I can't believe I'm saying this...), he's absolutely right.
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion.
Well, I know that the total of federal, state, and local governmental spending was 6.9% of GDP around 1900. I also know that projections for this year are for that to be 40%. So, if one assumes that what has happened in the past isn't impossible, then one should conclude that government could be much smaller. Possibly the GP's claim of 1/10 is an exaggeration, but if one compares the 1/10 claim to your "can [not
Note that the USA collects the least tax revenue of any OECD country [wikipedia.org] (as a % of GDP).
From your source..
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 38.9 percent of GDP. Spending increases totaled well over $1 trillion in 2009 alone, an increase of more than 20 percent over 2008. Stimulus spending has hurt the fiscal balance and placed federal debt on an unsustainable trajectory. Gross government debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP i
There is an obvious direct relationship between the desirability of a country, and the tax-revenue they collect. Norway collects twice the tax as the USA, and they are richer per capita, and have a very stable society. (Mass killings happen everywhere, and are a timeless phenomenon.)
I did a little more digging around in your source and found the following tidbit regarding Zimbabwe:
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 97.8 percent of GDP
Maybe we are addressing it wrong. If we don't all agree (for some large fraction of "all") that something should be part of the government, maybe it shouldn't be part of the government.
Do you really think this is the case? What I see is a lot of people saying: "Don't touch my Medicare, don't touch my Social Security, don't raise my taxes, and balance the budget." Which is sort of a ridiculous position to take. Even if we're allowed to touch defense (which a lot of people don't want either) that's not enough room to maneuver. Hell a strikingly large percentage of Americans don't even seem to realize that Medicare and Social Security are tied to the federal government and the debt. Remember back during the health care debate when the nice old lady stood up to President Obama to say something along the lines of "I hate socialized medicine and don't touch my Medicare?"
I don't think people are stupid, but much like with technology they often lack the bandwidth in their daily lives to learn as much about politics as they probably should. People want more responsible government, and smaller government until they see how it's going to affect them personally. Everyone's happy with the idea that we should cut "stuff" out of the budget, but when the "stuff" gets personalized to "My Medicare", "My defense industry job", "My road project in my town" or whatever the happy starts to wane. Then you start hearing the "Well don't cut stuff like that, cut stuff like funding for research on the affects of cow methane on the local owl population (or pick your ridiculous government project of choice)" crowd starts up; blithely ignoring that fact that a) some of that research actually is valuable, just not in obvious ways, and b) it represents a really small portion of the federal budget.
We have among the lowest taxes in the developed world in this country, and we have the infrastructure to prove it. I'm not saying we should move to the European model of 40% taxes (yes, I pulled this number out of my butt, your European taxes may be higher or lower than this figure), but we can easily balance the budget with some prudent and moderate cuts to spending, along with very modest tax increases to say, where they were just 10 years ago. I know that real "small government" people like you probably understand the cuts that would be needed for true "small government", I'm not saying that you don't full understand your position. I'm saying that if most people truly understood what it meant to cut government this way, far fewer of them would support the idea.
The "lowest taxes in the developed world" isn't quite true when you take into account state and local taxes.
However, I would say that the real problems are in the "My road project in my town" group. While the states have broad powers to tax, for some reason the argument has stuck that only the federal government can come up with the money for certain things. The federal government should not be funding the states, and any such funding should be cut. The states should administer their own taxes. When the states have more power, state elections will be even more contested, and better representation will result.
Social Security should probably be in the federal realm, since plenty of people move after retiring (and thus there's an imbalance of retirees). Medicare/Medicaid is already 50% funded by the states. If individual states really need help with Medicare costs then we can implement a "transfer" similar to the system used in Canada.
Defense spending certainly does need to be cut. Britain ruled half the world with 125,000 troops. We've got 1.4 million active troops. However, the time would be best spent finding a few large defense projects that can be cut for quick savings, and leaving the rest to an independent committee.
The Social Security wage base should be removed, so that it applies to all wages, not just the first $100K.
