The agriculture industry is already one of the most heavily subsidized industries in America. Also, are you familiar with the facts regarding communal farming? I suggest researching how that worked out in China: it led to famine and death. Do you know what saved millions of Chinese lives? The government ending forced collective farming and allowing farmers to personally keep what they grow. Nothing incentivises people more than being responsible for their own outcomes.

Disagree? Take it up with Ben Franklin: http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/founders/franklin/benjamin-franklin-on-the-price-of-corn-and-management-of-the-poor-november-1766

History, common sense, and reality are your opponents. That is why your movement - despite thinkiing you represent the 99% - really only represents like .5% of people (if even that many).

Problem with your response is that it is a straw man. While I am not an "Occupy" guy myself, they do not want the "equality" you seem to think they want. No one is saying we should all be of equal incomes, regardless of education, training and success(or lack thereof). They are saying that people should not get special rights exclusive to them because of their higher income and that people of lower incomes do deserve basic rights and the same access to the political process as the wealthiest people.

Oh and bankers and such should not be able to do what is both illegal and immoral to people of lower income, just because they are rich. The crimes that went on under George W. Bush's admin were inexcusable. Basically they were betting and speculating on poor people to fail under their impossibly deregulated industries. Like doing away with laws against rape and then betting that women will be raped. It is just sick stuff!

While I would agree that there IS some fraud going on with people who are fully able to work but choose instead to abuse the welfare system, your statements here are wrong, in that "1 out of 3 receive some other form of government assistance. " is pretty vague and devoid of context and your implication that those wrongly getting assistance are even a significant part of the financial problem is also wrong.

Also, in more than one post you seem to be advocating that the wealthy pay too much in taxes. I think you do not understand our progressive tax system. We have a system where those would-be wealthiest persons agree to a sort of contract that they will pay taxes, progressively in accordance with how much they earn. This is a necessity because without that wealthiest 1%(the multi-billionaires) paying these much higher rates(which they have not been doing for years now), who will pay for the raods THEY destroy with their 18-wheelers? Who will pay for collapsing bridges? Who will fund the public education that ensures America will be able to produce people qualified to work for those corporations? The poor and middle class?!
And we both know I am not even scratching the surface with the above. What Republicans are aiming for is a place where the wealthy maximize their incomes by paying no taxes(or as close to 'no taxes' as they can achieve) and the rest fend for themselves, even while the Republicans are shipping their factories and such overseas where they can hire desperate people to work for peanuts.

Wage caps? I think THIS covers it but you are being dishonest here in citing a straw man to support the other straw man. I know many of the "Occupy" folks here in WA. and NONE I have ever met want a ceiling on how much you CAN earn. Only a ceiling on what those earnings allow you to get away with. Yeah right; because one guy going to prison for doing things so outrageously illegal and immoral means that rich Conservatives are not trying to get special prviledges. *rolls eyes* Largely false. And it is not limited to the white collar crimes either(for which MOST of the wealthy who committed such in the last ten years have NOT been charged with anything and this is largely I suspect due to Republicans using "class warfare" lies). Remember O.J. Simpson? If he had been poor and not famous he would have been sent to prison for murdering two innocent people. He got off because of his money. Again, you are citing one example of a company going SO FAR in the evil they did that for them to NOT have gotten in trouble would have lead to nation-wide riots. No one here is arguing that NO wealthy person has ever been busted for anything. What we are saying is that they are getting away with a lot(if not most) of what they do. I will just leave this here:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/obama-prosecuting-fewer-financial-crimes-than-under-either-bush-presidency.html

I am not trying to be mean but you aren't even close to putting together an argument. First of all, the 1% starts with people making $434,000 and above. That includes most small businesses, including mine. That doesn't mean I take home all that money. I don't know how many "multi-billionaires" you think there are but even if you take all their money you still can't afford the free-ride system you desire.

I don't even know where to begin with your perspective on the tax system, on the "sort of contract" or on how rich people destroy roads. Do you know how roads and highways are paid for? Please google it and respond here then I'll finish my point. I really don't have the gumption to explain infastructure 101 to someone who can't be bothered to even learn the fundamentals.

In summary, I am very eager to understand why you feel a system in which those who contribute are punished and taken from so that it can go to those who don't contribute. Why is it fair for a person to pay over a third of their income in taxes while so many people pay nothing?

Also, this will shed some light on my 1 in 3 claim. Google is your friend. http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/07/news/economy/government_assistance/index.htm

You beat me to it - I found the same data here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist01z1.xls (Excel file)

What's interesting to me, and maybe most telling, are the projections at the bottom of the table, where the administration is predicting faster federal income growth than we experienced from 1992-1999, a stretch that is considered to be one of fastest growing we've ever seen. Never mind that there aren't any reasons for growth to shoot up that fast, but don't let that stop them from saying, "Look, we made projections! And they're all rosy!"

