got tonkaed wrote:Im well aware of the idea that there are worse places, i am not a believer that relative poverty is worse than absolute poverty. Admittedly i should be less condescending, but dont you think you should know what things like free rider problems are before you start talking about not wanting to pay taxes? I believe it would serve you far better to realize what some of the things you are getting from your tax dollars are going to. I am a reasonable man, i dont expect you (i certainly dont) nor anyone to go line by line through a local, state or national budget, but i would expect that many who decry the levels of taxes they pay to have an understanding of why we pay them. Otherwise its simply looking at ones check at the end of whenever your getting paid and thinking that you should get more money, well everyone tends to think that while they are looking at the check.
Admittedly this is tangential, but i think you are also failing to understand some of the structural issues with our education system. Im not trying to make you out to be a fool, i believe you probably have just as good as grasp as i do that there are many problems with our educational system. While we both theoretically likely agree privatizing schools could be part of a solution, i dont know if ive bought into the idea of that working in reality (as currently im teaching in a private school -admittedly abroad, and i can see even in a rather simplistic way where problems could easily arise). Ancedotal evidence aside, your schooling out of poverty truism fails to note that in many cases the places we are talking about with the large numbers of working poor are places where the schooling is that great. While this holds a ton of common sense type of weight the idea i think your missing is that the true greatness of the American education system (at least in terms of international competitiveness) is in the higher institutions, especially those than many do not have much of a chance to get into from those positions. Now certainly some can and do and do very well, but again the stratification in our society is far greater than i think a simple analysis of ancedotal evidence and common sense seems to provide. The problem is outside of the think tanks - which produce things that make more compelling arguments if not without their own flaws of course - most libertarian thought hinges on rather simplistic notions of what i deserve and what i should have to pay.
The fact that capitalist systems perform the best when individuals act with perfect information, suggests we need to advance far behind the type of lines of thinking you provide as the justification for the system that is propped up by it. This philsophically and intellectually suggests many potential problems if people took it seriously, which thankfully most do not.
I never suggested that we, the people should not pay any tax. This thread started with the idea that all money that you have left over at the end of your life should somehow be redistributed back into the population as opposed to taking the will of the departed into account, and executing that will by leaving money to the children of the departed. We then diverged into the whole concept behind welfare. while I recognize that there are cases for the allowance of assistance to people in need, I refute the notion that it is the federal government's responsibility to do this. Our federal government is a gargantuan machine of rules and regulation, full of horrible inefficiencies. Anything that goes into the Fed is corrupted and depleted with so much overhead that it, to me, seems hardly worth the effort. It is my assertion that assistance and aid should come from charitable organizations and state level programs, where the funding for such programs are voted on, managed, and funded locally or regionally. the Fed should only have very limited duties regarding its role as a governmental power.
I mean, can you not see how abusive and colossal it is? We are maintaining an impossible empire around the world and we the people hardly know why. The government is printing up more and more money, based of promises of the future generations to pay it back. Its folly and it is going to rupture soon. Only then, no one will know how to fend for themselves. the "Welfare Mentality" has now escaped the politic of the individual, it has elevated into the corporate world with bailouts and cash injections into the auto and airline industries, and now, actual states are asking for "bailouts." It just won't end until this government is dead.