My bet is that if all that was done, overall taxes would still go up, but federal taxes might actually go down. Some laws would also change, without the threat of losing federal funding, states might be less willing to implement federal programs (e.g. drinking age at 21, abstinence-only education, etc.)
Federal road tax shouldn't exist either. There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Direct Payment and Grants to the states total $2 trillion. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_spending_by_state.php?year=2010&chart=Z0&units=b&rank=t
There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Part of the goal for the Interstate Highway System was to support land transportation for national defense. National defense shouldn't be something farmed out to the states.
It's not so much that people believe only the Federal Government can come up with the money for certain things as it is a subtle redistribution of wealth to make sure that low population states don't turn into bankrupt republics. Sure, if federal grants went away and the states had to fend for themselves, places like New York or California would just up the state tax rate by a few percent (after much political wrangling, no doubt) and be fine. Most people in those states would probably see little or no di
I agree with both of you. By the way, I generally consider myself left of center, but I'm in Upstate New York. Basically, rather than cutting services wholesale I'd like New York to have a choice of keeping the services it wants, and keeping more of the tax money. Currently the federal government receives far more in taxes from NY than is spent here. If the federal government cut services and forced states to pick up the slack, NY could probably do it. Eventually federal taxes would go down as the debt cris
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
If you draw a paycheck, you'll notice that it has much more than just one number on it. Your failure to read those numbers does not mean tha they are obfuscated.
If you don't draw a paycheck, then you are making estimated tax payments at least every quarter, and cutting a check each
If the Congress restricted itself to what the Constitution explicitly grants it, there would be no debt ceiling to raise. Congress has the authority to appropriate money, not to refuse to pay the bills for the things they already spent it on. In fact the 14th amendment specifically says that U.S. debt should never be called into question, which is why dubya should have been censured for his Social Security "IOU" stunt.
But then, when the Constitution doesn't agree with the Teabagger line it can be convenie
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APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming;
...and is best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis
Well ... (Score:5, Funny)
Easy enough (Score:0, Insightful)
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
Too bad government isn't voluntary, or the national debt would be a small fraction of GDP.
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Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Insightful)
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
If you love water so much, why not move to the middle of the Atlantic?
The problem is not government in general. The problem is TOO MUCH government, and too much CENTRALIZED government. You have much more power influencing your local and state government than you will ever have trying to influence the federal government. This should be obvious when you consider that 48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state.
If we had more local control over our lives, your argument would carry much more weight. You could say, "If you hate government so much, move to Mississippi. Seriously." and you would know that the person you are talking to could truly move to Mississippi. Of course, if they are already in MS, you could tell them to keep their noses out of your state's business.
It's all clearly explained in the 10'th Amendment. Unfortunately, all three branches of our government seem to ignore it, even though they've all taken an oath to defend it. Clearly, the 10th Amendment means SOMETHING. I mean, the founders wouldn't have put in there for nothing. It's not like they had nine amendments and said, "Let's make up one more to make in an even 10."
Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
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Exactly. People will bitch and moan about the government all day but then they get to drive to work on paved roads with traffic moderation and other amenities.
The Interstate Highway System was created to move military equipment around. It serves a military function and should be funded through the military. The fact that civilians may use it daily is an added perk. All other roads should be purely state funded. That would cut our federal highway budget by a substantial amount. Of course, states would have to raise taxes to pay for the building and maintenance of state highways, so it would end up being a wash to the taxpayer. The difference is that my tax d
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If you read what the guy said, he suggested collecting the cleanup costs up front, and then refunding the difference to the company.
Of course, that would require some intelligence on the part of the state governments, which is unlikely to happen.
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How is the "Big Dig" a "very needed purpose" in my life? I've never seen it. I'll never drive through it.
There's a very good chance that someday you or someone you care for will be treated by a doctor who had to commute that route to one of the huge number of medical schools in the Boston area. He'll have retained more of the material due to the extra half hour per day he spent catching up on sleep instead of sitting behind a wheel listening to WAAF. Also, anything you ever purchase that had to travel that route will potentially be cheaper due to lower transportation costs.