1992-1999 saw huge growth because of the Internet boom. Life changing events like the advent of the Internet are lucky to happen once in a generation so you're absolutely right about that ridiculous prediction.

I am writing an article right now using similar data and I find the spending and deficit projections for 2013-2017 to be just as absurd. Either the OMB is expecting Obama to get voted out in November, or it is intentionally lying to Americans about our future spending. As of right now, especially under Obama, we're on track for many more trillion dollar deficit years.

I can't believe an established newspaper bothered to print that. That has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Wow.

Nope, I don't find it unfair. I have no deductions of note so you can imagine what my taxes look like (we have a state income tax around here too, so I pay 5 figures of that as well). I think I should pay more, we all should. But there's a caveat, it won't do crap unless three things happen:
1) Everyone, especially those in higher income brackets, pay more all at once.
2) We provide everyone with basic services, yes, healthcare included. We should implement a Basic Income Guarantee as well (BIG). BIG might allow you to buy an XBox 360 without doing anything strenuous, but
3) Our greedy growth has got to stop, there's no such thing as sustainable growth, it's a contradiction in terms. Most of our population will need to live very close to the majority of services they need, ares will need to be designed that have work, housing, schooling, and shopping in very close proximity. Most of us will need to change over to using vehicles 1-2 times per week.

I don't think (R)s are fiscally responsible, their ideas of balancing the budget involve stupid shit like gutting NOAA and letting their satellites essentially fall out of the sky. What they are doing is nothing more than a shortsighted political play and it will change the very moment it's not perceived as their "best move". I certainly don't agree with their disgusting and dehumanizing social stances, but that's hardly the only reason to dislike them.

Again, I don't think you and I are going to see eye to eye because you're still arguing for the lesser of two evils while I'm arguing both evils should be rejected, the end result will be the same, a total meltdown of whatever is left that we still hold dear as a culture. If you think electing Romney or even Paul would solve our problems, or even really change anything, I'm sorry for you. Really, most people do agree with you and that's why I don't bother to vote anymore. I voted for third parties for years, but you and I both know that doesn't do anything.

Finally, I use Bush Jr. as an example as most people remember him, I don't know how old everyone is (though folks on this forum tend to be older) and they're not really going to recall Bush Sr. or Reagan fucking up.
This reads like a screed against the big, scary specter of socialism. How can you possibly blame liberal elements of the above governments when the conservative elements have been running the show in many of the above? I also find it convenient that these lists never include the big, bad socialist countries that are kicking our ass in just about every metric that matters: Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc.
Don't be a doofus, Madoff went to prison for stealing from rich, well connected, and high profile targets. A good portion of AIG should probably be in prison as well and aren't.

Ok so we can agree to the following disagreements:

1. You feel that people who already pay all of the taxes should pay more and that people who pay nothing should continue paying nothing.

2. Everyone should receive a salary whether they work or not (Basic Income Guarantee) although you do not describe where this money comes from, who will administer it, or how it will be maintained.

3. Growth is "greedy and unsustainable" despite over 2500 years of civilization proving otherwise.

4. You suggest countries like Norway are a testament to the success of socialism. In reality, Norway is oil-rich (third largest oil exporter in the world) and not even half the size of New York City. It is the exception; not the rule. And what happens when oil is no longer the commodity it is today or the source is exhausted? Hint: see what Dubai is doing to get an idea. Anyway, this is why socialism fails so hard in countries that don't have such a fortuitous share of natural resources (i.e. Greece).

Hundreds of years of history have obliterated the notion that socialism works. Socialism benefits one class of people: the ruling class. It makes everyone else poorer instead of bringing them up lilke capitalism does. Do I need to list all the failures of socialism since 1800? I can do it but I think you get my point.

1) It's a misnomer that people pay "nothing". Sure they don't pay income tax (and they should - more on that in a minute) but they pay all kinds of taxes, especially regressive taxes. Certainly a higher total percentage of their income goes to taxes and basic living expenses, than people like us or the super high income earners. Everyone should pay a flat 20-25% of what they make, with BIG implemented there doesn't need to be a cutoff for the ultra poor.

2) There's tons of BIG information that explains exactly how to fund it. Alaska's citizen payout is a BIG, there's a hint for you. It would take you all of 5 minutes to google up ways to fund it, but I'll give you a second hint: all our public commons, gold, oil, minerals, etc., belong to everyone, the Federal Government is the stewards and supposed to be getting us a good return on it. The price for gold hasn't gone up in over 150 years so I'll let you figure out how well they're doing...

