Wow, this thread is poppin again! I had some things to say to older Posts, but the moment has passed on most of them. A couple of quick resopnses before my statements:
I'm afraid that there ARE sweat shops in the US. I will grant that they are less common here than in many places. I forgot my other response.
One thing I would like to throw on this debate is my take on the fundamental purpose of government. I think that many people don't think enough about what "govern" really implies. Government is a form of oppression.
Hear me out: The whole nature of government is that it prevents people from doing what they would do without it and compels people to do what they would not without it. The only real differences in policy involve who does the oppressing and who is on the business end of it. And, of course, the severity of the oppression.
Taxes are oppressive. They are also a necessary evil if we are to have government, which everyone who doesn't want to live in Somalia accepts as a necessary evil. Some of these people don't realize that they want to live in Somalia
So who gets taxed and how much? Obviously that depends on what services people want. Clearly, current tax revenues are insufficient to pay for current services. So, we run a deficit. I'd like to point out that running a deficit is not necessarily bad. See, I have studied economics
To the point, low taxes and deficit spending are thought of by many economists as beneficial in times of economic downturn like today. Going to war without huge public support and spending gobs of that money on defense and diplomacy are not such good ideas.
On the question of which services to provide, people will disagree (duh). But there are a few things that I feel like I should point out. Several of the folks posting here have pointed out that there is no moral obligation for anyone to take care of anyone else and do not lie when they say it. There are, however, practical concerns. Those who have the highest proportion of wealth may control most of our nation's policy-making institutions, governmental and economical, but we middle-class types are the ones who drive the economy. Or at least, we should be. There are more of us, aren't there? It doesn't make good sense to expect someone who makes $40k/yr to pay the same fraction of his income as someone who makes $300k/yr. Unless, of course, we want to remove most of our social services, which some would like to see. This is a viable model, but not for very long. History has shown that nations with extreme disparity of wealth often get in trouble from it. I'm not saying that we would have a revolution, not anytime soon, but those who are concerned with posterity might want to think about it.
If I were inclined to lie to you, I could provide some very good statistics from all sorts of reliable sources, backing up my claims. I actually am a statistician, and I know how all of that goes
But I don't want to trick anyone. I confess that I am a bleeding-heart liberal, and an egg-headed intellectual to boot, so I tend to feel that the poorer end of the scale is getting screwed. I also tend to want to help those people, because I don't like to see people get screwed. But I'm not worried. I'll just do my thing, and that's enough for me.
I was going to say more, but this is a long post already, and the rest gets almost mystical, so never mind. Have a nice day, everybody.
By the way, it seems like the conservatives in this thread tend to outrank the liberals. Does this have some hidden meaning, or is it mere coincidence? Maybe I should do some sort of study...
[ February 11, 2003, 06:23: Message edited by: orev_saara ]