Difference between revisions of "2009-05-31 Why do people persist in voting Republican/woozle/2009"
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(→Woozle (round 4) -- in progress: just a bit more; not done) |
(→Woozle (round 4) -- in progress: ok, I think I'm done with this... at least tentatively...) |
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I feel like I am clarifying points more than presenting new ideas or defending them. What are YOUR suggestions? | I feel like I am clarifying points more than presenting new ideas or defending them. What are YOUR suggestions? | ||
| − | ===Woozle (round 4) | + | ===Woozle (round 4)=== |
: [M] ''"Ron Paul is who I voted for due to many of the reasons stated above. I even wrote him in for the general election because I knew he was the only one who would get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan."'' | : [M] ''"Ron Paul is who I voted for due to many of the reasons stated above. I even wrote him in for the general election because I knew he was the only one who would get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan."'' | ||
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* '''1913''': States ratify the [[wikipedia:Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|16th Amendment]], allowing "Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on Census results" and overruling Pollock re taxing property rents. | * '''1913''': States ratify the [[wikipedia:Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|16th Amendment]], allowing "Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on Census results" and overruling Pollock re taxing property rents. | ||
| − | ''still in | + | Some obvious questions: |
| + | * How much did it cost to run the government (annually, in 2009 dollars) prior to 1913? | ||
| + | * How much does it cost to run the government now? | ||
| + | * What expenses have we added to make it cost more now? | ||
| + | * What portion of tax revenue is now income tax? (Historical data going back to 1913 would be useful, too, so we can watch the evolution over time.) | ||
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| + | A tidbit I remember reading somewhere: income tax does ''not'' pay for government operations; it basically pays the ''interest'' on the Federal Debt. (This obviously needs to be verified, but clearly has some implications if true.) | ||
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| + | I think inquiry into income tax -- or more generally, how the government funds itself -- is a completely legitimate thing to be looking into. For one thing, the income tax code is orders of magnitude beyond being too complicated. A family member is a tax accountant by profession, and he says that every year they get this huge, unreadable manual delivered -- and he never bothers to read it until he has a specific question to answer. I suspect very strongly that it is written to favor those who are wealthy enough to afford private accountants who can spend hours and hours looking for and setting up ways of shaving off percentages. How this benefits American society is beyond me. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Two proposals to throw into the hat: | ||
| + | * Start taxing at a level of income that is high enough that nobody has any legitimate need for "exemptions", and base the tax rate on a simple mathematical formula. We will need some pretty serious income data to work out how high we can set the "maximum tax-free income level" and still pay for whatever needs to be paid for. We will also need to figure out exactly what income tax is paying for (see note below), and what other revenues are being used to pay for everything else. | ||
| + | * Abandon income tax altogether, and replace the lost revenue by printing however much money is needed. This inflates the currency to some degree, and the question is how much inflation this would cause. It has been argued that this would essentially be a "flat tax", which is bad for poor people -- but unlike most flat taxes, it really only penalizes people who hold onto their money for any length of time, which poor people generally do not. | ||
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| + | Ok, I think we have a lot of common ground on this issue, but onward... | ||
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| + | That isn't because people actually ''want'' more pork, but because those politicians can (by virtue of having more pork to spread around the their circle of insiders) afford to buy more advertising... and favors. | ||
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| + | The rest of what you said in that paragraph sounds like you may be agreeing with me here... it is that the process is corrupt, not that the voters are greedy or selfish. | ||
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| + | in the federal government is done, the senate and congress do."'' | ||
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| + | Obviously we vote for the senators and representatives...but I take your point: we are too isolated from the decisions made at that level. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Your solution is to make the federal government smaller. This might be a reasonable goal, but there's a small problem: if, somehow, Congress gathers the necessary momentum to start making this happen, who do you think will be making the decisions as to which programs to cut and which to keep? | ||
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| + | Yeah. Those same people we don't have enough influence over. And the ones with the most influence -- and the most to lose from a reduced government -- will make damn sure that ''their'' sources of income will continue. | ||
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| + | Note also that the size of government has more often decreased under Democratic presidencies than Republican ones, and I believe this is because Republicans are largely just using "small government" as an excuse to get away with whatever they want -- while Democrats more often genuinely want government to run well and serve the people it is supposed to serve. | ||
