Why should government be kept smaller, and restricted to only certain tasks?

[rightwinger]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful because any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

 

[bripat9643]

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

May I answer it?

When the federal government does more than it is Constitutionally mandated to do:

1. It requires funding, infrastructure, staffing, equipment and supplies all of which it must obligate the taxpayer to provide whether the taxpayer wants the program or project or not. And invariably when the program or project has run its course and/or outlived its usefulness, the government might find something to do and expand itself to include that something else, but it never scales itself back to the original size. It just doesn't have the balls to give up the power, prestige, influence, and personal increase in wealth that it provides.

2. The federal government by its very nature gets bogged down in excessive rules and regulations and processes and procedures that greatly reduces both its efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes it gets so involved in just following the process, it loses sight of what it intends to accomplish entirely. It can spend months and years of expensive planning and writing and rewriting how the process will be done only to decide not to do it. Then those in government just shrug, don't give another thought to all that wasted money, and move on to something else that they probably won't accomplish either.

3. The system is designed to be wasteful because any department or agency that does not spend all its budget will have that budget reduced. So they find anything and everything to spend money on to be sure nothing is left at the end of the fiscal year and therefore they will merit a hefty increase. The bigger the budget, the more the people in charge merit in pay. Result? The government owns countless acres - square miles even - of unused land, buildings, and warehouses full of barely or never used and never will be used furniture, furnishings, equipment, and suppies.

4. The system is designed to increase the power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth of those elected, appointed, or hired to run the government, and that is a huge incentive for corruption, graft, and payola that funnels money directly to those same people or to those who will fund their campaigns and/or vote to keep them in office. It is corrupted to both those in government and those the government pays to keep itself there.

5. The government is inefficient and ineffective and excessively expensive whenever it does ANYTHING that can be done by the private sector.

6. Every dime the government spends it has to take out of the economy or obligate future taxpayers to pay. And when the government is growing and prospering more than the private sector is growing and prospering, it is a mathematical certainly that the government will increase while the private sector decreases until there is little or no private sector left.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

Society and government are two separate things. Libturds don't see the distinction. We didn't establish a constitution to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies or provide healthcare. Our government didn't do any of that until fairly recently. The fact that we have the legal authority to have our government do those things doesn't automatically make it desirable or ethical for government to do them. In fact, it's neither.

 

[Foxfyre]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

 

[rightwinger]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.



My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

Since it is Thanksgiving...let's look at the Governmens role in our food supply

Unlike those Pilgrims who grew their own food supply, we have a massive agribusiness. We allowed farmers to tear up land and plant crops as much as they wanted. The result was the biggest environmental disaster in our history....the dust bowl
It was the government that stepped in to require sensible crop rotation and use of the land
Our government acts like bullies and requires those who supply our food to meet sanitary standards. They set limits on what food can be safely sold. They fund research to increase agricultural production.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

[bripat9643]

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

Since it is Thanksgiving...let's look at the Governmens role in our food supply

Unlike those Pilgrims who grew their own food supply, we have a massive agribusiness. We allowed farmers to tear up land and plant crops as much as they wanted. The result was the biggest environmental disaster in our history....the dust bowl
It was the government that stepped in to require sensible crop rotation and use of the land

The government doesn't actually require crop rotation or "sensible use of the land." In fact, at the moment government is subsidizing stupid use of the land by requiring ethanol in gasoline. The dust bowl occurred because of a severe drought and because farmers in the west weren't familiar with dry-land farming techniques. If you think the government was aware of the problem before it occurred, then you're a gullible fool.

Farmers don't deliberately damage their land.

Our government acts like bullies and requires those who supply our food to meet sanitary standards. They set limits on what food can be safely sold. They fund research to increase agricultural production.

Happy Thanksgiving

If you think the government makes our food safe, consider all the recent outbreaks of mass food poisoning that have occurred despite government regulations. People weren't dropping like flies before the FDA was given oversight, and the FDA hasn't improved the safety of our food to any noticeable effect. Monsanto and other companies do plenty of research to increase agricultural production and are responsible for far more of the increase than the federal government.

