US Deficit Commission wants lower corporate taxes

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We are compelled to do things against our will from the day we are born. Existence isn't free. It is not wrong to compel people to share.

That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to ensure a more just and fair society. If justice and fairness aren't things you value then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. There's no point in continuing if we're just going to be talking past each other.

I think the moral/ethical foundations of libertarian thought are overly simplistic. I think people are drawn to the philosophy due to a misguided attraction to the sense of parsimony it portrays. Either that or they simply lack compassion for people not in their immediate sphere of contact (i.e. out of sight = out of mind).

Freedom costs a buck o five. Americans have no problem sacrificing soldiers for their freedoms, but you'd better not ask them to dip into their own pockets. That's clearly crossing the line.

Problem is government then gets to tell us how to live our lives, the situation isn't just about money. It is about government saying that we can't put salt on our food.

Ahhh, the food diversion. Here is yet another example of how the republican party is nothing short of genius when it comes to getting the masses to fight hard for big business. On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put salt 'rationing' on your list of priorities in life? Among issues like war, health care, jobs, poverty, and education, salt - salt is where you guys pick your battles?

Government is supposed to protect us from big business, by making laws and regulations to protect the consumers. These rules and regulations eat into their profits so, naturally, big business will fight back against the government. Their smart enough to know that they need to get as many of their consumers to fight for them at the polls as possible, even if that vote is against their own best interests.

They come up with clever ideas that appeal to the primary interests of most Americans. For the most part, this appeal has been made to the God and guns lovers. But, in an effort to stay ahead of the game, they've expanded their appeals. What do our gluttonous citizens love the most, possibly even more than God and guns? Food, and we've been hearing a lot about food from the right lately. The big, bad government's gonna tax your soda, or require restaurants to provide nutritional info. I like to think of it as the "save the Twinkie campaign." You know the masses are gonna step up to save the Twinkie.

Okay to simplify the point:

WHEN DOES IT REACH THE POINT THAT GOVERNMENT IS GOING TOO FAR?

The salt issue is an example of the government going too far, it is not the root of the issue.

Sorry about the caps and bold, but I wanted to be sure you didn't miss the main point in this post.

The government has not gone nearly far enough.

Look at your medical plan. Did you have a choice of insurer? Do you get a say in what they think should or should not be covered? Does your doctor have to ask the insurance company if the procedure s/he ordered is medically necessary?

Look at your home. Do you have kids? If so, you've probably already thrown out about half of their toys because of a lead recall. If you have a crib made within the last 10 years, there's a 50% chance it has also been recalled. No kids - then maybe it's just your Chinese drywall that's a problem. Or maybe the Toyota in you driveway had a bit of a brake problem.

Look in your fridge. Do you hesitate every time you crack open an egg because maybe it's one of the millions infected with salmonella? Are you cooking your burgers a little longer these days? Does the amount of pus in your milk, present from cows with mastitis due to rBGH, concern you? Can you even recognize half of the ingredients on the label? Have you noticed that corn is in everything. Did you know that Monsanto controls about 25% of the global seed market and over 85% of the genetically engineered market? They've got quite a laundry list of complaints and lawsuits against them, mainly because they control the farmers with their terminator seeds.

And then there's the banks. Quite a party they've been having with other people's money. Deregulation's been a winfall for them.

Stop letting fear interfere with reality. Big business owns us more than any government ever could.

Do you mean the Toyota brake failures that the Federal Government couldn't figure out what was happening.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its engineers continue to investigate and are reviewing data from the Prius owned by James Sikes to try to understand what happened. But so far, NHTSA says it has not been able to find anything to explain the incident Sikes reported.


http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/201 ... rius_N.htm

Also you again neglected to acknowledge that Government forced banks to make risky loans.

Yea. It's the whole straining at gnats and swallowing camels thing. For one thing, I'm a liberal who tends to agree with libertarians on a lot of issues regarding personal freedoms. I actually voted against stuff like the "vice" taxes on soda and bottled water. Yet when it comes to the big issues where the consequences of government un-involvement are people's lives being completely ruined the whole "let freedom ring" angle coming from conservatives/libertarians just falls flat on me. I have to question what hardcore social darwinists really mean when they talk about "freedom". If they really care so much about freedom why are they mostly obsessed with "welfare scammers" and "lazy bums" getting their "hard earned tax dollars"? It's so sad that a bunch of bitter fear-mongering suburbanite scrooges are the ones who think they are defending "freedom" in America.

Last edited by marshall on 16 Nov 2010, 12:20 am, edited 4 times in total.

Ummm... Maybe because government didn't force them. Fannie and Freddie only had a small portion of the bad loans. The private banks were even worse, making quick profits by bundling and passing around crappy adjustable-rate loans (i.e. money they couldn't really count on collecting anytime soon if ever) to third parties as "investments". It was the crazy BS of private banks thinking they could pull huge profits out of thin air that caused most of the problem.

I believe it was called the Community Reinvestment Act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C ... re=related

Watch the video.

Here is a second video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no ... ion_918789

Edit Update:

I am aware at least one of these videos is a campaign ad, however it gives numerous items you can look up for yourself on google and verify the information is accurate.

When one says that the controllers of wealth have the right to effectively banish people from the community and into death as a Matter of Principle, yes it has everything to do with social security. Controllers of wealth have all the rights and Social Security is stealing, is communism.

If you survived to age 5 in 1930 you lived nearly as long as people do now. Moreover, with the automation and increased productivity and efficiency, you'd think that this would allow for people not having to work until death. Ah, but it all belongs to hedge fund managers to bribe politicians and bypass the constitutional government and commit treason and serve as a parallel government with supremacy over the constitutional one.

Less biased sources show that the second video is right wing propaganda. Besides Fannie and Freddie, no private banks were ever forced to enter into the sub-prime market. Also, by the 2000s the majority of the sub-prime market was NOT low income. Most of the people stuck with foreclosed homes today are previously middle-class families who were mistakenly lead into believing they could afford a $700,000 mortgage.

Gnats and camels yet again. Let's freak out over the first-time home buyer who defaulted on an $85K property, but ignore the foreclosure on the million dollar home down the road that had and additional $500K in HELOC's (home equity lines of credit).

Cool! Could you tell me where you live? I bet you have some stuff I'd like to share. I could come and compel you to share it with me. You know, I was taught it was armed robbery, but really I'm just compelling you to share. Hmm, why bother going to you. I think I'll just walk into a bank and compel them to share with me.

Oooh wait, compelling someone to share is the same as the definition of theft.

I don't care what your 'less-biased' sources say (esp. since those sources are probably more biased than the campaign ad). How about you type the keywords into google that the ad was suggesting and do your own research.

@number5

Why did they foreclose on the expensive property though? Btw, the point is that the housing prices were out of control and quite a few people lost their money when the bubble burst which may be why they had to default on their $500,000 home.