Taxes... what do you think about them?

I meant the #8 point on the original post. I'm not much into politics either. Turns me off for the most part.

 

They're too high and they don't give enough power in the peoples hands to decide how their money is being used.

 

sorry was very high last night. Pardon my momentary misunderstanding.

 

Rhett

And here are a few quick thoughts on and questions of - you ideas

And the internet is also full or complete crap – if you wanted a well educated child just plonking them in front of the internet’ is that last thing to do.

Who is supervising these kids?

I’ve lived in such a community and it still had to be paid for by for through taxes, there had to be the building the equipment and paying the volunteers for their time and paying employers for their loss (if one of there workers runs off to fight a fire).

Also the volunteer system worked because it was a low density community with accompanying low incident rate, in high density urban (or industrial areas) were incidents are high full time fire-fighters are needed.

What?

Why?

Or is that criminals are just more likely to be armed? And what criminal activity would it deter?

A contested opinion so not proven and so not anything like a ‘fact.

What are you basing that on? I mean a lot of assistance goes to people that are working.

Localism is fine up to a point but only up to a point, for example someone – say X – lives in a prosperous area with high employment, they might ‘evaluate’ and find little reason to give since there are few disadvantaged. But only a few miles away their could be a town with high unemployment with many people in hardship but since X doesn’t live there, doesn’t go there and so cannot ‘evaluate’ that towns needs they have to suffer hardship.

If you have a national scheme with the duty, time, and knowledge to ‘evaluate’ things nationally if can move resources to those places where it is most needed.

But if often then that you get self serving arguments or ones based in prejudice and bias.

Why should I give money to people I haven’t personally evaluated I mean they are most likely feckless, scroungers.

The people around here don’t need so much help probably because they work harder than those feckless scroungers.

So what happens to those that through no fault of their own fall into hardship when the assistance is withdrawn?

Please clarify? I mean most people have not the time, inclination or knowledge to look into most issues.

 

Aren't we all? Although I think the terminology full of shit would be inherently incorrect. We are all ignorant of what we speak. Sounds so much more correct does it not?

Edit: Oh and this is exactly why I leave real politics to people like Balbus. They actually seem to understand their ignorance better than I

 

No, we aren't.

You made this statement;

one which quite frankly can not be known without having lived in that time era and paradigm.
so I asked you "how do you know this?"
to which question you offered this thinking it was an answer;

completely evading the fact that there really is know way for you to be able to make a statement such as you did with the air of certainty that you imparted to it.
That is why you are full of shit.

 

Your understanding is not my understanding friend. I cannot help you to comprehend the way the river flows when you are constantly swimming up stream. This is why you continually doubt. Isn't this thread supposed to be about taxes after all? Metaphysical discussions later perhaps.

 

LOL, I'm not the one swimming upstream my friend.

 

As you say, yet perhaps if you look you will see that no two rivers run exactly the same. If all flows were identical nothing would ever be achieved.

 

I think the fairest form of taxation is a straight sales tax. This ensures those who consume the most will pay the most.

as far as appropriation of taxes,I think America is basically fucked there. Too many people with their hands out saying "gimme, gimme," and no, i'm not talking about people on food stamps or welfare.

 

Maybe, but no taxing for food at least.

 

This.

And I'll add that I think Luxury Taxes are bullshit.

 

uhhmmm, your "monkeys" are in the wrong order.
it should be "see no evil" "hear no evil" "speak no evil".

 

LOL

 

Replies to Balbus

I don't know how to separate quotes so I'm going to just do my best to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

1. Education
I agree, there is a lot of bullshit on the internet, but there also happens to be a lot of bullshit in books, the TV, radio, carvings on cave walls, and every other form of information distribution. In the end, information is information. Children should be taught from and early age how to sift through it and make their own decisions. And there would still be teachers to guide the students. I was recently introduced to the concept of Montessori schools. While I still don't know all the details about them, the basic concept of "emphasis on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development" seems like a great foundation to start with.

2. Firefighters
You make some good points. The most logical way to handle firefighting is probably with tax dollars. If anyone has a better idea of how to handle the issue I would love to hear it.

3. Guns
I think guns (being used in a offensive way) are for cowards and the weak . I used to carry a concealed handgun (legally,and for defense) after I had been robbed at gunpoint several times. I was in the situation to end a criminals life ( once again legally) more than once when I carried, but I never did (and I'm glad didn't). Carrying a gun gave me a choice in how the situations played out though. Every time I had to pull it out and my would be attackers saw the playing field had been leveled, they tucked their tails between their legs and ran away (a classic coward maneuver). I sold it when I started travelling because the laws vary from state to state here in America. Luckily I haven't been in a potentially violent situation since the last attempted robbery (it also helps that I am no longer in the delivery business). I truly do wish guns could just disappear from existence, but that isn't going to happen and trying to do so is as futile as the war on drugs. We are fast approaching an era when anybody will be able to make a gun at home with just a click of a button. Do criminals respect the law? No, so logically the only thing gun restricting laws do is keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Now you may argue that it also decreases the total amount of guns, therefore making it somewhat harder for criminals to obtain them, and that is probably a correct assumption. I this situation though, the criminals are much more likely to use their guns because they know there is a far less chance they will have another gun being pointed back at them. Do gun restrictions keep guns from being used in the UK? Does the UK have a drastically lower occurrence of violent crimes than the US? I suggest you read a book called "More Guns Less Crime" by John Lott Jr. It is very well though out and thoroughly researched. I'm not advocating it as the truth, but if you read it with an open mind, your view might change.

