You guys are missing the point. What is natural about one person having comlete dominion over many others due to the accumulation of wealth?

Wage slavery is an archaic concept, and our repeated attemptses to mash our progressive policy together with it is the foundation problem of this generation.

GO AWAY. THE BEST THING AN OCCUPIER COULD BE DOING IS OCCUPYING, NOT BLOGGING ON GOG.COM

THE BEST THING FLUX COULD BE DOING IS GOING TO TOWN HALL AND YELLING ABOUT WHY GAYS ARE THE DEVIL

BEGONE. ALL OF YOU.

I appreciate the emotion in your argument but your entire position is based on emotion and little else. It's difficult to continue this debate as A) you don't have even a rudimentary understanding of government, economics, or the historical precedent of socialism in civilization. I suppose that is why I write and discuss in a different environment and not on gaming forums but it's a subject I enjoy too much too have passed on this opportunity.

Nonethess, one last pass as I have a few minutes to kill before my next meeting anyway:

1. Warren Buffett has said many stupid things. It is a solid fact that as tax rates rise, the amount of tax dollars collected decrease. Remember that tax policy link I posted earlier to disprove several of your emotional arguments? You can use that to compare tax rates and income. One example: under FDR - who implemented a 90%+ top tax bracket - nobody paid the top rate. Tax incomes plummeted as he tried to gouge the "wealthy" because they just put their money into shelters. That cycle has always and will always repeat itself. Do not bother trying to respond to this point. Rather than sending you the data, which I do not think you are capable of understanding based upon your comments thus far, I decided to go out of my way to find a write-up that I think is straightforward enough for you to follow: http://almostclassical.blogspot.com/2011/03/90-tax-rate-myth.html.

2. I have no idea where you're going with tribes and skinflints. I don't know how many times we have to go over the fact that human beings are a dynamic people but suffice it to say that things are not now as they were 20,000 years ago. That is just a stupid point. Really no other way to say it. Also, if I own 80 acres of land in Virginia, please explain to me how the government is allowing me to use my land to hunt , fish and drink PBR? As a free individual living in a democratic society I can manage my own affairs without the express consent of my government. Perhaps you need cradle to the grave oversight but I can manage my own life.

3. Your assumption is far more speculative than mine. You continue to propose some disastrous situation which is entirely in your head and without any merit whatsoever. Our advancements outpace our hardships. That is a fact. Necessity is the mother of all invention. For example, that's a nice coal equation you've got there, but its foolish to assume we'll be using coal at the exact same rate we are today in 2030. And I'm putting it nicely by calling it foolish.

4. Just say you made it up. You aren't the first to be unable to argue a point based upon its merits and that's ok. I'm not here to make fun of you or insult for not having all the answers. I don't have them all either. It doesn't really matter regardless. Although you made that up it still wouldn't change the fact that Norway is the size of a city and operates under far different conditions than the United States.

Also, rather than taking 5 minutes to type out what I've already explained in my comments regarding Norway to address the rest of the nordic countries is a waste of time. How about you explain how your ideals have failed in Venezuela, Cuba, the USSR, Greece, France, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, North Korea, and on and on. Hell, government in the Netherlands collapsed just last week.

5. I find it amazing that you've done nothing but make emotional arguments using stories you've completely dreamed up yet have the audacity to mention "talking points" as if this side of the argument is somehow less substantive. You haven't made a single logical point to back up any of your claims.

Thanks for the discussion. It's been years since I've had a "from scratch" debate where I had to spend more time on trying to explain the basics than the subjects themselves but it was defintely a fun change of pace.

Oh americans, you so silly. I know language evolution does spawn some pretty weird stuff, but nothing could prepare me to see the name of one of our most ancient and important cities used as synonym of bullshit!

It's the fault of the meat industry, really. Bologna, "The Jungle," pink slime, spam... WHEN WILL IT END!?!?

I felt like throwing up while reading the list of demands.

I'm with you on this but there is a lot of public land in the western states where orcish is. IMO anyone, even private companies, on public lands should be willing to accept that they must abide by the management of the government while there, especially if they are extracting resources. This pretty much amounts to socialism. However, the government should also stay out of the management affairs of privately owned land and resources. It appears that the Occupiers would like to pass something like a Common Property Amendment to let the government take whatever resources are on your 80 acres for common property. I can understand people wanting to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons by having their government manage whatever public land it has, but I don't understand why they want to make land that is already privately owned become commonly owned.

You do realize I was arguing for a flat 20 or 25% tax rate with no deductions, not what you're suggesting, right? There's no real skating around that one. Simply punish the shit out of any tax haven bullshit and done. I'm pretty sure no one's going to turn down extra money just because they have to pay 20% of it in taxes. Your article talks about a non-problem in this scenario.
Gee, what astounding proof, isn't Haiti considered a capitalistic economy? I'm pretty sure there's failures on both sides. I'm not quite ready to call the US a resounding success, we rate pretty shitty on all scales for human well being compared even to some of those "failures" you listed.