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| + | Republicans are not your friends on this issue either, as much as they pretend to be. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"Provide the services that can be provided locally (streets, unemployment, welfare, etc.) by the state, without the federal government taking their cut of the money."'' | ||
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| + | I agree with you in principle; the problem is that many of the individual states have a horrible record on some things (e.g. civil rights -- integration was opposed by many states, just as gay rights are now being opposed by an ever-decreasing number Perhaps if the integration issue had not been enforced at the federal level, they all would have come around on this issue -- but I tend to think it would have been a very, very long time and a great waste of human capital.) | ||
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| + | I need to look into this more, though, to see if my feeling about it is substantiated by facts. | ||
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| + | One question: under your plan, would we ever have a space program? Uniform laws from state to state? The Internet? Which parts of the FedGov would you actually cut? | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"The less money wasted on corruption and cronyism, the more we have available to do things like end poverty and hunger, starting at home, and expanding around the world."'' | ||
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| + | This is certainly true... how much of our national resources are being squandered this way? And which groups are doing most of the squandering? (Do we agree that the Iraq War was not only a wasteful activity to begin with, but that it was also conducted in the most amazingly wasteful way?) | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"The longer we allow the pigs in Washington to make our decisions for us, the more they will siphon the money into their own pockets."'' | ||
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| + | They're not all pigs, but again I take your point. (My impression is that far more GOP members qualify as "pigs" than Dems; the Dems are better described as "spineless worms"... mainly when they're not standing up to the "pigs", but again I have to wonder how much of this is just political theatre to keep us distracted from who is really pulling the strings.) | ||
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| + | We agree on these. Yay. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"Sperm and eggs are not complete nor unique."'' | ||
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| + | Neither is a fetus, without very specific tailor-made definitions of "complete" and "unique". | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"It isn't arbitrary, it is well defined, documented, and proven."'' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Hmm, I'd like to see that proof... | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"But I would do everything in my power to try to ensure that choice doesn't need to be made, for the health of the baby and the mother."'' | ||
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| + | Check. I think we agree on a lot in this area. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"And I wouldn't fund abortions making them free to allow their use as an irresponsible form of birth control."'' | ||
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| + | Well, I've already explained my views and the reasons for them... but I could see a working compromise being reached on this. A big goal of mine at this point would be to get pro-life-leaning people to start working against abortion clinic violence and intimidation; towards that end, I would be willing to advocate a compromise position like this and backing down from supporting third-trimester abortions except under extraordinary circumstances (perhaps there should be some kind of review board, possibly even with a jury composed of 50% pro-lifers and 50% pro-choicers, to decide if a 3rd-tri abortion is reasonable or not). | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"Why a fetus is entitled to live is the same reason any unique life is entitled to live."'' | ||
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| + | Nobody is arguing that an aborted fetus was aborted because it didn't ''deserve'' to live. Sometimes the circumstances just aren't right -- and as long as the fetus is part of the mother, in my view the mother has the right to decide what is best for both of them. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"What are YOUR suggestions?"'' | ||
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| + | I've given a few above -- in the areas of income taxation, popular control of the FedGov, and abortion (compromise treaty). | ||
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| + | I'll also add that I'd like to see the [[mainstream media]] completely deconsolidated. Given the abuses that happen when multiple print publications and broadcasters fall into just a few hands, I think we need to go the other way: nobody should be allowed to own more than one newspaper or broadcast station, and they should all be non-profit and community-owned. (I realize this is a bit of an extreme position, but I think it would be a very good experiment to try for about 20 years and then re-evaluate.) | ||
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| + | I also think the FedGov should be documenting itself much better than it currently does; I could go into an extensive lecture on this, but I'll spare you for now. | ||
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| + | What do you see as the biggest, most urgent problems America currently faces? | ||