That, and thousands of other effici
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I agree with ArcherB; when people complain government is too big, immediately people jump into Washington Monument Syndrome and claim that shrinking government will take away the really valuable things that most people want... but more than that, it conflates different kinds of tax revenues and where and how they are collected and what they are used for.
If you take a look at the huge debate going on in Washington right now, you don't hear people complaining about gasoline taxes - which is what is supposed t
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Because different local populations all have their own brand of stupidity. Countless times the Feds have saved states from the consequences of bad policy, just as countless times state governments have stayed bad policies coming from Washington. Having the two systems offers another check and balance. One system harnesses the best the country has to offer to find the best overall policies. The other harnesses the region-specific knowledge to adapt those policies locally.
Obviously, the system is broken,
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What he's saying is most taxes should be local.
But should it, really? And how local is local?
Number 1, just moving taxes to the state level (or even the county/city level) is not going to fix the budget problem. It just means someone else is responsible for it. Number 2, a significant number of states manage to have a balanced budget only because of help from the federal government for infrastructure, health care, education and security. Increasing their budgets while reducing their revenue is going to make the problem worse. Number 3, there is the impl
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I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
Well put! The programs that are Constitutional should not be slashed. The programs that are not Constitutional need to be eliminated.
Government has a purpose. Our government's purpose is spelled out plainly in the Constitution. Anything beyond that violates the Constitution per the 10th Amendment. However, I do believe that the government should not be limited to what's currently in the Constitution, but if it needs to do more, there is an amendment process that will allow for whatever expanded powers
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Re:Easy enough (Score:4, Interesting)
The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
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Left leaning anarchists (e.g. Bakunin) predicted the tyranny that would follow if a Marxist revolution ever occurred. I'd say that makes them at least a bit more realistic than Marx was.
The secret hope of left leaning anarchists is little more than seeing todays successful democratic socialist governments taken to their logical conclusion. More direct democracy and more direct ownership of the means of production.
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has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved.
The way I read Somalia's history, they have never moved out of tribal law. When the supposed Somali government's power was at it's peak, there were huge areas of Somalia that they didn't control. No governmental body has ever really ruled in that land. At best, they ruled Mogadishu and surrounding areas, and made a show of force in outlying areas. At worst, the capital experiences running gun battles round the clock.
England left Somalia because they were ungovernable nomads. Nothing has ever changed, t
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The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
Slavery is banned by the Constitution so the feds could get involved.
States' rights? (Score:3, Insightful)
All power to the Counties! All power to the Cities! All power to the neighborhoods!
What is the deal with States, that they're so awesome? Maybe it's because I live in Oklahoma at the moment, but I'm just not seeing it. When we talk about mobility, you have to remember that the reason it's relatively (not absolutely, by a long shot) easy to pick up and move between states is that there's a certain amount of standardization provided by the federal government. Even something as simple as "states must recognize
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States' rights sound awesome, but what would you *do* with that power and granularity, that can't or shouldn't be done at a higher or lower level?
Well, whatever you want. Your state could legalize marijuana. Your state could legalize gay marriage. Your state could ban abortion. Really, it's whatever your state wanted to do.
However, you are correct that their are limits. Part of the 10th Amendment states that duties of the federal government are the fed's job, not the states. Coining money, for example is a federal job. States may not coin their own money. Also, states may not violate Constitutional rights. For example, an Oklahoma policeman
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But that still doesn't answer why the State is the ideal layer for this to happen. It's arbitrary. Sure, we can quote the Constitution, or bring up the Founding Fathers, to justify doing things "by the book", but why? Just because that's the way some dead guys designed the system? Including dead guys who felt they had very little right to tell the next generation how to run the show? So then it just becomes an argument about either doing things by the book, or rewriting the book. Which is fine and dandy, bu
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Why can't I make prostitution illegal on my plot of land? Ultimately, shouldn't I be able to decide? And I'm sure anti-abortionists would feel that banning it in some states, and not in others, is akin to having slavery in the state next door: morally unjustifiable. We clearly recognize that there are basic human rights -- and some less obvious -- that deserve upholding both here and abroad.
