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by freeopinion
29 days ago
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If it soothes you at all, you can think of it the other way around. All members of a society have a duty to pull their own weight. But everybody stumbles. So sometimes we have to pull more than our "fair share" and sometimes somebody else pulls part of our "fair share". But we all agree to it. Anyone who doesn't agree or who is deemed by the community to be dishonest in their contributions is exiled from the society. When we codify like that, we call it a tax. Now, nobody expects the 95-year old cancer patient to chop their fair share of firewood for the winter. So we can levy a tax to pay somebody to chop for them. Or we can just schedule a community chop for next Saturday and try to make sure everybody has enough wood. What do we do with the slackers who don't show up on Saturday? We figured out a long time ago that cash is a very useful tool to facilitate trade better than bartering can. And we can extend that into community contributions. We don't have to track how many potatoes and apples somebody grew and contributed to the widow fund. We don't have to figure out if 5 carrots and two hours of wood chopping is a fair contribution. We can just convert it all to money and require everyone to chip in the same amount. Except for the cancer patient and the widow, and the guy who hurt himself chopping wood for the cancer patient. Oh, and the Microsofts and Amazons. They only have to contribute 1/100th of what everybody else chips in. But those are the rules. We just codified them so that we can stop feeling peeved because we haven't seen Ricardo at the last three community chops. So we started keeping score. And yet, somebody is always still feeling peeved. Perhaps they don't like the rules that let big corps off the hook. Perhaps they think wood chopper boy is faking that foot injury. Maybe they think cancer is a hoax perpetrated by big Pharma. People complained when contributions were an honor system. They complain when contributions are codified into a tax system. Some people dodged when it was an honor system. Some people dodge when it is the law. |
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I appreciate your condescending attempt to explain your garbled Reaganomics logic.
Just by your tone, I can tell your mental framework hasnt changed in the last 30 years, despite copious evidence to the contrary of everything you say. You probably think Climate Change is a scam ... or something. By your tone, I can also tell youre a pretentious person who thinks they "just know better".
When Microsoft and Amazon use public resources and infrastructure to grow their business and maximize their profits, buy out politicians and push policies to destroy competitors margins while improving their own. Monopolize markets, expand into every vertical and then jack up costs to increase their margins. What is going on exactly? Why are trillions able to be allocated for AI R&D, but the education, and sciences and pretty much everything that might benefit the general public receives a tiny fraction? Oh right, because thats charity. Education and science and the post office need to turn a profit! Why did the banks receive a bailout on the taxpayers dollar, is that not charity... I forget did they return all of the billions on profits they made along the way?
Just ask yourself, what is a government and what is its purpose?
Whatever you're going to reply, just dont bother, because its the same arguments that have been used since the 80s to scam the public.