3) Basic arithmetic trumps anecdotal evidence on this one. Seriously, all you have to do is compare the amount of oil burned to produce 1 calorie of food in 2000 and the amount we burn today. That's just 10 years. There literally isn't enough acreage in the world to support food production, waste disposal, energy production, goods production, etc. for the existing world population to be supported at a US lifestyle. Science seems to the magic cure all to people who can't do basic arithmetic when this problem is brought up... unless the scientists warn them that they cannot continue to have their toys, then they're ignored. I don't know if you have any children, but I assure you if you that they will despise you for what you're currently leaving them.

4) The US has more mineral wealth than Norway, per citizen. I gave a few examples, they're not the only ones, seriously are you going to stick your fingers in your ears and squint your eyes shut for each example until you can reassert your comfy worldview with some hand-waving argument?

Ah, here we go, so, if you're drinking the anti-socialism kool-aid there's really nothing to talk about. All it takes to make you despise something is for someone to explain to you why it must be big, bad socialism. Even (R)s support the Alaskan Permanent Fund when they run for office up there, isn't that socialism? Oh I see, it's only socialism when they tell you it is...

1. What you're referring to is a derivative of the negative income tax, which I like in theory, but there are about 4 dozen reasons why it won't work.

2. Who are these angels in our federal government who you trust to give you all of this money?

3. You make the same illogical and ignorant (no offense) assumptions that people make about manufacturing. We do not live in a static world. We are constantly moving forward in terms of technology and ability. For example, 200 years ago it took one farmer everything he could muster to feed his family. 50 years ago, one farmer could feed 25 people. Today, one farmer can feed 150 people. As you can see, the growth is exponential. Apply this to every industry. You live in a dynamic world; you should try to make opinions based upon facts and reality rather than trying to contort facts to fit your predisposed positions.

4. I would LOVE to see where you came up with that opinion. Do you have the report link? Regardless, when your country is smaller than Atlanta, GA, and is more homogenous it's certainly easier to spread the money around. Then again, Norway's government and constrictions are the reason why that country encounters such absurd situations as butter shortages.

5. I've never even heard of the Alaskan Permanent Fund and it's irrelevant anyway. As I mentioned previously, a one-off example does not constitute a rule. It's an exception.

1) I always hear about these nebulous reasons (which I call excuses), what I'm never seen is much in the way of proof that it cannot work. Hell, even the favorite (R) pres in the last 100 years moved us more towards that idea (Reagan got rid of so many deductions that, while he cut the top tax rates, high income earners paid similar amounts, or perhaps a bit more - I'd have to look it up).

2) Angels in the federal government? Who needs angels? You just need people to do their job. If you're referring to politicians, except the handful that still have a soul and some human empathy, no, we should sack the lot. That's kind of what I've been arguing for... and you against.

3) Oh I hear this "not static" counter argument all the time, but it relies on breakthroughs which are unpredictable (and have had less impact over time - check with anyone who works on this stuff, most will admit the same). Instead look at what we put in and what we get out. Having a massive breakthrough in agriculture 50 years from now doesn't help if a third of us have starved in the meantime. You don't really want to implement policy that's akin to rolling dice at a craps table do you? You're also looking at one variable, which is not surprisingly the one that reinforces your world view, how about the fact that we burn 10% of our domestic energy on ag and produce 1 calorie of food for every 8 calories of oil (a ration that's been getting dramatically worse in the last decade, probably even higher since the last time I checked). I'm sorry, last time I checked oil was getting, as a function of time, more expensive, not cheaper. Even if the price remained the same the fact that we need more of it every year just to farm food is bad.

4) Seriously, check some geological surveys, exploit the copious amounts of online data...? How did you find out how much oil Norway has? Did you just repeat some talking point you heard on AM radio?

5) Oh okay, well, we'll just accept all your anecdotes and reject the inconvenient ones, k? Or, you could opt to learn about it, find out that even Palin is on record as supporting it, wonder about the seeming hypocrisy and check for other things. I know it's painful to no longer be so sure of everything but, you know, you'll be a better person for knowing it. And hey, if you come to a different conclusion, feel free to share it.

1. Increasing the likelyhood of tax fraud, increasing the cost of tax enforcment, and further disencouraging people from working are "nebulous"? This is not a new idea; NIT has been discussed widely since the 60s. I guess you have all the answers that have somehow eluded academics, administrators, legislators and municipalities for decades. You can even Wikipedia this... it's not revolutionary by any means.

