[jonallanharper]

"[when that tax bill comes your thought should be]... a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you."

Right, so I bust my ass in school, non-paid internships, contracting as much as possible, and 50 hour work weeks on my startup... and the reason I'm making money is b/c I'm more "fortunate" than the slob who is still playing video games in college after 6 years and the idiot who chooses to have kids he can't afford?

OK, got it... making wise choices makes you "fortunate"... and it's "unfortunate" when idiots who make poor decisions just don't make quite enough money to afford cigarettes, bling for his car, and health insurance.

Another serious flaw in this article, besides his inept philosophy: money stolen from us by the government is not "helping to support millions of americans"... it's being completely wasted by GovCo, for the most part, or at minimum used very inefficiently.

[decode]

"Right, so I bust my ass in school, non-paid internships, contracting as much as possible, and 50 hour work weeks on my startup... and the reason I'm making money is b/c I'm more "fortunate" than the slob who is still playing video games in college after 6 years and the idiot who chooses to have kids he can't afford?"

I don't know you, but I consider myself fortunate to be making more money than most because I was given, through no merit of my own, the ability and environment in which I could become educated and work towards goals that ended in lucrative work. As the child of educated, middle-class, white-collar people in a modern industrialized country, I have had thousands of opportunities denied most others in the world. If any of those things changed, for example if I happened to be born 300 years ago or if my community never taught me the importance of education and hard work or if I was born in a place where subsistence-level living is the norm, I would be in a completely different boat. If you have the ability to make wise choices that effect change in your life, then yes, you are fortunate.

On a side note, this sort of disdain for the poor is disturbing to me. Do people really think poor people choose to be so? Nobody wants to be poor.

[miked]

Do people really think poor people choose to be so? Nobody wants to be poor.

That no one wants to be poor is obvious enough, but it's hardly the same as whether or not they choose to be. The poorest person I know has an IQ of 186 and a PhD in chemistry. He chooses to live on government disability and not work, even though he's quite capable of doing so. But he he shares a quality I've noticed in all of the poor people I know personally: a belief the world owes him a living. Everything in his screwed-up life is someone else's fault, never his, no matter how much damage he inflicts on others.

That isn't all poor people, but it's a lot of them.

[forinti]

It always amazes me how americans have the smallest social safety net of the developed world and are always blaming the unfortunate for eating up their taxes.

You also work more hours than workers in other developed nations and yet still can't stop going on and on about lazy people.

[321abc]

Not to mention the daily stories of Wall St hustlers stealing billions, trillions of taxpayer dollars being given away as welfare to corporations (which promptly pay out billions in bonuses) and trillions pissed away on murdering tens of thousands of people in other countries, but people are all up in arms when some single mother gets a $100 in food stamps, or a Mexican risks death in the desert to come mow your lawn. Or god forbid that health care suddenly becomes affordable. That would be a true outrage!

There's really very little sense of proportion in this country.

[solutionyogi]

The problem here is of the government. Government decided to intervene and give those billions to the corporations. If government and bureaucrats didn't have the power to give away taxpayer's money, we won't have this problem. And that's why we libertarians talk about 'limited government.' Remember, 'Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.'

[321abc]

That might be a half-respectable position, if libertarians were against all concentrations of power. But they're not. They're more than happy to give corporations and individuals all the power their money can buy them. Also, libertarians have plenty of scorn for what the government does wrong, but little respect for what it does right.

The EPA, before the anti-EPA right wing nuts of the bush administration took it over, was doing good work, like trying to keep mercury out of our water. Of course, under the "pro business" bush administration, they've undermined such protections and declared that mercury and other toxins in our water aren't so bad after all and raised their acceptable limits in water (which is just a small sample of the outrageous "pro business" bullshit the bush administration was guilty of).

I happen to enjoy the National Parks in the US, as I think many Americans do; and I, for one, am glad that they're in public hands instead of the hands of the corporations. Yet Bush appointed people to head the National Park service who had explicitly expressed their opposition to even the existence of National Parks. And they've proceeded to sell off public lands and undermine the protections of the National Parks by granting more permissive logging rights to corporations and by watering down environmental regulations.

Now on to the FDA, which does a pretty good job of protecting the quality of the food and drugs it regulates (though in my opinion they are not nearly strict enough, because in many cases they in bed with the corporations and are underfunded, so consequently their regulation and enforcement is not nearly strong enough).

All the "pro-business", anti-environment, and anti-public-property abuses of the Bush administration would be increased a hundred fold if the libertarian vision ever came to pass. The libertarians would get rid of the EPA, the FDA, and sell of the National Parks. The corps would be free to pollute our air and water, kill off all endangered species, and the corps would be free to "self-regulate" the food and drugs they produce (meaning a free-for-all for a quick buck at the expense of public health).

