Sure I can. If someone's choice is to do whatever their fancy, why is it my responsibility to financially support them?

There are duties and responsibilities that the gov't is required by the constitution to do. One is to protect us.

i balked when I read materialism and being self sustaining in the same post, maybe a bit reflexively. Many makes you less happy then you expect and optimizing your life so you make more money is not a full proof strategy. This post may seem obvious to you but I am an MBA and this fact did not come to me until later in life. I believe people should make an effort to be self reliant. I have cousins who never felt the need to work because of inherited money and they did not really fair well. I assume it would suck more for the able bodied who rely on government support as they have no sense of accomplishment nor the money to spend on decent entertainment.

Theres no constitutional requirement to have a standing, professional military.

The goal-post was financial under-achievers and you kicked the ball out of bounds to irresponsible burdens. LOL

Typical loaded rhetoric. If you question the size of the safety net, you support people starving to death. Got it.

Oh so calling people burdens and asking why you are responsible for them is just questioning the size of the safety net? Talk about loaded rhetoric, lol. More like full of it.

The idea that everyone who is struggling is simply not choosing to support themselves is so ignorant...

You owe the government a portion of the fruits of your labor because the government creates and maintains an environment in which people like you can succeed. It also gives you some security in case your life takes a turn for the worse or your circumstances were different. You can't just opt out of the rest of that after seeing the cards you were dealt. "Turns out I didn't need food stamps, so nobody else should have them either!"

Okay, I get that. But when I'm paying close to 50% in taxes and fees for the fruits of my labor don't you think that excessive? At what point does the gov't ever start to do more with less?

You also don't seem to understand that "life expectancy" was so low because of infant/childhood deaths. It wasn't because the majority of people who survived childhood were dropping dead before the age of 65.

+1. But I do believe a lot of people are in the category of "Yeah, I get it. I need to pay taxes. That should be enough. I did my part. Let the government deal with the problems of inequality. That's their job."

I'm not necessarily saying that's a completely wrong mentality. It just doesn't hurt to have some compassion.

This trend can't continue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...9fe_story.html

Poor people are used like an anvil to politically pound on moochers with hammer.

Self reliance keeps coming up, which is not a controversial concept. It's just not boundless. Nobody can run a business alone. Nobody eats by virtue of their sole existence. The only reason to argue about it seems to be fundraisers.

Author: George Will


NOPE. Not readin that.

There is no income bracket that pays anywhere close to 50% effective tax.

I dunno, I've only ever heard you advocate for the government to do less. The gov't already does a lot, with less to work with than most other first-world countries.


(src)

I don't see Libertopia anywhere on that list.

Why are liberals arguing over debts and deficits? Isn't the liberal economics position that the national debt is irrelevant no matter how high it gets? I absolutely agree with them on this point. If it's almost 20T now and no problem will it ever become a problem?

"Deficits don't matter" was your party's position as well about 10 years ago.

Look at it this way, if a republican wins in 2016 you can go back to not worrying about either!

Well, when a country prints and sanctions it's own sovereign currency, it can print whatever it wants to pay off it's debts. This isn't true for European countries under the Euro.

With that said, simply printing trillions of dollars isn't necessarily good for stability of currency.

I'm for gay marriage, pro choice, background checks for fire arm purchase, high taxes on the rich and huge cuts in military spending. What is my party?

I absolutely do not trust the GOP to fix this problem. It is a predictable crisis that does not age well. I hope, but do not expect, it to be addressed next cycle but I would vote for the party that does under any fix scenario currently envisioned. It is political malfeasance to ignore it.

My point is no matter what party says debt and deficits don't matter it is absolutely correct.

How do you know it's a problem? Why should goldbugs, Peter Schiff or zero hedge have any credibility on this issue?

The ability to borrow and the cost of find of borrowing matters, right? Are you stating that there are no consequences of debt levels to these two things? If so let's eliminate the income tax.

Not for nothing but those guys behind the Enterprise Rent A Car counter by and large have college degrees. They were recruiting on campus our local college's career day.