Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Disinterested Observer;n3554110 said:
Just wondering something here. Have you ever thought about suicide as an option? Just curious. It might be showing a distinct lack of self-awareness.

I prefer homicide, it decreases traffic.
 
93Flareside;n3554077 said:
Is it? How would things like roads, sidewalks, and general town maintenance get funded?
A few things to address here and I have to be brief because I'm about to run into a meeting.

1) Google who will build the roads. Plenty of analyses on that one.
2) Local governments can build the roads, you don't need the federal government for that.
3) Before the federal income tax, the federal government had money...
4) Taxation is literally someone taking your money without your permission at gun point. How is that not theft? It literally means that you are not entitled to the fruits of your own labor. Even if you think that taxation is a net positive for society, it's still highly immoral.
5) A significant portion of taxes goes to people that aren't me or you and services that we may never use.
​​​​​​6) About a third of my taxable income goes towards taxes. That means that from January to April I work to subsidize the government. How is that ethical?
​​​​​7) The government is incredibly wasteful with my money. My state has very high taxes but our roads are terrible, for example. The post office is horribly outdated and outclassed by private competitors. Bureaucracy results in large fees for services on top of taxes, as well as strong unions that mean that no one can get fired; having worked closely with the government, it's incredible how many useless people it employs that add zero value but cannot be fired.
8) When my income is taxed, any further taxes (sales, gas, property, etc) are double-taxation. Again, highly immoral imho.
 
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I really should clarify, my problem is very specifically income and property taxes. I am fine with consumption based taxes because I make the choice on whether I participate in those taxes.
 
prizrak;n3554120 said:
I really should clarify, my problem is very specifically income and property taxes. I am fine with consumption based taxes because I make the choice on whether I participate in those taxes.

That is indeed a whole different discussion than "tax is theft" - and I guess also not as good as a t-shirt slogan ;)

I for one also prefer consumtion taxes over income taxes.
 
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Interrobang;n3554122 said:
That is indeed a whole different discussion than "tax is theft" - and I guess also not as good as a t-shirt slogan ;)

I for one also prefer consumtion taxes over income taxes.

If it don't fit on a t-shirt it ain't worth it!
 
I agree that taxtation is unfair but, this won’t go away no matter how much we privatize services only we find useful. All it is going to do is turn something that should be easily accessible to something that only works if a profit can be made. See the American health care system for reference. For example, is it your fault you got cancer? Most likely as we’ve found, chemicals allowed by government agencies sometimes affect you in a bad way. This is something I think about often and it scares me knowing those we have in power in this country don’t care unless they’re making money off of it.

For whatever reason, we cannot make our corruption work well enough that the public by and large, can function fine, have good roads, a modern-ish postal service, and a quality life. No country is perfect, I understand that.

From what I can tell, profit is all that matters in the United States and it makes me angry and sad at the same time.

Germany in my expierence has fantastic roads and a public health care system, people complain of the high taxes. There’s not really shit boxes on the road causing a safety hazard they have the strongest economy in Europe. In America, we have some of the worst roads, a failing health care system where the majority of people have a drug abuse problem while driving a car that will fall apart when they go over a bump in the road. Somehow, we’re this amazing badass without taking care of ourselves. Like a race car driver trying to win the race with fuel burning away before the finish and tires about to burst.

What do you suggest we do? Continuing on with what we have now isn’t going to work, people are angry, and shits going south while we instagram our latest meal and bitch that google is stealing or information while we willingly give it away and our president can’t take criticism. Fuck off, I need more beer.
 
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93Flareside;n3554127 said:
I agree that taxtation is unfair but, this won’t go away no matter how much we privatize services only we find useful.
See you say that but I remember there were a few guys in late 18th century that didn't like a tax.... There was some sort of a party in Boston, I'm fuzzy on the details :p
Germany in my expierence has fantastic roads and a public health care system, people complain of the high taxes. There’s not really shit boxes on the road causing a safety hazard they have the strongest economy in Europe. In America, we have some of the worst roads, a failing health care system where the majority of people have a drug abuse problem while driving a car that will fall apart when they go over a bump in the road. Somehow, we’re this amazing badass without taking care of ourselves. Like a race car driver trying to win the race with fuel burning away before the finish and tires about to burst.
While Germany is doing well a whole bunch of other European countries with similar policies and significantly worse of. Regardless it's a very poor comparison as Germany is about the size of a single state and is extremely homogeneous. The whole EU is a much better comparison to the US.

The only reason US has heaps of garbage driving around the streets is because outside of like 3 - 4 major cities there is no other way of getting around so people who can't afford anything nice are stuck with heaps of junk and our geography being what it is it's not very mass transit conducive.

As far as health care goes, it has nothing to do with privatization and everything to do with history and regulation. We don't pay for our healthcare we pay a company to pay on our behalf, those companies demand huge discounts from the providers and providers jack up the prices in order to get profit. Of course when you come in with cash, you get charged the jacked up price not the discounted or the real price. Socialized healthcare is also far from perfect, with less profit motive come less doctors and more wait times. Becoming a doctor is really hard (I have a friend who is one, she basically was a nun until residency because she straight up had no time) and even nurses or physician assistants (like a dr light) require a lot of schooling and have to work their asses off. Medical field is emotionally and physically taxing and even with promise of good money it doesn't attract all that many people (US has a shortage of doctors already), it's an even harder proposition when the pay is shit.
What do you suggest we do?
Revolution.
 