Actually, you may make prostitution legal if you want... in Nevada. Laws against prostitution are state laws. If you want to make it "illegal" on your land, say, in a state where it is legal, than you may. It's your land. If you don't want someone paying for sex on your land, then kindly ask them to leave. If you want to be a pimp, and do it legally, you may petition your local state legislature to make prostitution legal or move to a state where it already is (Nevada is the only one).
You mentioned sla
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The 10th has been effectively trumped by the Interstate Commerce Clause. Which is probably the single largest reorienting of power in the country's history. If anyone realized what was happening at the time, it should have started a revolution.
I wonder if that was the intent of using the ICC, or if that's just how it has turned out; but the federal consolidation of power is absolutely been garnered by the expansion of that power beyond it's clear intent.
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And that works not at all for the three things our federal government spends >75% of its budget on: defense, health care, and social security. Is
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Well they were all about the decimal system really...
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Rightists and leftists are indistinguishable to me. Both sides of the aisle have bought into globalism, and both sides serve Corporate America, rather than the constituents who elect them. So - don't point fingers at the righties. The lefties are just as bad.
Re:Way to completely miss the point (Score:4, Interesting)
The federal government, as the least representative government of any specific person does a whole hell of a lot it was never intended to do. It's not a matter if government should do it, it's a matter of if a government so far removed should do it. If every single person in Montana wanted to opt out of Social Security in favor of their own locally run version, where do the assholes in the rest of the states get off telling them how to run their lives? If you want to be a dictator to the minority, instead of respect differences of opinion, maybe you should leave. Your ideas of how the government should be run are further out of touch with our laws than small government fans. You obviously don't have the support to change the laws or the constitution would have been ammended to make a lot of these illegal, overreaching programs legal, so you get out. There is nothing stopping any state from implementing any of the federal programs for themselves, they just want to impose it on everybody else whether they agree to it or not so they can get the benefit of other state's resources. That is the evil of strong central government, that is the purpose of the electoral college, and that is why changes to the constitution require more than a simple majority. But you can get around all of that by simply ignoring the constitution, and that's what we as a country have done. Somehow the people that don't support it want to send us back to a third world country? No, not at all. But I guess it's easier for you to cover your ears and scream than to challenge your own beliefs.
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48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state
There are 100 US Senators, not 50. Each state gets 2.
Correct, I meant 49/50. I guess I'll have to forgive that 57 states comment.
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technically 96/100 is the same as 48/50 as 24/25.
fractions are fun.
Um, actually it's 98/100, so the fraction you're looking for is 49/50.
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good catch.. me not thinking - no coffee today.
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Unfortunately, the argument that the current federal government should be cut to 1% of its current size amounts to exactly that - no federal government. Heck, it wouldn't even be able to fund the various military branches at that level. Heck, $40 Billion won't even fund NASA and the Department of Justice. You'll fund a bit of administration, a couple of foreign embassies and a small army that is less than 1/10 of what it is now (just going by budget figures). Furthermore, lack of a central authority will re
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The point you're missing is that $40 Billion doesn't even buy you the government of a small state like Norway or Belgium. It buys you the government of a state like Vietnam. And putting things at the state level doesn't mean squat. Who suddenly pays for the much larger state budget? The same taxpayer who was paying the federal government. Except now, you're doing it with less economies of scale and less standardization.
That's a great idea to turn the US into a Banana Republic.
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Hey, you need oxygen to live, right? So why don't you pump your house full of 100% oxygen?
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Flash point [wikipedia.org] is not the problem. LEL/UEL [wikipedia.org] and autoignition temperature [wikipedia.org] are the problems.
In an oxygen-rich environment, the LEL is lower, the UEL is higher, and the autoignition temperature is lower. The flash point does not change.
Flash point is the temperature at which a flammable liquid (at STP) releases a flammable vapor (Wikipedia says "the lowest temperature at which [a volatile liquid] can vaporize to form an ignitable mixture in air").
