Don’t you pay attention? In my post I was using the “I” in the rhetorical sense; if the citizenry decide that they are not being taxed justly then there will most certainly be a revolution.

That’s treason. If you don’t like what your elected representatives do, elect new ones. If you don’t have the votes then don’t try to take over with guns against the majority.

Just don’t go there. That path doesn’t lead anywhere either one of us wants.

Am I a liberarian? Nope – I’m an adult. But just because the libertarians are yutz’s doesn’t mean they’re completely without merit.

Too many adults went with the GOP because it was electable, and because it provided patronage. Get a real Libertarian party and you’ll have something. Libertarians don’t have to be yutzes. Dump the GOP and get a real party going.

You wrote The thing is, your “private property” only EXISTS as such because the state, through the institution of the law, defines it into existence. Otherwise the only way you could “own” something securely would be literally to guard it night and day against all comers.

You appear to fundamentally misunderstand the concept of human rights. Our Constitution is predicated upon the idea that rights are conferred by God upon us; that government exists solely to safeguard those rights. If gov’t fails to do so then it is delinquent in its duties, but it cannot take or grant rights because they accrue to us through the act of being human.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If you believe that they don’t exist or are subject to the whim of government then you literally don’t believe in the concept of rights & thus we really can have no discussion other than an assurance at the most basic level of “I’ll thump you if you mess with me.” That is a pragmatic argument that I’m willing to have if that’s the only way you understand such things; but gov’t is at its core the banding together of civilized people to ensure that we need not each be constantly vigilant. Our contract & criminal law all recognize the existance of private property rights. Going back to my mnemonic “fire departments & sewers”, police & courts exist to help preserve those rights for us in the aggregate so that we need not all be our own security guards. But, we are not dependent upon them as our sole remedy,

Absolute private property, like “human rights”, is a fiction …

You can choose to believe that but I assure you that you’re out of the mainstream on this one.

Any citizen of the USA who doesn’t agree that the definition of private property they choose to live under is arbitrary and culturally-bounded – and thus subject, whether you like it or not, to future majoritarian revisions – should immediately return their house to the nearest surviving Native American representative. Because if you don’t accept that premise, that means the original inhabitants were robbed of their absolute rights, which never went away, and are still valid.

The aborigines who invaded first did indeed have rights; but they lacked a government that could enforce those rights against a superior culture. They lost.

I concede that the US may be invaded in the future by other humans or another species that can eliminate or subjugate us; but the existance of a possible act of force majeur does not mean I have to surrender my rights here & now.

J Thomas

You wrote:
It harkens back to the American mantra of “No taxation without representation.”

Since no one has alluded to this but you I just can’t agree with you. The issue has never been about “are citizens not represented in congress”; the issue has been “shall we elect Obama to tax the hell out of us”? This whole issue and the language in this post regarding spreading the wealth is only germane because of the clearly socialist origins of the “spreading the wealth” bilge that Obama is trying to spread.

You’re having a conversation that has nothing to do with anything I’ve written or read.

You wrote:
If the state is going to confiscate part of my hard-earned money at the point of a gun, then I have to be convinced that its worthwhile or the inevitable end product is revolution.

Woo. Them’s fighting words. You’re talking about overthowing the Constitutional representative government of the United States of America with force and violence, because you can’t get enough citizens to vote the way you want them to. Think about it. You’re talking about being one of the really bad guys.

Of course we’re talking about fighting words. Don’t you pay attention? In my post I was using the “I” in the rhetorical sense; if the citizenry decide that they are not being taxed justly then there will most certainly be a revolution. From the D of I that I quoted earlier:

…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

I haven’t advocated or threatened violent overthrow; I’ve commented on the universal human condition. It happened here in 1771 – 1776; replayed in 1861-1865. Happened in Russia in 1917; in Spain; etc. I can go on, but I think I’ve made my point: if government arrogates to itself powers that disturb the citizenry sufficiently then revolution is inevitable.

What is so remarkable about the US is that our Constitution provides for a peaceful change of power every 4 years, making violent revolution usually unncessary, but that doesn’t mean that we’re uniquely immunie among all human societies.

And what I’d prefer is that we not elect Obama or anyone like him who will push our country in the direction where gov’t becomes far more powerful than the citizens think it should be.

Am I a liberarian? Nope – I’m an adult. But just because the libertarians are yutz’s doesn’t mean they’re completely without merit.

You got that completely wrong.

