Chambers wrote:
> 
> (3) I wish the Democrats would get over their "Robin Hood" mentality and 
> figure this out.
> 

OK. (1)

The biggest "entitlement boondoggle" in the history of the world is the 
idea that some people are entitled to grab everything within reach and 
are then entitled to hang onto it.  Baloney.  It's never been that way 
in the history or prehistory of the world, and it isn't that way now. 
"Wealth" (2) is also called "privilege" because that's what it is--a 
privilege.

Privilege isn't about the cream rising, it's about being good at getting 
and holding on and about being in the right place at the right time. (3) 
  If Bill Gates had been born in Kenya, he'd be outstanding in his 
field--actually out standing in his field, leaning on a spear, and 
counting his cows.  If Oprah Winfrey had been born in Kenya, well, hell, 
she'd be dead by now--uppity woman, anyway.  But Bill and Oprah had the 
_privilege_ of being born in a place where they could amass wealth and 
power and _privilege_ and I'm damned if I can see why they shouldn't pay 
for that privilege. (4)  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch for 
rich folks, either.

Back in the halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriet and Ward and June, the 
uppermost income tax bracket paid something like 90% (5)  Oddly enough, 
the rich folks didn't all just roll over and play dead--they kept right 
on doing what they did and building stuff and inventing stuff and making 
lots of money and so forth.  And meanwhile, we all got NASA and the 
interstate highway system and a whole buttload of new school buildings 
and so on.

The proper function of government is to standardize or purchase the kind 
of infrastructure that can't practically be gotten piecemeal, and taxes 
are the proper mechanism for that process. (6)  Taxes are _not_ the 
proper mechanism for making public servants (7) rich, or for declaring 
war on the rest of the planet, or for increasing the divide between rich 
and poor or for obliterating the middle class (which, in the long run, 
is the ultimate source of the rich folks' wealth, as well as the poor 
folks' hope of not being poor anymore.

Aaaaaaah, there's nothing like a good rant!

--Sherry Shaw


(1)  Actually, I'm a Pie-Throwing Anarchist who votes Democratic.  But 
I'll bite.

(2)  By which I mean wealth down at the far-right, skinny end of the 
bell curve.

(3)  The three most intelligent and hard-working people I know are all 
teachers; needless to say, none of them is wealthy.

(4)  Yep, poor example; both Bill and Oprah give a lot of their money 
away.  But they're at the top of their respective heaps, so I'm using 
them anyway.

(5)  By the way, the part most people miss is that it's n% of Adjusted 
Gross Income, not just income.  You have to look at the exemptions, 
deductions, credits, etc.  (If you want to know if your taxes have 
really been going up or down, you need to plug this year's data into 
last year's forms, and vice versa.)

(6)  Beyond that, governments should be caged, muzzled, and injected 
with Haldol whenever possible.

(7)  Read "public masters"; yep, I swiped that from Mr. Heinlein.

-- 
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1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons

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