And the above doesn't even begin to address the havoc libertarians would wreck on our education system (turning it in to even more of education for the wealthy than it already is), and destroy the few vestiges of a social safety net that America has managed to save despite many decades of assault from the "small government" crowd.

Basically, what libertarianism really amounts to is the attitude that there should be even more concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy, and the poor can go fuck themselves.

In my youth I was drawn to libertarianism (and I still agree with a few of their positions, such as their opposition to the War on Drugs), but as I've learned more about politics and history I see that the vast majority of those who will benefit from libertarianism are the wealthy, which is one reason (another is his racism) why Ron Paul could sneak in as a Republican candidate, where he wouldn't have stood a chance as a Democrat.

[solutionyogi]

Could you give me an example where FDA has done a good job? Let me give you some examples of where they have fucked up.

* Seven thousand people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the Ambu CardioPump, a CPR device that is available in just about every other industrialized country.

* Nine hundred people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the OmniCarbon heart valve, which also is in use just about everywhere else.

* From November 1988 to May 1992, about 3,500 kidney cancer patients died waiting for the FDA to approve the drug Interleukin-2, which was already available in France, Denmark, and seven other European countries.

* In 1988 alone, between 7,500 and 15,000 people died from gastric ulcers caused by aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, waiting for the FDA to approve misoprostol, which was already available in 43 countries.

* And 22,000 people died between 1985 and late 1987 waiting for streptokinase, the first drug that could be intravenously administered to reopen the blocked coronary arteries of heart-attack victims.

I have a friend who does medical research and to quote him:

//// As a professional in the medical device field, I can bear witness to many better reasons.

1. Delay of life saving technologies. I've had a product which has already saved lives in clinical trials waiting for FDA approval for 10 years!!! How many have died unnecessarily in that time? Nobody risks their job in FDA by saying "no", only "yes" The review boards are a joke. They consist mainly of your potential competitors!

2. Needless paperwork. At least half of my company's expenses are directly related to useless compliance with FDA paperwork. The joke here is that it doesn't have ANY connection to REAL patient safety, just the proper invocation of holy words on endless reports and forms. Maybe the FDA is really a secret cabal? Just kidding...

3. Chilling effect on new products and technologies. Want to make venture capital run away and hide? Say "subject to FDA approval" ///

Tell me again how is FDA useful?

Also, why do you think libertarians will wreck havoc on education? Could you explain me with example of how they will wreck havoc? AFAIK, libertarian recommends a school voucher system which will ensure that all kids get education and the free market forces ensure that they get best education possible.

The libertarianism doesn't advocate concentration of power, it actually promotes liberty for everyone involved.

[321abc]

How is the FDA useful?

From http://fdaissues.blogspot.com/2008/03/upton-sinclair-book-ju...

In "The Jungle", Upton Sinclair, "wrote about how dead rats were shoveled into sausage grinding machines. He explained, in nauseating detail, how diseased cows were slaughtered for beef; how guts and garbage were swept off the floor and sold as "potted ham."

Upton Sinclair even described how the occasional worker would fall into a meat-processing tank and be ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard."

The Chicago meat-packing industry was in deep trouble after Sinclair's landmark book, The Jungle, was published in 1906. It caused outrage in America and abroad and meat sales fell by half. The book forced the government to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration."

That's one of the things the FDA does right. I, for one, am glad I'm not eating rat sausage and meatpacker lard.

Another thing it does right is requiring food and drugs have all their ingredients listed on them. I am appalled when I buy other products, such as various cleaners and other chemicals, which are not under the jurisdiction of the FDA and could have all sorts of carcinogenic and dangerous chemicals in them without my even being aware of them, because they are not required to list their ingredients on their labels. I am glad that at least the food and medicines I consume do require strict labeling.

While many people may have died waiting for various drugs and medical devices to get FDA approval, there are also no doubt countless thousands saved because this approval was required. All you have to do is look at the days before the FDA existed to see the mountains of snake oil garbage that was peddled to American consumers (things like these radioactive quack cures: http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/quackcures.htm )

I am quite grateful to be living in the days of the FDA, and wouldn't want to go back to the pre-FDA era.

This is not to say the FDA is perfect, by any means. It's been affected by budget cuts and has a huge conflict of interest in its sometimes incestuous relationships with the corporations it is supposed to regulate.

These deficiencies are cause for reform (perhaps even radical reform) but not for elimination of the FDA altogether.

