Again - it seems you have a poor grasp of history and politics.

The enormous byproducts of NASA alone have had billions and billions of dollars in real economic benefits. Because of NASA, we have minituraized integrated circuits, countless medical technologies, satellites, GPS navigation, cordless tools, etc.

The Internet came directly out of the DoD DARPA project. The innovation made my military R&D and tech development is incalculable in terms of real economic improvement.

To think otherwise is just willful ignorance.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

yeah I knew all that, but to say that because government started internet in infancy there would be no internet without government is just gross non-sequitor

Ditto micro circuits and everything else

How to get elected imo. "The platform you'd run on" strongly implies this.

I'm not capable of being dishonest enough to tell people stuff that would make them want to elect me. For me to run for President, people would have to be far more receptive to my thinking than they are (and I would have to be American).

In this imaginary world where people think like me and would actually vote for me, my revolutionary platform would be based on promising to do something the president is supposed to do: protect the constitution. I would promise to regress towards the America that the founding fathers intended. No longer would the constitution be treated as an outdated document that can be disregarded. I would promise to do everything in my power to disband every unconstitutional program and institution of the federal government, at any cost. Bye-bye dept of education, foreign aid and so on.

Military: obv cut the budget. no questionable long-term military initiatives on my watch. pull out the troops from the middle east and use them at home against unions. just kidding. but not really. i would promise to do everything in my power to bust the unions and make them illegal in the same way price fixing and other forms of collusion are federal crimes for corporations.

too tired to go on but ill click the reply button anyway

edit: also, coercing states into balancing their budgets would be part of the program. get a brain moran states and learn the concept of not spending more money than you make. if i end up having to bail you out, it will be under the condition that all leftist bums be thrown out of your govt.

If the government hadn't stolen all that money, the guys at Goldline and Pay Day loan people would have invented the internet and launched satellites. Also, penis enlargement pills would actually work. This is well known.

1) Cut the military budget - 50% cut would still be triple the budget of the 2nd largest military.

2) Throw out the Bush tax cuts and bump up the top bracket to 50%. Possibly eliminate all taxes below $30,000 per year. Increase Death Taxes

3) Eliminate the Social Security wage cap - cut the Social Security tax in half from the current cap to say, $500,000/year, then keep it at 1.25% of earnings above 500k. I would also end medicare/medicade instead you get a voucher.

4) Mandatory Organ donation if over the age of 18 and a parent must decide the childs status at birth. If you opt out you can not receive organ donation

5) Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax - corporations are just businesses, individuals and stock holders should pay taxes as income. All welfare going to businesses should be eliminated.


6) Privatize the Post Office Worked In Canada

7) End all Federal pensions - social security is good enough for government work.

8) Bring in more Banking Regulation copy Canada's system it held up in the crisis

9) Ban smoking on a federal level in a car that has a minor in it

10) Try George Bush as a War Criminal

11) Eliminate all Middle east oil imports

12) Force the NCAA Football to go to a playoff system

13) Legalize Marijuana and stop jailing drug offenders and treat but put Lindsay Lohen in Jail for a year

Learn everything I can about how to sell an idea.

Politics is about selling ideas to people who disagree with you, or to compromise in a way where you can achieve the goals you are setting out for. Coming up with policy decisions is easy. Selling them isn't.

It's one thing to disagree with the Iraq war and not want to fund it, it's another to cut off money to the troops who are there and risking their lives for their country. I don't want them to fight but if they are I want them to have damn good equipment.

Wasn't Obama supposed to do this?

You certainly don't have an MBA.

Let's just give money to the idiots.

If you (whoever else) need more revenue, go out and earn it DUDE.

I mean not that I generally disagree with them, but the passion with which people advocate for billionaires really is a strange phenomenon.

I would take bribes in the form of campaign contributions from as many people as possible ,so that I have enough money to be able to get on TV and lie to as many people as possible as often as possible so as to get elected.

Noble, ambitious... yet completely impossible.

That's a process that would have to be gradual.

Why?

What about Bill Gates?

Did he not revolutionize this world? I like playing Halo 3 live... guess what we would still be playing if it weren't for him? tecmo bowl, UNLIVE.