 

[Foxfyre]

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

Since it is Thanksgiving...let's look at the Governmens role in our food supply

Unlike those Pilgrims who grew their own food supply, we have a massive agribusiness. We allowed farmers to tear up land and plant crops as much as they wanted. The result was the biggest environmental disaster in our history....the dust bowl
It was the government that stepped in to require sensible crop rotation and use of the land
Our government acts like bullies and requires those who supply our food to meet sanitary standards. They set limits on what food can be safely sold. They fund research to increase agricultural production.

Happy Thanksgiving

And that massive agribusiness has as much interest in looking to its own interests and preserving its investment as does the individual farmer. But then it was the government that encouraged the massive agribusiness and made it more and more difficult for the individual farmer to prosper.

The government did not step in and require anything however. The FDR administration did bribe farmers to be educated in and utilize better farming practices, but they did not mandate it. But what farmer, once educated, would not do what he needed to do to prosper? Educating farmers in better farming practices is certainly promoting the general welfare but you don't need an enormous ever growing, ever more expensive, ever more authoritarian and intrusive bureaucracy to do that.

 

[bripat9643]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

Your truly gullible if you think we have a free press. No one become a member of the press without first being thoroughly brainwashed in the government indoctrination centers. For every little guy who successfully defends himself from some government atrocity, there are 100 others who get steamrolled. All the politicians currently serving in Congress act like bullies, especially the Democrats. They rammed this healthcare boondoggle down our throats, didn't they?

What you really meant to say is that you're happy with the bullies we have.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.

Thank you for your honest and well thought out response. I wish other posters on this thread would emulate you

We function better as a society than we do as a bunch of individuals struggling to survive. A society makes us stronger and better able to function. They provide us with security, take care of the weaker members, infrastructure. We also ask our society to provide free education, monitor our food and water supplies, provide healthcare for those who can't afford it as well as thousands of other tasks.

We established a Constitutional government to execute those societal functions. We give them broad latitude to do what needs to be done. We decide what we need our government to do through the election process. That process decides how big or how small a government we need and what functions we want them to perform

My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

If you only beat up every other kid you aren't a bully?

Damn, that must mean that those kids that only picked on the little kids weren't really bullies. Another treasured lie exploded.

 

[ShaklesOfBigGov]

In over 235 years, I have never seen my government take property on a whim

You're 235 years old?. Wow.

Anyways, it's clear that you don't want government kept small and restricted in any way.

You are dismissed.

You still have not addressed my question

Why would you want to restrict the size of the government and the tasks they perform?

To rein in the multiple layers of bureaucracy and inefficiency that's associated with government's out of control wasteful spending.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Here ya go. Direct from faux news cousin.....Your own effective tax calculator!

What Is Your Effective Tax Rate? - WSJ.com

Note that the field on the right is labeled "Total INCOME"

So the money that the checker puts in the cash register isn't INCOME?

Okay, seriously. Are you REALLY this obtuse, or are you just goofing on us to see if we'll believe someone can be this dumb and still operate a keyboard?

 

[Cecilie1200]

I'm not that interested in whether we call the games we play with the tax code 'subsidies' or 'incentives' or 'gifts-to-lobbyists'. But I would like to see the practice abolished. It's just plain bad government in my view.

Why?

Because it violates the fundamental ideas of equal rights and rule of law. Everyone should have to obey the same laws. Our leaders have learned to use the tax code as backdoor legislation to force things on us we'd never tolerate as straightforward laws. The 'individual mandate' is the perfect case in point.

I am so frigging tired of this numbskulled idea that's become popular that "equality under the law" means "everyone gets the same outcome", rather than "the same laws are applied to everyone the same way".

