"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Since my Wonder Woman now has a new Toshiba notebook, I’ve been thinking about security for it when she takes it with her to conferences or whatever. Better security than we have for it now might be a Very Good Thing.
And then I hit on the perfect security device:
There. That oughta work…
😉
This is an open trackbacks post. Link to this post and trackback. More below the Fair tax post by Debbie of The Right Truth. (BTW, Debbie’s information also indicates a fair tack to take with those who make the silly assertion that a flat tax will encorage savings more than the Fair tax.)
A reader here at Right Truth, Ralph Ekwall, who doesn’t like the Fair Tax sent me an email. He seemed to think that I would not be interested in hearing his opinions, but that could not be further from the truth. I think healthy debate is good and encourage it. Below are his arguments and our reply:
I doubt you will print this since it is in opposition to the “Fair Tax.” The “Fair Tax” is really unfair because it taxes middle and low income people at a higher rate than wealthy income people. Here is an example.
Let us consider a tax rate of 30% for the so-called “Fair Tax.” Let us look at how it affects two different American families: Mr. Average Joe and Mr. Rich.
Mr. Average Joe makes just $45,000 per year. At that salary he must spend everything that he makes to support his family. So, almost all of his income is taxed. His rate of taxation is between 27- and 30% He may give money to his church or to a charity and that would not be taxed.
Now consider Mr. Rich who has an income of $10,000,000 per year. He is really rich. Most of his income will be reinvested in his business and not taxed. He will put some of his money into an education trust for his children and that is not taxed. It may be possible that he will spend $1,000,000 of his income, but that is doubtful. If so then $1,000,000 of his income is taxed and he has $9,000,000 of income that is not touched by taxation. His rate of taxation is about 3%. I ask you – is that a fair tax?????????
We now have a progressive income tax system that imposes a higher rate of taxation for high income earners. The so-called “Fair Tax” would impose a higher rate of taxation on middle and low income earners and allow most of the money earned by wealthy people to be untaxed.
It does not seem fair to me. –by Ralph Ekwall
Our reply:
You fail to mention that Mr. Average Joe will benefit tremendously from the PREBATE included in the FairTax. Your statement that “almost all” of his income would be taxed is erroneous. I cannot off the top of my head tell you how much of a prebate Mr. Average Joe and his family would receive, but it would be substantial.
You also fail to consider that Mr. Rich who will not have to pay tax on his income or on returns from his investments will now have more money to re-invest and he will probably have more money to return to his business which in turn creates jobs for people like Mr. Average Joe. The economy prospers, Mr. Rich is rewarded rather than punished for his entrepreneurship, and Mr. Average Joe and his friends would be assured of good jobs.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, I’m doing a little math here:
If Mr. Average Joe spends all of his 45,000 dollars and is taxed at say 23 percent he would pay $10,350 in taxes most of which he would get back in the prebate.
If Mr. Rich spends a million dollars at 23 percent his tax would be $230,000 and his prebate would be insignificant to the tax that he paid.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, sounds fair to me.
Also, don’t forget that the tax is paid ONLY on NEW goods and services. If Mr. Average Joe buys that decent used minivan for his family, guess what! NO TAX! –by Thomas Hamilton
We welcome any other comments or opinions, and thanks Mr. Ekwall for this opportunity to address your questions.
The FairTax Blogburst is jointly produced by Terry of The Right Track Blog and Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous. If you would like to host the weekly postings on your blog, please e-mail Terry. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll.
An observation: Almost invariably, arguments I hear against the Fair Tax stem from a few common camps: the ignorant (haven’t bothered to do their own homework), the decievers–usually basing their arguments in an investment in another scheme, the “pragmatcs” (“It’ll never pass. Take what we can get”) or those with an anarchistic/utopian desire to avoid all taxes.
It seems to me that the more I look at the various tax schemes–keeping the current bushwah but “trimming” it a bit, adopting a “flat tax” (which is what the current bushwah evolved from to begin with) or the Fair Tax–the issue revolves around something that’s more and more “honored” in the breech in this country: justice.
The Fair Tax is well-named. Yes, I’d prefer we once again have the kind of limited Federal government of the Founders’ Republic, complete with a relative freedom of direct taxation of its citizens, but that will NOT happen in my lifetime. The Fair Tax is the only option on the table that not only will cause the least disruption of current Federal government activities (*sigh*–really a negative, though a political “plus”) but will also have an almost universally salutory effect upon our economy and our liberties in general.—mnmus
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Storming the gates of the Bastille IRS at The Random Yak and TMH’s Bacon Bits and Basil’s Blog aaaaand at Diane’s Stuff.
