🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <GREENEG.96Jan10142342@jackson.cs.unc.edu> George Greene,
greeneg@jackson.cs.unc.edu writes:
> :   Only in the theory that tax breaks are subsidies "because
> :   everyone else has to pay in that much more".
>
>No, that is not the theory.
>The theory is that tax breaks are subsidies because
>they result in the people they are given to having more
>money, and the government having less, which is the EXACT SAME
>result you would've gotten (in terms of where the buck stops)
>if you had not given the tax break, but had given them a direct
>appropriation.

I agree with you George.  As long as one is not appropriating *more* than
the grand larcenists are extorting from you, it all falls under the
rubric of self-defense against vultures.  Once you begin to take *more*
from the federales than they take from you, you cross the line into
partnership with their extortion racket.

>
> :    Tax breaks are not subsidies, but instead just the
> :   government taking less from someone.
>
>What is this INSTEAD bullshit?
>Taking less from someone IS a subsidy IF you have
>the power to decide how much is vs. isn't taken ALL the
>way around (which the government does).  In most circumstances,
>takers and givers DON'T control it all the way around, so we
>are used to thinking of these as different.  But powerful
>legislative bodies are even more different than that.

That's right.  When Frankie's hoodlum "security" service shakes down the
local merchants, and some of them escape the squeeze because their
proprietor manages to talk Frankie out of it, they are actually being
*subsidized* by Frankie the Hood.

>
> :  Now, it's clearly not fair for the government to 
> : take from _anyone_,
>
>This is not clear at all.  It is clearly fair for the
>government to take from those who have unfairly and illegally
>taken from the innocent.  That is why convicted felons get sentenced.

The *victims* should get the money, not the government.  And if there
aren't any unwilling victims, then there isn't a real crime--which means
upwards of 50% of the "felons" in prison are serving time for political
unpopularity such as using or selling the "wrong" drugs--cocaine or pot
instead of nicotine and ethanol.

>Although it is less clear, it is also fair for the government to
>take from those whom government services disproportionately benefit.

You build a beautiful rose garden next door.  I benefit tremendously from
the sweet smell, and my property even gains in value.  You demand $59,650
per year from me, since I am benefitting from your services
disproportionately.  Is this kosher?

No.  I never agreed to give you any money.  So despite the fact that you
have done something of benefit to me, I certainly have no moral duty to
pay you, or the government, for any services you deem "important" or
"necessary" because I have not contracted with you or the government for
these services.


>
> :   it's even less fair for the government to take more
> :   from some and less from others, 
>
>No, it is even less fair for the government to take the alleged
>"same" amount from everybody, when everybody has completely
>different circumstances and different abilities to pay.

Reporter:  Jesse James, why do you rob banks?

Jesse:  Because that's where the money is.

Reporter:  How come you take more from the middle class and rich than the
poor?

Uncle Sam:  Because that's where the money is.  I can squeeze more out of
the wealthy, so I do.


  Margaret
>Thatcher got booted the hell out of 10 Downing St. for being
>(despite her prinicpled intelligence on virtually everything else)
>too big an idiot to see that.  The proximate cause of her failure
>to win her own party's renomination for a third term as prime
>minister was their fall to a near-record low in the polls as a
>result of her ramming through a one-size-misfits-all poll tax on
>EVERYbody.  This "same" amount was a much bigger hit for some
>people than for others.

Certainly a poll tax is cruel and unjust to the poor.  But so is every
other kind of tax.

Import duties on cheap foreign goods are cruel and unjust to the poor. 
So are building codes which discriminate against affordable housing,
zoning laws which do likewise, huge regulatory fees for starting many
businesses which prevent the poor from participation (it costs over
$100,000 to buy a taxi "medallion" or license to operate in NYC, PER
YEAR), FICA taxes which take from the poor (who typically pay into the
system much longer than the middle class, who attend college and / or
graduate school) and give to the rich (the poor typically die at the time
when Social Security benefits kick in).

> :  especially in those cases where the more/less decision 
> : is one motivated by political connections.
>
>That is ALL it ever CAN be motivated by.  Anybody who ever
>alleged to you that it was motivated by something else
>was Just Lying, if we are in the context of a republican
>form of government.

Exactly correct.  Washington is nothing but politics.  And politics is
nothing more than a grasp at power over the lives and property of other
people.  It is nothing more than the incarnation of might makes right--we
have the votes, so we control the police and the army and the guns, so we
can control your behavior and confiscate your money for our ends.

Politics is immoral per se, because it presumes the right to violate the
natural inborn freedoms of human existence--such as the right to one's
own labor and its fruits, the right to associate with whom one choses and
not associate with those whom one choses not to associate, the right to
defend oneself against those who would agress upon one's self and the
fruits of one's labor, etc.

Instead of politics, we as individuals must embrace an ethic of freedom,
and rely upon voluntary associations (such as the market, charities,
families, and philosophical/religious organizations) in order to meet our
needs as human beings, rather than marshalling the use of force in order
to take from others what we think they ought to give us.

> : In either case, though, an incident of the 
> : government _not_ taking from someone
> :   (as in that 20% you mention above) is very different
> :   from the government (taxpayers) paying that amount.
>
>Prove it, fool.

Ad hominim logical fallacy.

>I grant you two economies, with the same distribution of
>taxes, corporations, corporate profits, and legislative
>powers.  The only difference between them is the
>agendas of their corporate lobbyists.  In one, the lobbyists
>ask for (and get) a 10% reduction in taxes for their corporations.
>In the other, they ask for (and get) a direct appropriation, as
>a pure gift from the government, in the same amount.
>All you have to do, if you can, is tell me, after I
>remove the lid from the boxes, which economy is which.
>You can't.

True enough.  But in real life, appropriations for corporations are often
a major or even the exclusive raison de etre for the company.  For
example, many of the defense contractors and agricultural conglomerates
turn a profit solely by sucking on the government tit.  Such a
corporation I consider a parasite on the people of America.

>If they started out equal, they'll still be equal after the
>introduction of this allegedly differing policy, because there
>in FACT, NOT in theory, IS no difference between the policies.
>

MC