I won't say that our government is free of graft and corruption, nor will I say that I think it's the government's job to micromanage social behavior via the tax code. I will say, however, that there's nothing "unequal" about tax deductions that are available across the board, to anyone who meets the clearly-stated requirements (eg. being a mortgage-paying homeowner.)

My objection to the individual mandate is that it's inappropriate for the government to force people to engage in commerce. The objection I have to them THEN excusing certain people from that is a separate issue.

 

[dblack]

I am so frigging tired of this numbskulled idea that's become popular that "equality under the law" means "everyone gets the same outcome", rather than "the same laws are applied to everyone the same way".

You're wildly missing my point if you think that's what I'm saying. In fact, misguided efforts to equalize outcomes are often used as justification for the kind of crap I'm talking about.

I won't say that our government is free of graft and corruption, nor will I say that I think it's the government's job to micromanage social behavior via the tax code. I will say, however, that there's nothing "unequal" about tax deductions that are available across the board, to anyone who meets the clearly-stated requirements (eg. being a mortgage-paying homeowner.)

You don't see how the mortgage interest deduction is manipulating behavior? It does so every bit as much as the individual mandate and its net effect is the same - punishing everyone who fails to maintain home debt by taxing them more on their income.

When I'm talking about equal protection it's not equality of outcome, but equality under the law. No one should be granted preferential treatment due to some quid-pro-quo arrangement, whether it's to satisfy the genuine interests of the state or the product of a corrupt lobbying process.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I am so frigging tired of this numbskulled idea that's become popular that "equality under the law" means "everyone gets the same outcome", rather than "the same laws are applied to everyone the same way".

You're wildly missing my point if you think that's what I'm saying. In fact, misguided efforts to equalize outcomes are often used as justification for the kind of crap I'm talking about.

I won't say that our government is free of graft and corruption, nor will I say that I think it's the government's job to micromanage social behavior via the tax code. I will say, however, that there's nothing "unequal" about tax deductions that are available across the board, to anyone who meets the clearly-stated requirements (eg. being a mortgage-paying homeowner.)

You don't see how the mortgage interest deduction is manipulating behavior? It does so every bit as much as the individual mandate and its net effect is the same - punishing everyone who fails to maintain home debt by taxing them more on their income.

When I'm talking about equal protection it's not equality of outcome, but equality under the law. No one should be granted preferential treatment due to some quid-pro-quo arrangement, whether it's to satisfy the genuine interests of the state or the product of a corrupt lobbying process.

I never said mortgage deductions weren't "manipulating behavior". Please don't assume that because YOU have personally decided something is "eeevil" and unacceptable, everyone else agrees with you and is therefore trying to tailor their arguments to support that. I understand that EVERY human interaction involves the altering of someone's behavior in some fashion, and don't waste my time trying to condemn or avoid that.

I said - and you might want to take notes, since this seems to be confusing you - that I don't think it's the government's job to micromanage social behavior via the tax code, and I don't. That is not necessarily the same thing as acknowledging that certain activities are necessary to the function of society - such as providing housing for one's family - and should therefore not be interfered with by a tax code that's already onerous and intrusive. And as long as ANYONE paying a mortgage has the law applied to him in the exact same way as ANYONE ELSE paying a mortgage, it is equal under the law. It does NOT become unequal simply because people who rent instead aren't eligible. It is definitely a far cry from the individual mandate, which forces people to purchase something whether they want it or not.

 

[dblack]

I said - and you might want to take notes, since this seems to be confusing you - that I don't think it's the government's job to micromanage social behavior via the tax code, and I don't. That is not necessarily the same thing as acknowledging that certain activities are necessary to the function of society - such as providing housing for one's family - and should therefore not be interfered with by a tax code that's already onerous and intrusive. And as long as ANYONE paying a mortgage has the law applied to him in the exact same way as ANYONE ELSE paying a mortgage, it is equal under the law. It does NOT become unequal simply because people who rent instead aren't eligible. It is definitely a far cry from the individual mandate, which forces people to purchase something whether they want it or not.

