Yes, Mafia is right, GST is Goods and Services Tax, which was implemented here in Australia in 2001 (IIRC) by the very right-wing Howard government, after he said during an election campaign that he would never introduce it. Hilarious.

Hahahahhahaa, if I'm informed correctly that's exactly what happened when PM Mulroney a contemporary and ideological ally of Reagan and Thatcher said when he introduced the Canadian GST back in '91.

@abge

I largely opened the thread that way simply to attract argument, but I also wanted to open with the idea that forms the ideal. In a perfect world, where no one begins life at a significant disadvantage, I would expect people to live with the consequences of what brought thier standard of life below what is viewd as acceptable. Maybe I'll write my next short story for Fiction Writing about such a society and explore more of the details on how I think it would have to work. But yes, abgemacht, I do see how it would be confusing for someone to fully share both views. The right-wing nut-job view simply doesn't work in practice, but can form the basis for a philisophical debate on the subject which leads to reasonable views.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of a trend. Our dear friend, anti-tax, anti-communist, pro freedom Maggie Thatcher tried to introduce a Poll Tax and then attacked protestors. What fun.

Society can only provide equality of opportunity.

The big government socialist model is fiscally unsustainable because it destroys the incentive to excel because those who can't achieve the level of success that they want craft corrupt arguments to demand government legislate equality of condition which has failed over and over and over again since Thomas More.

So after the big government statists destroy the finances of the west we will be right back where we started, demanding freedom for individuals to act in their own self-interest and to rise and fall based on their own abilities.

You can craft all the arguments you want, but this reality is inescapable and history proves it over and over.

Feudalism, Communism, Socialism, Monarchy, and all the rest can't sustain themselves fiscally and bankruptcy is the result over and over and over.

The Soviet Union went bankrupt. The Bourbon's bankrupted France. The Hundred Year's War bankrupted the English Monarchy. On and on and on. Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain (again).

The only system that is left in the ruins is free market individualism.

It's sad how many ignorant fools refuse to accept the truth.

This is doing the rounds. It was written by British soldier - What he says makes a lot of sense!

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to earn that pay , I train for war and eventualy deploy. I am required to pass a random urine test… for drugs, with which I have no problem. ... What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a benefits cheque because I have to pass one to EARN IT for them? Please understand that I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their arse drinking beer and smoking dope. Could you imagine how much money the government would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a benefit cheque?

No it doesn't.

Most soldiers sit on their ass drinking beer, the irony apparently is lost on this random person you're citing. Binge drinking is rampant in the military, but I'm sure the saintly soldiers crowd will object.

I plan on taking the normal person's viewpoint on social security - I love it when I'm young and poor and hate it when I'm old and rich.

@largeham: Careful, people can say something similar of the Gillard government.

@Warden:

"I'm not saying that ALL social programs should be removed, I honestly haven't studied the issue enough to know what can and should be kept VS what needs to be cut out as a wasteful program. I'm just tired of the constant demonization of anyone who says that certain programs are not fulfilling a valid role and should be removed."

Well, with all due respect, if you are NOT in a position of knowledge to be able to say what is needed and what is not, it seems rather foolish to suggest cuts NOT knowing what needs to be cut and what should stay...it seems to me a bit like saying your being a surgeon and not knowing what organs are vital and which are vestigial and which may be removed safely and which are rather infirmed in the body...

You CAN operate, sure...but if you don't know wHAT to take out, or what SHOULD be taken out, it seems rather foolish to do so.

Moving further with that analogy, if you don;t know what's to be left in and what's not, how can ask another, fairly, to operate in your place, on the presumption THEY know what you do not...they might be just as ignorant about anatomy as you might be, and if you DID ignorantly defer in this manner and the patient died udner that other surgeon's care, YOU would ALSO be held as liable in a court of law of gross negligence and malpractice.



Again, I don't say this to disparage you or hurt you personally, but your position of "I don;'t know what to cut, but I know something must be cut" seems illogical to me, fkr the reason stated above.

As for your Social Security/opt out argument...

I don't entirely disagree that the AMOUNT you pay in should be flexible--maybe put in a floor that all citizens must pay, so as to be sure those who really DO nneed it will still have it, and then, if you don't wish to pay more than the floor, so be it, as long as you likewise receive no Social Security yourself in return, on the assumption that if you ARE just paying the floor amount you are financially secure and ONLY pay into the system the minimum ammount as a sort of charity towards your fellow countrymen who DO really need that Social SECURITY (it wasn't, after all, called Social Monopoly Money...)