*sigh*
While my Linux machines weren’t affected, some Ubuntu Linux users had a rude awakening a week and a half ago. Seems an experimental update to Ubuntu Linux was posted for download. result? BSOD and a broken GUI–only the command line was available. For a Linux distro that is designed to appeal to the proverbial “Aunt Tilly” (a complete computer naif), that was disastrous. Fortunately, users didn’t have a monolithic foot-dragger like M$ to turn to, and the bad patch (which was never supposed to have been posted to begin with) was very quickly nuked, a fix was promptly published and an internal investigation fired up, with promises of transparency.
Now, I wasn’t caught because, having been well-taught by years of buggy M$ downloads/patches, I don’t do OS or application patching w/o checking out how it’s affected others, first. I haven’t had time until today to run down the latest patches offered for Ubuntu Linux, so I didn’t approve installation of the buggy experimental, wrongly posted patch.
Just luck… resulting from my justifiable paranoia (well, and the fact that only one of the Linux boxes is an Ubuntu box*).
🙂
But, it woulda been fun getting a BSOD on a Linux box of any kind, especially on a non-production/mission critical machine. (The fix was simple: a coupla command line entries and bob’s your uncle, so no big deal, really… except for “Aunt Tilly” eh?)
So, anyone capture a pic of the Ubuntu BSOD for me to use making a wallpaper?
🙂
*BTW, I have mentioned before, haven’t I, that I’ve built my Linux boxes from bits and pieces of dumpster computers, right? Yep. Great performance from pieces of junked computers slapped together. Nice.
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Ever wake in the middle of the night with THE perfect post sprung full blown from slumber? Yeh, me too. Ever decide to roll over and go back to sleep rather than get up and post it immediately? Yeh, me too.
Gone. But I can assure you, it was a doozy of a post. Really.
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In honor of the stupidity of large groups of people (not to mention groups of large people–ooops! just did… ), here are a couple of samples of “Wobbly” work:
And,
Note: neither of these make a lot of sense, and not only is the song (lyrics by John Brill) sung by someone who cannot accurately reproduce the tune it’s set to, but a large part of the interesting, contrasting section of the tune is simply missing. Probably because the singer(s) don’t have the musical sensibility or intelligence to appreciate it.
Labor. A good thing, but remember: (at least) half the workforce is on the left side of the bell curve. Many of those join labor unions in order to have other (often equally incompetent or surpassingly corrupt) folks do their thinking for them.
Of course, that doesn’t make labor unions (or their members) any dumber than management often is.
But, Yay Labor Day! Celebrate the fantasy flattening of the bell curve!
Wobbling over to TMH’s Bacon Break, Woman Honor Thyself and The Random Yak
Good news, that is.
Iraq reports al-Qaida’s No. 2 captured
Yeh, it’s good news, on balance, even though ya realize these Moose-limb Mohammedans are masochists. They just love getting roughed up six ways from Sunday. And the 6-to-1 kill ratio (dumbass Moose-limb Mohammedan savagess to U.S. troops in Iraq) seems like a sweet deal to these idiots.
So, more “leadership” holes in al Qaeda. Good news, but I just wish they’d get the message: getting their tickets punched for hell early is better for us than for them.
(OK, OK, so “Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana” wasn’t killed but captured. That’s just a formality, cos he was “arrested” for “supervising the creation of death squads and ordering assassinations, bombings, kidnappings” and more. Think he’s not in for the long drop, eventually?)
If you are, you won’t understand this post, wo why am writing to “you”?
*heh*
I had a chance to play “Doctor Bullshit” with a group of college students yesterday. First interesting thing: most of them were fairly bright. Second interesting thing: most of them were woefully subliterate.
One of the kids told me he was changing his major to English because he wants to be a writer. I cautioned against it. Almost all the good writers I know are experienced and expert in some field not influenced by English departments… the worst contemporary traitors, depoilers of the language. He further expressed some doubt about his future as a writer because “nobody reads anymore.” *heh*
He has a point. Today, while reading an Alfred Bester dystopian view of some unspecified future (written in 1975), I ran across this lil bit:
“We picked up a couple of girls who claimed they were coeds and might well have been; one of them could recite the alphabet all the way to L.” [emphasis added]
Indeed… not quite there—yet—but getting closer.
*sigh*
Recieved via email:
President Bush wants us to cut the amount of gas we use. The best way to stop using so much gas is to deport 11 million illegal immigrants! That would be 11 million less [sic] people using our gas. The price of gas would come down.
