13 Comments Add your own

• 1. Debunked  |  October 3rd, 2011 at 12:23 pm

  

  So, from what I can tell, you think everybody should have just shy of a 0% tax rate. And you don’t support tolls for public roadways to maintain said roadways.

  How, exactly, do you expect to maintain a functional highway system, again?

  Even if it the road system was privatized, you would certainly to see far more tolls than currently exist. Every intersection, every highway on-off ramp, and every neighborhood street, you would be running up the meter.

  I’m just trying to figure out how you realistically see this working.

• 2. John Foust  |  October 3rd, 2011 at 3:50 pm

  

  Michele Bachmann said recently, “I think you earned every dollar, you should get to keep every dollar that you earn. That’s your money. That’s not the government’s money.”

  Once upon a time, Libertarians would suggest the government should be funded by voluntary means, such as a lottery.

• 3. Roland Melnick  |  October 4th, 2011 at 11:12 pm

  

  Ever hear of the Gas Tax, Duhbunked? How about Milwaukee’s own Wheel Tax?

  Where did Elliot advocate a near zero tax rate? Can you make your point without misrepresenting Elliot’s?

• 4. Billiam  |  October 5th, 2011 at 1:46 am

  

  John, she also said, shortly after that bit you quoted, “Obviously we have to get money back to the government so we can run the government, but we have to have a completely different mindset, and that mindset is: the American people are the genius of this economy, it certainly isn’t government that’s the genius, and that’s the two views.”

  I know it’s popular among both parties these days to use a partial quote so we can play ‘gotcha’. We need to stop that.

• 5. John Foust  |  October 5th, 2011 at 10:21 am

  

  Follow the logic! Ipso facto, corpus delicti: The government isn’t genius, therefore Michele is best qualified to be President.

  This endless demonization of government isn’t helping, either. The government is us. How exactly can we be “geniuses” of this economy, but when we make and manage a government, our efforts and intentions are somehow less genius?

  It’s just as can-do / American know-how / git’er-done to suggest that if our political process has decided to use tax dollars to do something, we can do it at least as correctly as we do it when it’s done privately. Government tasks often have a very different set of constraints than private enterprise, by definition.

  Libertarianism discovered its own political dead-ends a long time ago. It’s why it wasn’t easily incorporated into Republicanism.

• 6. Billiam  |  October 5th, 2011 at 2:53 pm

  

  The problem is that government has shown time and again, that it rarely can do anything in an efficient manner, either on cost or time. That is a human failing. Yet, we seemed to manage just fine until the early 20th century when Government stayed in Constitutional boundaries. Can we get back to that point? I doubt it. Too many are hooked on entitlements. Yet, the escalating costs, coupled with the printing of $$ that Bernanke seems bent upon, will turn us into Wiemar 21st century. Snark at the messenger all you want, but things can’t go on as they have been.

• 7. John Foust  |  October 5th, 2011 at 4:23 pm

  

  Billiam, if you think government excess was discovered in 1901, you haven’t studied much history.

  Similarly, it seems to be an article of faith in the Wealth Gospel that we can take the general observation that a free market tends towards efficiency and sometimes lower prices, and extend it to the specific case and speculate that any given private business operates at 100% efficiency and under budget. My only experience with a state paycheck was hourly work when I was in college. I saw plenty of crazy, over-budget busywork in private businesses, too. You think government is the only place that happens?

  Build toll booths and a new bureaucracy to administer them? Sounds like expansion of government to me. Let me guess. Truckers will get a discount. Road-builders get the contracts to build the new toll plazas. And the DOT budget will increase, not decrease.

• 8. Billiam  |  October 6th, 2011 at 8:44 am

  

  Never said that Government was the only place. What are you reading? Hell, the company I work for wastes money in dumb areas and it’s like pulling teeth to get them to spend it where it should be spent, like new drive tires, or new trailers. That said, they can’t, unlike DC, spend more than they take in and stay in business. The stockholders won’t allow it, nor would the market. As to tolls, truckers don’t get a discount. Ever driven a semi on the Illinois Tollway? Also, pre 1900, I said the Government pretty much stayed within Constitutional boundaries. I never said they didn’t have debt. I must not write very well, or you are trying to inject words I didn’t say.

• 9. John Foust  |  October 6th, 2011 at 9:31 am

  

  I’d like government to do the best job at what our system asks it to do. I’d like it to stop doing stupid stuff. I’d like it to stop wasting money, especially in endless wars. I’d like it to be as small as it needs to be. Of course it doesn’t need to give everyone a pony and an ice cream cone. I’m quite active and eager to expose government waste and improve oversight. So why is it considered by some to be a form of treason to ask for “good government” in this fashion?

• 10. Billiam  |  October 6th, 2011 at 2:36 pm

  

  Treason? To want good government is not treasonous. That is ludicrous. If that were the case, then I also would be a traitor. For myself, I want the Federal Government to operate within it’s Constitutionally imposed boundaries. The true power was intended to be in the hands of the people or the individual states. I’m sure you’re aware of what happens to people who become enmeshed in the clique. Only the clique comes to matter. This is what I believe has happened in DC. I’ve often said that ultimately, it is We the people who’ve allowed this. Why? It’s easier, and in line with human nature, to get what you want with as little of your own effort as possible. DC takes and gives to too many who do not deserve. That rankles me to no end.

  My mom and the two of us kids were on welfare for a time when it wasn’t acceptable. That is where I learned to do what ever I needed to so that I never again had to experience the shame when people looked at you for using food stamps. Yes, at the time, we needed them. We got off them quickly. Mom said it was too tempting to get something we didn’t earn. That’s where I come from.

• 11. BobG  |  October 7th, 2011 at 2:24 pm

  

  I know what you’re saying, Billiam. When I was a kid, most people were embarrassed fi they had to get food stamps. These days I hear people brag about how they get food stamps and use them, and how they con their way out of other “free” stuff from the government.

• 12. John Foust  |  October 7th, 2011 at 7:34 pm

  

  Whew, for a second there, I thought you were going to worry about all the war spending or the tax benefits to corporations. What we should be worrying about is whether the poor are scamming us. They’re the ones to worry about!

• 13. Billiam  |  October 7th, 2011 at 9:19 pm

  

  John, a little less snark please. I’m for no tax breaks for any industry. That includes Oil and Ethanol and big Ag. If the product is good, it will make it in the free market, and have no need of tax breaks or government ‘protection’. As to the wars, the current occupant seems to like them as much as W.

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