No it's pretty much exactly the same. Like the mandate, the mortgage deduction doesn't address what it claims to. Whereas ACA pretends to be addressing the high costs of health care, and is really about pushing us all into buying insurance, the mortgage deduction doesn't exempt housing costs - it exempts mortgage interest, pushing all of us into debt. If it exempted basic housing costs for everyone, your argument might have merit. But it doesn't.

 

[Spoonman]

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

Since it is Thanksgiving...let's look at the Governmens role in our food supply

Unlike those Pilgrims who grew their own food supply, we have a massive agribusiness. We allowed farmers to tear up land and plant crops as much as they wanted. The result was the biggest environmental disaster in our history....the dust bowl
It was the government that stepped in to require sensible crop rotation and use of the land
Our government acts like bullies and requires those who supply our food to meet sanitary standards. They set limits on what food can be safely sold. They fund research to increase agricultural production.

Happy Thanksgiving

its our government who also pays farmers not to grow when americans are starving. it's our government who also limits our own production while importing foods from China. Why is America buying wheat and corn from china when we pay farmers not to grow it here?

 

[Spoonman]

ask yourselves one simple question. Is it your life or is it the governments? government is way to involved in our personal decisions.

ask yourself another simple question. With the infrastructure the government has and the massive reach between agencies, why is everything so expensive and poorly coordinated? No private enterprise could stay in existence if it ran as inefficiently as the government. Yet we let the government spend, excuse me, waste our tax dollars with out question. then we allow them to increase our debt ceiling and put our futures at risk. our government is more corrupt than the mafia. would you let the mafia run your lives?

 

[jasonnfree]

Excellent exchange. The real issue here is finding consensus on the purpose of government - that's where the disagreement lies.



My answer to the question is different than Foxy's. For me, the need for restricting government's scope and reach has nothing to do with its inherent efficiency or wastefulness. Even if we could streamline government and eliminate all corruption, I'd still want to see it explicitly limited to certain functions. For me, it comes down to the fact that the essential means of government is coercion. That's what distinguishes it from all other social institutions.

The libertarian ethos is based on the idea that the primary threat to social stability is the initiation of force to achieve our ends - i.e. bullying is bad. The concept of government rests on the assumption that the only way to deal with a bully is to respond in kind. We create government as an organized means of self-defense. From that perspective, the only justifiable use of government force is in achieving that end.

Hmm.... It occurs to me I could bloviate about this for several more paragraphs, but it's Thanksgiving. So, I'll sum up for now by saying that government should only be used in situations where the application of violent force is justified. As a simple litmus test, if you can morally justifying killing someone who stands in the way of something the government is trying to do, it's probably a proper function of government. Otherwise, we should look for better alternatives that embrace voluntary cooperation.

I don't look at our government as bullies. In fact, I consider the US Government to act as bullies less than any government in history. No government in history has ever had the power of the US Government and used it less

Why doesn't our government act more like bullies? Because we have a free press. Our press loves to print stories standing up for the little guy being oppressed by the government. So do our courts. There are thousands of cases of the little guy standing up the government.

We also have the power of the vote. Politicians who act like bullies do not last long on the political scene

I DO see the government as the nation's largest bully with the unattractive capability to make its bullying activities legal. And people keep voting the bullies back in because it would cost them government freebies that the bullies use to bribe people to keep them in office. They may resent, even hate, the government and intellectually know those freebies are a corrupting influence. But once a person is getting them, it is a difficult thing to persuade them they should give them up.

We do operate better as a society than as loners. . . .but as a society with each person looking to his/her own interests and thereby benefitting the whole. That will always promote the general welfare more efficiently and effectively than most government programs can ever do. This is the argument I've been trying to make in my Greed? Giving? or Government? thread that the mods inexplicably moved from politics to general discussion.

