[aldo_14]

http://news.com.com/Conservative+group+savages+anti-P2P+bill/2100-1028_3-5381593.html?part=rss&tag=5381593&subj=news.1028.20

One quote...strikes me as quite odd

"This is the Hollywood liberals trying to crush innovation," said ACU deputy director Stacie Rumenap.

The opportunistic attempt to chuck mud at the other side amuses me - you'd never guess it was political.

[Rictor]

cool cheese

[Bobboau]

yay!

[Ghostavo]

I find it funny calling liberals conservatives and conservatives liberals...

[Knight Templar]

Hey, if we can get the Conservatives on our side, all the more power to us. Yay!

[Liberator]

It's you Brits that have the terms fouled up.

Conservative in the political sense refers to the following:

marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners(morality)

Liberals on the other hand are all about doing away with the above.  It's not that they have any better ideas they just don't like traditional ethics or morality.

On topic: it's nice to see someone in government(any government) coming down on the side of innovation and technological development instead of trying to stifle it since they don't understand it.

[Bobboau]

conservitives conserve, they like things to stay the way they are or were,
liberals like big change, if something is in there opionion wrong they will flip the world upsidedown to corect it.

[Ace]

Originally posted by Liberator
Liberals on the other hand are all about doing away with the above.  It's not that they have any better ideas they just don't like traditional ethics or morality.

Keep in mind that your tradition is not everyone else's.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator
It's you Brits that have the terms fouled up.

Conservative in the political sense refers to the following:

marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners(morality)

Liberals on the other hand are all about doing away with the above.  It's not that they have any better ideas they just don't like traditional ethics or morality.

On topic: it's nice to see someone in government(any government) coming down on the side of innovation and technological development instead of trying to stifle it since they don't understand it.

*cough* Inventors of the language and the democratic use *cough*

I like how your definition is completely biased in favour of your own view, very (not) subtle.

For the sake of fairness, here's some proper definitions.
(NB: I've selected the definitions which are appropriate...the financial description for conservative, i.e. 'conservative guess' isn't relevant IMO, etc etc)

Definition for conservative from http://www.dictionary.co.uk/;
conservative (AGAINST CHANGE)
1 tending not to like or trust change, especially sudden change
2 If you are conservative in your appearance, you tend not to like fashionable or modern clothes or hairstyles:
Conservative (POLITICAL PARTY)
belonging to or supporting the British political party which opposes sudden social change, high taxation and government involvement in industry

Definition for liberal from http://www.dictionary.co.uk/;
liberal (SOCIETY)
respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behaviour:
liberal (POLITICS)
of a political party or a country) believing in or allowing more personal freedom and a development towards a fairer sharing of wealth and power within society
Liberal Democrats
in Britain, a political party that believes in more power for local government, more personal freedom and a gradual development towards a fairer sharing of wealth and power within society

[Liberator]

Okay, I agree with the more personal freedom part, the more I learn about current governmental trends the more Libertarian I become.  I diverge, however, on the sharing of wealth.  

What gives anyone, the government included, the right to take the money that I work my ass off for and give it to someone else because they are shiftless or are unwilling to work for what they want.  If they can't make enough where they are move.  I understand hard times, everybody goes through them.  But I refuse to fund someone else's life of leisure when I can barely pay my rent.

[Rictor]

you make it sounds as if though people on welfare a) are living the high life, with a fleet of Mercedes and a mansion with a pool and b)are in their position becuase they are unwilling to change it, not unable.

Anyway, the poor actually get taxed quite a bit too. Take Bush's tax cut for example: most of it was to the richest 1 or 2%.

What I don't understand is, if you (and conservatives in general) are so keen on keeping taxes low, then why do you unquestioningly support a ridiculously overlarge military, which is a huge waste of money. American military spending is almost equal to that of the entire rest of the world combined. I can understand the need to protect your borders, but having such a large military speaks volumes about the way in which Americans feel they ought to dominate.

Cutting the military down to a reasonable size (and cutting the massive inefficiences and under-the-table *wink wink* military contracts to well-connected military companies) doesn't mean you'll suddenly have the Commies or the terrorists or whoever knocking on your door. And it would give everyone a nice, bg tax break..

[Blue Lion]

*munches popcorn*

This is gonna be fun.

[Ford Prefect]

America is currently in a "ME" phase, whereby the plight of those in poverty is brushed aside by the American myth that everyone controls his or her own destiny.

[Liberator]

You do control your own destiny.  The only people who can change that is you, if you give your freedom of choice away to say a government or other organization.

Don't even start with me Rictor, you know as well as anyone that The Top 1% of wealth holders pay something in the neighborhood of 50% of the total tax burden.  If you increase that percentage to the top 10% of wealth holders the total percentage of the tax burden goes up to somewhere near 75%, meanwhile they use next to none of the goevernmental services they fund.

Prefect, you and your left wing liberal social experiment tripe can take a long walk off a short pier, I'm trying to have a well reasoned discussion with Rictor about tax structure and anything else he cares to bring up.

Also, for reference, the current tax system in the USA is broken.  It's hundreds if not thousands of pages long.  It has more loop holes than a hundred shoe stores.  Even the IRS doesn't fully understand it.  There is, however, an alternative.



What freaks me out the most about you Ford, who quote Friedrich Nietzsche in your sig is how can you not believe that each person is responsible for their own destiny?  Survival of Fittest and all that?  

America is the number one perveyor of foreign aid, both financial and humanitarian, in the world.  We fund your precious United Nations, which has far outstripped it's original purpose(which was to act as a forums for countries to talk out their disputes in a mature manner instead of resorting to war, not to enforce a peace that would not hold otherwise and otherwise act as some defacto World Government) and is filled with nations that are run by despots and murderers who would rather see the USA in flames.

