Is Government Debt Immoral?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Michael, May 26, 2012.

  1. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    What part did the economics play in their downfall and did they ever attempt to *gasp* use fiat currency manipulation to keep their "Nation" from collapsing?

    (all these nations were incidentally National Socialists by the way.)

    No Joe, the 1000 year German Empire was never ushered into being and so the 3rd reich/reign never happened. Well, outside of a few kewl videogames.....

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    Income tax is stealing Joe, sorry that you can't understand that, or that doesn't still well with you, but pointing a gun in someones face and taking their money "For the Glory or God" or the "Good of 'The' Nation" is still stealing. And there it is. Bonding your child's labor, is immoral. One would think that this should be self evidence? What's so hard to get here? Bonding the labor of your children to the Chinese government is immoral. Explain to me how it isn't immoral. Again, here we are. Counterfeiting / printing money is immoral because it is, again, stealing. Each new dollar that's printed into existence obtains value by all the other dollars that have value and, as you know, takes a little value from each of them. ALL these other fiat peaces of paper loose there real value which is why we have inflation. That's stealing Joe. That's immoral. I fail to see why this is so hard to understand :shrug:
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2012
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  3. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    No they were communists. There is a difference Michael. And they did not fall as a result of hyperinflation as you have claimed. They failed because of corruption.

    It truely is amazing how you come up wtih this crap.

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    You just keep repeating the same old debunked talking points Michael. Repeating crap ad nauseum will not make it stink any less. Taxation is not theft. It is the way we pay our collective debts. Additionally, debt as has been proven numerous times is not bonding the labor of future generations.
     
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  5. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    You are offensively ignorant of history and politics. Stop making an ass of yourself.

    Good thing that's not how income taxation actually works, then.

    By all means, though, please provide documentation of the various times that you have had a gun pointed into your face by a tax collector. Should make for fascinating reading.

    Good thing nobody does that, then.

    The problem is that you can't tell the difference between government debt and child slavery, not that anybody has any problem objecting to child slavery. Your whole line of rhetoric is both offensive and ridiculously stupid. You should stop making such a total ass of yourself.

    You're equating legal money printing with conterfeiting now? I'm sure there's a more uselessly confused perspective you can come up with, but it's hard to imagine what it might be...

    Except when it doesn't, of course. You don't know the first thing about this topic, so why do you go around trying to lecture others, suggesting they're dumb, etc? You're an embarassment.

    Except we barely have any inflation at all these days - despite all of the printing of money - so your complaints are inane and irrelevant.

    It's hard to "understand" because it's complete nonsense, spouted by someone who clearly has no grasp on the subject.

    What is hard to understand is why you think anyone will take your rhetoric seriously - you never substantiate anything you say, or engage with any direct questions or criticisms. You just keep repeating the same bizarro slogans and hurling insults. Who do you think you're fooling?
     
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  7. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    1. Income Tax
    Try NOT paying income tax, you will have your paychecks garnished. You may even be sent to prison. I find it shocking to think you support taxing a person's productive labor. Why do you support that? You OWN your labor. You're the one being paid. Why on earth would YOU have to PAY for the privileged of working!?!? You didn't buy something. You didn't make a purchase. You were being paid for your labor. Which you own.

    The only reason you think Income Tax is right is because it's legal. If it were illegal, then you'd think it was wrong. We know this because in the 1800s that was the case with most Americans. The Founding Fathers did NOT want Americans paying Income Tax which is why some crooks had amend the actual US Constitution to get it done.

    2 Bonds
    When a 30 year bond is sold to the Chinese. What are they buying? They're buying your child's labor. The bond can only be paid back through the labor of the people who will be working in 30 years. It's immoral to sell someone else's labor. Particularly if they had no say. AND of children! Jesus!?!? What has this nation come to? Of course, without Income Tax it wouldn't be possible to pay those bonds and so they wouldn't be sold. Which is why Income Tax and Bonded Labor go like hand in glove.

    Jefferson clearly states "Each generation is to PAY ITS OWN WAY".