Since it is Thanksgiving, let's look at the honest history that resulted in the first Thanksgiving. The first settlers in America lived a communal lifestyle with a common garden and other such joint enterprises. And they were starving. So their leaders rethought things and assigned each family its own plot to maintain and harvest. And voila! When working for themselves the people worked much harder on their gardens and the bounty fed them all with food to spare. And that was the year they joined together in the first Thanksiving to give thanks for the bounty.

Every communist country that has tried the same thng has experienced the same results. Communal farming in Communist Russia was pitiful. But when the government allowed people a small plot to grow food for themselves, those plots flourished.

As Adam Smith said in Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The federal government serves us best when it recognizes and secures our unalienable rights and enforces just enough regulation to allow us to function as one nation and the states not do violence to each other, and then leaves us alone to live our lives and/or form whatever sort of society we choose to have.

More and more we as a society are choosing to have some socialism. Look at the popularity of social security. We'd still be working twelve hours a day, 6 days a week if it weren't for progressives.

 

[Foxfyre]

Your land is prime land for raising crops. You, however, do not want to be a farmer and decide that you have no interest in developing your land. Perhaps you want to do something else with it. Maybe you like it the way it is. The rest of the community has decided that they want the tax revenue and goods that would be brought to market if your land was developed and they then decide that property rights no longer belong to you. Just to everyone else. They are allowed access to equal law but have decided that because things would be ‘better’ you don’t. It would be in everyone’s best interest if we simply remove you from your land and take what is on it. That is the exact same ‘logic’ that you have used to justify charging everyone else one rate but giving another entity a different one.


You are willing to give one business a rate that is lower or other incentives to move into an area but then that same rate is not applied to local competition. What you have done, in effect, is allow company X to price their products lower than the others that are already there essentially limiting competition from other companies. How can you think that is a good practice? That is the very heart of government picking winners and losers. It is how the government practices favoritism.

Your logic is the EXACT same logic that justifies Solyndra, Halliburton and a thousand other crony institutions that the government has backed. Are you really comfortable supporting those endeavors?


You state that the practice costs nothing. In that you could not be more incorrect. It does not cost tax dollars up front but that is as far as you are looking into it. What it does cost is competition and law. It changes the purpose of government from enforcing law to picking those that law is applicable to. It is the heart of why the government has moved into economic matters and as long as that practice remains there will ALWAYS be government right there bailing out banks and giving loans to campaign donors. As long as government retains the ability to give business the edge over its competitors then those businesses will continue to corrupt government in order to gain those favors from them.

The initiative took not one dime out of the public treasury. The initiative put not one dime into the pocket of Intel owners other than what Intel would subsequently earn. It raised nobody's taxes. It confiscated nobody's property. All it did was make what was a highly unattractive location more attractive.

The initiative resulted some 3,300 hundred very good paying private sector jobs in an area in which unemployment was high and people very much needed the work. Those 3,300 jobs provided an economic base that other businesses quickly moved in to serve, which in turn provided an economic foundation supporting more commerce and industry. Result? Providing an initial tax break for a large manufacturing plant has resulted in a thriving, prosperous community and created tens of thousands - probably hundreds of thousands of jobs.

It was an initiative that was win win for all concerned and absolutely promoted the general welfare.

It was good government.

[MENTION=6847]Foxfyre[/MENTION]
(Because I think some of these are getting buried as DBlack pointed some of this out already)

Completely and totally irrelevant as you piled right over my entire post completely missing the point. You are again focused solely on the fact that nothing was taken out of the treasury bust still fail to see that the REAL travesty is in the fact that one entity was allowed to not comply with the law where other entities were not. I can come up with a thousand different examples all outlining how this is absolutely corrosive.