It harkens back to the American mantra of “No taxation without representation.”

If you don’t want taxes, then vote for candidates who promise you no taxes. It’s as simple as that.

“Read my lips: No new taxes.”

Your elected representatives decide how much tax you get. If you don’t like it, vote them out and put in new ones.

If the state is going to confiscate part of my hard-earned money at the point of a gun, then I have to be convinced that its worthwhile or the inevitable end product is revolution.

Woo. Them’s fighting words. You’re talking about overthowing the Constitutional representative government of the United States of America with force and violence, because you can’t get enough citizens to vote the way you want them to. Think about it. You’re talking about being one of the really bad guys.

But you don’t have to do that. You sound like you’re a libertarian, apart from this bit about violent overthrow of the USA and getting rid of the Constitution. You should support the Libertarian Party. If the GOP collapses adequately then the Libertarian Party can pick up the pieces. When the GOP becomes a third party it will disappear—it has nothing to keep it going if it can’t supply patronage.

When the Libertarian Party is one of the two main parties, then the task will be to persuade a majority of americans to vote libertarian.

In the short run, you should campaign on the tax issue. But your approach is lacking. You need something more like a flowchart.

Do you make more than $250,000 a year?

If so, you should vote against Obama because he will raise your taxes, perhaps by several hundred dollars a year. Vote against Obama and maybe you’ll get even better tax breaks than you get now.

If you don’t make more than $250,000 a year, vote against Obama. He will lower your taxes and get the money from people who do make that much. Don’t you want to pay higher taxes so that richer people can pay less? Someday you might get rich and then it will be important to have low taxes. You’d rather pay more now so you can pay less then, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Vote for higher taxes for you and lower taxes for people who make more than $250,000.

This approach will be much more effective at influencing votes. Try it out and you’ll see.

Absolute private property, like “human rights”, is a fiction – literally, we made it up because we liked the sound of it, and we choose to live by those rules: but we do CHOOSE [or, actually, abide by previous generations’ choices, under the false impression that they weren’t choices at all].

Any citizen of the USA who doesn’t agree that the definition of private property they choose to live under is arbitrary and culturally-bounded – and thus subject, whether you like it or not, to future majoritarian revisions – should immediately return their house to the nearest surviving Native American representative. Because if you don’t accept that premise, that means the original inhabitants were robbed of their absolute rights, which never went away, and are still valid.

So, which is it, abandon your illusions, or your home?

But what’s bothered me most is that while some very smart people here are talking about ways of ordering society’s wealth, no one seems to be addressing what I consider the most important part of any taxation policy: the right to own private property. I earned my money the hard way.

If the state is going to confiscate part of my hard-earned money at the point of a gun, then I have to be convinced that its worthwhile or the inevitable end product is revolution.

The problem I have with Obama’s “redistribute wealth” crap is not the technicalities of the percentage of income to be confiscated from citizens; it is with the underlying assumption that the state is morally correct to take any amount of money it pleases from its citizens. The whole phrase harkens back to the socialist mantra of “from everyone according to thier abilities….” etc. What’s more, everyone knows this. So whether Obama considers himself a socialist or not, we’re talking about a socialist mindset and I think its dishonest to not admit that. I know that if Obama can set the stage for confiscatory taxation then eventually the threshold for having property seized will trickle down from the uber-rich to me.

Letting the state just take money with no restrictions leads inevitably to viewing all monies as rightfully the property of the state. Obama & his fellow travelers are trying to set the stage for confiscatory tax policies because the power to tax is the power to destroy, i.e. the power to control. I’m sure they seek control for the purest of motives, but I am cynical & suspicious about those motives.

For these reasons, I’m a conservative who believes that taxation should be kept to the minimum necessary to run the government, and no more. We are talking about abridging property rights, after all, and that is always a slippery slope. Couching the taxation power-grab in terms of “fairness” or “economic justice” is dishonest; if a charity is worthwhile a decent respect for the free will of citizens means that those who support a charity may do so. I disagree vehemently with many of the charities that my money will go toward if leftists control the government (as do they if I got to control the gov’t).

The only fair way to resolve the strong feelings of both sets of citizens is to restrict gov’t spending to truly public purposes. I like to summarize those purposes with the shorthand “fire departments & sewer systems”. I think it hurts me to take my money to give to people who work less hard than I, and I know it does them no good whatsoever to make them dependent upon the gov’t & me for thier living. If a man has any inherent worth at all it is too much to allow him to become someone’s lapdog. And I fail to see the value in a country of sheep living off of the dole. Didn’t work for the USSR, didn’t work for PRC, doesn’t work for Cuba, etc.

