I’ve never been a big anti-tax person in the personal sense. I recognize lower taxes are more likely to stimulate both economic growth and personal responsibility. But when one of the paychecks in your family comes from a Land Grant university position and the other from a college supported by regional and state taxes, it is unbecoming to complain too much. Nonetheless, this Reid discussion is irritating. Of course, it was sent me by my brother who has been responsible for creating far more jobs in his lifetime than our household’s academic posts have.
What world do these people live in?
Taxes are voluntary. But in the sense used in Bad Movies about the military.
“I want three volunteers: You, you and you – you just volunteered.”
Like you, I’m not a big anti-tax fan: but it appalls me how much wastage goes on with the money I send them. It’s the high taxes coupled with the waste that irks the snot out of me.
Like this: a few years ago the town in which my wife had her shop got into the steam generation business. With four customers. One of whom promptly got a better deal for fuel and started making their own steam, another who shut down the plant that was buying steam from the city.
The company that was making steam wasn’t able to make a profit: that’s why they were selling the plant. How in the heck did the _city_ think they could make a go of it? Turns out .. even they weren’t sure.
The heck, people.
As an aside, I spent eight years in the service and I never had a sergeant tell me that, ever. They said “You, you and you: do this.”
If people support welfare, they will pay for it.
The reason we have so much taxation, is that most of what is done, is not truly wanted.
The use of force is proof of lack of popular support.
The support is usually elites, those benefiting and contractors who always vote for more. Naturally.
To attempt to answer your specific question, Ginny, they live in a world of magic. A world in which none of the rules of mundane reality apply.
Cause and effect, as we in the normal world experience it, does not exist.
Intentions matter more than actual results, and the highest, best intention is to become a public servant acting in the interests of the common good.
Words have no meaning except what they are deemed to mean.
Only the big picture matters, and only those “in the know” can see the big picture. Those guys, like your brother, who own some little business somewhere might have to be given some lip service once in a while, but they can be safely ignored at crunch time. They’re only worried about their trivial little business matters. They don’t see the big picture.
And what is the big picture? (Even asking the question reveals one’s lack of membership in the club of those who know “what’s really important”.)
Remaining in power. Getting re-elected or re-appointed. Increasing one’s leverage. Expanding the range and strength of one’s powers.
It is Col. Cathcart’s world, where everything that happens is reduced to a black eye or a feather in one’s cap, and none of it is his fault, unless it’s a good thing, in which case it was all his idea.
What kind of world do they live in?
A world of formless plasma, in which everything is fluid, unattached, malleable. A world where anything is possible, where no laws apply, except the only law that matters—never give up power.
Some Italian guy wrote a book about it once upon a time.
Machiavelli or Mario Puzo?
I was being too cute by half in referring to the former, although the “Chicago way” might very well lean towards the latter as a model.