A forum for cigar lovers.
Krieg:Speaking of snow plows and taxes...you guys in DC ought to have a little laugh at this: link
clearlysuspect:So, let us now be objective. We have all expressed dismay in obsurd taxation and government overstepping their bounds and primary responsibilities. Any thoughts on how to reverse the cycle?
kingjk729: its my personal opinion that people are like cigars ..... they mostly get better with some aging.
letsgowithbob: clearlysuspect:So, let us now be objective. We have all expressed dismay in obsurd taxation and government overstepping their bounds and primary responsibilities. Any thoughts on how to reverse the cycle? I honestly don't know if there is any way to reverse it at this point. I think that the government is so bloated that it needs to go through a starvation diet, and I htink the only way for that to happen is a serious recession. I always think "well if we could just get rid of all the people that are currently serving we would have a fresh start" but honestly, I don't think that getting rid of all of them and putting all new ones would even work. I'm kind of at a loss for what to do to fix it.
clearlysuspect: One2gofst:The arguement that we have more services now so we need to pay more taxes is severely backwards. IMO, we pay way too much in taxes. Then again I am a libertarian. I believe we need military and locally we need police. Frankly I wouldn't mind higher sales tax on gasoline, both at the federal and national level. That would go to building and maintaining roads. At least that way, we would decide how much we, as individuals would pay in taxes. Realistically, anyone who does not want to get more than they give, should be a proponent of the Fair Tax. That lets each individual decide how much tax they will pay. It also makes the guy busting his ass all day for "the man" not have to subsidize the taxes the drug dealer doesn't pay. Sin taxes are a joke, as they only tax the things that are bad enough to need an additional tax but not things that are so bad they are illegal. IMO, part of the whole system that makes people like me so hopeless that we can get any relief and/or fairness back into the taxes we pay is that more and more people are depending on redistribution of wealth for their survival. When more people live off the redistribution of wealth, the smaller the possibility of being able to vote down tax increases and even less possibility of voting for tax reductions. I am a firm believer in the democratic republic form of government we enjoy, so it creates an interesting conundrum for me. Every citizen in good standing has the right to vote. However, that allows the many to infringe upon the few. When it comes to things like welfare/taxes theoretically the majority could vote that the minority pays their living expenses, which is f'd up. On top of that, when people become disenfranchised because their money is taken away, they are less likely to strive to be productive. So they stop trying to improve their situation and let someone else take care of them. And so it continues. I thought this was very well said. I also added line breaks for you. LOL.
One2gofst:The arguement that we have more services now so we need to pay more taxes is severely backwards. IMO, we pay way too much in taxes. Then again I am a libertarian. I believe we need military and locally we need police. Frankly I wouldn't mind higher sales tax on gasoline, both at the federal and national level. That would go to building and maintaining roads. At least that way, we would decide how much we, as individuals would pay in taxes. Realistically, anyone who does not want to get more than they give, should be a proponent of the Fair Tax. That lets each individual decide how much tax they will pay. It also makes the guy busting his ass all day for "the man" not have to subsidize the taxes the drug dealer doesn't pay. Sin taxes are a joke, as they only tax the things that are bad enough to need an additional tax but not things that are so bad they are illegal. IMO, part of the whole system that makes people like me so hopeless that we can get any relief and/or fairness back into the taxes we pay is that more and more people are depending on redistribution of wealth for their survival. When more people live off the redistribution of wealth, the smaller the possibility of being able to vote down tax increases and even less possibility of voting for tax reductions. I am a firm believer in the democratic republic form of government we enjoy, so it creates an interesting conundrum for me. Every citizen in good standing has the right to vote. However, that allows the many to infringe upon the few. When it comes to things like welfare/taxes theoretically the majority could vote that the minority pays their living expenses, which is f'd up. On top of that, when people become disenfranchised because their money is taken away, they are less likely to strive to be productive. So they stop trying to improve their situation and let someone else take care of them. And so it continues.
A teacher in high school was teaching the class about communism. He was giving the theories on how it would work. Produce according to their ability and receive according to their need. They studied Marx and Lennon for a week and were told to study hard for a test at the end of the week. The test would be an essay test. The essay was to make an argument FOR communism. All the students did as told. When the tests were graded and handed back there were two grades: One in blue One in red. The teacher then explained that the blue score was a "capitalist" score and the red score was the "communist" score. To the good students who worked hard and studied hard had a blue score in the 90+ range. The decent students who studied but not as hard had a blue score of 80-90. The average students who either coasted, didn’t study but were smart, or who studied hard but just didn’t understand the concepts well got a score in the 70-80 range. The students that didn’t study much if at all were 60-70. The rest of them who didn’t study at all and didn’t care got even lower, some as low as a 20%. There was a bell curve in the class. The two smallest groups were the top few and the bottom few. Most were average or slightly above. The class average was a 72%. That was the score in red that everyone got. The majority of the class had a score higher than that but the few at the bottom were so low that the class average was brought down by this. Most of the students were mad. The lowest scoring students were in the minority but were quite happy. The day after the tests were handed back, the teacher asked the students with above the average score that if they knew they would only end up with a 72% no matter how hard they studied would they have tried so hard. All of them said they wouldn’t. ...this would only lower the average score more. This was the introduction into Communism.