And I think it is devestating to the social contract to have politicians refuse to elaborate on exactly what expenditures they intend to support. Anytime the children on the left can stop attributing my principles to selfishness then I think we can find compromise; but the flawed strategy of lying about what the confiscated money will be spent upon, how much is to be confiscated & from whom, & impugning the motives of us “wingnuts” can only lead to fatally flawed policies that are devastating to this country.

ginsocal, you could argue that all taxes are legalized theft. But it would be stupid.

In fact, you are arguing that.

I think this stuff would be a lot easier to understand if we did away with the income tax entirely. Replace it with an employment tax, paid by employers. (And a proprietor’s tax, paid by the self-employed.)

So, if a company hires you, they pay your salary which is YOURS, to pay sales taxes and property taxes etc with, and also to buy whatever you want. No income tax. The company also must pay the government roughly 40% as much as they pay you, for the privilege of hiring you. They pay into your social security etc. And it could be a graduated tax, so if they pay you a million dollars a year they pay the government ten million. Why not?

But the taxes your employer pays are between your employer and the government. Your money is YOURS as long as you got it being a wage-slave.

This would be an improvement in several ways. People who only have employment income would not have to file income taxes at all. Good!

And a whole lot of people would get over this stupid idea that the government is taking their money when it collects income taxes on their wages. We pretend the employer gave you the money and the government took it away. But usually you never ever saw that money, you knew the government was going to have it before you got the job, and with every paycheck your boss mailed it to the government before he gave you your share.

It’s only a sort of polite fiction that you pay income taxes. It was never your money and the government never took it from you. Your boss paid that money to the government and it was never ever really yours.

We would all be much better off if we understood that employees do not in fact pay taxes, that everything the government gives to employees is really a sort of welfare. When you drive on an Interstate it isn’t funded with your tax dollars. You never paid those tax dollars. The government is letting you use that road for free, for nothing.

BTW, there is NO biblical injunction to “be our brothers keeper.” You people should try a little research before spewing your idiocy.

This sounds like it was written by an individual who doesn’t do much charitable giving. I wonder what your take is on mandatory volunteerism in high schools?

In part I agree with you. This is a pretty popular view

http://www.thenextright.com/jon-henke/republicans-are-losing-the-taxation-narrative

and would be a major departure from how things are and how they have been.

But

“And at this point it is going to emerge that 1) Obama’s egalitarianism is not some monolithic “Harrison Bergeron” value, rolling over all other values and crushing them in its relentless path;”

is setting the bar pretty low. You can wave you hands all you want but Obama is appealing to pure egalitarianism and almost certainly cares much more about pure egalitarianism than the average voter. For the average voter pure egalitarianism is a creepy and alien concept.

Concern about that sort of distribution is a defining difference between Obama and the average US voter.

I think Obama is definitely more concerned about regular old egalitarianism and less about pure egalitarianism.

So, I don’t think the average voter, upon realizing Obama in a small but real way supports a creepy view point, should jump up off their couches scream and vote McCain.

But the idea that liberalism doesn’t have any strands of pure egalitarianism running through it and so all objections to Obama are baseless strikes me as pretty silly.

“If taxing ‘for fairness’ is socialist, then America has been a socialist country for a very long long time.”

We don’t tax for fairness and taxing for fairness is not the American way. Because we need to tax we try and tax fairly.

“Right-wing arsehole” is not exactly the way to describe me (but close) rather, both by nature and by dint of living in New Orleans, I am instead a rather confirmed “hedonistic arsehole.” And loving it….at least as long as my liver holds out…..all sorts of community “standards” to uphold and all that—can’t let the side down you know……

Lefties have no sense of humor—I only meant it in the same way people describe parents as “willing to commit mass murder” in order to get their children into the “proper” pre-school, let alone Harvard, so lighten up—And yes, I am indeed a minion of evil, but I assure you my duties are largely ceremonial…….

NOoooo——those trends long pre-dated the fall of the wall and are simply (in the opinion of many who follow such things) the carry through of long established sociocultural momentum. (Although to be quite truthful I am not personally up to speed on the very latest morbidity and mortality rates—nor rates of alcoholism and drug addiction)

But what of my questions, engels?