'Progressive' taxes are WRONG and EVIL (fact, not opinion). They penalize success, which is exactly what the power-hungry Government pukes want. After all, the more that are successful, the less of a need for those evil 'progressive' programs... Less power for the Government to wield for their OWN benefit.

If you want a tax system where everyone (all individuals) pays their 'fair share'... Eliminate all of the deductions. Eliminate all of the 'special credits'. Eliminate all of the various tax brackets. Everyone pays the SAME flat tax rate on ALL of their income. Cut Government spending down to the bare minimum on legitimate functions only (listed in Article I Section 8 in the part that does NOT refer to taxation) (cut all the illegitimate spending totally). Adjust the flat tax rate down to the minimum necessary to cover this spending, with some extra to pay down the national debt. Stop deficit spending at all times except during active hostilities in a Congressionally declared war. Then behold FAIRNESS and equality.

Let's try this on for size then https://fee.org/articles/the-common-good-demystified/ wrote:

The Common Good Is Protected Individual Liberty

Each person has the right to protect himself against all forms of external aggression initiated by private individuals or by the state. The proper role of government is to protect the freedom that allows individuals to pursue happiness or the good that each defines for himself. Government ensures the common good when its functions are restricted to protecting the natural right to liberty and maintaining peace and order. The necessity of self-direction provides a rationale for a political and legal order that will not require the autonomy of any individual to be sacrificed. Limited government only guarantees man the freedom to seek his own happiness as long as he does not trample the equivalent rights of others. A libertarian institutional framework is concerned with a person’s outward conduct rather than with his virtuousness. A proper social system should not force a particular good on a man, nor should it force him to seek the good. It should only maintain the conditions that leave him free to seek it.

I'm sure you have no issues with this.

Now let's have a couple of maxims about man.
Carl Sandburg wrote:

“When money speaks, the truth keeps silent. Russian Proverb Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.”

John Dalberg-Acton wrote:

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,

Now deal with the real world, not a theory were every person utterly obeys the golden rule out of a duty of altruism. You know real men won't obey, so don't lie to yourself they will.

If money is power, power is evil and corrupt, then is it not the function of government to protect the person against allowing one to accumulate so much evil that the urge to use it becomes irresistible? Remember "Each person has the right to protect himself against all forms of external aggression initiated by private individuals"

Ergo a progressive tax system is not an evil, but the prevention of evil.

---

So do you think it would be a good idea to create a national police force who could go around to all the rich people hiding their money over seas and say, "Hi, we're from the government, we're here to protect your individual freedom and we're here to collect the back taxes that you owe." (as they chamber a round and point it at the rich person...)

No, because the rich person just chambered an ICBM in a silo.

---

So do you think it would be a good idea to create a national police force who could go around to all the rich people hiding their money over seas and say, "Hi, we're from the government, we're here to protect your individual freedom and we're here to collect the back taxes that you owe." (as they chamber a round and point it at the rich person...)

We already have a national force that has the job of enforcing the tax code. I think they're called the IRS or something.. so assuming a tax code that prevented offshore accounts, it would then be the IRS's job to *enforce law*.

---

#resist

Only the government controls ICBMs. So you're saying it's evil if the government becomes too rich?

If we let money control our government, then is it the government in control of ICBMs or the money?

---

#resist

And we're off to a light-speed start!

Lets make America great again by eliminating an independent ethics office!

"...Pelosi said the night before the new Congress, Republicans have eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions."


Things are about to be so great I can see it now. I think I'm gonna go buy a cheap mesh Trump trucker's cap and change teams now!


Edit: Ayn Rand? <vomit>

---

#resist

Now deal with the real world, not a theory were every person utterly obeys the golden rule out of a duty of altruism. You know real men won't obey, so don't lie to yourself they will.

If money is power, power is evil and corrupt, then is it not the function of government to protect the person against allowing one to accumulate so much evil that the urge to use it becomes irresistible? Remember "Each person has the right to protect himself against all forms of external aggression initiated by private individuals"

Ergo a progressive tax system is not an evil, but the prevention of evil.

No. You are sadly misled at best, and spinning lies to mislead at worst.

Altruism is evil.

The golden rule? "He who has the gold makes the rules."?? I am surprised you invoke that.

The function of Government in this case is to protect individuals from the interference in their rights by other individuals.... NOT to be a source of interference itself.

Read this book for further instruction in virtue, if you wish.

What is capitalism?

As understood by Rand, capitalism is the system that emerges among a group of free individuals, each applying time and reason to sustain his or her own life, each the owner of the means to do so, freely trading among themselves.

Rand regarded a mixed economy as a dangerous and unstable combination of freedom and controls which tends to develop into ever increasing statism.

