Quote :

"For my ignorance, can you give me any in the past 30-50 years that I should know about? "

The progressive income tax started as a miniscule tax designed to punish ONLY the super-rich. The idea sounded innocent enough to most people in 1913. But today, you have to work til April or beyond before you are working for yourself.

What seemed like a harmless tax, that wouldn't affect anyone but those evil rich people who deserved it... morphed into the gigantic, confusing, mess we have today that strips away our hard-earned money to be wasted by politicians.

5/12/2009 3:54:17 PM

i suppose if they really wanted to they could just put a gps tracker in your license plate when they issue you one

5/12/2009 6:21:30 PM

Quote :

"Really? To name a few: a ban on the sale of lawn dart games a ban on selling ephedra-containing dietary supplements bans on selling horse meat for human consumption bans on tobacco smoking in privately owned businesses"

Fuck! You're right. My life is materially worse because of those things. I...I never knew.

5/12/2009 9:24:21 PM

^

Quote :

"Government policies which curtail freedom but sound reasonable at the start, without any critical challenge, will always become unreasonable"

5/12/2009 10:23:42 PM

Quote :

"The progressive income tax started as a miniscule tax designed to punish ONLY the super-rich. The idea sounded innocent enough to most people in 1913. But today, you have to work til April or beyond before you are working for yourself. What seemed like a harmless tax, that wouldn't affect anyone but those evil rich people who deserved it... morphed into the gigantic, confusing, mess we have today that strips away our hard-earned money to be wasted by politicians."

The problem isn't the progressive income tax, it's the politicians that spend on pork and that have grown the government to sizes unimaginable in 1913, or 1776 for that matter. I mean, if we use your line of logic, this whole Democracy thing was a well intentioned thing until it became abused and has us where we are today. I don't subscribe to the same "tin hat" code you guys do, it makes for a very paranoid lifestyle and a lot of ants in your pants over nothing. When you compare the cost of surveillance ot this GPS it's a damn no brainer. I'll start getting worried when reports start surfacing of police officers tracking completely harmless citizens in an attempt to invent reasons to arrest them.

5/12/2009 10:28:02 PM

I actually agree with everything said by EarthDogg in this thread

5/12/2009 10:46:07 PM

^^ what you fail to understand is that without the progressive income tax, the politicians would not be able to expand the government to such an unheard of size. If everyone in America had to actually shoulder the burden for the government, then the government would be ten times smaller than what it is.

5/13/2009 6:58:04 AM

You're putting the cart before the horse. How many decades have we had nukes and no incidents (yet). Are those still a good idea...until they aren't?

Your arguments are running right in line with all the anti-gun people who say the guns are the problem, not the gun owners.

5/13/2009 8:38:44 AM

what? that makes no sense with respect to what I posted...

5/13/2009 6:53:21 PM

Quote :

"For my ignorance, can you give me any in the past 30-50 years that I should know about?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug-free_school_zone

http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_knock_warrant

QED

5/14/2009 9:19:06 PM