Not bad, except that the guy who came up with this has bought the lie that there are only eleven million illegals. The number is much closer to twenty million, according to those with less cause to lie about it than Mass Media Podpeople and Political Poltroons.
Still, even a more accurate twenty million is just about 7% of the officially recognized U.S. population (who really knows what the “underground” pop is?) and won’t have THAT big an impact on gas prices. No, what would have a proper impact would be if President Bush were to actually act on his own pledge to go after those who harbor or fund terrorists. Then he could send a few marines in to kick the Saudis outa bed. (Lifting cost for the Saudis’ oil is about $5 a barrel.)
But licking the illegals out would be a small thing the administration could do, a small step to restore respect for the rule of law. And in the long run that’s more important than gas prices.
Yeh, makes a lotta sense, right?
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Today is totally jammed @twc central. For some Reading That Is Not to Be Missed, just go to Melanie Phillips’ front page and start reading. With well written articles titled, “The war against Israel” and “While truth dies in the west, in the east it struggles to be born” you shouldn’t miss her insight.
I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned her recently. But now that I have, DO read.
And do catch this one from DL over at TMH’s Bacon Bits while you’re out and about.
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Congress.org might be useful as you attempt to keep track of your congresscritters’ shennaegans. A recent mailout included the opportunity to “vote” on some issues (and submit emails to one’s own congresscritters), an invitation to check on congresscritters’ voting and attendance records and more. Sample:
…vote for the one idea you think Congress should adopt by clicking once on the “Best Idea” link next to your favorite.
– 92 Percent Agree: No Pay for Congress When Approval Under 50 percent
Agree| Disagree | BEST IDEA
– 52 Percent Agree: Raise the Minimum Wage Every Four Years
Agree | Disagree | BEST IDEA
– 77 Percent Agree: Replace All Taxes With a National Sales Tax
Agree | Disagree | BEST IDEA
– 73 Percent Agree: Drug Tests for Those on Unemployment/Welfare
Agree | Disagree | BEST IDEA
– 82% Percent Agree: Constitutional Amendment – Right to Privacy
Agree | Disagree | BEST IDEA
– 75% Percent Agree: Remove All Overseas Troops and Put Them on U.S. Borders
Agree | Disagree | BEST IDEA
OK, so you know how I “voted” 🙂 In addition to simply “voting” in a poll, the links lead to pages where you can send emails to your congresscritters. Mine referring to the “No pay for congresscritters… ” link included my assertion that congresscritters’ family income should be limited during their terms of office (and for a decade thereafter) to NO MORE than the median income mof those they represent. Oh, that one will fly… (straight to the circular file).
We don’t need a Constitutional amendment to protect our privacy. What we need it citizens who run congresscritters outa office when they enact bills that enable bureaucraps and LEOs to invade our privacy… and a Constitutional amendment requiring all adult American citizens who have the right to vote to WEAR a loaded sidearm at all times. Adjunct to that MUST be an amendment restricting the right to vote in such a way as to exclude ALL feddle gummint employees who are NOT active duty military, as well as ALL persons who recieve income in any other way from the feddle gummint.
That’d go a long way toward getting the feddle meddlers outa our pockets, outa our homes and outa our lives, sending them back to the fevered swamps of D.C., where they belong.
As to bringing the troops home to protect our borders… well, that’d be hard cheese for some Iraqis, and it’d pretty much show the EU up for the bankrupt economy it is (and likely put a pretty big spike in the South Korean economic “miracle”), but tough luck. Send the Kurds all the military (hardware, intel) aid we can and let the Sunni and Shiite population of the rest of Iraq iron out their own feuds.
Use our troops on our borders to turn away (or shoot) illegals who try to cross. First option, of course, would be to turn ’em away, but if they come armed or resist, just send the bodies back.
That would free up PLENTY of resources to
a.) enforce existing laws against hiring illegals, benefitting ALL citizens of our country (even those cheap bastards who hire cutrate illegal workers would benefit in the long run).
b.) spur development of alternative energy (a few hundred billion hwere, a few hundred billion there, and pretty soon we’d be selling nuclear-generated electricity to Canada at cut rates they’d not be able to compete with, electric cars would become really practical–at least for city use, and funds for Izlamic savages would start to dry up a tad)
c.) have enough left over to send out any black ops teams anyone’s heart could desire to sow dismay in the hearts of Izlamic savages faced with an eternity in hell, courtesy of their own choices and a little introduction to Satan via a .50 calber bullet in the brain from one of these:
Of course, since all of this is simple common sense, none of this has ANY chance of surviving a pack of congresscritters…