4. Welfare
Here are the reasons why I think the gov't should have very little (if anything) to do with welfare. #1 People shouldn't be forced to help others out or do the "right" thing. They should do it out of the kindness of their own hearts. Would most people help out someone who is truly in need of it? I would like to think so (mainly based on my experiences traveling), but I could be wrong. Your example of the rich and poor neighborhood does make a valid point, but I think the problem there has more to do with run away capitalism and greed than the need for welfare. I also believe the majority of people who are lazy just haven't found something productive that they enjoy yet and a large part of that comes from the strict boxed in education they are hit with from the time they are children (again, this is just my opinion).

5. People governing themselves
You say "most people have not the time, inclination or knowledge to look into most issues" and I somewhat agree with you on this, but only due to the way our current gov'ts of the world work. In general, gov't are top-down, meaning that the higher up in the gov't a branch is, the more weight it has. This is backwards though in my eyes. I think the gov't should work from the bottom-up. Small neighborhoods should govern themselves and the relatively few issues that concern them. All higher branches should function primarily as communication between the lower branches so, for instance, one neighborhood doesn't dump it's sewage into a river that the people down the stream drink from. I don' believe there should be too many "issues" that need to be decided on frequently that affect a persons day to day life. Over complication of simple things is what keeps big gov't in business.

 

Education

Ok this makes things clearer - you seemed to be suggesting that the internet could take over from formal education, but now you seem to imply it would be supervised and guided.

But the problem with that is that it’s already happening, my child (age 8) has been using the internet at school with teacher supervision and at home with parental supervision for some year now.

I would like my child to be taught at school by a professional educator and I think a good education should be open to all irrespective of class, colour or creed.

I think the only way to have both is through public institutions that are publically funded.

 

Guns Part 1

Well that seems to make my point about more guns meaning more criminals carrying guns.
But what this shouts to me is – why, why have you so many people turning to crime?

Isn’t the disease that people are turning to crime and the use of a gun only a symptom? And the fear of criminals with guns that drives the desire of others to own a gun just another symptom.

So to me guns can only be used to tackle the symptoms of the problem it cannot be used to tackle the root causes.

My theory is that there is a general attitude among many Americans that accepts threat of violence, intimidation and suppression as legitimate means of societal control and this mindset gets in the way of them actually working toward solutions to their social and political problems.

This is because that attitude colours the way they think about and view the world from personal interaction to how they see other countries.

They can come to see the world as threatening, they can feel intimidated and fear that they are or could be the victim of criminal or political suppression.

This attitude can taint the way they see the government, how criminality can be dealt with, how they see their fellow citizens, differing social classes, differing ethnic groups, and even differing political philosophies or ideas.

Within the framework of such a worldview guns seem attractive as a means of ‘equalising’ the individual against what they perceive as threats, it makes them feel that they are also ‘powerful’ and intimidating and that they too, if needs be, can deal with, in other words suppress the threatening.

The problem is that such attitudes can build up an irrational barrier between reality and myth, between what they see as prudent and sensible and what actually is prudent and sensible.

 

Guns Part 2

The problem here is that it is very difficult to compare statistics on ‘violent crime’ between jurisdictions because of differing methods of categorizing and cataloging what is defined as a violent crime.

But gun deaths well lets put gun related homicides for the UK and US in context

England and Wales – 73 (2001, BBC)

USA - 11,348 (2001, University of Utah)

England and Wales has around 60 million people compared with the USA’s of 280-300 million so lets boost the UK’s figure

60 million – 70 deaths
120 million – 140 deaths
180 million – 210 deaths
240 million – 280 deaths
300 million – 350 deaths

In fact I believe to get to the USA’s levels of gun related homicides we would need to increase the UK’s population some 160 times to 9,600 million people, the worlds population at this time is only 6,500 million

*

I live in London it has a population of around 7.5 million and it only had 175 homicides between Apr-2005 to Apr-2006. In fact in 2009 there were only 651 murders in the whole of England and Wales with a population of around 60 million.

But let us take an American city - Philadelphia – it I believe has a population of around 6.1 million yet it had 406 homicides in that same year. So two Philadelphia’s with only 12.2 million people would create 812 murders, more than what is produced by 60 million Brits.

But if you take out gun related homicides from the US crime figures they do not seem that much different from those of many European countries that have gun restrictions (although it is incredible difficult to compare any crime statistics other than homicide).

So the question is are Americans more murderous or is it just that Americans have easier access to much more lethal weapons.

I found it anecdotal, selective and its methodology seemed rather flawed and of course its findings have been disputed for example at –

Myths about Defensive Gun Use and Permissive Gun Carry Laws
http://www.bmsg.org/pdfs/myths.pdf

Try reading – Gun Show Nation by Joan Burbick

 

Governance

LOL sorry but I grew up in small communities (once in a village of only 175) and that’s where I learnt that most people have not the time, inclination or knowledge to look into most issues. The Parish council was dominated by those who were time and money rich; often they didn’t have the knowledge but the first two advantages often won out.

I’ve also been a political activist and it was the same thing amongst the general membership they may have had the inclination and even the knowledge but many just hadn’t the time to spare to get involved.

If you don’t live alone in a hut that is in the wilderness and off the grid and you have no contact with anyone then maybe you have few ‘issues’

For me of concern today is - school education, public sports facilities, state of the roads, street lighting, the health service, public transport, work safety regulations, water supply, power supply, postal service etc etc. Most people live in a connected world were many things are connected and are an ‘issue’.

 

Rhett

You can just type in quote and /quote within square brackets - like this but without the star * - [*quote*] text in here [*/quote*]