2. Ok, so we disregard the entirely history of human civilization, the very nature of man, and assume we'll find people "to do their job" and just give away trillions of dollars of wealth. Good luck with that. Maybe once we're done with that we can go party with some unicorns and leprechauns.

3. I'm not following your logic here but are you somehow saying that things today are exactly as they were at the dawn of human civilization? Are you saying that human advancement is some far-fetched gamble? I'm not sure where you've obtained your figure regarding 1/3 of humanity starving but if you have a source I'd sure like to see it. Also, can you clarify what you mean by "check with anyone who works on this stuff"? What stuff are you referring to? LIke most of your statements that's very vague and lacks substance.

4. Funny you mention that. Turns out it's easy to prove facts (e.g. Norway's oil production) but not so easy to prove made up statistics. I suspected you wouldn't be able to provide a source.

5. If I'd heard about it or cared I'd be more interested. No offense, but if it were some breathtaking model of excellence it'd be more popular. To me it just sounds like a public venture that ultimately funds public endeavors. It's not something unique or special and you're just trading corporate players for politicians in the enrichment scheme if that's the case.

1) This is pure bologna, Warren Buffet said it best, no one's ever been discouraged from making more money by having to pay more taxes. Keeping 80% of 10,000,000 USD is still more than 80% of 5,000,000 USD. Seriously, this sounds like it came straight from an episode of Rush Limbaugh.

2) There's ample anthropological and psychological evidence that people are extremely generous to those in their own "tribe". Even skinflints like the average conservative American are capable of great generosity under the right circumstances. Even in the US today we exploit resources for the common good all the time. Government isn't some necessary evil, it's how we do the things together that we cannot do on our own, and largely it's successful. Every day you benefit from massive undertakings that we do "together" through government. The worst educated PBR swilling red neck, loading up his guns in his truck for a weekend of hunting, fishing, drinking, and bitching about big, bad "daddy gov" still reaps the fruits of the government by having a place to hunt, fish, and swill beer and animals to kill.

3) If you think the situation today in any way reflects the vast majority of human history than I just don't know what to say. It doesn't (and btw, the 1/3 thing was just an off the cuff observation that if a scientific breakthrough happens too late it's no good, it's not a prediction, I thought that was clear). It's not even like the dark ages. What you're saying amounts to, "we've managed to feed ourselves so far", ignoring the fact that there's actually been many times that we haven't, our situation today bears almost no resemblance to any other time in human history. The energy density of hydrocarbons was a one time windfall for humanity, our radical progress in the last century is directly correlated to our exploitation of said energy source. Replacements for it, if they can be found and built, won't magically spring up overnight. Furthermore, basic math illustrates the truth unequivocally, there is no resource on this planet that isn't finite (technically solar energy is, but we'll give that one a pass since the sun has a lot of fuel left - our ability to exploit it, though, is finite), you cannot use ever more of every resource, be it land, fresh water, hydrocarbons, etc. and not expect to eventually run out. If we found 4 new earths worth of coal and oil, fresh water, arable land, whatever the resource, it wouldn't even last as long as the first earth's supply did: BECAUSE arithmetic growth.

I'll give you an example of this problem (it's called the doubling problem, if you want to google it), in 1970 our surveys said we had 500 years of coal in the US. The survey had two caveats: we can only ever get to half of it and at our current rate of mining. Let's pretend we mined 1 ton of coal in 1970 and we've increased our mining rate at 7% per year (which is our actual rate of growth for coal mining, btw): How much do we mine per year now? Do you want the napkin math answer? Over 16 tons. That's right, that's 16 times the 1970 rate. By 2020 it'll be over 32 times the 1970 rate. By 2030 it'll be 64 times the 1970 rate. Go ahead, double check on your calculator, (I'm using the rule of 70 trick, so your answers may vary slightly).

4) No, I just don't know why I should provide a LMGTFY link when you're perfectly capable of doing so yourself. Are you really saying you don't know where the US maintains this information on their public websites? I suppose we could just move on from Norway, if you'd rather not do anything at all, and you can explain why I'm wrong about Sweden and Finland as well, or maybe even Switzerland.

5) And yet you're talking nonsense, because it's not what you imagine. Through this whole debate you've done absolutely nothing but trade the talking points with me I'd expect to hear on AM radio. I have seen no indication that you'd ever look anything up or change your mind if you did. But I don't really care if you resist finding out anything more, I'm pretty sure I'll be making that bowl of popcorn regardless of you changing your whole world view or not, because right after you are marching millions more that think exactly like you. The US will remain on its present course, statistically Obama will serve a second term (but it doesn't really matter if he doesn't), and bad stuff will happen while most of the population suffers one indignity or another, during a unique time in human history when we've actually had the power to prevent them. How very sad for us...