As for the complaints of your friend in the medical industry, I agree that the approval process takes too long. More funding of the FDA, and perhaps even requiring the FDA to conduct its own studies (eliminating the corporation from the loop, which have a conflict of interest in testing the safety of their own products anyway) would help.

I have a friend of my own, who worked as an internal safety inspector in a pharmaceutical plant owned by a major pharmaceutical company. He said that the plant should have gotten closed a decade ago because of its poor safety record (for which it had been sited by the FDA many times in the past), but it stayed open because the company's CEO had a lot of pull in the FDA.

This sort of thing calls for tougher regulation, not weaker regulation (much less the elimination of the FDA altogether).

As to your point about education vouchers, those are mainly used by right-wing religious fanatics, who are dissatisfied with the "liberal", desegregated education their kids would get in public school and want to get their kids in to religious schools and schools which are free to discriminate in ways public schools can't. I see no evidence that the voucher system would work for a wider segment of the population. Again, the people who would most benefit from this would be the rich, and religious, racist nuts.

See this report on vouchers from the Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/vouchers/vouchers_main.asp

which, among other things, notes that:

"Under a system of vouchers, it may be difficult to prevent schools run by extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the Ku Klux Klan from receiving public funds to subsidize their racist and anti-Semitic agendas."

Finally, your point about libertarianism not suggesting concentration of power. On the face of it, this is true, since libertarians never actually come out and say they suggest concentration of power. However, it's not difficult to read between the lines and see that's exactly what will happen when the checks that the government keeps on corporations (the EPA and FDA being just two of many good examples) are removed.

In fact, we have already seen what this is like. It's happened in America during the days of the Robber Barrons, where child labor, an 80-hour work week, workers being literally chained to their desks in sweatshops, the abominable conditions described in Sinclair's "The Jungle", no worker safety regulations in the workplace, and no environmental regulations were quite common. I do not want to go back to those days.

Apart from increased concentration of power in corporations, which libertarianism is powerless against, there's also the concentration of power in individuals, which the US system as a whole does a piss-poor job at controlling. That definitely needs work, but libertarians have nothing to say on the matter. If Bill Gates managed to get his hands on all of the world's wealth (or even, say, all the world's water) and the rest of the people on Earth had none, libertarians would presumably not have any problem with that. But thankfully, many other people do have a problem with that kind of inequitable distribution of wealth and power and will work to prevent it.

Another example of the government doing good work is when it manages to break up monopolies. However, it doesn't do nearly as good a job at this as it should (else Microsoft would have been broken up decades ago, and the media consolidation that's happened in the last decade or so would never have been allowed to take place). But, again, I don't see why libertarians would have any problem with monopolies (unless they're government monopolies, in which case they'll raise a stink).

I believe that for most libertarians, the rhetoric of caring for liberty is a mask for not caring much about anyone who can't make it the rat race of the social darwinists. This is why it's really no suprise that many libertarians are wealthy, highly educated types that imagine themselves made in the mold of Randian heroes. Conversely, you're not going to find many libertarians in the projects (with the possible exception of the drug dealers). And the only libertarians you're likely to find out in the sticks are the militia members and gun nuts who believe in conspiracy theories featuring the UN taking over the US, and the like. Fortunately, the majority of Americans haven't bought in to this bleak vision (yet).

[scott_s]

Without the infrastructure around you, you would not have the opportunity to succeed. Much of this infrastructure is public - paid for and run by the government. Taxes are not the government stealing your income from you. It's the government pooling resources so the society we live in can continue to function.

There's more to success than making wise choices. It's also have the ability to even have that choice because of your surrounding environment.

[solutionyogi]

Wow, HN folks sure have a 'socialist' slant. Anyway, do you think you are getting your money's worth when you give away 30% of your income in taxes? Do you know how much of the tax money is spent of infrastructure? Look at this chart of US budget spending.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY...

65% of taxpayer's money went to defense/social security/medicare-medicaid. Think about it for a moment. 65% of the money spent had nothing to do with infrastructure. Also, do you think that government is spending all the taxpayer's money carefully OR you think that government wastes tremendous waste amount of money? There are 3 ways to spend money:

1. Your own money on yourself. [You are very careful about getting your money's worth and you do spend generously] 2. Your own money on someone else. [You are very careful about getting your money's worth but you spend as little as you can] 3. Someone else's money on someone else. [Let's burn some money to heat up the place!]

Government falls in 3rd category and it's no surprise that there is tremendous waste.

That's why libertarians are advocating 'limited government', 'minimal taxes' so that people (you and me) can keep their hard earned money for themselves and spend as they see fit.