I was going to troll this heavily on the net (completely unprincipled left-wing troublemakers), but decided to give it a brief read instead.

What annoys me is this whole fundamental 'global democracy' element.
Democracy is obviously appropriate in the relevant places, but it is not a 'one size fits all' fix.
What's next? Get rid of shareholders in companies and replace them with global elections instead? Bitch please. And - what do you know? For probably the first and last time in my life, I agree with XmXFLUXmX. If there's one thing that Europeans can definitely learn from Americans - it's the work ethic. Europeans are lazy and entitled (in contrast).

Oh it is, is it? Based on...? What, past performance? The "awesome index of advancement"? I'm not the first one saying it. Pretty clever people have been working on this one. I mean, I guess I can't blame you for not listening, few listened to Aristotle and Socrates. That doesn't automatically mean these folks are right, just that a lack of belief or failure to "pass the sniff test" with the majority of the contemporary population is hardly a rock solid predictor of fact.
That's one of this wishes you'll probably regret getting granted...

In the US, when private organizations lease public land, they do operate under serious restrictions and have to abide by many more regulations. It's not socialism, it's basic contract law, where the owner of the land gets to decide what happens with it.

Government officials abusing their power for political or economic gain is despicable. All socialism does it legitimize rampant greed and corruption. Since officials are acting 'for the people' they're automatically assumed to have authority. I'll live in a country of informed, legally and physically protected people any day.



1) You're basing that whole statement on a faulty assumption of the so-called perfectly rational economic man. It's been proven faulty many times - the sense of justice, fairness and earned compensation plays a huge part in most if not all economic transactions. Try reading about the Laffer Curve for some basic empirical info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

2) Lowering the overall tax rate and eliminating deductions is a move towards a flat tax - and also a move towards libertarianism. The complete and utter opposite of socialism on the political spectrum. I think you are very, very confused.

Eh, still a student right now but when I work, I work hard (midnight's not an issue), but I guess it also comes down to being passionate about what you do.
I've lived in many European countries and to be honest, I find some of the regional work ethics appalling. But I guess it goes down to the 'live to work' and 'work to live' distinction.
But honestly, contributions to society shouldn't be measured in tax (lo mr Hollande and your 75%) but by not being a lazy wanker.
I'm thinking about moving to Asia right now, ideally Japan. Work my ass off for 10-20 years and then calm down potentially.
Europe is obviously great for certain things, but working is effectively concentrated to London (and a few other cities for the niche work).
But yes, you yanks do work a lot more than we do. Respect!

You do have a point about people not being rational always, or machines. But the Laffer Curve has a lot of assumptions and there are some pretty strong criticisms of it. There's also some counter data, so at best it's a hypothesis that needs improvement, at worst it has little to do with reality (I believe some of the contrary data was linked at the bottom of that Wikipedia article you linked).

You also, missed the other part of the equation and I'm sorry, I should have restated it, there would be a "flat tax" and no deductions only because we implemented a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). That's a fairly crucial piece to make it actually work. I think libertarianism is a pipe dream only because "rational self interest" as a driver doesn't often lead to the desired outcome and because, frankly, it assumes a fully informed market which is impossible currently.

BIG can be paid for from our commons, which is pretty actually impressively large in the US.

As far as public initiatives go, have you seen this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GryIDl0qY
Brought a tear to my eye.

As far as Norway goes, it's slightly different from the rest of the world.
Norway is extremely healthy as far as oil, natural gas and fishing goes.
All of the proceeds from said industries go to a special fund used exclusively for education, healthcare, social benefits, etc.

e: forgot to mention, Israel is considering a similar thing with their new-found oil fields.
Would be great to see more proceeds from natural resources going to the people rather than to politicians / businessmen.

Much like the Alaska Permanent Fund in our state of Alaska. It's a similar idea, BIG actually has some traction in some places, it's typically not called BIG, though. Still, the Norwegian results actually shows it works rather well if there's enough of a commons on which to draw.

I'm not quiet sure why everyone is so quick to shoot down an idea that actually seems to be working, "but, but but...!" is all I hear. Americans are weird, despite all evidence to the contrary they actually think a significant percentage can achieve wild success. Someone verbally presented a survey (sorry, no idea it's name, but it was a TED talk so there's a non-zero chance this is true) that about 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1%;)

We're terrible at math here. But I think we already knew that.
Agreed, I'm not sure how it cannot be argued to belong to all citizens equally. But there ya go.

The way I see it is that you should have some tax fundamentals.
Got oil? Pay for healthcare.
Got gas? Pay for education.
I am all for free enterprise, but it's not like free enterprise fucking created your natural resources. Give credit where it's due. Not saying that it was the general population that created the natural resources, but they have as much of a right to enjoy the proceeds than does every other fucker. Winning tenders does not constitute entitlement.

But yeah, America's a bit of a Camelot. A silly place.
(I jest, the US is great)