Hippiekinkster
Posts: 5512
Joined: 11/20/2007 From: Liechtenstein Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY quote:
ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster They pay sales taxes. They pay ad valorem taxes. Some of them pay property taxes. They pay FICA, FUT, and SUT taxes. They pay all kinds of taxes, just not income. How much in taxes is "enough" to you? (and, btw, this totally undercuts your entire argument. We were talking about income taxes, and you had to go and change the subject. Since "everyone" pays sales taxes, property taxes, even if they don't pay income taxes ... then they are entitled to use all the services you first mentioned.) Es tut mir Leid, Komrade, but my original statement was this: "I'd be absolutely thrilled to let you opt out of paying any taxes." The astute reader will note the type of tax is not defined. If you want to opt out of all taxes, you don't get to use any government services. PERIOD. quote:
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ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster I seriously doubt you could survive with your voluntary association of other "libertarians". If you think you can, do it. Nobody's stopping you. Get some investors together and buy the land for your tollpike. Start your libertarian Farmer's Market. Better make your own fuel for that, because you won't get any more subsidized fuel. Try flying 200 cases of tomatoes to market on your ultralight. Sorry, but everything I mentioned in my "not tax supported" list works just fine, and thrives in America. It's amazing how much people can do when the tax burden is low. We sometimes manage to run a business, grow and sell our crops and even .... gasp! ... eat without government "help". And your "Libertarian" (quotation marks because term was hijacked in 1971 by Rothbard et alia) (I was once a member of the party. Then I came to understand that "freedom" comes with a price, and that price has nothing to do with the military) solution is to remove any controls, and if I am poisoned by your toxic tomatoes, I should seek redress in the courts, is that right? I would just as soon have some Govt. oversight and not get poisoned in the first place. Fat lot of good being able to sue does me if I'm dead. quote:
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ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster I'm a Libertarian Socialist. I'm all for much of what the Libertarians stand for. Where I differ is that I consider Responsibility to Society to be as important as individual freedom. "No man is an island." Sometimes, the most responsible thing you can do for a person, or a society, is force it to stand on their (its) own two feet, and discover that - to a large extent - they are responsible for themselves. Firm And so glibly you cast those who need assistance to reach their full potential onto the ashheap because they aren't like you. They can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps (and, if you were completely honest with yourself, you'd admit that you didn't get to where you are, wherever that is, totally and completely by yourself)(I sure as fuck didn't and I haven't drawn a paycheck in 15 years and I don't have to work now. I benefitted from the NYState educational system, from basic grants for college, from preferential job treatment because I was a student, from NOT being red-lined for loans or credit, and a host of other intangibles). So callously you tell the millions of people in this country who have experienced institutionaized racism, redlining, credit discrimination, overwhelming medical costs, a decline in real earnings, the transfer of their pensions to Wall Street criminals, that "if they would only stand on their own two feet, they wouldn't be in that situation." I've listened to this tripe for over 30 years, since before the "Libertarian Party" was HQ'd out on the Katy Freeway (IIRC). I read "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World" way back around 76 or so. I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Virtue of Selfishness" (still have a copy). It was sophomoric rhetoric then, and it's sophomoric rhetoric today. Ask yourself this: if "Lib'ism" (tired of typing that out. it's my shorthand now) is such a wonderful philosophy of socio-economic liberation, why has it been relegated to the margins (even behind the Green Party, which I support) of American political discourse? Oh, I know, *people just can't see how right it is*. The fools. If only people could see that flying their 200 cases of tomatoes to the Farmer's market on their ultralight was in their best interests, they'd adopt it tout de suite. Your "Lib'ian" philosophy just doesn't work. If it did, it would. Q.E.D.
< Message edited by Hippiekinkster -- 9/20/2008 8:12:42 PM >
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"We are convinced that freedom w/o Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism w/o freedom is slavery and brutality." Bakunin “Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” Reinhold Ne
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