The stranger phenomenon is why people have such disgust for billionaires.

How much has Bill Gates given to charity? A LOT. How much more would he have been able to give if he did not have to pay probably 50%+ in taxes? Less? no, MORE.

How many jobs do you think Bill Gates has created??? How many more would he have created if he only had to pay 10% taxes? Hell, this guy should pay ZERO in taxes for what he has done.

There are only 400 billionaires in the U.S. and I am sure the average billionaire is worth only 1-2 billion. Why don't we just tax them all at 100% then that means we get 1.0 trillion in tax receipts. Yippee, that means we are ONLY 75% of the way to paying off ONLY Obama's first year. Now what do we do about the other 4 or 5 trillion he has tacked on till then? What about all those people that work under the billionaires that just lost their jobs?

I got an idea, we can just print even more money to subsidize the unemployment of all those laid off workers that worked under those billionaires that have recently lost their jobs because those billionaires can no longer run their business because they got taxed 100%

I swear some of you people think that billionaires were just created out of thin air. You know, kinda how john kerry became a millionaire.

You want to take from the gigantic producers in this country, so the idiot politicians can waste that money and also give it to the idiots while I watch that hard earned money go down the slot machine drain everytime I walk through the casino to the poker room.

So when Warren Buffet goes before congress and asks them to tax him more since his secretary pays more in taxes, he's really just trying to sabotage our economy.

Got it.

I believe Buffet said his tax 'rate' was lower. I think Buffet probably paid a few million more in taxes than his secretary.

BTW, any of these uber-rich yambags who are upset that they aren't paying enough in taxes are free to remit any amount above what they owe to the treasury. I haven't heard much about that happening.

This logic is absurd.

So what you guys are saying is don't tax the rich, they create jobs and they spend their money?

Lets go to the extreme both ways. 100% tax = doesn't work. 0% tax = unlimited growth (which is ridiculous). Some number between 0 and 100 is correct, so we can all obviously agree on that.

The issue is that in the last 10-15 years the wealth gap has increased to drastic levels. The rich are ridiculously rich, while the wages for working americans have stayed stagnant.

So, I ask you, what the hell is the logic behind not taxing the rich when we've seen their demographic EXPLODE in wealth?

0% tax on everyone, people will form surities and synthetic law will emerge

Taxing the rich is not a productive thing to do because they do put their money to good use (taking the risks of financing various enterprises), but I agree with pretty much everything you've stated and with Buffet's point of view. We should always be skeptical of those who support something that apparently goes against their interests, but in this case Buffet is just being honest. It's not right that his average income tax rate is lower than his secretary's. Ideally shouldn't his taxes remain low and his secretary's be made lower?

I believe the impact of the increasing wealth gap to be overestimated. Until somebody owns a significant enough % of America to be dangerously powerful, there's no real problem. I know many would argue that this is already the case, and I accept that point of view. I just don't agree with it. I feel like most people who bring up the wealth gap are driven partly by envy and not taking a good look at the big picture. Even the richest person owns a very tiny % of the nation/world. States are massively powerful in comparison to private corporations and individuals.

In short, it would be good for people to be even more critical of government spending and the tax burden of the middle class, and less critical of the rich's relatively low tax burden. Yes the system is unfair, but making it more fair is less important than making it more efficient. Just my humble opinion. I know it's nothing new or particularly intelligent.

The logic behind not taxing the rich upwards of 60% is that the government or the scumbag wasteful politicians did not earn that money. That is a pretty logical answer I would deduce.

Also...all they do is spend it on mostly and overwhelmingly wasteful things. Micro 101 -misallocation of resources.

I hear you on 0% taxes being ridiculous, but that is just as ridiculous as the wealthy being taxed upwards of 60%. It should be somewhere between 10%-25% Not OVER HALF.

Go up to me post about Bill gates above please, and answer some of the specific questions that I ask.

Oh... and here is a pretty good counter-arguement to what you have stated... Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.

So basically, surrender to canada, but with college football playoffs?

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well then how do you find the logical amount of property that should be taken by force, I mean, by government?