The Trouble With Socialism

I suppose this puts the argument to rest, and we can all agree that smokers are net contributors to the healthcare system eh?

I sure hope Kathy S is correct, and all entitlements will be drastically reduced in the future.

You could say the same for the other 49 States, 10 Canadian Provinces, and both federal governments.

And, add on all the goodies from taxing alcohol consumption.

Here in Canada, we call it a 'sin tax'. Which is ironic considering we don't consider Biblical infractions like Sodomy, a sin.

Heck, we don't even consider murdering one's children a sin: look at the recent 'not guilty' of the Quebec cardiologist for killings his children, because he was 'anxious' and 'depressed'.

Thanks Kate for a story that made my day.

or kill off thousands of jobs for a misleading soundbite...

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Replace it with a tax on illegal immigrants.

I think it's the Cloud Complex, which I define as a state of mind that floats far, far above the hard factual data of reality and exists only in amorphous images. What are some of these images?

Well, there's the Image of The Rich. These, in their nature as Cloud Images, are infinite in number and size; their wealth is equally infinite. Obama defines 'millionaires' as anyone with an income of 200,000 proving either that he failed grade school arithmetic and/or that he believes that His Words are sufficient to define reality.

So - when the left says: 'The Rich must pay'..the view is that the wealth of these 'Rich' is, like Merlin's gold, infinite.

Same image of 'Big Corporations' must pay; they are viewed as infinite, global pots-of-gold.

These are all images within Obama's world: a world of amorphous, non-factual images defined only by Words. Obama's world is all about: Big Government, Big Unions, Big Corporations...and these are, as non-specific institutions, amorphous and authoritarian.

But the real world is specific, actual, individual. The money to pay for services comes from specific, actual individuals...and the left, who live in Cloud Reality, don't even see this actual world. So, it doesn't occur to them that reality is finite, that the taxpayer isn't a source of endless wealth, that even by redefining terms (millionaire)..this won't increase your wealth.

Obama is destroying the US. Get rid of him.

Cigarettes are very cheap to make - the taxes make them too expensive to buy...

'Where have all the smokers gone? Gone to tax free, every one...when will the fanatics learn, when will they ever learn?'

Many people have also given up the habit because they never liked it in the first place (they tell me); they just smoked to be popular. Smoking has been legislated to the grey fringe - all PC venerable individuals quit years ago...smokers no longer fight here in the smoke nazi country, they stay home and save their money so they can vacation in a nice warm place where smokers are welcomed. Sorry Arizona/Canada, that ship of stolen $$ has already sailed...smokers also have long memories.

So a law sold on a promise that health coverage would be expanded without state tax revenues is now being reinterpreted as an obligation to use additional state tax revenues to fund the coverage expansion—whether legislators want to or not. Where are the smokers when you need them?

Where are the smokers when you need them?

ET - Obama is destroying the US. Get rid of him. You hit the nail on the head, thank you.

Jema - gone to pipe tobacco rolled into non-taxed smokes. The government is working to outlaw that as well.

Orlin - how does that taste? I never thought of buying pipe tobacco.

In my above comment venerable should be vulnerable.

On a related note - many jurisdictions in the US and increasingly in Canada are mandating that new toilets be low flow per flush - you know save some sort of endangered species by reducing the cr@p flowing into sewers and treatment plants etc. Unfortunatley there are two unintended consequences - many public utilities rely for budgeting purposes on revenues obtained from normal (gallon per flush) water use patterns, and are now facing budgetary pressures from reduced volumes, and most large sewer projects depend upon a flow rate of x gallons per minute to 'flush' the waste a certain distance. The reduced flow is causing cr@p to sediment out into the pipes and requiring additional pumping stations to move it along. Of course when our leaders choose to obtain degrees in 'environmental studies' rather than mechanical engineering, ought we be surprised at the results?

Exactly, Socialism means that high taxation leads to zero taxation in the end as the government appropriates all the means of production. After which, the only means by which a Socialist government can "tax" the citizenry is essentially through a slave labour system (in case nobody noticed independent trade Unions are prohibited in communist countries). Taxation essentially becomes irrelevent -- Socialist governments don't need to tax a small percentage of you when they already owns you 100%!

In practice, don't they just print up new money so that the old money that they missed is now worth half what it used to be worth?

Or is that too optimistic an assessment?

the problem with capitalism of course is you get garbage like rupe murderdoch hiring people that hack the phones of the deceased to get a story for their vitriolic gossip rags, first cousin to the fox news network.

I see another aspect of capitalism kicked in when big name advertisers like Ford Motor Company decided they had had enough.

Our job is to, never, let them discover that well known fact for themselves, if only to avoid the incessant whining.

Who's they?

