Random Arguments & Strawmen #15

That's how Italy was after the fall of Rome until like a century ago (give or take 50yrs). Polis states don't really work in the modern era of unions and conglomerates.

Also there are like, the "modern" Mennonites that I can't even wrap my head around how they're still even following that strain of religion but whatever.

Same reason people still play a dying video game that hasn't had content in years...I think it's called FFXI !

I quit, it means the game doesn't exist anymore.

Right?

Isn't that the mindset I'm supposed to have, as someone who doesn't play anymore?

("LOL FFXI. People still play that!?")

I was going for more clinging to something that hasn't changed in years. And hoping it will but deep down inside knowing it is dead.

Marriage?

What is the point in having states anymore?

Take New York for example. New York City practically runs that entire state, but why? "Upstate New York" as it is commonly referred to is vastly different from New York City. What is good for the city is not good for the rather rural state, or the smaller cities of Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany.

Would it not make more sense to have political boundaries be based on major metropolitan areas and get rid of the idea of states as it is?

I was just thinking yesterday about how a national sales tax, even a small one, would be a fantastic idea if done correctly.

Going to try and not "Wall-of-text" this post since others don't like it

I simply don't have enough information on the topic to formulate an opinion on what needs to be done, I probably never will. The only idea I am championing is that all people in this nation need to be taken care of in some form or manor. People need jobs, and a lot of them need help getting jobs. Some people are unable to work, what do with them? These are the questions that I'd rather be asking.

More taxes could easily mean more money in the governments pockets that can be used to answer those, but less taxes could also mean the same thing if it stimulates the economy. I understand and respect how both function. One is direct the other is indirect but the latter if it works would make people happier - Thus I'm not opposed to it if it can work.

Your source provided very little information, while the Pew research source I provided earlier provides enough information to conclude that the top 1% are paying income taxes at a slightly higher rate then the rest of the US. I find that aspect fair.

Again, what is fair?

Marriage is still useful if you want to raise a family...that and you get 2 incomes instead of one ! Maybe love if you are into that sort of thing...two incomes sounds better to me.

Here's an interesting question to throw out there. What is the point in having states anymore? What constitutes a state?

What I mean is, making laws that permit to an entire state just isn't practical anymore. Take New York for example. New York City practically runs that entire state, but why? "Upstate New York" as it is commonly referred to is vastly different from New York City. What is good for the city is not good for the rather rural state, or the smaller cities of Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany.

Would it not make more sense to have political boundaries be based on major metropolitan areas and get rid of the idea of states as it is?

I was just thinking yesterday about how a national sales tax, even a small one, would be a fantastic idea if done correctly.

Again, what is fair?

Why is it considered fair for a very small group of people to pay almost half of the nation's bills and almost half of the country either don't pay or get money from the nation?

Second we have a progressive tax, which taxes the right more and poor less, if not at all.

Freudian slip?

First is a flat tax rate across the board. A person make 15,000 a year pays out the same % of tax as someone making 15,000,000 a year. Realistically this is the most "fair" way as everyone is paying their share. Looking at only numbers and not considering situation this definitely what I would define as fair.

Second we have a progressive tax, which taxes the rich more and poor less, if not at all. The idea behind this is that the poor don't have money to be taxed and actually need money while the wealthy have an over abundance of money that is not needed for them to live their life of leisure. Just to expand on ***more

Person A makes 15,000 a year and essentially needs 13,000 to pay for poor living and another 2,000 to pay for food. If you take 25% of his money as taxes he is then making 11,250 a year and therefore can't pay for his house.

Person B Makes 15,000,000 a year and needs 1,000,000 a year to pay for his estate, maybe more (bullshitting numbers here). If you were to tax him 25% he would have 11,250,000 left over to spend on food or anything of leisure. Even if you were to tax him at 50% he would still have plenty of money to live a leisurely life and obviously contribute more to the government.

Furthermore Person A would actually be a cost to tax payers money because of his situation and if person B can provide more tax money than that go to helping out Person A. It may even help Person A make a reasonable income at some point and not need the tax dollars.

This is fair to some people, people Person A is in a much more dangerous situation while Person B has a lot more additional money to spend.


Your argument may be that Person A deserves that, but in reality you don't know his situation so you can't pass a clear judgement. Persona A needs help and Person B has help to give.

It's one thing that Person A is in a situation where they are in between jobs and/or learning new skills for the next big job, it's another if they choose to live that life. I'm all for taxing those who choose to live at or around the poverty line. That might be incentive enough for them to get out of poverty, or at least attempt to.

Seventy-five years ago today, the sun rose on Oahu a few minutes before 6:30. Later accounts vary in many details, but all agree that the day dawned fair—blue skies, wispy clouds, a fresh breeze. It was a quiet Sunday morning.