And your final point:

"you shouldn'thave to give any excess you have over to others"

I agree and disagree.

I agree in that you SHOULD be able to build and keep a surplus through your own efforts and the successes you yourself have merited and brought forth.

However, I DO also agree with Locke's Tree Argument, which is vital to his idea of "natural justice" and how that should be applied to societies and governments.

The gist of the Tree Argument:

Imagine you have an Apple Tree.
This tree grows apples in abundance.
In fact, it grows more than enough apples to happily sustain you and your family.
You are able to build up a store of these apples in case of tough times.
You grow so much, in fact, that you can NEVER eat it all until some of the apples spoil.
ANYTHING given naturally by God to Man is a Gift of God via Adam.
To allow a Gift of God to spoil is immoral.
Further, there ARE hungry people in your area.
To allow Others to starve while you allow God's Gift to spoil is a DOUBLE sin.

THEREFORE, the ONLY just thing to do, Locke says is to keep as many apples as you can comfortably and happily keep AND will be able to actually eat before they spoil, and the REST of these apples you must give to others, either by giving them as charity or by trading them for other goods or selling them, so long as you don't allow them to spoil due to YOUR greed while others starve.

Obviously I myself don't buy into the whole God/God's Gift/Adam bit, but I think the basic principle holds true for Capitalism and Justice:

Keep as much as you comfortably can use and have rightfully earned, and give the rest away or invest it in such a way that it benefits others, rather than let it "spoil" by letting it just sit in your vaults while others cry out for a mere dollar to by bread.

"The argument that social services are on the whole wasteful or not cost effective is largely a myth."

well that depends. If you are a business owner and employer, then social services may help people avoid having to accept whatever terms and conditions you wish to impose. They reduce your operating profit by increasing the average cost of employing someone. They drag people just far enough above the poverty line so that people aren't desperate enough to work for less than $1 a day...

And thus from the perspective of a employer, taxing them to increase the cost of being an employer will never and can never be cost effective.

On the other hand you can try looking at things from the perspective of a society. Social Cohesion... having people believe in a system. If they believe the system is setup to screw them over. If they know, from personal experience, that poor people sometimes work very hard (and thus that it is a myth/lie/propaganda to say the poor are only poor because they don't work hard) then they will not believe in the system, they will not trust the system, and as soon as people start viewing the system as being against them it will become clear to them that they should take as much from that system as they can.

It is infact the only natural human thing to do. We all see people who try to cheat at every game they play. But do we question whether the game is fair in the first place?

Maybe y'all could help me with something.
Any who know me, know I lend no more support to democrats than republicans or liberals more than conservatives. But at least the left pretends. I mean they both fuck us over, but the left will at least lie to you about it. But the right is just so obviously.... I mean just LOOK at this thread. I dont get it. someone please explain it to me. I'm being serious.

phrased better
While mainstream 'right' and 'left' policies end up basically the same (pro-war, pro-corporate, etc.) the rhetoric of each side is markedly different. What makes people support the rhetoric that is overtly.... I dont know... callous? idiotic?
I hope you know what I mean, this isnt just some cheap jab at the right (or left) I really do want an answer

Orathaic, Thanks for the chuckle. I appreciate it.

Please let Greece know that the argument that their social programs and entitlements have no bankrupted the county that is something else entirely, and in fact the way the Greeks should save themselves is not to cut social programs but to double them.

Like I said man, thank you for the chuckle.

Lord Nubz, they do say it and they are correct in saying it. However, that does not mean that she is wrong for trying to introduce the carbon tax (indeed, in the same vein, one might say Howard was right to break his promise on the GST). That said, I'm not a fan of the carbon tax, but for probably different reasons than most of the more vocal opponents.

I wonder if everyone knows that the main argument of wasteful social services was based on a lie that Ronald Reagan circulated far and wide and has been accepted as the truth. He gave a speech about a welfare mother he met in Chicago who drove a brand new Cadillac and bragged to him about how much money she made.

First of all, if she's smart enough to game the system that much, why would anyone believe she'd be dumb enough to brag about it to a conservative candidate?

But even beyond that, a search was done of Cadillac sales versus welfare recipients. No matches. There are people who abuse systems, but the worst case examples that are often trotted out are as real as unicorns.