Reason and values

Rand held capitalism to be the only moral social system, that is, one consistent with an objective theory of value and ethical individualism. The creation of wealth, according to Rand, is a fusion of mind and matter, and she argued that reason is the most fundamental tool of survival for human beings. However, rational thought is rendered inoperative under conditions of compulsion, coercion or, as she puts it, the initiation of physical force. Whether it is the force of an armed robber or the force of a law, an actor's own judgment is rendered irrelevant to his actions by a threat of force, compelling him to act on the judgment or will of another, thus neutralizing the source of wealth and survival itself. Only voluntary trade can ensure that human interaction is mutually beneficial, and an analysis of history shows that only economic and political freedom has worked to create significant growth and economic development, precisely by liberating the rational faculties of ever wider numbers of individuals, according to Rand.

Individual rights

In its most basic form, the right to life (as understood by Rand) is the right of each human to do any and all activities necessary to sustain his or her own life. Rand further argued that one's selfish interests can never rationally entail the use of physical force or violence against the person or the property of another. Rand saw humans as thriving only as independent beings, reason being a faculty of the individual, with each freely expending his own time, effort and reason to sustain his own life.

Rand suggested that through the division of labor, specialization and voluntary trade, other people are of enormous value to an individual. Moreover, knowledge, skills and interests vary from human to human. One person may be better at shaping flint into arrowheads, another may have acquired the skill to turn mud into pottery. If the first wants a pot to cook in, he may trade an arrowhead for a pot. The central feature of free trade is that each participant judges that he or she has gained from the transaction.

When physical force is banned, according to Rand, persuasion alone can organize or coordinate human activity, and, consequently, the use of reason is both liberated and rewarded. The technological innovation which characterizes capitalist systems is thus directly related to conditions of economic freedom. A producer profits and becomes wealthy only by satisfying the voluntary choices of other market participants and in direct proportion to the value those participants find in transactions with that producer.

In this way, individuals who themselves could have never invented, for example, the light bulb or the steam engine can nonetheless benefit from the creativity of others – but this can be only ensured when both the innovator and the consumer are free to refuse the proposed trade. This, according to Rand, is the mechanism behind America's rapid economic development, its liberation of human reason.

Freedom being the primary condition for the practical use of reason, the role of government in protecting individual rights is therefore fundamental, according to Rand, and it is equally fundamental that the government itself be limited to its role of protecting rights, for only by rendering all human interaction voluntary, i.e., free from the initiated coercion of criminals and laws, can the market operate to radically improve the lives of everyone. To the extent that it has been permitted to operate, this is what a free market has done, argued Rand.

Thus, she held, "a free mind and a free market are corollaries."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism:_The_Unknown_Ideal#Themes

Altruism... Bah...

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”

"Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,"
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 61.

---

https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Major I read that crap, The fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged, 60 years ago when I was 11 and it made sense to me then. Some how around the age of 35 I realized that it did not fit the world I was living in. Ayn Rand wrote purely romantic fantasy. The fact that literate adults can swallow that BS speaks much about out specie. OBW a good read.

---

And we're off to a light-speed start!

Lets make America great again by eliminating an independent ethics office!

"...Pelosi said the night before the new Congress, Republicans have eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions."


Things are about to be so great I can see it now. I think I'm gonna go buy a cheap mesh Trump trucker's cap and change teams now!


Edit: Ayn Rand? <vomit>

Heh... Trump is no good at all... Same sort of stuff as Clinton.

If you really want to change teams, go Libertarian...

But that seems unlikely since you expel your stomach contents over Rand...

---

https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Major, libertarians are the only ones I can even get along with on the 'other side of the aisle', but we have a fundamental difference of opinion on what the government should control and regulate. ;-)

Anyways in another step back to the 80's and Reaganomics, Trump is expected to tap Robert Lighthizer, a Reagan administration alum, for trade rep.

---

#resist

Major, libertarians are the only ones I can even get along with on the 'other side of the aisle', but we have a fundamental difference of opinion on what the government should control and regulate. ;-)

Anyways in another step back to the 80's and Reaganomics, Trump is expected to tap Robert Lighthizer, a Reagan administration alum, for trade rep.

On one side of the aisle, to use your figure of speech, you have the Libertarian Minarchists. On the other side of the aisle, you have the Authoritarian Statists (note, this side includes both the Republicans AND the Democrats).

Considerations such as 'left' and 'right' only matter to Authoritarian Statists, for to the Libertarian Minarchists, such policies are not within the Government's purview to legislate on.

Liberty... or Freedom of thought and action are paramount to the Libertarian, without threat or prevention through threat of force, either by criminals or by the Government (heh... little difference between the two these days). The only permissible restraint on this Freedom is by the Government to ensure that you don't take away any one else's, and no one takes away yours.

Try reading some of Ayn Rand's work. I would recommend one I referred to a few posts back, to start with. "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal". Please, give it a chance. Now then, you might still consider it a barrel full of hogwash. If so, that's fine. But... You might find that you begin to agree with at least some of it. Please, give it a chance.