So if you tax something, you get less of it. And if you subsidize something else, you end up paying more than you expected.

Why, I NEVER would have expected that!

Hm, the States are all desperate for new sources of revenue, but they can't see the herd of elephants in the phone booth.

Legalize marijuana, lawmakers,and the taxes will keep you and your kind fat and sassy for a few more years,until the novelty wears off,and pot smokers use less.

I'm in San Jose Kalifornia this week. My impression, many many bicycle lanes. Very, very few bicycles. Like, I've seen maybe ten all week. Perfect weather, nobody is using them. They -really- screwed the pooch on the bike lane thing.

Also, very nice triple streetcar/train looking thing cruising around. Half full at rush hour, dead empty the rest of the time. Another pooch screwed.

So the two beloved causes of Greenies everywhere, bikes and mass transit: despite 100% perfect weather, gazillions of dollars spent, really devoted following of fanatics pushing this crap the last 25/30 years, DEAD LOSS.

Solar panels: quite a few little demonstration project looking things around, some seem quite old. Lotsa lotsa money. Zero industrial scale applications. Because duh, it doesn't work.

Local TV, all Lefty/Greenie propaganda all the time. Much more even than Phoenix AZ, which I found to be pretty propaganda-ish this March.

One last impression, there are many empty buildings for lease here in the core of Silicon Valley. The computer boom is -over- baby. The big names are all still here with their vanity headquarters buildings and campuses, but real estate is priced out of reach for everybody else. This is the richest, most fully employed, most business oriented part of California. Those expensive buildings are going EMPTY now and will increasingly be emptying out over the foreseeable future.

Here in the very heart of darkness I've seen three (3) Obama bumper stickers. That includes one in San Francisco. All three on Priuses. People noticed the empty bike lanes and transit, the idle solar panels, the unbelievable sky high taxes, and now they are very quietly, but very seriously p1ssed off. Oh. Yeah.

Arizona based their public welfare/medicare program on tobacco taxes mostly because of DemocRats from Tucson demanding it, and because they weren't getting any love from the public on the raising taxes idea.
Arizona can recover if they start cutting benefits to illegals and the professionally unemployed.
California went whole hog on socialized everything, I don't see anything saving them short of State bankruptcy and massive divestment of regulations and tax.

Kate, exactly!

This is another time that the phrase "monkeys running the zoo" comes to mind.

junior, a fellow in Ontario, now retired, but keeps up with events at the local treatment plant, confirms what you said.

Orlin, interesting.

Bam Bam 9:45 "the problem with capitalism of course is..."
Comrade, I cry for your anger..!
(Did you recently renew your subscription to News Of The World?)

A message for liebrals everywhere...this is why tax and spend doesn't work, never has, and never will...and why taxing 'the rich' is meaningless...layton take note.

Sen. Rubio: "We Don't Need New Taxes, We Need New Taxpayers"

"Our total debt is about to reach the size of our entire economy. That's kind of the framework in which we're operating in when we discuss this. Now, I actually think we're closer to some sort of agreement on this, Sen. Ayotte, than a lot of people realize.

"I've heard the term thrown around in the last couple days, a 'balanced approach' to dealing with it, and I think there's agreement that there has to be a balanced approach. I certainly have always said that you cannot simply cut your way out of this problem. You have to have a combination of cuts and growth, growth and revenues to government. I think the debate is, how do you accomplish these two things? And I'm not going to focus so much on the cut part of it today. I want to focus on the revenue part of it because that's the part the president and some of my colleagues here have focused on over the last day, this idea of getting more revenue or this new term, 'revenue enhancers,' which is Washington talk for more money to the government.

"And, according to the president, some in his party, most in his party I should say, the idea is simple that...in America that are making a lot of money, more money than maybe they should be making, and they just need to pay more in taxes. And if these people pay more in taxes, then all of these problems will get a lot easier to deal with. That's kind of the viewpoint they bring to this debate.

"Yesterday, we saw, and I know tomorrow the majority leader, we'll be voting here on the floor on something the majority leader has offered up, something called the 'sense of the Senate,' which people watching at home may wonder, 'What is that?' Well, that basically means what's on the Senate's mind. The 'sense of the Senate,' this thing that we're going to be voting on tomorrow, is basically that you've got a bunch of people in this country that make over a million dollars, and that these people need to do more to help with the debt. That's basically the 'sense of the Senate' that there's going to be a vote on tomorrow -- very interesting things.

"So, I looked at it because ultimately this is a serious issue. So, let's explore this with an open mind. Let's not be doctrinaire, let's not be blindly ideological. Let's look at this from a common sense perspective, this idea that all these millionaires and billionaires, if they just paid more taxes, these problems would be solved. Let's analyze it. This is all about math.

