Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Rock, scissors, paper.

re: Rock, scissors, paper.
TB — (archived)

Modern conservatives have deliberately tried to redefine "liberalism" as the champions of big government and opponents of business, a definition that fits in nicely with their own of program of unfettered and unregulated commercial activity, while someone else pays their taxes.

Again, this is based on the premise that the only choices we have are our current course toward European socialism, or lawless chaos. Liberalism has been defining itself for years as the champion of big government and hostility to business. No help needed from the outside.

Your "separation of powers" idea is valid, but not the way you think. Does giving the government almost complete control of the economy at every level accomplish this goal? Or does it just allow a new level of corruption that is enhanced by the government's inherent ability to use force and create money from nothing?

The key to a decentralized free market system is not that it is free of flaws, criminality, economic downturns, or corruption, but that the flaws can often be isolated while the system works around it. This is not possible in a highly-centralized system. We can burn out an Enron and work around it. Not so easy for a government-controlled and subsidized mortgage system where, for example, half of all American mortgages ended up in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These organizations also accounted for 80 percent of the mortgages packaged into bonds.

Lee made a telling point below on who actually pays almost all of the taxes in this country. Given your statement above, it should have made more of an impression than it did.

Then again, I can still find plenty of leftists who don't believe the rich pay any taxes.

I asked the question a while back: When would you think government is "big enough?"

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (53 posts)