I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation. Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987 British politician (1925 - )
PuroFreak: lilwing88: PuroFreak:Well your tax dollars last night, entitled us all to watch $2.5 million get pissed away on a commercial for the Census... What sense does that make honestly? First of all our taxes are out of hand because of all the places where government has overstepped their intended purpose. The government has gone beyond their job of protecting our rights so far that they were paying for peoples cable boxes so they can have television, which should NOT be something anyone is entitled to. This type of thing has caused the "entitlement mentallity" to grow in this country to the point where people expect it and even demand it from out political figures. Remember, "The government powerful enough to give you everything, is also powerful enough to take it all away." Well said, purofreak. I think it's unfortunate that people who are for shrinking government as opposed to expanding government are often dismissed as far-right whackos. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."Thanks, I have to admit that quote is not mine. I believe it was Mr. Thomas Jefferson that said it. But you are correct, the whole idea that government is taking far too much control of our lives, is an extremist view gets under my skin. It gets under my skin almost as much as people calling conservatives or libertarians "right wing." Kuzi has posted a link about this before, but if you look at the actual spectrum of political beliefs, Communism is the far left, and Anarchists are the far right. Conservatives and Libertarians fall about the middle and are more acurately centrists.
lilwing88: PuroFreak:Well your tax dollars last night, entitled us all to watch $2.5 million get pissed away on a commercial for the Census... What sense does that make honestly? First of all our taxes are out of hand because of all the places where government has overstepped their intended purpose. The government has gone beyond their job of protecting our rights so far that they were paying for peoples cable boxes so they can have television, which should NOT be something anyone is entitled to. This type of thing has caused the "entitlement mentallity" to grow in this country to the point where people expect it and even demand it from out political figures. Remember, "The government powerful enough to give you everything, is also powerful enough to take it all away." Well said, purofreak. I think it's unfortunate that people who are for shrinking government as opposed to expanding government are often dismissed as far-right whackos. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
PuroFreak:Well your tax dollars last night, entitled us all to watch $2.5 million get pissed away on a commercial for the Census... What sense does that make honestly? First of all our taxes are out of hand because of all the places where government has overstepped their intended purpose. The government has gone beyond their job of protecting our rights so far that they were paying for peoples cable boxes so they can have television, which should NOT be something anyone is entitled to. This type of thing has caused the "entitlement mentallity" to grow in this country to the point where people expect it and even demand it from out political figures. Remember, "The government powerful enough to give you everything, is also powerful enough to take it all away."
TatuajeVI: clearlysuspect:So, let us now be objective. We have all expressed dismay in obsurd taxation and government overstepping their bounds and primary responsibilities. Any thoughts on how to reverse the cycle? I'm actually writing a research paper sort of about this topic. I'm drawing parallels to the Roman Republic and why they went from a republic (likes ours today) to a dictatorship. Rome's problems from 200bc to 44bc were pretty much identical to ours: political corruption, special interests/businesses buying politicians and politically favorable laws, a slow and incompetent government, political gridlock leading to nothing getting done, and all of this lead to a compete and total lack of faith in a Republic. (heh, sound familiar?) The dictatorship in Rome slimmed down their government, made it far more efficient, and was able to put a massive amount of power into a single persons hand (Caesar Augustus for instance) that amazingly wasn't abused all that much. Benevolent/honorable dictators were the rule, not the exception for several hundred years in the Empire. The Roman people under the Caesars had an incredible amount of freedom in comparison to under the Roman Republic, economically and socially, and the changes in government structure took the Roman world from a horrible system designed to run a city, to the perfect system to run an empire. The point of my paper will essentially be to say that our republic is incapable of fixing itself and it will need a drastic political change - like a dictatorship - in order to slim down the bloated, disgusting waste of a government we have. Even though I vote Republican, I don't believe they would do anything even given a super majority and a republican President. And even if they did, eventually our culture of entitlement would vote someone else in later on to give them more things they do not deserve. And I feel I am not alone in my opinion.
jpclotfelter:I am not a big fan of Kennedy but one thing he said rings more true today:"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."What we need is a president who will cut the budget down to size immediately. No more multi trillion dollar deficits. We need to have a balanced budget within immediately and be running a surplus shortly there after. Planned Parenthood needs to go, ACORN needs to go, and on and on. No item in the federal budget should be off the table.The problem with this is that there will be so many people whose pet projects go away. There would be no more "Derek Zoolander School for Children Who Can't Read Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too", no more million dollar grants for studying homosexual behavior in Brazil, no more studies for cow farts. It would be highly unpopular because everybody would be effected in some way. The next election cycle would come along and we would elect a president who promised all things to all people. We truly live in an I, Me, Mine society. It's sad.