We no longer have starvation at all in the developed world
Apple is probably a bad example to use here. For many years it used conflict minerals from the DRC to produce its phones and other products, which kept millions of Congolese living in terror with rape and other forms of violence perpetrated against them to keep them subservient, oppressed, and yes, poor.OneSheep:
It’s not at all clear that the concentration of wealth is at the expense of those in poverty. When a company like Apple succeeds in selling a lot of I-phones and becomes very profitable, does that create more poverty, or does it create more jobs?
No one is stopping you. Adios.
That is not even remotely true. Social Security and unemployment alone more than double all military spending.
I too worked a soup kitchen in a city. I was always grateful for local businesses that helped out with contributions.
Apple is not responsible for what is happening in the Congo any more than you. I assume your family uses light bulbs, maybe buys earrings, and someone even uses an underwire bra.
False. Really, really false. Apple and every other company makes ethical choices about how it conducts business. (There is such a thing as business ethics, after all.) If this weren’t the case, companies could dump toxic waste anywhere or they could start marketing and selling cocaine publicly. And yes, we all have to make ethical choices as consumers. I have made many choices based on whether companies used conflict minerals.gracepoole:
Apple is not responsible for what is happening in the Congo any more than you. I assume your family uses light bulbs, maybe buys earrings, and someone even uses an underwire bra.
Unemployment in this great economy?
So your lightbulbs, earrings, and underwire bras don’t use conflict minerals, your certain of it?
In Caesar’s government, people collected taxes to give to government officials and military, etc.
These are not mutually exclusive.
The more we can earn in a particular society, the more we are reaping the benefit of being able to safely do business in that society (assuming the tax structure is fair, and the tax collector is abiding by it, etc.) Yes, it is earned.
Implication not intended.
It is more gridlock than insanity, I think. We need some real leadership to come up with a better solution, and it may not be government leadership.
I was referring to the discretionary spending budget, the budget based on income taxes. Social Security is a payroll tax, and it is “supposed” to be self-supporting, a system whereby a person gets out what they put in with interest added. haha
I beg your pardon?
In addition, the military encourages education in the sciences and in engineering.
Yes, I did, and I apologize for my misstatement. I meant “discretionary spending”, the spending that our legislature has a choice as far as what to do with our taxes. What to do with Social Security and Medicare is already predetermined, they are essentially government-managedretirement and health insurance programs, which legislators are not supposed to plunder!
Yes, the expectations are also ridiculous. We have no business dealing with those problems with our military.
Diplomacy and working through sanctions is not isolationism.
This is the “If we don’t do it, someone else (an enemy, someone unsavory) will.” It is the rationalization of many, many evils in the world.
I continue to be perplexed as to why you appear to believe I think people shouldn’t pay their taxes.
The evidence is obvious that the wealthy pay far more than their fair share, but here is what our wrote and I was responding to:
If you’re hopeful that people who don’t pay taxes help others , why can we not extend the same courtesy to those that do? Why force them to help others when we know that type of coercion is wrong?
Then you agree that those same benefits are available to all.
Yet every time those who believe as I do propose, we are called (by some) uncaring, evil, even unchristian. It often sounds like they are not interested in different ideas.