Now, for a short quiz to verify that you understand the concept of f
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It's a pretty common mistake. Most people don't understand flash point. Its name doesn't really help either.
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Is that good enough or do you need some more?
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Oh, that's plenty, thank you. I think you get my analogy just fine.
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So you're calling him an elf?
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The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century...
Yeaaaaah, that turned out well, didn't it. [wikipedia.org]
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Great Depression is your answer to what? Because Great Depression was created by the Fed, who monetized UK debt (yeah, English debt). Fed was printing obscene amounts of greenbacks and buying UK debt to prevent UK from defaulting (sort of like Germany is doing with Greece).
The 1921 saw a depression that had higher unemployment than what is observed today, but by 1923 that depression was over. The difference? Government spending was cut by 70%.
1925 US Fed started monetizing UK debt, this inflated the agricul
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Yes it worked out very well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) [wikipedia.org]
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And so it comes full circle.
People originally wanted to escape the corruption, massive taxes, distant and uncaring government, and miles of paperwork and red tape that existed in Europe. We have become that which we fought so hard against.
Except that there is no place to escape to any more. I'm not trying to be fatalistic, so much as if there was a solution that easy, half of the people in the World would be trying to take advantage of it as well. So we have to start cleaning it up. And grabbing back po
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Re:Easy enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't mention Switzerland. Despite living there, you have no clue what "economic freedoms" means. The only economic freedom you care about is the one to reduce the taxes you pay.
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Not exactly true. The only "economic freedom" roman is caring about, judging by his posting history, is the freedom to shit on his fellow man from a high perch, unchecked and unchallenged.
I don't know what roman was referring to, but if you think "keeping what I earned through my own labor, innovation and investments" = "shitting on my fellow man from a high perch," then I'd love to shit on you all day, every day.
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You mean keeping what you earned by benefiting from the whole society around you, all the infrastructure and background services it provided you? No, cannot be, it is all YOURS, you are the sole prodigy that came up out of nothing with no help at all, so you are DESERVING to KEEP IT ALL! Right? But thanks for making it clear. The mentality of a sociopath.
In trade, both parties are enriched, as they both find a greater value in what they got than what they gave. Trade, in itself, automatically benefits society.
Background services? I would voluntarily trade, and pay for such services as I require or see fit. I do so on a daily basis. The fact that the government runs some of these, and so claiming that I would not pay for them because I object to taxation, is a strawman. The government doesn't need to run things. Roads can be privatized (and some are) and I w
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A sociopath, or anti-social person, is one who would demand that others contribute to one's benefit through the use of violence.
You have no idea what you're talking about. [wikipedia.org]
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You mean like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Millon.27s_subtypes [wikipedia.org] ?
* covetous antisocial - variant of the pure pattern where individuals feel that life has not given them their due.
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I earn mine, earn yours
Ah, the classic libertarian/randian fallacy: that everything you achieve in life is 100% due to your own actions, and no one else's. If that were truly the case, you could live like a king in the various places in the world that lack anything like a central government. I'm still waiting for you to move to any one of them and fulfill your dream (hint: Switzerland is not it. It's pretty much the opposite of it).
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And yet, you voted with your feet to go to Switzerland, land of regulation and regulation-loving people. Again, please don't vote.
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Then please move to Cyprus. Or are you saying that you like all the social stability and safety that the Swiss regulations buy you? Like, for example, the various minimum wage agreements hashed out between trade unions and employers in various sectors of the economy, and enforced by the government?
Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started. In the 20th century we became a super power due to massive infrastructure investments giving us our highway system and DARPA helped us build the Internet as we know it today. Sorry, government played a huge part in all of that. Everything from establishing minimal wage to setting fire codes help improve the way of life of every American and not just the robber barrens of the 19th century.
I don't see anyone leaving this country because they feel the government is too oppressive, if they did I'm not sure where they would go since Europe has a lot of the same policies, Asia is even tighter on freedom of expression and Africa is filled with strike. I guess that leaves Australia? While full of nice people and hot aussie chicks, they too have been spying on their citizens and doing the same things as our government including failed regulation leading to a massive oil spill off of their shores. So I guess that leaves Antarctica? Of course there are our dear friends to the north but Canada has its problems too, the grass is always greener on the other side. So I guess I have trouble picturing what a freer nation is. There aren't many nations out there where you will pay less in taxes, usually twice as much and don't forget the artificially low cost of gas here.
