Jon Louis Mann wrote: > >> i prefer the government to spend my taxes on social >> >>> programs... >>> >> jon >> > > >> And you prefer even more to have the goverment spend OTHER >> people's money on social programs. But you don't >> want other >> people to spend YOUR money on their preferred applications. >> Robber baron, robber comrade, you fit right in! >> > > where do you fit in, john? maybe if you would reveal your tax bracket i > would understand how you prefer the government to spend your taxes? > jon > My favorite quote is from Nero Wolfe: "A man condemning the income tax because of the annoyance it gives him or the expense it puts him to is merely a dog baring its teeth, and he forfeits the privileges of civilized discourse."
Among the things you need to be extremely careful about are: 1) unsupported assumptions; 2) inflammatory language; and 3) false analogy. I am seeing many of these being used in accordance with the principles developed by the Cult of Rand. Unsupported assumption: It's your money, and the government is stealing it from you. This is one of those things that never stands up to close investigation, unless you are willing to take it on faith as an axiom. Taking things on faith as axioms is of course the primary method of the Rand Cult. In this case, as a member of a society that does various things to allow people to make a living in relative security and safety, you have obligations to that society. The money you earn derives in part from the social structures that make that possible. If you ever doubt that, start suggesting that we get rid of the army, the police, the courts (and didn't we go through all this back in the days of Hobbs?), and watch how quickly the Libertarians will start talking about public goods. In practice, a public good is anything they find necessary, and wasteful spending is anything they don't find necessary. (As an aside, there is a technical definition in economics for what should be a public good, but this is rarely brought into the argument.) How government raises and spends money should be subject to intense debate, since there is a definite tendency for governments to spend more money than they should on things we probably don't need, but even there for every man's wasteful expenditure you have another man's vitally important program. But no matter how intensely you debate these things, to imply that government, by being government, is immoral, marks you as outside the realm of intelligent discourse. Inflammatory language: Taking your money by force Again, this is intended to give you the image of being mugged in a dark alley by scary robbers. By definition, everything the government does has the implied ability to punish you if you don't go along, but how would you enforce any law otherwise? Unless you are an anarchist and believe that everyone should have the right to decide for themselves which laws they feel like observing, you will have to have some type of law enforcement. Governments also punish you for driving while intoxicated, and are quite willing to use force to do it. And they are also quite willing to force you to support your children. In fact, most people would prefer that the government do a better job of enforcing those last two. False analogy: John used one earlier to imply that stiffing a waiter was a good analogy for Obama's economic policies. Mostly that was just a weird story that leaves you going "Huh?", but false analogy is used a lot. One of the best ones was popular some years back, before the Republican party descended into outright criminality. It goes like this: "The government is just like a family, it cannot live beyond its means." Many people who gave the outward appearance of intelligence bought into this one, but it fails at the outset. The government is not just like a family. In fact, one could search far and wide and have trouble finding two institutions more unlike than a government and a family. Apples and oranges are identical twins when placed next to governments and families. And yet many people focused on the second part of the statement, while ignoring the fact that the premise was stupendously wrong, so wrong that it should have invalidated anything that followed after it. Now that the American people have realized the right-wing is batshit crazy, you will hear a lot of bizarre stuff as they desperately try to stop their slide into total irrelevance. So pay attention. Regards, -- Kevin B. O'Brien TANSTAAFL [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux User #333216 "If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