[scott_s]

I actually think people here tend to run more libertarian than socialist.

I wish we spent less on the defense, but the amount spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid sits fine with me. I consider that social infrastructure. When large portions of society go without, all of society suffers.

We see ourselves as fitting into society in different ways. You feel that the government is taking your money in the form of taxes. I feel that I'm paying for the privilege of living in a society that affords me the opportunity to earn money.

[solutionyogi]

Why is the social security/medicare/medicaid program okie with you? What is 'social infrastructure'? Why do you think that government can do a better job at spending your money than you alone? Check my other comment where I have written about money spending patterns. Also in another reply I have written about the amount of waste/fraud incurred by medicare/medicaid.

Trust me, I have no problem with taxes, I understand their need and pay them on time every year. My problem is the already high taxes and the fact that they are increasing. This means that government gets bigger and bigger and wastes all our (yours and mine) hard earned money. Unless you are suggesting that government doesn't waste money, I don't want them to increase taxes.

[Daishiman]

When you can get 40% off the retail price of basic medicine because you can negotiate drug prices en-masse, let me know.

Or how about when making sure education reaches everyone's hands.

See, the funny thing about people defending libertarian positions is that if they hadn't lived in a country with a public education infrastructure, roads, fire brigade and energy, it would be very unlikely that they'd had the capacity to acquire the knowledge and stability they'd need to become what they are today.

The inescapable fact is that they did nothing to "deserve" their health care of education through their infancy, yet it's one of the core reasons they got here, and they have the gall to complain about it.

Evidenced by the high standards of living in countries which do have social infrastructure (and yes, it exists, no need to put quotes around it) it works, and works reasonably well.

Doing infrastructure planning and development for millions of people kicks in economies of scale which are unachievable otherwise. History has effectively shown that social benefits that guarantee a minimal level of rights for education and health have dramatic effects in social mobility and overall quality of life.

[solutionyogi]

Do you really think government will be able to negotiate the price of basic medicine better than say Walmart/Costco? US have had Medicare/Medicaid for years but that had no effect on price of basic medicines.

Walmart enters the market and voila, you can get 90 day prescription for 10$! You can get similar deals at Costco and Sams Club. Show me one government program which has actually reduced the price of medicine. Walmart opens up clinic at their stores at a low cost so that uninsured people can visit the clinic and actually get basic treatment by paying cash. CVS and other pharmacy stores have followed Walmart's footsteps and started their own clinics program.

As I commented elsewhere, having a school voucher system will ensure that everyone gets education while also letting free market do its magic.

I am from India and we don't have any free health care there. We do have free public school but they are terrible. My father worked hard to send me to private school and I did part time work in college to fund my education.

And I am not suggesting that government should not provide public infrastructure. As I have shown in my other comment, not even 1% of your tax money goes towards infrastructure. Why are you not talking about (outraged about) the immense waste by done by defense/social security/medicare medicaid?

[mikeryan]

I don't want people spending their money as they see fit, see I'm not a politician so I can say this.

This why I don't see libertarianism (or even conservatism) working in general. There are vast swathes of americans who given more money would spend it irresponsibly - and what do you do then when someone spends their limited income on new truck nuts instead of health insurance?

[solutionyogi]

Great. Please allow me to control your bank account so that I can dictate how much you spend on your car, on your health insurance, on your vacation, on your wedding, on your kids, on your personal growth, on your food... each and everything which affects you.

Are you okie? I hear a 'no'. Then why do you think you want government to control how others spend their money? Do you really think someone else knows better than you what to do you with your own hard earned money? And why do you think libertarianism doesn't work? America is a living proof that libertarianism/capitalism works.

Another example: I am an Indian and when I was a kid, I remember how poor our country was. Since India decided to open up the trade in 1991 and adopted some of the libertarian policies, it has flourished. I don't know how old are you but did you hear about India as a vibrant economy 25 years back? So please don't suggest that libertarianism doesn't' work because I have seen it with my own eyes how well it works.

[mikeryan]

"Do you really think someone else knows better than you what to do you with your own hard earned money?"

You're not answering my question. I trust myself, heck you seem smart enough, I even trust you. I don't trust large sections of my country and you don't have a solution for dealing with the people who decide to spend their money irrationally.

You can not call America a libertarian country and wave it like an example. Its far from it and thankfully so. The most economic success this country has seen in the last 25 years was the eight were it was run by democratic leader (you know the tax more spend more people).

