no u r the moron

As Lysander Spooner once wrote, 'The Constitution has either authorized the government such as we have today or been powerless to prevent it arising' (not exactly verbatim). Jefferson himself was an awful hypocrite, who talked a good game but as soon as he was president went about encroaching on the liberties of others (see whiskey rebellion). And what sort of believer in freedom owns other people? disgusting. Still I do think article 1 section 8 was a pretty good idea - but here's the problem, when you give an organization (like the state) a monopoly on violence, decision making and arbitrage it is impossible to keep it in the neat little box of limited government. Imagine if I had a monopoly on arbitrage between you and me. We make a deal that you will pay me $10 and I will mow your lawn. You give me the ten dollars and the next morning discovery your lawn is not mowed... now remember I am the judge of disputes between us, so I can rule anything I want. For example I can rule that I was supposed to mow your lawn 50 years from now. There's nothing you can do. So when you give the government this special status, it is impossible to keep it limited, because the government decides what the governments power should be. And people love to aggrandize their power. Thus rather than attempting the naive ideal of limited government, we should, as Thoreau pointed out, argue instead

'I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe— "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.'

Spend it on hookers and blow. Worse as in, 95%. You cannot defeat incumbents. The problem is the general philosphical attitude of the American people. Everyone wants something for free, everyone wants someone else to pay for the things they want and politicians are all too happy to kowtow to special interest groups if they think it will play in their favour. There is no way to reform the state. To understand the role the state plays in society you must understand it's origin. As Oppenheimer points out in 'The State' the origin of government is in the conquest and subjegation of one tribe by another. The state was born through conquest and exists as a form of exploitation - extracting tribute from the subjected people. Instead of reforming the state we should abolish it.

hah! eject the incumbents? Do you have any idea what re-election rates are in the US congress? It's worse than the politburo used to be.

I don't want to make people the same, but I think people should be treated equally.

There are three types of lies, lies, damned lies and statistics
- your name sake

Fair is when you treat people equally. If a store charged someone else $3 for chocolate milk but they charged you $6, would you consider that fair?

I find it humourous that you admit your ignorance about this topic YET still feel fit to be condescending and insulting.

That's fair isn't it? How is it fair to charge one guy a million dollars when you charge the next guy zero? That's not fair at all.

The labour conditions of the late 19th century compared to what? Today, or the labour conditions of the 18th century? If you are saying that things weren't great in the 19th century... well, no duh. It was the 19th century. We didn't have cars. Or running water. But that's not an indictment of the socio-economic system in place at the time. Working 11 hours a day in a factory might not be so hot, but it's better than working 15 hours a day on the farm trying to scratch a living out of the dirt. Living standards during the 19th century skyrocketed for EVERYONE, including the poorest of the poor. Because of laissez-faire capitalism. The reason why we have so much prosperity today is because of laissez-faire capitalism in the 19th century. It enabled wealth and capital to be developed.

Really if you are going to be fair the only right thing to do is charge everyone the same tax rate. Not percentage wise, but in dollar amounts. I think $50 a pop out to cover it.

During the 19th century in America (the period I believe to which you are referring), prior to the advent of the minimum wage, child labour laws and safety regulations what we saw was skyrocketing standards of living - not only for the elite, but also for the poorest of the poor (and everyone else). Prosperity did not result BECAUSE of government interventions in the economy but rather because of the accumulation of capital & technological innovations that increased productivity and hence wages and general living conditions. It was capitalism that ameliorated the brutal poverty that had been prior to that endemic in man's experience, not the government. Then after the government took credit, passing these laws which were either blessedly impotent or counter productive.

Take the minimum wage. Perhaps the intent is well meaning (although there are sinister forces at work here as well, as I'll explain) but the effect is absolutely devastating. All you have to do to understand what is going on is to look @ teenage unemployment and especially negro teenage unemployment after the advent of the minimum wage. The biggest percentage increase in the minimum wage was from 30 cents to 50 cents and after that unemployment skyrocketed among teenagers. Why teenagers specifically? Because they have the lowest skill set of any group of workers. You see, the minimum wage doesn't make anyone get paid more. It simply makes it a crime to hire anyone who has a skill set less than the minimum wage. Because wages are determined exactly by productivity. Every worker gets paid his marginal revenue product. But when you set a price floor it results in surpluses, in this case that surplus is of labour, also known as unemployment. And it doesn't matter if that price floor is the result of government fiat (as in the case of the minimum wage) or the result of union activities the result is the same.

Africa is very far behind Europe and the US when it comes to individual freedoms. Absolutely. That's why it's so fluffed up and poor over there.

It's not about spoiled - although there is no doubt that the wealth in western nations has resulted in indolence of the first rate - it's about freedom. I recommend 'The Conquest of Poverty' by Henry Hazlitt (available online in pdf format for free, just google) for anyone interested in the subject of poverty. If you are concerned about improving matters in the third world - as I am and believe we all should be - then it's important to understand how the west became so prosperous in the first place. Laissez-faire capitalism. The market economy. Economic freedom. Look @ the example of Botswana, which was for many decades in the 20th century the world's fastest growing economy. How did they manage to climb their way out of poverty? Why were they different from so many other African nations? Limited government. They strictly controlled government spending. That is the path to prosperity.

Gary Johnson seems like the clear choice for anyone who values liberty, freedom or the free enterprise system. How can fiscal conservatives expect Romney to repeal Obamacare when he was the original architect of this program in Mass.? It's nonsensical. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Candidate for president, would put an end to America's hyper aggressive foreign policy and veto domestic spending bills and pass the savings on to the taxpayer. It's time to put an end to the GOP and DNC's duopoly and support the Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson for president.

Eliminating tax deductions is a bad idea - although at least Twain goes farther than most political analysts who simply call for 'simplifying the tax code' read : raising taxes. Deductions are the way that some individuals have found to lower the extremely oppressive tax burden - we shouldn't begrudge them this minor victory but should seek to widen every tax loophole in the books until we can hop through them.

Mighty white of you to post this. Nationalism or socialism are both very bad ideas so it's only natural that the most idiotic of idiots would like to combine them into one really really bad idea. This is not sodium and chlorine... garbage in, garbage out.