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What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started.
It appears that roman_mir's idea of utopia is based on the few robber barons of the 19th (and early 20th) century who managed to amass great fortunes by running rampant over man and beast. It's a narrow reading of a small portion of history.
Re:Easy enough (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century was capitalist free market and industrialization, which only became possible because the US was so free to do business in because the government was so limited, so small and so insignificant.
My, you are persistent. No, the reason that the US became the wealthiest country in the world is that it was able to harness enormous amounts of cheap resources without much interference by neighboring countries nor effective resistance by the native populations. The resources of the Western US (and various marine bodies) untapped (except by the locals who were rather quickly marginalized).
This behavior also had a number of deleterious effects - raping of resources, the environment (would you want to live in a 19th century urban environment?) and impressive social inequities.
So, government did step in and attempt to mitigate the hellbent robber baron / beggar they neighbor system. It was partially successful. Yes, we have problems that stem from going the other way - to much regulation, too much governmental control. But your slavish devotion to an anachronistic and time limited system (not much of the West available for plunder at bargain prices) suggests you really haven't looked at some of the finer points in American history.
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My, you are persistent
- well, I am not your president, so what do you care?
raping of resources
- I don't see raping, I see people developing their economy. Everything else is secondary to that until the point is reached, where there is enough wealth to start caring about the environment. Just ask the people in the poorest nations what is the most important thing - environment or food? Only wealthy economies with large amounts of wealth and production can start caring about anything beyond food and minimum comforts.
impressive social inequities
- that's what free market capit
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My, you are persistent
- well, I am not your president, so what do you care?
Really? I so thought you were!
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If things are not going your way, convince enough people to
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This is one of those forwards that your crazy uncle sends you all the time. Unlike "Lets not buy gas on 9/11", this one actually makes a bit of sense.
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1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. [You are paid X for being in 'full session'. If you show up to 50% of sessions, you get 50% pay.]
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fu
Re:Easy enough (Score:4, Insightful)
... the result being that Congressmen will be people who either are independently wealthy, or are doing backdoor deals which will get them lots of pay, benefits, and retirement money.
Of course that happens anyway, but you really don't want to encourage it even more.
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Start giving law enforcement bonuses for every politician they throw in prison.
That approach works so well in the private sector I'm sure that there could be no negative effects if we include it in law enforcement.
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2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
They've been doing this since the 80's. Not sure if I see the point in having Congressmen who paid into the previous system get switched at this late date; it disrupts predictability (people planned for their retirement according to assumptions that you'd now retroactively upset), and many of them are probably retired from Congress already, so it's not as though this can be used to pressure them into doing anything to help everyone who pays into Social Security out of self interest.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Already done in the big h
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Damn Democracy....
Let's really go for representation. Why not get rid of the election of representatives. *gasp* What you say. Anti-democratic. You betcha!
Democracy is 51% telling the other 49% what to do, a.k.a. two wolves and a sheep deciding who will be dinner. Liberty being a well-armed sheep. Anyways...
Instead of voting, we draft people to Congress. Similar to jury-duty. For 2 years you find yourself serving the people for a reasonable stipend. 2x avg salary should suffice.
Then the people elect 100 re
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Wow. You are so off-base with reality.
Social Security has long ago been reduced to a line on paper. Our Government currently cooks the books and manipulates the fund to make it appear as if it's not broke. Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and knowing their disdain for Rome and its history of corruption, I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it. (the fall of Rome can be attributed to the same pattern of social and military over-spending and lack of leadership)
Th
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Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers ... I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it.
So? I don't want to live in a country that is governed by long dead patricians. I'd rather that the living run things, and in the here and now, Social Security seems to be well liked and useful (if not implemented as well as we might hope). I don't have a problem with its existence.
