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From: AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: bike light optics
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2024 12:34:11 -0500
Organization: Yellow Jersey, Ltd.
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On 4/6/2024 10:40 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
> On 4/6/2024 8:27 AM, AMuzi wrote:
>> On 4/5/2024 10:54 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, if taxation is not your cup of tea (or blood), then 
>>> perhaps we
>>> should finance our government using the traditional 
>>> methods of
>>> sacking, plundering and pillaging other countries.  This 
>>> has worked
>>> fairly well since history has been recorded (by the 
>>> winners).  If you
>>> want some fairness and logic, successful conquerors 
>>> usually hire
>>> politicians, philosophers and economists to justify their 
>>> actions, all
>>> of which are summarily declared to be fair and logical.
>>>
>>
>> The original Constitution had a better ethos IMHO than the 
>> incorporation of envy as a guiding principle after the XVI 
>> Amendment. Predictably the situation has degraded such 
>> that more than half of us pay zip and many of those have a 
>> negative Federal tax burden, i.e., they are paid to be 
>> here. So much for 'shared burden'. And also predictably 
>> election results reflect the avarice and envy of the 
>> takers against the makers, creating societal and cultural 
>> divisions to our greater loss.  There has to be a better 
>> way. And there was.
> 
> As usual, I'm interested in how other nations manage things. 
> Which leads me to again ask: Is there a nation that finances 
> its operation in ways you like?
> 
> I'm aware that much of Europe has economic structures that 
> generate far less economic disparity. Taxes are higher, but 
> tax-generated benefits are also far higher, and citizens are 
> generally much more content. It's not that there are zero 
> problems, but that there seem to be far fewer problems than 
> we have.
> 
> Also, when making comparisons, it seems simplistic to say 
> "The U.S. did things better in 1795" or whenever. Conditions 
> were totally different then regarding society, technology, 
> morality, customs, personal freedom etc. Anyone who 
> campaigned for election saying "Let's just go back to all 
> the laws we had in 1795" would surely lose the vote of 
> almost all women and blacks, and most of while males as well.
> 

Nice straw horse you have there. Maybe I'll help you beat on 
it later.

As regards actual economics, and ignoring various other 
cultural failings you mention, no nation in history enjoyed 
so large a wealth increase and so fast and so broadly shared 
as the USA between 1865 and 1914.

Regarding 'income disparity', the myth seems to have shouted 
over the actual data:

https://www.hoover.org/news/senator-phil-gramm-john-early-dispel-myths-income-inequality-america

But it serves some interests to perpetuate that lie, and so 
'official numbers' utterly ignore public transfers (rent, 
food, medical, walking around money, negative income tax and 
so on) which are no longer negligible. They are in fact a 
huge drain on our society.  Economists have noted this for 
years but in politics facts do not matter.
-- 
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971