You pay a 50% tax rate. Your neighbor, on the other hand, pays a scant 10% tax rate. He pays 40% less because the local company (company X) that produces water heaters and air conditioners donated to the local politician’s campaign. Now that politician has, using YOUR exact justification, decided to give your neighbor a huge tax break because he has purchased a water heater and air conditioner that ‘helped create local jobs.’ Nothing was ever taken from the coffers. Not one red cent in tax monies was expended. Never mind that now his competitor did not donate to the campaign and therefore could no longer compete with company X. Never mind that now, as a DIRECT result that competitor has gone out of business also ensuring that company X is able to charge even more for his product considering he now has less competition and prospective clients have less supply to purchase. It is all okay that you are paying way more in taxes because the politician did this in order to promote the ‘common good’ through policies that were ‘business friendly.’ Hell, the fact that the company paid the politician off is actually irrelevant – the policy still sucks and should be outlawed.

In the end you have still to overcome one basic fact – you are advocating for politicians to be able to apply one law to you and then NOT apply that law to your neighbor. THAT is sickening and completely contrary to the concept of rule of law. We cannot, under any circumstances, have a nation of laws when we are creating special groups of entities that are above that law. Your justification is the EXACT same justifications that are used in Solyndra, the bank bailouts and the auto company bailouts. EXACTLY THE SAME.

I don’t think that you realize it but your essentially advocating for democrat based concepts with a conservative façade over them. I hope that you can see the problem here because it is a doozy and one of the central reasons that the republicans have become the disaster of a party that they are today. They have lost the concept of law to the power of special interests.

And you and dblack are failing to see the distinction and differences between the example I used - an example of how government can effectively PROMOTE the general welfare as opposed to attempting to PROVIDE it--rather than favoring one business over another. In the example I used, there was no cost to anybody, but the incentive provided to Intel benefitted EVERYBODY and I do mean EVERYBODY including all other private businesses and enterprises and all the people they served. It cost nobody a single dime, imposed not a single requirement on anybody, and has helped hundreds of thousands of people prosper as well as create tens of thousands of brand new taxpayers that has allowed debt free upgrading of infrastructure that has further benefitted everybody.

If you are unable to see the difference between that and differing tax rates or favoring one business over another, then I don't know what else I could say to convince you because you obviously don't WANT to make the distinction between those two things.

 

[rightwinger]

ask yourselves one simple question. Is it your life or is it the governments? government is way to involved in our personal decisions.

ask yourself another simple question. With the infrastructure the government has and the massive reach between agencies, why is everything so expensive and poorly coordinated? No private enterprise could stay in existence if it ran as inefficiently as the government. Yet we let the government spend, excuse me, waste our tax dollars with out question. then we allow them to increase our debt ceiling and put our futures at risk. our government is more corrupt than the mafia. would you let the mafia run your lives?

Private enterprise is interested in two things. Making money off of us and getting the government to subsidize their making money off us

Ask yourself a simple question. Who do you trust more? A private company or a government that you have direct accountability over?

Many of the functions in our society are better executed at the government level

 

[jasonnfree]

ask yourselves one simple question. Is it your life or is it the governments? government is way to involved in our personal decisions.

ask yourself another simple question. With the infrastructure the government has and the massive reach between agencies, why is everything so expensive and poorly coordinated? No private enterprise could stay in existence if it ran as inefficiently as the government. Yet we let the government spend, excuse me, waste our tax dollars with out question. then we allow them to increase our debt ceiling and put our futures at risk. our government is more corrupt than the mafia. would you let the mafia run your lives?

How is government more corrupt than the mafia? I'm happy to live in a society where a government will help those in need. Private contributions aren't enough. I donated some money to a program "go fund me" where a woman needed about $60 k for a serious operation. Total donations, three thousand dollars. Donors get their money back if the sixty thousand goal isn't reached. Be careful about what the rand/ron pauls, limbaughs etc say about the glorious free market and generous donors taking care of you or your great aunt that needs expensive medicine she can't afford or she'll die. Sometimes we need the help of a huge central government. Let's try to reign in the power of multibillionaires and corporations that can buy politicians (from both corporate parties) and who can purchase and form public opinion via corporate media instead.
By the way, I notice the Pauls, Ryans, and Boehners that regard public dollars going toward health care as a horrible thing for America. Have any of them waived their taxpayer funded health care as a matter of principle?