A link to the actual Fair Tax bill, H.R. 25

[Rictor]

Mmmm, I could be wrong, but I think your greatly mistaken if you think that the top 1% pay 50 of the taxes. I think its quite the opposite, that they pay a proportionally lower amount than the ppor or middle classes. And what I do know for certain is that a number of large corporations (as in, among the largest 50 in America) pay no taxes at all.If you check some numbers from the past, you will see that corporations today account for the smallest percentage of tax revnue I think ever. Its past 1am here, so maybe I can dig up something tommorow, I know there are websites out there that monitor this kind of stuff, its just hard to find them.

------------------------------------

As for the UN, is it not true that the US has, since its inception, used the UN precisely for that which you think it should not be, an organization created to enforce a certain agenda instead of only a forum for discussion? Did not Bush say just last year that the UN was in danger of becoming a "debating society", which is what you feel it should be, if they did not take action against Saddam, which you feel they should not do in any case?

In my opinion, the UN should focus on enforcing international law, no matter who the perpetrator, thats it (for now). This means having a variety of measures in place to deter and punish those who break international law or violate human rights. Aside from that, if there is a way to make them independent of the politcal agendas of the big players (security council nations), then they could do more, but right now thats not the case.

The UN ought to serve as a higher authority to appeal to, so that might does not make right. Level the playing field if you will, ensure that all nations are equal under the law. I don't think world government, in one form or another, is avoidable. And there is nothing intrinsicly wrong with that. But the trick is to make these institutions independent and accountable (democratic). Whether its trade, or military matters or economic sanctions, no country should recieve preferential (or, uh..whatever the opposite of preferential is) treatement.

I would also like to get your opinion on the military. Right now, they up to about 400billion a year, which means that if it wqere cut down to a reasonable size (say, 100billion), that would equal a tax-break of $1000 a year for every person in America.

[Ford Prefect]

First of all, my Nietzsche quote is about music, not the human condition. Second, Nietzsche advocated nothing. If you examine his work, you will find that a large number of his statements directly contradict each other. He was a philosopher who sought furiously to describe the absurdity of existence, not spearhead a creed.

If we entirely controlled our own situations, we would not be human, we would be gods. Although we have considerable ability to reshape our circumstances, it is still limited by two things. First, that human interests overlap; it is our natural tendency to exploit one another, and when there is exploitation, not everyone can win. Second, we are very small entities in a very large, very indifferent universe. We reside in a cosmos that exerts tremendous force and at the same time, is not aware that we are in its path. Thus, no matter how hard we try, we are always at the mercy of random chance. Combine these, and the result is a society in which many will succeed, and many will fight day in and day out to hold their own and will fail. The only hope they have is for others to look back and help dig them out.

[Liberator]

I think Ford, that you must be a pessimist of the highest order, not that that's a bad thing, the world needs more realists.  But at the same time, while I don't pretend that the universe/cosmos is a benign, even helpful enviroment, I believe that there is a compassionate being who created it and has our best interests at heart.

Rictor, I have a question for you, when is a sovereign nation at it's most vulnerable?  Right after it's been invaded and defeated by an aggressor nation who is trying to cement their hold over the populace.  

Here's a better one.

Why should a nation with as many enemies as the United States(both declared, which are dangerous enough, or undeclared, which are even more dangerous since they often come with an open hand of friendship and a knife behind their back) surrender it's sovereign national rights to defend itself and its citizens to an entity which is composed of said enemies?

I'm should need to remind you that your bloody precious UN issued 16 resolutions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in an effort to have him stop his weapons programs and the mass murder of his citizens.  Each one threatened use of force, but the weak-kneed bastards sat in their nice New York penthouses with their various distractions while the weapons programs and mass murdering continued, all the US-led coalition(which BTW we didn't and aren't going it alone, we just left the France, Germany, ect out of it because they wouldn't do anything but get in the way and slow down progress) was enforce those resolutions.

The UN is full of loud-mouthed politicos who are as meaningless as an umbrella in a hurricane.

[Kamikaze]

Yeah, but it's not like Iraq posed any actual threat to US citizens.

I like the Libertarian candidate's approach to the military problem. Don't **** with other nations and stuff outside the US. That means the US keeps its troops where it matters (the US) and can spend the extra money on genuinely useful things.

[Liberator]

And that will last until the first outcry that the USA isn't doing enough to stop human rights abuses and "ethnic cleansing"(it used to be called civil war).

Also, the US and her allies are engaged in a campaign, of which Iraq was a part don't forget, to eliminate Islamo-Fascist Terrorism.  The side effect of this is we have to also eliminate those that provide succor to this enemy.  As in any war there will be casualties, but the politicians need to stop using the conflicts to bolster their reelection hopes and let the military complete it's assigned task.

[Zarax]

About "fair" tax...
I was amazed by it a few years ago, and i asked to some well informed people (i hope you agree that economics and finance university teachers are informed) some details about it...
It came out that the system was widely used in the past, but basically dumped because a)You don't have any reliable control or predictability on it, b)thus you cannot plan spendings this way and c)it's to vulnerable to fraud.
That said, there are taxes on goods almost everywhere (at least in UE, which uses it for self financing and i'm almost certain UK too) but in the real world they works well only with large businesses as you cannot reliabily control individual cosnsumers or smaller businesses.
BTW, ironically tax monitoring was way more efficent in Italy when there was a center-left coalition in government, as the actual liberist coalition is very lax and permissive, condoning in many ways tax evasion...