The issue isn't any of that stuff that you posted. It's that Goverment Pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and Interest on the Debt account for almost 100% of our current budget. That leaves only 25 billion (less than 1.5%!) for our entire defense department, military, and, well, literally thousands and thousands of programs and agencies. Until we get rid of these four items, we're broke. We could cut the military to $0. Kill off every single social spending program. Get rid of student aid. Stop patrolling our borders. Stop foreign aid. Close down NASA. None of it would make any more difference than spitting on a bonfire. Those four items alone are literally killing our nation, and until we get rid of them entirely, we are doomed.
Well, you seem to be ignoring half of the picture. Why have you forgotten about raising additional revenue? (Which is not to say that we should not address some of our current spending priorities)
We could:
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We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away. We have four single items out of thousands that are enough to cripple us. If we count the military, we'd have to raise taxes by almost 30% to just cover those five items. And none of that includes welfare or unemployment programs and the like. If we dropped the entire defense bu
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"Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people"
This section makes no sense whatsoever.
Which "American people"'s policy would they have to abide to, by law? In what world do you live that you think there is a common healthcare policy for all of the people across the land? If you want to be in the business of writing policy, learn how a basic contract works, first.
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The price of civilization is a bitch, isn't it. I read that Pakistan is closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia, btw.
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There are some things that we need that you cannot trust the individuals to properly fund... Most of us doesn't really understand how expensive stuff is or why it is so expensive, and just assume that someone is ripping us off.
If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused. Managers on top of managers all making sure each other isn't abusing their own p
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If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused.
Up to a point, auditors and inspectors pay for themselves.
We haven't reached that point yet and entrenched interests constantly fight to prevent us from reaching it.
Worse, leaders do not have the will to deal with the steady trickle of scandals uncovered by auditing anything the size of the US Government.
Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Interesting)
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion. No? Didn't think so. Please stop parroting stuff you've heard parroted by various Fox News personalities. Simplistic "solutions" like this sound attractive until one spends more than ten seconds thinking about them. Then their absurdity becomes obvious. And no, I don't mean fiscal responsibility is absurd. I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue. Not even close. So this suggestion, one that is near and dear to Tea Bagger hearts everywhere, is nothing but an absurd distraction from the critical process of meaningful reform, reform that actually has a chance of solving the very real problems we are facing. It is the folly of indulging this absurd distraction that Senator McCain refers to, and (I can't believe I'm saying this...), he's absolutely right.
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No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion.
Well, I know that the total of federal, state, and local governmental spending was 6.9% of GDP around 1900. I also know that projections for this year are for that to be 40%. So, if one assumes that what has happened in the past isn't impossible, then one should conclude that government could be much smaller. Possibly the GP's claim of 1/10 is an exaggeration, but if one compares the 1/10 claim to your "can [not
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Note that the USA collects the least tax revenue of any OECD country [wikipedia.org] (as a % of GDP).
From your source..
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 38.9 percent of GDP. Spending increases totaled well over $1 trillion in 2009 alone, an increase of more than 20 percent over 2008. Stimulus spending has hurt the fiscal balance and placed federal debt on an unsustainable trajectory. Gross government debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP i
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There is an obvious direct relationship between the desirability of a country, and the tax-revenue they collect. Norway collects twice the tax as the USA, and they are richer per capita, and have a very stable society. (Mass killings happen everywhere, and are a timeless phenomenon.)
I did a little more digging around in your source and found the following tidbit regarding Zimbabwe:
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 97.8 percent of GDP
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I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue.
What's this "We" kimosabe?
You have an idea of the type of Government YOU want. This does not grant you the ability to extend this desire to all Americans.
Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone thinks some of government should be cut.
No one agrees on what that some should be.
That's the entire problem.
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Re:Easy enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you really think this is the case? What I see is a lot of people saying: "Don't touch my Medicare, don't touch my Social Security, don't raise my taxes, and balance the budget." Which is sort of a ridiculous position to take. Even if we're allowed to touch defense (which a lot of people don't want either) that's not enough room to maneuver. Hell a strikingly large percentage of Americans don't even seem to realize that Medicare and Social Security are tied to the federal government and the debt. Remember back during the health care debate when the nice old lady stood up to President Obama to say something along the lines of "I hate socialized medicine and don't touch my Medicare?"