It is your mind that they want you to surrender—all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth. Those who start by saying: “It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others”—end up by saying: “It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.”

Galt's Speech
For the New Intellectual, 142.

You are a rational being, Ex... Make up your own mind.
Ayn Rand is a person, in the opinions of many, of great wisdom. But her writings are NOT holy writ. They just challenge you to think about things... to use your OWN reason.

In my signature, I have the line:
"Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power. "

To that I might add Reason.

"Truth AND Reason are dangerous... especially when they challenge those in power."

---

https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Major I read that crap, The fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged, 60 years ago when I was 11 and it made sense to me then. Some how around the age of 35 I realized that it did not fit the world I was living in. Ayn Rand wrote purely romantic fantasy. The fact that literate adults can swallow that BS speaks much about out specie. OBW a good read.

betreger,

You chose two works of fiction she wrote. Have you read any of the more philosophical of her works?

---

https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Yes, my degree required it and it made sense then because I was still brain washed by the crap I read when I was 11. Her philosophy no longer coincides with my view of reality.

---

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May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

So do you think it would be a good idea to create a national police force who could go around to all the rich people hiding their money over seas and say, "Hi, we're from the government, we're here to protect your individual freedom and we're here to collect the back taxes that you owe." (as they chamber a round and point it at the rich person...)

No, because the rich person just chambered an ICBM in a silo.

Only the government controls ICBMs. So you're saying it's evil if the government becomes too rich?

If it is made, money buys it. And there are plenty of places one can get them other than the US stockpile. Kim in DPRK, an individual, has them. The oligarch Putin has them and an army, navy and air force. Bin Ladden didn't have enough money. Do you think for one second if a Colombian drug lord had one and thought it would solve some problem of his, he would hesitate to use it? (OBW drug lords are a good place to look for tax evasion.)

You ask for taxes. If they don't pay you PNG them. But you don't start wars over it, heck Fidel owes and we didn't collect with the marines. We only grabbed what was easy to grab and put it in trust, never even took title. We even sent the rent check.

---

Altruism is evil.

If this is your definition of evil

altruism noun:
the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others

I think we can understand where you come from.

The rest of us use something akin to

evil adjective:
profoundly immoral and malevolent

Now how does Darwin put it? Darwin wrote:

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Nah, you want: Herbert Spencer wrote:

survival of the fittest

and use that to justify
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest#Social_Darwinists wrote:

It has been claimed that "the survival of the fittest" theory in biology was interpreted by late 19th century capitalists as "an ethical precept that sanctioned cut-throat economic competition" and led to the advent of the theory of "social Darwinism" which was used to justify laissez-faire economics, war and racism.

So you seem to be for War and Racism. Interesting. And we understand where you come from.
It is where many Republicans come from. They would never believe in Global Warming being an issue, even if they thought it was real. As long as they get theirs, they don't care if their spawn has a chance at survival. Funny how they are also anti-abortion.

---

And we're off to a light-speed start!

Lets make America great again by eliminating an independent ethics office!

"...Pelosi said the night before the new Congress, Republicans have eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions."


Things are about to be so great I can see it now. I think I'm gonna go buy a cheap mesh Trump trucker's cap and change teams now!

I must now retract this statement. Trump said 'NO WAY!'

"The dizzying about-face came as lawmakers convened for the first day of the 115th Congress, an occasion normally reserved for pomp and ceremony under the Capitol Dome. Instead, House Republicans found themselves under attack not only from Democrats but from their new president, over their secretive move Monday to neuter the independent Office of Congressional Ethics and place it under lawmakers' control."

---

#resist

And we're off to a light-speed start!

Lets make America great again by eliminating an independent ethics office!

"...Pelosi said the night before the new Congress, Republicans have eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions."


Things are about to be so great I can see it now. I think I'm gonna go buy a cheap mesh Trump trucker's cap and change teams now!

I must now retract this statement. Trump said 'NO WAY!'

"The dizzying about-face came as lawmakers convened for the first day of the 115th Congress, an occasion normally reserved for pomp and ceremony under the Capitol Dome. Instead, House Republicans found themselves under attack not only from Democrats but from their new president, over their secretive move Monday to neuter the independent Office of Congressional Ethics and place it under lawmakers' control."

Well, you should have reported on how they enacted a law criminalizing allowing the public to see what happens on the floor of the house by making photos and video illegal. That is a great way to achieve transparency especially when you also want to get rid of the office of ethics.

It appears as if they know what they want to do can't be done out in the open. Now they are going to force feed it like a dictator.

---

It would seem that way Gary, and it seems they have this all thought out with or without Trump. Maybe we will see more of the tail wagging the dog in the near future..

And as far as the ethics office? They are not gutting it yet, but they do plan to 'revisit' the issue later this year. So we're not out of the woods yet.

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#resist