From: best@anasaz (Mike Best)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.correct
Subject: Re: Term limits
Keywords: socialism, knee-jerk, envy
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:03:54 GMT
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.  Phoenix, Az

In article <1992Apr6.172037.25939@cs.yale.edu> jovanovic-nick@CS.YALE.EDU (Nick Jovanovic) writes:
>In article <1992Apr2.145138.26120@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> moller@netmail.austin.ibm.com writes:
>>
>>In addition to term limits, how about paying the congresscrumbs _exactly_ the
>>national average income.  At least that way they might get some idea of how
>>much their theft-by-taxation hurts...

>OK.  While we're at it, let's limit all corporate salaries to the present
>national average as well.  The money saved can be used by business to 
>invest in new production and employment.  

This is a bad precedent, what's to stop the government from establishing
salaries for _all_ employment?  I hope this is a joke.

>Labelling taxation as "theft" is quite an emotional response.  It would
>seem to me that people who are lucky enough to be wealthy (on a world
>average scale -- most Americans) OWE a good portion of that money back
>to the system that made it possible for them to acquire the wealth in the
>first place, and that means taxes. 

In theory you are correct that citizens are responsible to support the
mechanisms which protect their lives, property, and pursuit of happiness.
However, people land on one of two sides of this issue.  The left believes
that the people live to support the government and it's programs while
the right believe that the government exists to protect individual citizens.
It's like the difference between "I work to live but I don't live to work."

The "system" under which wealth is created (It doesn't simply exist 
contrary to the left) is the result of a limited government that allows
the individual to thrive.  The Founders recognized that a strong 
central government was required to protect individual rights but at
the same time they knew that it must be obliged to watch itself.
That this was the intention of the Founders is not arguable.
The problem is that the government (Congress) is no longer "limited" 
in its scope and is seen, by many, as standing in the way.

Further, more taxes do not mean more prosperity for the country.  Obviously
the last tax increase which was among the largest ever did not help nor
did it balance the budget (as promised).  The tax cuts in the 80's did,
on the otherhand, increase tax revenues to the treasury.  Even the 
Democratic leadership of the Ways and Means committee admitted that the
wealthy were paying more after the tax cuts than they were before.

It is true, however, that people are becomming cynical and angry over a
government which takes in a trillion dollars per year and _still_ can't
balance the budget.  I don't think that in light of the ways in which
our (OUR) money is spent the term "theft" is more apt.

More to your point that the rich owe more than the middle class, I would
suggest that yours is a philosophy of envy and is mean spirited.  The
politics of class envy is demagogic and sophist.  In reality there is 
the strong scent of discrimination by establishing rules that differentiate
one group of citizens from another, rules which penalize one group more
than another.  It also does not serve the country well to penalize the
very group from which capital is raised to start companies and in general
employ middle class Americans.  Would you have the whole country go on
the dole and become wards of the State by getting rid of the rich then
getting rid of the middle class?

Mike Best
{mcdphx|asuvax}!anasaz!best

"Nobody spends anyone's money as carefully as they spend their own"
(Not the motto of our Congress)