@Sacred I have seen a unicorn.

@Sicarius If both sides end in the same location, and one of them is lying to you, and the other is being direct about it, why would you side with the liars? Do you view the lies as a good thing? That's the impression I get from your post, that lying about the direction they intend to take society is a good thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

As to why one might embrace such rhetoric, it really depends on the individual's preferences. Rhetoric is by design targeted towards certain groups, and it is likely that many in said groups will fall under its spell. People who embrace conservatism are largely self-sufficient and think that other people should carry as much of their own weight as possible. As far as I can understand it, a liberal viewpoint is that it is society's responsibility to assist individuals on the lower side of the bell curve via distribution from those on the upper side of the curve.

Arguments from both sides claim moral superiority, so it's up to personal sensibility to make a choice between them.

@ Obiwan I like the tree argument as far as you take it, but the question is, how far do we take it? Are the hungry people in Africa "in your area" now? As far as I can tell, I agree with you completely, the only vague point is the precise amount one should part with, and to whom?

If I only have enough surplus to feed 2 men, and there are 2 starving people in front of me, and 4 more down the street, and another 2 in the next city, who should I give my resources to? Or, perhaps my resources would have more of an effect somewhere else entirely, say it could feed 8 people in another country. Who decides who gets what? I would say that we leave it to the individual who has the resources to begin with (at least in most cases) but I can see and understand many arguments that would say that this is where government can step in to find where this excess will do the most good.
Lastly, @TC
Honestly, I found of your post nearly unintelligible. Orathaic's post had nothing at all to do with Greece or their bankruptcy. At least continue the topic at hand, or open a new thread that people can mute separately.

By which you mean an actual unicorn, or a person who has an income great enough to generate a brand new Cadillac off gaming the system?

Warden, Orathaic's post had everything to do with Greece and their bankruptcy.

His opening quote was "The argument that social services are on the whole wasteful or not cost effective is largely a myth"

The reality of Greece destroys the quote. If it wasn't his quote he didn't attribute it to anyone.

Sorry you didn't have the intellect to make that obvious real world connection, but I see you are interested in rhetoric over substance and reality as so many in these threads are.

Life is not esoteric.

The glaring omission from the thread is the root destructive force of any and all social programs. They replace a dependence on real world, flesh and blood relationships with the abstract idea of the state.
Doing away with any government social program has the multiple benefits of eliminating the overarching waste create when a bloated government bureaucracy takes from Peter to give to Paul. Study claim waste of 30-55%.
Doing away with any government social program immediately ends the potential for abuse of power and corruption by government. Government power is by nature malignant and never benign.
Finally doing away with any government social program reinforces the basic social institutions upon which all vigorous societies depend, the family and the local community. The society of individuals who see one another on a regular basis. Government does not enhance these bonds it destroys and replaces them abstract impersonal relationships.

This is why any sensible person wants to eliminate social programs because only fools who believe in fantasies still hold to the old utopian or progressive era faith in the superior ability of so-called experts (substitute government) to solve social problems.

Individuals, families, and local communities solve social problems better than any government program and government programs destroy the ability of individuals, families, and local communities to solve problems by crowding them out.

@TC if you had actually read the thread, you would notice that Orathaic's quote was from Maffia and was just addressing it. If your vast intellect can't even realize that, then you must simply be either making enormously unfounded leaps, or have Mafia muted.

@ Sacred, yes, a real unicorn. With the alabaster spike protruding from its head.

He definitely has me muted. Not to worry, I've returned the favour.

Well, then, those sorts of examples are as unreal as something that you see as unreal.

I've seen people manage to scam the cost of a new X-Box or a few cases of beer here and there off "the system." I've also seen that catch up to them sooner or later. I've never seen the kind of graft that the horror stories paint for it.

@sacred btw the unicorn was the very person who I also saw scamming the system. He transformed into a human and used his magical wiles on the social workers. He gamed them out of many an important welfare check. Unicorns are not all good, they are evil!

^ not me joking around or trolling.

"
Individuals, families, and local communities solve social problems better than any government program and government programs destroy the ability of individuals, families, and local communities to solve problems by crowding them out.
"

omg, I think I kindof agree with TC

I muted Maffia and don't see any of his stupid lunacy, case in point the quote of his that Orth didn't attribute to him that I cut to shreds.
If you want to read Maffia's stupidity feel free.

Warden, you have 59 replies in your thread. I see 13 of them.