On the great naval base at Pearl Harbor, a battle-of-the-bands competition had been held the evening before. American battleships carried 20-man bands, and in a semifinal two weeks earlier the USS Arizona’s had qualified for the final round. The concert on Dec. 6 was a second semifinal, and the Arizona’s musicians attended only to watch and listen.

Next morning, they were back aboard ship. When “first call to colors” was bugled just before eight, the band formed up on the fantail to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But before they struck up, there came the drone of approaching aircraft.

Astonishingly—incredibly—low-flying planes, bearing the distinctive red “meatball” insignia, appeared, dropping torpedoes and dive bombing. Arizona’s bandsmen rushed to their battle stations. The Coast Guard’s motto is semper paratus, always ready, but in 1941 peace-loving America was minime paratus, very little prepared, even though Europe had been at war for over two years and Japan for more than four.

“The Navy is not going to be caught napping,” the secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, had promised a mere three days earlier. The Japanese attack—boldly conceived, assiduously plotted and rehearsed, shamelessly perfidious—torpedoed not only battleships, but American complacency.

Japan’s great victory, however, was a catastrophic miscalculation. Never since have Americans been so collectively aroused, ignited and determined. The empire’s doom was assured even before the attacking aircraft had returned to their carriers 200 miles north of Oahu. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of the Japanese fleet and architect of the attack, feared as much. If ordered to go to war with America, he had warned, “I can guarantee to put up a tough fight for the first six months, but I have absolutely no confidence as to what would happen if it went on for two or three years.”

In exactly six months—June 7, 1942—a shattered Japanese strike force would retreat from Midway, leaving four aircraft carriers on the bottom of the Pacific. Yamamoto survived Pearl Harbor by less than two years: American pilots, fittingly, ambushed his plane during an inspection tour of Japanese bases.

Hearing of Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill in beleaguered Britain gloated: “Hitler’s fate was sealed,” while the Japanese “would be ground to powder.” And so they were.

But for the 2,400 Americans killed at Pearl Harbor, there would be no victory celebration. At battle quarters, Arizona’s bandsmen did not fiddle. When general quarters sounded, they dropped their cornets and clarinets and hurried to the ammunition hoists beneath the forward turrets, where they handled the heavy powder bags for the ship’s 14-inch guns.

At nearby Tripler Army Hospital, Army nurse Anna Busby was herself a patient that morning, with an infected cheek. Hearing explosions, she rushed out to a lanai to look. “My God! The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor!” another nurse exclaimed. “Well, we will all be needed on duty,” Anna replied. She doffed her patient’s gown and donned her nurse’s uniform. “You can’t go anywhere with that red face,” the chief nurse said. “You’d better take charge of the women’s ward.” And so, Anna recalled, “I reported on duty, took the report, and now I was in charge of the women’s ward, where I was a patient in the last hour.”


Only minutes after the attack began, a Japanese bomb hit the Arizona, triggering a volcanic explosion in the forward magazines. The ship broke in half and quickly sank. Almost 1,200 sailors and Marines, including all 21 musicians, died.

We sleep peacefully in our beds at night, it has been said, because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf. But few of the sailors on the Arizona were rough men. Many were homesick young recruits, 18- and 19-year-old boys from rural and working-class America. One bandsman had enlisted the year before at 16. Arizona’s dead remain entombed in their sunken ship, America’s most poignant war memorial.

At Gettysburg, the Park Service boasts of offering visitors “fresh experiences for a new generation.” There’s no need for “fresh experiences” at Pearl Harbor. Silent, still and solemn beneath the harbor’s lapping waters, the Arizona mourns her dead mutely, timelessly.

They fought the enemy, said a poet. We fight fat living and self-pity.

Arizona’s wounds still bleed. Every day, two or three quarts of oil seep from the ship and float to the surface. “I was very, very frightened,” nurse Busby recalled of Dec. 7 and the days following. Like most on Oahu, she feared the attack was prelude to invasion. Japanese brutalities in China made this a terrifying prospect.

“I was petrified,” she admitted. “But I did my duties. I carried on.”

Yeah well we only pretend to be charitable Christians. If we didn't pretend we'd be labeled socialists.

It's funny because if anything Christ was a socialist.

I think its hard to define why they are there. They could just be stuck there with no way out. If they lack education and job training they could forever be stuck there and feel like they have no means to move up.

Keep in mind too that if everyone in the nation had a job some people would still have to work these low wage jobs and we need to consider their livelihood.

The answer to the problem that the progressive tax is attempting to fix would start with fixing how we spend government money.

The thing is republicans are consistently opposed to cutting Welfare and Medicaid which both are supposed to be an ends to means for the less fortunate. You will have a hard time saying that you want to cut taxes and then to cut government spending education, welfare and medicaid because at that point you are against the people. You could maybe reform welfare and medicaid to better facilitate peoples needs and also use them as tools to help people get employed but you can't de-fund them.

Also



The qualifications of being part of the 1% varies. Take it from me a .003%'er