From: rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Subject: Re: My thoughts on Clinton's character
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 18:09:22 GMT

pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman) writes:
>Cripple?  Do you see any reason why those who benefit the most from
>our system should not put something back into that system? 

This makes it sound as if the government is actually benefiting
someone all that much, instead of being the single biggest threat to
their financial well-being.  The government is there to punish the
rich, not help them, in our current setup.  Some of the rich manage to
get direct government welfare through pork-barrel politics, but that's
just standard perversion of a too-large government, certainly all the
rich aren't getting government welfare.  They would be far better off
with far less government (as would we all), and you think they're
somehow supposed to pay more because they're benefitting from the US
Forest Service?  If the government was paying for just essential
services, maybe you could argue the "progressive" tax, but it's
nothing near that level.


>If you make 100K a year, what difference is it going to make if you
>pay higher taxes?

Uh, just a guess, but you'll have less of the money you earned.
You'll have less to spend on real things which create real jobs
instead of government paper shuffling.


>You would STILL be making more than a lot of people.

"To each according to his needs...."


>>That people keep the property which they earned is what I consider to
>>be moral.  That you seem to believe that you have a greater claim to this
>>property than they do is awkward.  Did you earn it? No.

>You didn't see the point.  Ok, let's not tax anyone.  Now, tell me--who
>is going to pay the government's huge debt?

Good point.  You big-government types have spent us into bankruptcy.
How do we fix what you created?  Freeze spending at the rate of
inflation and the major part of the problem goes away.  Start slashing
all the crap that's found its way into the budget, and slash every
department by 10%, a far too small estimate of the amount of fat.
Then let the deficit slowly go down.  As the elderly croak, the estate
taxes will make hefty inroads into the deficit, to the tune of several
trillion.  Rather appropriate, in that those who created the problem
may help bail us out.  



>>Now, do the wealthy have an obligation to pay taxes, yes.  Do they owe 
>>more because of any reason other than you want to use their money? No.
>>I wouldn't want you to be my banker, I might find my account emptied
>>because you had a need that you deemed sufficient to take my property.

>Right.

True enough. 



>The point is not that the needy should steal from the rich (and since
>that's your implicit assumption, I can't see that I'm likely to get
>through your thick head, but I'll try).

It's that the government should steal from the rich and give to
everyone, including the wealthy, apparently.


>The point is that the rich
>should give back to society some of what they get, when in fact many
>find every possible way to evade taxes and dodge taxes left and right.

The rich do not get anything close to what they are being charged for.
This is very reminiscent of the old scam where you mail someone
something they don't want and then try to charge them from it.


>Of course, poor and undereducated people don't have the resources at
>their disposal to maximize their income and minimize their taxes--if
>you can't put food on the table, you sure can't pay a tax preparer to
>make sure you don't pay any more taxes than you have to.

That's part of the federal bureaucracy which is inevitable under your
system.  If they made taxes easy to calculate and hard to play
accounting games, they'd have to lay off people at the IRS.


>So the poor and undereducated pay "more" taxes than the rich--is this
>any more fair than taxing the priveledged at a higher rate?

You bet.  Taxation is unfair in and of itself, and they're both
incredibly unfair.  You can come up with a scenario under which either
is more "fair." 


>Personally, I don't think taxes should be anyway.  For anyone.  But
>you seem to be arguing that those with money have earned that money
>(what about inheritances?) by hard work, and they "deserve" that money
>more than the poor people (who work pretty damn hard themselves, they
>just haven't had the breaks).  This is ludicrous.  Our system favors the
>rich--that's how many of them got to be that way.

This is strange reasoning.  Someone got rich because the system favors
the rich?  It would seem then that for someone who was not rich to
become rich would be harder, not easier.  Perhaps you mean richer?
Yes they "deserve" that money.  They provided something that society
was willing to pay for, while the poor person has little society wants
(once again, government perverts this).  It's hardly just luck.
Education, savvy, smart choices play a part.  You get the lottery
winner or the sap who was in the right place at the right time.  They
often lose it.


>>There is a seemingly infinite number of good ideas which the government
>>might be best suited to accomplish.  Which of these do we need and why
>>do they always require a great deal of money?  

>If good ideas don't require a great deal of money, then why to the rich
>need to hold on to theirs in order to keep the economy going?

You must be joking.  I know you are.
-- 
If Carter is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question.
Xref: sparky alt.politics.clinton:591 talk.politics.misc:35715