I don't think people are stupid, but much like with technology they often lack the bandwidth in their daily lives to learn as much about politics as they probably should. People want more responsible government, and smaller government until they see how it's going to affect them personally. Everyone's happy with the idea that we should cut "stuff" out of the budget, but when the "stuff" gets personalized to "My Medicare", "My defense industry job", "My road project in my town" or whatever the happy starts to wane. Then you start hearing the "Well don't cut stuff like that, cut stuff like funding for research on the affects of cow methane on the local owl population (or pick your ridiculous government project of choice)" crowd starts up; blithely ignoring that fact that a) some of that research actually is valuable, just not in obvious ways, and b) it represents a really small portion of the federal budget.
We have among the lowest taxes in the developed world in this country, and we have the infrastructure to prove it. I'm not saying we should move to the European model of 40% taxes (yes, I pulled this number out of my butt, your European taxes may be higher or lower than this figure), but we can easily balance the budget with some prudent and moderate cuts to spending, along with very modest tax increases to say, where they were just 10 years ago. I know that real "small government" people like you probably understand the cuts that would be needed for true "small government", I'm not saying that you don't full understand your position. I'm saying that if most people truly understood what it meant to cut government this way, far fewer of them would support the idea.
Re:Easy enough (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I would say that the real problems are in the "My road project in my town" group. While the states have broad powers to tax, for some reason the argument has stuck that only the federal government can come up with the money for certain things. The federal government should not be funding the states, and any such funding should be cut. The states should administer their own taxes. When the states have more power, state elections will be even more contested, and better representation will result.
Social Security should probably be in the federal realm, since plenty of people move after retiring (and thus there's an imbalance of retirees). Medicare/Medicaid is already 50% funded by the states. If individual states really need help with Medicare costs then we can implement a "transfer" similar to the system used in Canada.
Defense spending certainly does need to be cut. Britain ruled half the world with 125,000 troops. We've got 1.4 million active troops. However, the time would be best spent finding a few large defense projects that can be cut for quick savings, and leaving the rest to an independent committee.
The Social Security wage base should be removed, so that it applies to all wages, not just the first $100K.
My bet is that if all that was done, overall taxes would still go up, but federal taxes might actually go down. Some laws would also change, without the threat of losing federal funding, states might be less willing to implement federal programs (e.g. drinking age at 21, abstinence-only education, etc.)
Federal road tax shouldn't exist either. There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Direct Payment and Grants to the states total $2 trillion. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_spending_by_state.php?year=2010&chart=Z0&units=b&rank=t
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I shouldn't have included direct payments, as that probably includes Social Security.
The number should be $500 billion (grants) in 2008, I'm sure that's higher now.
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There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Part of the goal for the Interstate Highway System was to support land transportation for national defense. National defense shouldn't be something farmed out to the states.
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It's not so much that people believe only the Federal Government can come up with the money for certain things as it is a subtle redistribution of wealth to make sure that low population states don't turn into bankrupt republics. Sure, if federal grants went away and the states had to fend for themselves, places like New York or California would just up the state tax rate by a few percent (after much political wrangling, no doubt) and be fine. Most people in those states would probably see little or no di
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If you draw a paycheck, you'll notice that it has much more than just one number on it. Your failure to read those numbers does not mean tha they are obfuscated.
If you don't draw a paycheck, then you are making estimated tax payments at least every quarter, and cutting a check each
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If the Congress restricted itself to what the Constitution explicitly grants it, there would be no debt ceiling to raise. Congress has the authority to appropriate money, not to refuse to pay the bills for the things they already spent it on. In fact the 14th amendment specifically says that U.S. debt should never be called into question, which is why dubya should have been censured for his Social Security "IOU" stunt.
But then, when the Constitution doesn't agree with the Teabagger line it can be convenie