Likewise India's success in the last 25 years is great, but its a bit hard to show that as an example when it houses 1/3 of the worlds poor and 42% live beneath the international poverty line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India

[anamax]

> I don't trust large sections of my country and you don't have a solution for dealing with the people who decide to spend their money irrationally.

I've got news for you. I don't trust YOU to decide how to spend their money or my money.

Yes, people do dumb things with their money. However, they do dumber things with other people's money. And, since the potential damange is greater in the latter case than in the former, that's double-plus ungood.

[solutionyogi]

India became independent from British rule in 1947. It opened up economy in 1991. India has progressed more in last 18 years (from 1991 to 2009) than it did in 44 years (1947 to 1991). You can confirm this with any Indian who is more than 30 years old. [Compared this to US which has been independent since 1788, more than 200 years]

I hope you would agree that poverty can not be eliminated overnight. I am thrilled that India is making progress and I can assure that over the next 50 years, India will also join the rank of developed nations if they continue to adopt libertarian policies.

Anyway, coming back to your argument that you don't think others are smart enough to know how to spend their money. Just because percentage of the population is not smart enough, do you think I should suffer (by paying higher taxes) because of that?

Also, let's for a moment say that government should decide my health care. What's next? They will tell me what to eat as well. Where do you draw the line?

[mikeryan]

Wow that's cold.

It's a bit ugly that you can loop everyone that can't afford healthcare, mental health issues or drug addiction into a single bucket and dispose of them.

Those who can afford to spend 6 years in college playing video games, rarely are the ones who are doing it on the gov't dime. Its the kids that grow up in crappy underprivileged neighborhoods with poor school systems and no guidance are the ones that need help. But hey its their parents fault right?

You sir, compassion less, and cold spirited and are the one I can do without.

[solutionyogi]

Here's the problem with your argument. How are you going to make sure that government helps those poor people (the one you identified in your post) and not others? How are you going to make sure there is no waste/minimal waste? How are you going to make sure that lobbyists/corporations won't lobby the government to get this additional taxpayer's money and use it for their own instead of helping the poor? Where is the accountability? Show me one government program which has achieved its stated goal without wasting huge amount of taxpayer's money.

Let me give you an example. NY State auditors recovered around 270 million dollars in Medicare fraud/waste between Oct 07 to Mar 08 (6 months). This is only one state, think about the amount of fraud/waste happening in other states. In fact, they plan to spend 90 million dollars to prevent this fraud/waste! Why give government money so that they can waste it and then let them spend more money so that they can prevent the waste?

Link: http://www.nysun.com/new-york/state-recovers-269m-in-medicai...

[mikeryan]

And your solution is to what exactly? Pay less in taxes and hope the parents of underprivileged kids in poor neighborhoods spend the money responsibly on healthcare and schooling? That seems naive at best.

I have a general issue with the waste argument. And perhaps this is a bit naive, but as long as the gov't spends money that stays domestic, then the economy is being helped. Even with waste.

I'm sorry I have less faith that "most" Americans would spend money more responsibly than my gov't.

[solutionyogi]

I have no argument if you believe that your government can spend money better than your fellow citizens. Good luck!

[jonallanharper]

And, you sir, live in a false reality.

I bet you'd love to tell us how socialism would work if we "just gave it a chance." Let me guess... it "hasn't been implemented properly" yet right?

[scott_s]

Socialism isn't a scalar. We have government run/funded military, police, fire fighters, grade schools, universities, postal service, space program, welfare, pensions in the form of Social Security and health care for the poor and elderly through Medicaid and Medicare. Many European countries are more on the socialist side of the spectrum than we are.

[mikeryan]

Wow which false reality is that?

I'm well aware of how much I pay in taxes, its significant and getting worse since I started my own business this year.

But I believe that my taxes fill a need society and in fact even have a pragmatic slant (one which Cuban raised) in the Keynsian model more taxes = more spending by gov't and the only real way to stimulate economy.

Win/Win I help people and make more money with a better economy.

[solutionyogi]

Show me one example where government is able to stimulate economy. First, you will have to clarify what 'stimulating an economy' means. Once you have specified what it means, you will have to explain how each dollar spent has somehow stimulated the economy.

I think you fail to comprehend how complicated modern day economy is. Have you heard of 'I, Pencil' story? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU The gist is that no single person knows how to make a pencil. Because of co-ordinated efforts of thousands of people, working for their own goals, makes it possible to manufacture pencil and deliver it at your local store where you can buy it for dollar a piece.

Do you really think that few hundred bureaucrats in DC can decide how billions of dollars should be spent so that economy is stimulated?

[earl]

You have heard of, say, the EU, Singapore, Canada, Japan, etc? No?