From: kenh@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (Ken Hudson)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism,alt.activism
Subject: Re: Class Warfare is STUPID: (Was: : Where Have All the Liberals Gone?)
Date: 8 Apr 92 19:22:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: YaleVM.167C3D822.KENH
Organization: Yale University

In article <15146@drutx.ATT.COM>
dlo@druwa.ATT.COM (OlsonDL) writes:
 
>
>In article <167C1FA94.KENH@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu>, kenh@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (Ken Hudson) writes:
>} Your case example is all wrong.  The government does not assess income
>} tax on transactions; THAT would be a sales tax.
>
>What about the transaction between my employer and me?  Or between me and
>someone I hire?
>
 
IF there is withholding (and this is not necessarily the case), it is
contingent NOT ON THE ACT OF PAYMENT by the employer NOR ON THE ACT
OF PERFORMANCE OF YOUR SERVICES and may be reimbursed entirely based
only on YOUR NET INCOME at the end of the year.  A transaction-based
tax is not refundable and applies exactly to the amount of the
transaction.  You cannot later AVERAGE it and apply for any kind of
a refund (unless your status was non-taxable when you paid it).
 
>} What the government
>} does in the above case is say to the seller:  Collect all your receipts.
>
>The transaction carried out between the other person and me is none of the
>government's business.
 
Then the government should be able to say to you that what it does is
none of YOUR business.  What you do with your car parked on your own
property is none of the government's business; what you do with it
on the road IS!
 
>
>} Now suppose you try conducting your transaction: 1) with no roadways
>} or transportation to and from the site of transfer;
>
>But I have already paid for my use of that road, either through tolls or
>gasoline taxes.
>
 
Do your math.  The paultry amounts collected from tolls and gasoline
taxes pick up only a fraction of the cost!
 
>} 2) with no court
>} system to remedy a rip off by the seller;
>
>If there is a ripoff, that will be remedied later.  Government has no
>business forcing me or the other person to pay for court costs beforehand,
>when there is no evidence that a ripoff will occur.
 
Yes it does, since the court system must be in place...also, you are
paying for prosecution of people who ripped off other people and in
that event hopefully get them off the street BEFORE they rip you off.
 
>
>} 3) with no police protection
>} while in transit to assure that muggers don't grab the bucks you were
>} going to spend;
>
>The police can't do that anyway.  If muggers want to steal my money, the
>police can't do anything about it until after the crime has already been
>committed.
>
 
I've never heard of a policeman casually observing a crime in progress
and waiting until you go to the station and fill out a form before they
move into action...Where do you dwell, anyway?  Someplace founded by
Lewis Carrol?
 
>} 4) with no bucks printed by a treasury (what are you
>} going to do? carry around pure gold?);
>
>While there are costs associated with printing currency, to imply that
>these costs are proportional (let alone progressive) to their amount
>is nonsense.  It costs no more to print a $100 bill than it does to print
>a $1 bill.
 
Why should costs be proportional?  Does not follow...does not compute...
does not make sense.  There is a cost to running a monetary system
period.
 
>
>Besides, the cost of that money has already been paid for -- government
>has no further claim on it.
 
Whah????  Take a look at the expense line for the Treasury Department?
It is not being budgeted zero dollars, and its expenses haven't slowed
one bit.  Like roadways, those paper bills are wearing out
and being replaced in circulation every day...
 
>
>} 5) with no education to be
>} able to count your dollars in the first place;
>
>Education does not have to be provided by the government.  Besides, my
>education has already been paid for.
>
Yes, but not by YOUR dollars...By someone from the previous generation,
and not necessarily in full by your own parents unless they were
property owners at the time...And now you are helping to educate those
who come after you:  like in Nature, we adults go about the thankless
task of creating and nurturing those who will follow us...
 
>} 6) with no regulatory
>} agencies to set standards of quality which you could never test in
>} your garage
>
>Again, these do not have to be provided by the government.  Organizations
>like Consumer Reports and UL do that quite well.  If there has to be such
 
Yes, but Consumer Reports tests only judge quality of a randomly selected
sample from a model line...they do not certify or establish the ongoing
standard of quality to which a manufacturer (et al.) can be held in a
court of law...
 
>it there.  If I do want it, I'll put it there -- I don't need some damn
>bureaucrat in Washington DC to do those for me.
 
And if the faulty part goes into the next airliner you take?  I assume
you will entrust the task of certification to some proxy after your
death?
 
>
>} which probably burned down last week because there was
>} no Fire Department which wouldn't have mattered anyway because there
>} were no water lines to your house and you couldn't phone in the fire
>} anyway, because government had never required universal service and
>} no-one strung wires to your area because it was too sparsely populated
>} for them to make a profit, etc. etc. etc.
>
>Gak!  And all I really wanted out of this transaction was a loaf of
>bread.
 
Welcome to the real world that makes that loaf of bread such an easy
thing to acquire:  NONE of the tedious tilling of the soil, nervous
fear of drought or killer frost, hand-harvesting, grinding of the
flour, desperate search for cooking fuel, crude construction of
an oven...I'd say, for your money, you a pretty damn good life.
 
>
>I have a huge problem, however with the notion that it must also provide
>fire protection, utilities, phones, food, education, etc, etc, etc.
>
>I would much prefer a system in which people are either billed directly
>for the services they get, or they pay for insurance which can fund those
>services as they are needed.
>
 
But then you get profit motive going:  and while you, your wife, and
children are fried to a crisp in your home burning to the ground,
the fire department is whisking off to the wealthy suburb to pull a
cat out of the tree for a HUGE handsome check...
 
>I really object to a system that, in any transaction, forces me to purchase
>something from the government, when that isn't what I wanted.
 
That's why democracy is always a struggle of coalitions, priorities,
votes, rejections...we're conducting one huge transaction all the time
wherein we mete out some semblance of fairness as best we can...AND
we have committed pretty much to reserving a high degree of UN-socialized
individual economic freedoms...We may not get the best of either world,
but at least a damn good compromise between social fairness and individual
liberty...
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc