He had all the potential to be pompous, but he wasn't there yet. Mostly he was angry. He led the Young Republicans on campus, and all 100 or so of them (there were 42,000 students at Mich. State then) were very unusual dudes, a combination of the Sons of Grosse Pointe and pig farmers with Ivy-League pretensions. That was when calling someone a conservative was one notch up from calling them a child molester. It made him kind of fierce.
That was not me who made that comment. I'd read just enough to see how little it all seems to mean today, and then move on.
Not for seminal ideas about democracy and republics. He was a little late for what we're talking about, anyway. Yes, I can picture you with The Devil's Dictionary.
It's not a bad way to spend middle-age.
Still at the movies. We do have the cowboys and outlaws, though, and I'm expecting an Indian any time now.
That "new" reminded me of a cartoon I saw many years ago.
Public restroom with a roll of TP and bicycle pedals out in front of the pot. Paper ran across the toilet seat and up the wall to a take-up roll. You have to picture the required sprockets and crossed chain, shafts and u-joints and supporting framework to make all this work. This was all pretty comical but the sign on the wall was the clincher.
A close friend of mine was discussing what it was like living on a boat with his wife and daughters. He said it took a bit of work to get them to quit clogging the head.
His comment about the paper:
"Use Both Sides!"
Jim
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Well, we have a sales tax here in Tennessee, instead of an income tax, and the major result is that the state officials seem to always be whining about how they don't have enough money to do anything, so they are having to spend more than they take in and push the state deeper into debt. The fact that the last two governors started pushing for a state income tax hurt their chances at the least, and at most was the root cause of their being kicked out of office. The fact of the matter is that money to a politician is like crack to an addict. They can never get enough of it. While it may be unpopular to cut programs, the fact of the matter is that if I don't have enough cash to go out to my favorite restaurant and eat... I don't go until I CAN afford it. Why should government be any different? Dave Mundt
Taken literally, that makes no sense at all -- it sounds like a romantic boast. "No obstacles will stop me!".
I guess this "no one" who ever paid it is in the same category as the people who will let "no obstacles" stop them -- that is to say, at best an exaggeration.
That's one of several hundred causes I've seen blamed for the degeneration and debasement of society.
That's almost a tautology -- what _is_ a democratic republic, other than a place where the primary political power is held by the middle class? Yes, if the power gets away from the middle class, then it is no longer a democratic republic. That follows simply from the definition of democratic republic; no knowledge of the real world is necessary to make that statement.
It might surprise you, but I actually agree that in the Depression it was reasonably fair to take money from the rich and give it to the middle class. The reason is that one of the main things that happened in the Depression was deflation, of around one third. Everyone with money, and every creditor, was enriched by this, since their money was worth more; every debtor was made poorer by it. Since this deflation was due to government bungling of the monetary system, it was fair for the government to try to reverse its effects. Of course no income redistribution could exactly remedy the effects of deflation; the really fair thing would have been to not screw up the monetary system in the first place. But to err is human.
Yup, that's my style: I work up from the bottom, starting with things that can be isolated enough that one can be certain about them, and combining them; the big picture appears only at the end, if at all. I mistrust the results of any other approach.
If you're going to invest your time in this, here are a couple of practical suggestions that you can take for what they're worth. You probably know this already but it's worth repeating.
A lot of those old guys are insufferable to read. Plato sounds like a nut; Marcus Aurelius repeats himself endlessly; Thomas Hobbes goes around every back door, couching his words and covering his ass in ways that we can't understand because they only have meaning in context of the politics of his day.
Without teachers, and without entire days to spend in class and nights to spend doing homework, don't feel bad about dodging to the encyclopedia or to some modern school textbook that covers the subject. For an adult, it's my feeling that the encyclopedia is better.
We miss some of the richness of the experience that way, but that's the price of not having to start your life over again to read all of it. You'll find plenty of original material that you want to read. Just don't kill yourself trying to plow through all of it. It isn't worth it. You'll get the color and flavor, in most cases, in the first ten pages of each original work.
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 04:00:49 GMT, "Ed Huntress" brought forth from the murky depths:
I saw that. Two demerits and no gold star today, boy.
Nor do I, but I resent wealth via exploitation.
Isn't it, though? The worst part of our government now is that the corrupt, power-hungy millionaires run it. That applies to the many congresscritters (all millionaires, right?) and to the people above them who pull their strings.
What I'd really like to know is: Who controls the Shrub string?
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Huh? What I was doing was asking you how, if at all, the statement
"a democratic republic can only survive if the primary political power is held by the middle class"
isn't a tautology. Because it sure looks to me like one.
Certainly it's a masterful political statement: each reader can imagine his own definition of "middle class", such that he fits into that "middle class", and can feel flattered, because the republic can't survive without him and his kind holding "the primary political power". Indeed, the way you phrased it, he is not just flattered, but flattered by "every wise political thinker", no less. But aside from sounding warm and fuzzy, what is the point of that statement?
I am not in the top 1%, I'm barely upper middle class. But if what the analysts tell us is true, a 23% national sales tax (no exemptions) would be revenue neutral if it replaced *all* other taxes. I currently pay more tax than that.
I currently pay a 21.4% effective federal income tax rate on my unadjusted gross income (one has to correct for the progressive steps, and for adjustments to gross income due to deductions to arrive at the actual effective rate, I simply calculated what percentage of my gross Turbotax says I owe this year to arrive at the effective figure). I pay 7.5% SS tax (really 15%, but getting that other 7.5% from my employer could be problematic so I don't include the latter, though it would make negotiating for a raise a bit easier). I pay 6% state income tax, 6% state and local sales tax, plus property taxes, excise taxes, user fees, etc which kick the total take by government to over 50% of my income.
Cutting my total tax bill by 54%, saving me over $20,000 per year, seems like it would be in my self-interest. Those of you who currently sit back and clip coupons on tax free municipal bonds will whine, but such a tax system would be good for us middle class working people who are trying to set a little money aside to grow our wealth, but who can't because the government takes so much up front.
$0.30 a mile is what the IRS lets you deduct for the depreciation, wear and tear, etc on a vehicle used in commercial service. It is *not* the annual cost of maintaining 12,000 vehicle miles of highway. The Federal Highway Trust Fund, funded by fuel taxes, is currently running a $800,000,000,000 surplus, but Congress won't release the money because they've already spent it for non-highway uses (contrary to federal law).
As the signs on over the road trucks say, "This vehicle pays $4853 a year in road use taxes."
I wish.
You've forgotten to include the increased cost of everything you buy as part of those regulatory costs.
Hmmm, the volunteer fire department charges me an annual fee of $105. I just paid it. I *know* that the local PD collects more revenue in speeding tickets each year than its annual budget. It is the major revenue source for the town.
They shouldn't be. And if they want more revenue, they can take steps to grow their state's economy so that there will be more economic activity, increased sales, and increased sales tax revenues as a result.
That's one of the benefits of forcing government to live off a sales tax. Instead of penalizing economic activity with confiscatory taxation, they have to promote it in order to gain more tax money to play with. In other words, any steps they take to increase the velocity of money in their state directly results in more tax money for them to spend.
Actually, I don't have any immediate plans for reading pre-18th century works. I did just pick up a used copy of Bertrand Russell's _Wisdom of the West_ and I'm interested to see what he has to say about those old Greek and Roman guys.
After thinking about it for a few days, I took your advice. I think it will suit my needs well. I looked at the new, printed version of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but $1400 is just too rich for my blood. Instead I ordered the DVD-ROM version from Amazon.com for $30 (after rebate). I'll keep my eyes peeled for a used set of the printed version, as well.
BTW, although Ben Franklin is included in the Harvard Classics, it looks like they overlooked his _Farting Proudly_. Seems like a major oversight to me.
There are a lot of inaccuracies in the way you're calculating your taxes, Gary (you're only paying 6% on the PART of your NET that has sales taxes applied, for example, yet you've added it in as if it was on 100% of your GROSS).
However, consider this: If there was no income tax withholding and no payroll taxes, your gross would immediately drop substantially. It comes out of your paycheck now, not your employer's, and he's getting a big deduction for what he pays you. He isn't going to pay you what he's now getting as a deduction, only a part of it. In other words, he'll pay you the net of what he's paying to keep you now, unless he decides to give you a big raise, and that's a lot less than your present gross.
Another thing is that the total taxes in this country on gross incomes (actually on GDP, which is close) runs around 27%. If you're paying more than that now, it means that someone else is paying a lot less -- noticeably the people who produce your food and your clothing. Say they're paying 10% tax now overall (it's a lot less than that). If you put a 23% sales tax on everything, your food and clothing costs will immediately rise by 13%.
So will the price of a stock that you buy. That puts a burden of 13% on equities across the board. If you hold a stock for an average of two years, that means there's a performance burden of 6.5% added to that stock. Many stocks don't grow that fast anyway, so those businesses would be out of the market and bankrupt in a hurry. Then you'd have to collect and pay 13% on your stock when you sell it: no exceptions, remember? The stock market would be thrown into an impossible wringer.
And so on. The whole program is a nightmare of unintended consequences.
You're welcome, Tom. It was the pre-18th-century thinkers that I had in mind when I decided I wanted to go back and find out where these ideas came from, however. I think you'll find it worthwhile to at least read a couple of encyclopedia accounts of the Greeks, Romans, and Middle-Ages thinkers. By the time we got to the Enlightenment and the 18th century, the fundamental ideas had already been cast. The Enlightenment thinkers didn't come up with much that was new; they just put it together into a coherent package, with a modern basis for the principles.
In any case, any amount of time you spend studying it systematically, even in this condensed version, will be a real eye-opener. And it's interesting.
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