    ..... and people wonder why America is going into the toilet.....

    3 Inflation
    Oh, you think 'legal' money printing is moral .... oooooo... but counterfeiting is not moral. Why? What's the difference between the two - other than legally. I mean, economically, what's the difference. The Central Planners have a goal of 2% inflation per year. That is immoral because it takes from savers and people on fixed income. Do the math - its that simple. Stealing is immoral.



    You really have to hand it to the Public School system. And whoever came up with the Pledge of Allegiance? Got to hand it to them -they're good.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2012
  8. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I'm curious quadraphonics: do you, like Joe, think it's the role of the Central Government to control and plan our economy? It seems to me, you support the notion of Centralized Banking with a single currency given value through fiat. You also seem to support the use of the Central Government using social incentive's (tax breaks) and regulation over that of free-market and law. Is this true? If not, just how much on a scale of 0 - 100 do you think the Central Government should have influence and direct control over our monetary system?

    Also, do you agree with the notion that when demand is down, the central government should step in and do 'stuff' to increase aggregate demand? If so, how does government-induced increasing of 'aggregate demand' efficiently distribute limited resources in society without a free-market feed back system to allocate the products?

    Lastly, do you agree with the statement: "Ending is better than mending"? IOWs it's much better to keep people employed producing 'goods' that will soon be discarded and replaced with new goods in a never ending cycle. Rather than producing durable goods that once made, last a long time - maybe a life time.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2012
  9. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    1,876
    Taxes are the price you pay for using the road(which we all paid for with our taxes), enjoying the protection of a police force(which we all paid for with our taxes), having a safety net that attempts to catch you when you fail(as we all do or could do), and enjoying the benefits of a modern society(which our taxes made possible). You're crying because we, collectively, have decided not to let you freeload. Waaaah! Pay you taxes or run for the border. Run to a country without running, clean water or sewage systems, roads or police and no rule of law and no safety net to rescue you from starvation, murder or invasion. Might I suggest somewhere in central Africa. I hear they don't have taxes, but the local warlord will stick guns in your face anyway, taking your money without needing to build you a road.

    Grumpy

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  10. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    So you are admitting that you will not, in fact, have a gun put in your face?

    Simply refusing to pay taxes - as opposed to actual tax fraud - does not result in jail time in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with.

    Because without all of the public goods and services that your taxes are required to pay for, said privilege would not be available to you. Get rid of police, courts, firefights, roads, water and sewers and see how many job opportunities are left for you.

    Why should you be taxed for the privilege of purchasing something? You're just trading your money - which you own - for something else that someone else owns.

    Your rhetoric doesn't add up - you present arguments as if they're against specific types of taxes, when they are simply generic arguments against any kind of taxation. And then you get mad when people suggest that you are opposed to any and all taxation.

    No, it isn't. And you have no way of knowing what I think what I think. You can barely manage to keep track of what I actually think, so just do everyone a favor and don't even attempt to track motives.

    Baseless attribution of motive. You should cease this offensive silliness, and apologize.

    The Founding Fathers didn't want a lot of things that we later decied were, in fact, good and necessary things. Like women voting, or blacks having human rights.

    A promise by the government to give them a certain amount of dollars on a specific date, obviously.

    No child labor is involved in paying government debts.

    No, it's paid by government revenue - which comes from all sorts of things other than taxes on income. There are taxes on various assets and transactions, as well as streams of revenue not derived from taxation at all. Even the portion that is income tax, is not the same as a "labor tax." You can derive income from all kinds of things other than labor. Rents, for example, are income, but do not derive from labor. They derive from the investment of capital into rent-producing assets.

    Even ignoring the above: the government of a legitimate democratic republic is not "someone else." Those are our duly-elected representatives issuing that debt, to pay for things that we have approved of.

    Your statement there, if taken seriously, applies as much to any given corporation as it does to a government.

    If you want to limit this discussion to dictatorial states wherein the populace has no say over such matters, you might find the reception different. Applied to a democratic republic, it's simply inane on its face.