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93Flareside;n3554127 said:
Revolution.

I, for one, will welcome our new Russian/Chinese overlords while you're distracted doing that :p
 
gaasc;n3554135 said:
I, for one, will welcome our new Russian/Chinese overlords while you're distracted doing that :p

I am one of the Russian overlords :p And if there is one thing we are good at is revolutions :p
 
gaasc;n3554135 said:
I, for one, will welcome our new Russian/Chinese overlords while you're distracted doing that :p
lol good luck with that. The USA will never be conquered. First, most military and LE personnel lean right so if it's a revolution against Trump it won't go far and if it's a revolution against a socialist president (e.g. Bernie wins) he might not have the .mil and LE folks on his side. Luckily we're not really near a right-wing revolt and if the "resist" douches ever leave their parents' basements I'm not too worried about betas with pink hats threatening to pour out their lattes. As far as an outside force invading this country, that's laughable - even if we're in the middle of a revolution so our military doesn't stop the invasion, have fun dealing with 100 million armed partisans.
 
LeVeL;n3554159 said:
lol good luck with that. The USA will never be conquered. First, most military and LE personnel lean right so if it's a revolution against Trump it won't go far and if it's a revolution against a socialist president (e.g. Bernie wins) he might not have the .mil and LE folks on his side. Luckily we're not really near a right-wing revolt and if the "resist" douches ever leave their parents' basements I'm not too worried about betas with pink hats threatening to pour out their lattes. As far as an outside force invading this country, that's laughable - even if we're in the middle of a revolution so our military doesn't stop the invasion, have fun dealing with 100 million armed partisans.

I would also point out that the right leaning folks are typically the ones armed ;)
 
LeVeL;n3554159 said:
lol good luck with that. The USA will never be conquered. First, most military and LE personnel lean right so if it's a revolution against Trump it won't go far and if it's a revolution against a socialist president (e.g. Bernie wins) he might not have the .mil and LE folks on his side. Luckily we're not really near a right-wing revolt and if the "resist" douches ever leave their parents' basements I'm not too worried about betas with pink hats threatening to pour out their lattes. As far as an outside force invading this country, that's laughable - even if we're in the middle of a revolution so our military doesn't stop the invasion, have fun dealing with 100 million armed partisans.

Oh, I'm not worried about the US. I'm worried about other countries with US support which would be left in the wind while the US has a boo boo with itself. The Vlads and Mao's of the world have no problem swinging money at dumb countries in exchange for, you know, a favour somewhere down the line. ;)
 
prizrak;n3554162 said:
I would also point out that the right leaning folks are typically the ones armed ;)
Ironically it is the left that's currently calling for violence and potentially revolution. If all the right-wingers with all their guns survived Obama, I'm pretty sure the lefties can get through the Trump era :lol:


gaasc;n3554164 said:
Oh, I'm not worried about the US. I'm worried about other countries with US support which would be left in the wind while the US has a boo boo with itself. The Vlads and Mao's of the world have no problem swinging money at dumb countries in exchange for, you know, a favour somewhere down the line. ;)
Good point. I'm sure Vlad in particular would love to see some, uhh, voluntary secessions across eastern (and maybe western!) Europe if the US isn't there to stop him.
 
And Mao is already, err, assisting the development of nations quite close to my backyard. Buying an island is perfectly normal right...right? D:
 
gaasc;n3554178 said:
And Mao is already, err, assisting the development of nations quite close to my backyard. Buying an island is perfectly normal right...right? D:

Course it is, are you saying you don't have any?
 
Not only did Pocahontas finally take an ancestry test but she was dumb enough to release the results. At best she's 6 generations removed from any Indian relatives, up to 10 generations. She's between 1/32nd and 1024th Native American, which is not enough for her to be admitted into any tribe and be considered NA. She basically just admitted to fraud.
 
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LeVeL;n3554262 said:
Not only did Pocahontas finally take an ancestry test but she was dumb enough to release the results. At best she's 6 generations removed from any Indian relatives, up to 10 generations. She's between 1/32nd and 1024th Native American, which is not enough for her to be admitted into any tribe and be considered NA. She basically just admitted to fraud.

Then: Warren's lying, she doesn't have any Native heritage at all!

Now: Warren's not Native enough to count, because reasons!

(As for "not enough to be admitted into any tribe," the current chief of the Cherokee tribe, to give one example, is 1/32 Cherokee himself.)
 
ROFL here come the mental gymnastics. Dude, out of well over a THOUSAND of her ancestors, ONE possibly maybe could've perhaps been Indian from some tribe. What a joke. Trump should take a test too, it would be epic of he had more Indian blood than her.
 
LeVeL;n3554268 said:
ROFL here come the mental gymnastics. Dude, out of well over a THOUSAND of her ancestors, ONE possibly maybe could've perhaps been Indian from some tribe. What a joke. Trump should take a test too, it would be epic of he had more Indian blood than her.

I probably have more Indian blood in me :p
 
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