John Wilkes Booth

i understood it just fine. can you try answering my question in your own words? you're making this pretty boring tbh.

Chula Vista

I'd say pretty much the same as what I quoted, just not as succinctly.

Working father runs out on his wife and three young children. There's simply no way for her to earn enough money to cover all of her expenses and still take care of her kids.

As a society what should we do?

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Guybrush

This is a logical fallacy of the strawman variety. How do you go from paying a percentage of income to tax to : "So money never belongs to the person who "worked for it"? It's entirely communal?"?

edit :

To JWB, a simplified answer is society's losers are a burden on all of us. Just to illustrate a point - let's say you have a poor person. Scenario A, this person gets welfare taking him our her out of poverty. This costs society some, but hopefully, the welfare will enable this person to become a contributing member of society who pays back in taxes what society spent. But maybe not, it's a gamble. Scenario B, the person is in poverty and receives no help. This person likely has reduced quality of life, has a greater chance of becoming sick, of becoming a criminal, is less likely to become well educated, is more probable to engage in substance abuse etc. That person will also tax society. In money - possibly, particularly if he or she enters the criminal system, but there are other ways of taxing society too.

I think scenario A is generally the best option for a good society.

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Something Completely Different

The Batlord

Well, A.) I'm just ****ing around playing the Devil's Advocate in general. If someone had taken a conservative position about my first post, I would have gone the other way.

And B.) if the government can take your money, then did you ever really own it? There has to be a minimal level of government coercion concerning your income, to provide for infrastructure, education, etc, but no matter how you dress it up, it's still coercion with the power of armed force behind it. Which kind of implies that all money is communal to start with.

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John Wilkes Booth

so you won't answer my question but you'd like me to answer yours?

Chula Vista

We don't pay poor people to be poor. We support poor people so they can get by and hopefully better support themselves and society as a whole, and maybe even crawl out of the holes they are in.

It's unfortunate that so may people scam the system though.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

DwnWthVwls

What are your thoughts on the government paying farmers not to grow crops?

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

John Wilkes Booth

you really do think that rewording things can make them better, don't you?

John Wilkes Booth

what do you mean?

DwnWthVwls

The government pays farmers to not grow crops on some of their land.

If you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricul...Adjustment_Act

I think this issue parallels the "supporting poor people" issue in function, so I was curious if you felt the same way about it.

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...