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* With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Government contributions to transfer payments.
* In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their government."
Originally posted by an0maly33
it should be noted that much (i've heard from some sources that it's closer to all) of your federal income tax money just goes to paying off debt.
...
i've heard this from other places. just do some research. abolishing the irs and the federal reserve is in the nation's best interests. the country is already overextended on debt and has little hope of paying it off.
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Originally posted by Sestias
Originally posted by SteveR
reply to post by spacedoubt
Ron Paul is a social darwinist. There will be no compassionate conversatism
I agree, and have said the same thing in another thread. Most Libertarians are social Darwinists. That means no government programs for the disabled, the mentally challenged or the mentally ill; no safety net for the most vulnerable people in society. No medicare or medicaid. No social security. Instead, everyone must struggle for existence, and the fittest survive. This is an understandable position if you are young, strong, healthy, above average in intelligence; in short if you believe you will end up at the top of the heap. If you believe you are, and will always be, invincible.
Many Christians don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. It puzzles me why they would support social Darwinism.
Originally posted by Novise
Churches, charities, and people took care of all of this up until the 30's when welfare was introduced, so I don't really buy what you've said. The government has failed to do a good job of providing for the needy, and only made the problem much worse in the long run.
Even this day and age, you do not have to look very far to find a person who has grown up in a society when there was no government welfare, or very little government welfare. I bet some would even bother to tell us how it's done.
In terms of rights, the government has no right to rob us in order to help others. Our help should come willingly.
Also, these programs will eventually be bankrupt if you keep things at the status quo. Social Security is going to go first. People on welfare only talk about it getting worse, their welfare money is buying less and less for them month after month.
Also to add: If your state wants to have it's own welfare program, nothing stopping it under Ron Paul's vision for America. Just like there is nothing stopping your state from having it's own department of education type deal.
Originally posted by C0le
How would they violate the Constitution when they enforce it?
Churches and charities are local, and depend on the population in the immediate locale to provide. Let's apply the "church and charity" paradigm to, say, New Orleans after Katrina. The charity offices are inoperable. The churches are empty. Outside agencies nearby - Mississippi, northern Louisiana - are busy with their own populations, and cannot get to New Orleans anyway due to damage to the transit system. And yet there are people in New Orleans with no food, no clean water, and no medical care.
"Let them grow gills!" cries Ron Paul, and Novise with him.
Sure, just as soon as they cash their social security checks, pick up their medicaid prescriptions, and come home to a home warmed by government-subsidized heating oil, I'm sure they would just love to tell you all about it. And then we can go find all the immigrants who are in favor of closed borders, and the black men who are in favor of gay segregation. It'll be like a hypocrite field trip.
Article 1, section 8, plus the 16th amendment. Congress can levy any tax it wants and spend it on whatever they judge to be in the best welfare of the nation.
Clearly the answer is more gigantic tax cuts, right? Better yet, let's just take the Ron Paul solution - scrap it. I'm sure all those people who's SS checks are getting smaller would much rather not have them at all, right? Ron Paul thinks so. Sure, you're eating dog food and in danger of hypothermia, grandma, but you're so darned FREE!
Let's say you're a poor person in North Dakota receiving federal aid. Suddenly Ron Paul's VISION FOR AMERICA™ takes place. All states, no feds, all the time! Well, North Dakota doesn't exactly have what we would call a robust economy, and so the state legislature votes to not institute any sort of welfare.
Well, according to Ron Paul, that's your own fault for living in North Dakota. What the hell's wrong with you? But never fear, Oregon, just a few states away, has a thriving economy and a successful welfare program.
But wait! Under the VISION FOR AMERICA™, none of the states you would cross through have quite the same laws. Particularly outstanding is that the Department of Transportation no longer exists under hte VISION FOR AMERICA™ and regulation of hte roads is subject to the states. heading straight west to Oregon, you discover that the Road Barons of Montana have instituted tolls every fifty miles along the interstate, and along many back roads as well. Since if you had the spare change to pay for road use every fifty miles, you wouldn't be crossing Montana in the first place. So you have a hell of a time picking your way through what toll-free roads are left..
Finally, you reach Idaho... and the Idaho State Troopers open fire on you because Idaho has enacted state legislation preventing "illegal interlopers" from crossing its borders. Without the interstate regulations guaranteed by all those unconstitutional programs that Ron Paul did away with in his VISION FOR AMERICA™ the Idaho Legislature has seen fit to declare itself a semisovereign, whites-only state with VERY strict border patrols and rigorous standards of entry. You, being poor, don't qualify.
But you're so free without the feds providing you welfare!
The government also depends on the population to provide for it. It does not produce anything, the population does. Disaster relief is a different issue from welfare, and I don't know his stance on it. You and I both should read into it, or we are just putting words into his mouth.
If it came down to it, yes, some of those people would give anything to make their great grandchildren's and grandchildren's lives better (and they have one vote, so let the voters decide). Ron Paul doesn't want to get rid of it all in one day, he wants to take care of those who have become dependent on the system, but wants to stop making the problem bigger. And besides, they don't have to sacrifice any of that if you get rid of our foreign policy of nation building policing the world, and if you get rid of wasteful bureaucracy.
Fair enough, they have a right to do it by law.
The difference is that you don't send the money to a federal social security fund for it to be robbed blind and bankrupted by irresponsible politicians. You don't produce a welfare program that contributes to the problem. The money stays locally, with the people, for them to take care of others by mutual consent - which usually involves a hand up, not a perpetual hand out.
I thought the federal government had the constitutional right to ensure domestic tranquility, and to regulate commerce between the states?