"And here's the fact: the fact is it doesn't solve the problem. First of all, if you taxed these people at 100 percent, basically next year you said, 'Look, every penny you make next year the government's going to take it from you,' it still doesn't solve the debt. Not only does that not solve the debt problem, but I looked at a host of other -- a great publication that came out today from the Joint Economics Committee, our colleague Sen. DeMint chairs it. And it kind of outlines some of the tax increases being proposed by our colleagues in the Democratic Party and the president to solve the debt problem. And you add them all up, you add all of these things up -- the jet airplanes, the oil companies, all of the other things they talk about -- you put them all together in one big batch, and you know what it does? It basically deals with nine days and 23 hours worth of deficit spending. Nine days and 23 hours of deficit spending. That's how much it solves. So all this talk about going after people that make all this money, it buys you nine days and 23 hours. Let's round it off. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It buys them 10 days of deficit spending reduction. That's what all this stuff rounds up to.

“So, here's the bottom line: These tax increases they're talking about. These so-called revenue enhancers, they don't solve the problem. So what do we do then? Because clearly we have to do two things.

"One, we have to hold the line on spending, if you keep digging yourself in the hole, the hole is going to bury you. But the other thing is, how do you start generating revenue for government so we can start paying down this debt? And that’s what the debate should be about.

“We already know these taxes they're talking about don't work. So, here's what works. Here is what I would suggest works in a balanced approach, using the president's terminology. Let's stop talking about new taxes and start talking about creating new taxpayers, which basically means jobs. Now, here in Washington, this debt is the number one issue on everyone's mind, and rightfully so. It is a major issue. But everywhere else in the real world, the number one issue on people's minds are jobs. And I'll tell you every other problem facing America -- a mortgage crisis, home foreclosure crisis, this debt problem -- all of these issues get easier to deal with if people are gainfully employed across America.

"And the impact that unemployment's having across this country is devastating. We hear about unemployment in facts and figures. They give us numbers, Sen. Ayotte, 'Oh, X percent people are unemployed.' Well, there's stories behind every one of those people. You know who a lot of these people are that are unemployed in America? They are people that have done everything they've been asked to do, and they've done it right. Maybe they served their country overseas, maybe they went to college and got a degree and now came back home. Maybe they worked for 10 or 20 years and did a really good job at work, and now, you know what, they can't find a job. Or maybe they were lucky enough to find a job after losing their original job, but it pays them half as much, and they work twice as long.

"That is the real face of unemployment in America, of people that are hurting. And our job here is to do everything we can to make it easier for them to find a job, not harder. And I think that's what we have to do when it comes to a balanced approach and when we talk about revenue.

“We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system. And then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again. And that's what we should be focused on, and that's what we're not focused on.

“So you look at all these taxes that are being proposed, and here's what I say. I say we should analyze every single one of them through the lens of job creation, issue number one in America. I want to know which one of these taxes that they're proposing will create jobs. I want to know how many jobs are going to be created by the plane tax? How many jobs are going to be created by the oil company tax that I heard so much about? How many jobs are created by going after the millionaires and billionaires the president talks about? I want to know: How many jobs do they create?

“Because I'll tell you, and I'm going to turn it over to Sen. Ayotte in a second. I'm interested in her perspective on this as a job creator, as the spouse of a job creator who runs a small business, as someone like me who just came off the campaign trail. Let me tell you something. I traveled the state of Florida for two years campaigning. I have never met a job creator who told me that they were waiting for the next tax increase before they started growing their business. I've never met a single job creator who's ever said to me I can't wait until government raises taxes again so I can go out and create a job.

"And I'm curious to know if they say that in New Hampshire because they don't say that in Florida. And so my view on all this is I want to know how many jobs these tax increases the president proposes will create because if they're not creating jobs and they're not creating new taxpayers, they're not solving the problem."

Menbers of the Ontario Landowners' Association have a standard question they ask bullying bureaucrats:

"Have you figured out where your paycheque will come from when you've managed to put every small businesses out of business?"

I am afraid that pres.Obama thinks,like many more,that govt empoyies pay taxes.They dont,they are paid taxes.In fact for every govt employee it takes many industrrial workers to pay their wages.In Saskatchewan medicare removed all doctors and medical workers from paying taxes as their are no premiums for health coverage.

Bemused raises an interesting point. Clearly the -facts- of the debt-ceiling debate are utterly irrelevant to the DemocRats. They can do basic arithmatic the same as everyone else, they did it and dismissed it as unimportant.

Which makes me wonder, what is it they are actually trying to do? Besides the obvious, winning 2012 that is. Just what the h*|| are they thinking? Or is it all just desperate scrambling?

spike 1 - same in the Yukon.