    There is no child labor involved. Child labor is illegal in the jurisdictions you are addressing. You are engaged in dishonest misrepresentation, for the sake of overblown rhetoric. It is offensive to the actual, real issue of child labor for you to misappropriate it for your own cheap, petty rhetorical ends.

    There are plenty of other ways to raise government revenue and so pay debts. You don't know what you're talking about.

    There is no "bonded labor" anywhere in site. You are simply inventing hysterical accusations to sex up your idiot rhetoric.

    Personally, I tend to wonder more at why various navel-gazing fools imagine that America is "going into the toilet."

    Legality is a very important difference when it comes to the morality of printing money - as is democratic legitimacy. We control how much money gets printed - and so, how we trade off inflation vs. unemployment. It is just and correct that society, as a whole, exercises its democratic franchise to decide such major questions for itself.

    A counterfeiter is messing with the money supply for his own profit, and in doing so violating the prerogative of the polity to control the money supply through democratic means.

    Targetting zero inflation is likewise "immoral" because it takes from borrowers and the unemployed. So we are forced to find a compromise position that balances the interests of savers and people on fixed incomes, against the young, the unemployed and the indebted. We use democratic means to find the correct balance, which imbues such with moral legitimacy.

    One can infer that you must be an elderly person, probably with considerable savings and likely contemplating living on a fixed income (if not doing so already) by your myopic focus on the interests of such, and blithe dismissal of the interests of other sectors of society.

    Good thing nobody is being stolen from in your example, then.

    Why? Aren't they the same system that produced the brazenly ignorant blowhard you turned out to be?
     
  11. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    In the sense of, like, Soviet Communism? No. I don't go in for "Centrally Planned Economies," although it appears that you are confusing that term with central banking, which is a different beast entirely.

    Sure.

    I'm generally kinda lukewarm on social engineering via tax policy - apart from big-picture stuff like progressive taxation. Stuff like the mortgage interest deduction and student loan subsidies should probably never have been undertaken, to give a few examples.

    One very important function of the state in the economy, however, is to ensure that markets can function efficiently and usefully. This means stuff like providing court systems to peacefully settle disputes, preventing major externalities from being priced out of markets, enforcing anti-trust and accounting requirements, ensuring non-discrimination, etc.

    All of which is a far cry from a centrally planned economy - that term refers to a system wherein bureaocrats directly allocate resources, set prices, dictate production and investment decisions, etc. If you can't see the major, salient difference between that, and central banking then you evidently have your head so far up your own ass as to render your perspective totally stilted and risible.

    Counter-cyclical monetary policies of some sort are often a good idea, if undertaken in a careful and measured manner.

    It doesn't. That's why we do so via monetary easing, and then allow the free market to figure out what to do with the cheap money.

    Huh? You're asking how I feel about durable vs. disposable goods? What is the relevance of that?
     
  12. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    20,285
    Be gone Ye Devil!!!

    :mufc:


    People in Pakistan pay Taxes - why aren't they living in the modern world? People paid in plenty of tax in the middle ages - yet, you just said it wasn't that great to live then. The Romans paid tax. The Taliban charge tax. Paying taxes does not create a prosperous society.

    Oh, and it was the free market created the modern age not paying in tax.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2012
  13. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    20,285
    quadraphonics,

    Did you see what you did there? You know we're talking about the child in 30 years which is an adult. But you're selling their labor TODAY - and today they're a child. That's not 'child-labor'. If you sell a 30 year bond, it will be the children born today and tomorrow that will have to pay back that bond with interest.

    You think this is moral?
    Why? Why do you think you have the right to buy something your children will have to pay for in 30 years?


    Suppose someone offered to sell their own child's labor? They said: Boy, you live in this eer house. It needs a roof. I'm selling you to work for 20 years to pay off my eer roof. When you is a done working each day, you can sleep eer in this house. You'll got ta do this eer. On a count-n you were born through not fault of yer own into this eer house.
     

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