He was utterly against spending squat to aid victims of Katrina, unless some other federal program were cut at the same time to do so. And no, disaster relief and welfare are intimately connected. People who need disaster relief are, essentially, people who have found themselves thrust into the same position as many people who need welfare.
Now yes, the federal government relies on its populace to provide as well. Unlike a private charity however, it has hundreds of millions of people to fall back on, and has networks across the nation as well as abroad. Further, it has access to means of transit and regulation that no private charity can come close to matching. And lastly, the federal government will never turn you away because you worship Jesus in a different way.
Buuuut he does wish to get rid of it, along with such similarly despicable things as public education, drug standards, rural electrification, etc. If a grandparent wants to vote to aid their descendants, Ron Paul is not the choice to do so. Unless I suppose said grandparent is of the sort that thing abject poverty, lack of education, and the possibility of death from common illness "builds character."
By a law that would not exist were it not for the will of the people voting it into place, and subsequently defeating the measures introduced to repeal this right of the government. What is it with Paulistas being populist until they're not?
Please save the rote talking points for people who may actually be inclined to buy them.
First off, if politicians are plundering and pillaging a program for pork - and we can both agree that it happens - then the answer is not as you and your candidate suggest, dismantling the program - the solution is to hold those politicians responsible, throw them out on their asses, and vote in protections to make such plunder more easily traced and punished.
Ah yes, let the people take care of each other by mutual consent. You realize that, while it's a very warm, fuzzy, Norman Rockwell-esque picture, that doesn't actually happen, right? Mangling welfare does not create a matching rise in charity. It's kind of odd to expect people who bitch about their money going to the needy... putting their money towards the needy.
If you go the full Ron Paul, the federal government will be an incredibly different beast than we see today. He's in the "drown it in a bathtub" camp of paleoconservative. That is, he wants the federal government to be weak, powerless, teetering eternally on bankruptcy, and lacking in manpower, with the gaps filled by the states. In other words, federal law and regulation will only be followed if the individual states volunteer to go along with it, if only because the feds wouldn't have the power to have any say otherwise.
Strangely the supporters of a starving federal government still imagine we'd have enough money to pay them for their congressional "service" along with maintaining a strong military, a court system, and all these other chunks of expense. I have yet to hear of a libertarian willing to do pro bono work in politics.
So just vote for big government and you'll be taken care of. No need to work any your whole life, the government has millions of hard working Americans to fall back on. No need to pull your weight. Welfare was a good idea until this is what it became.
All things that are currently funded at city/county/state level, and if not they easily could be. There is no point in sending all your money to Washington, and then paying people to go argue on your behalf to have it sent back to you. Just keep it local in the first place and you end up losing less to bureauracracy.
Welfare is not just a safety net, it's a way of life, and that at the very least should change. But people get on it and they are afraid to get off it and go back to work, because they are afraid they will not be able to take care of themselves. And the problem gets bigger inevitably.
There is certainly enough money to pay all the necessary branches of government and to have a very strong military. The pie does not shrink because the government shrinks. What matters is the economy. The productive efforts of a society are what matters and what lead to it having the capacity to have a military etc. In this situation, a limited government can easily accomplish whatever is within it's authority.
I really wish the federal government did or was capable of doing the things you talk about. It would really be a great world. At the end of the day, I think you have to limit it to the very bare necessities because once you surrender that power and authority, they abuse it and waste so much every time. Nothing happens overnight, we have a lot of people to take care of, but a shift in the right direction is needed, things have gotten out of hand.
Also I think you have been involved in politics longer than I have, I'm probably not arguing at your level so sorry if I'm boring, but I've only known about these ideas for 2 months, so I don't know how much you are getting out of it, but I know I am learning alot from you - at the very least what a big government of today SHOULD accomplish.
Originally posted by The Walking Fox
Churches and charities are local, and depend on the population in the immediate locale to provide. Let's apply the "church and charity" paradigm to, say, New Orleans after Katrina. The charity offices are inoperable. The churches are empty. Outside agencies nearby - Mississippi, northern Louisiana - are busy with their own populations, and cannot get to New Orleans anyway due to damage to the transit system. And yet there are people in New Orleans with no food, no clean water, and no medical care.
"Let them grow gills!" cries Ron Paul, and Novise with him.
Originally posted by The Walking Fox
Let's say you're a poor person in North Dakota receiving federal aid. Suddenly Ron Paul's VISION FOR AMERICA™ takes place. All states, no feds, all the time! Well, North Dakota doesn't exactly have what we would call a robust economy, and so the state legislature votes to not institute any sort of welfare.
Originally posted by The Walking Fox
But wait! Under the VISION FOR AMERICA™, none of the states you would cross through have quite the same laws. Particularly outstanding is that the Department of Transportation no longer exists under hte VISION FOR AMERICA™ and regulation of hte roads is subject to the states. heading straight west to Oregon, you discover that the Road Barons of Montana have instituted tolls every fifty miles along the interstate, and along many back roads as well. Since if you had the spare change to pay for road use every fifty miles, you wouldn't be crossing Montana in the first place. So you have a hell of a time picking your way through what toll-free roads are left..
Finally, you reach Idaho... and the Idaho State Troopers open fire on you because Idaho has enacted state legislation preventing "illegal interlopers" from crossing its borders. Without the interstate regulations guaranteed by all those unconstitutional programs that Ron Paul did away with in his VISION FOR AMERICA™ the Idaho Legislature has seen fit to declare itself a semisovereign, whites-only state with VERY strict border patrols and rigorous standards of entry. You, being poor, don't qualify.
But you're so free without the feds providing you welfare!