The fact that nobody deserves to die a slow agonizing death from poverty in no way negates the fact that we who work, and have worked hard to get the careers we hold, deserve to get paid what we were contracted to get paid.
What we deserve from God is entirely different than what we deserve by engaging in a employer/employee relationship. The same goes for contractors/customers.
Yes, the systems analyst deserves every penny he has contracted for, despite not ‘working hard’ as you so call it in your mind. A systems analyst (unlike a garbage collector, cashier in a grocery store, cook at Mcdonald’s) had to put himself/herself through school and had to acquire skills and knowledge to help him do his job that the garbage collector, cashier, and burger flipper cannot do. You in your mind may decide that the systems analyst isn’t “working hard” but in fact, he is using his skill set, knowledge base and experience to do a job that only others with his particular skills, knowledge and experience can do. And I’m sure it’s just as tiring as any other job. Any worker worth his/her weight in salt is working hard doing what they are doing.
And that’s okay. But then those who are not ambitious and aggressive should not complain when those who worked so hard, actually climb higher on the pay scale ladder.
And neither do I condemn paying taxes. Paying taxes to support our communities and redistribution of wealth are two totally different things.
I don’t know where you work, but usually people who slack off get told to buck up or get fired. You can’t force an employer to pay you for work you don’t do. They will only put up with it for so long, create a paper trail and send you on your way. So the second worker can enjoy his few minutes of fame, but will be one of the ones complaining and whining when he doesn’t have a job, and thus, no pay.
Good question. The numbers differ a bit, but the point remains: peace is cheap; consensus is about 1% of world GDP, war, 2.5%,* and therefore undesirable:
Taxes we use to pay military personnel are indicative of the relationship between the military personnel and the taxpayers who are protected by the military personnel. Taxes are paid to support the benefits that come with living in a particular community.I don’t think I agree that taking something from someone and giving it to another is always theft. That would make, say, taxes that we use to pay military personnel a form of theft.
No, it doesn’t fit the bill. Here’s why: The amount of taxes one pays depends on the community in which they live. People who live in cities that have more resources (such as garbage pickup or multiple schools, etc) will pay more taxes than those who live in cities with less resources (no garbage pickup and one or two schools per city/county, no city sewage, no city water). In essence you are contracting with the community in which you live. If you don’t want to pay higher taxes, you are free to move to another location that has less resources/less taxes.
It depends on what you have in your employment contract. If your contract says that you must be paid regardless of how much work you do, then yes you can force the employer to pay you for what you didn’t do.
It depends on how rare of a skill set you possess. I know of one guy who is legendary for his nastiness and his abuse of his staff. But his employer puts up with him because his output is the best in the business.
Funding the military can still be redistributive though. For example, we borrowed money to pay for our two recent wars. This of course means that we are redistributing future taxpayers money for our own folly. Talk about taxation without representation!
Yep. And that money is manufactured out of thin air as bonds, so that increases inflation, therefore reduces your buying power: It takes $100 today to buy what $10 would have in my birth year. So if your wages aren’t tied directly to inflation, your wages are in effect going down, as is the value of any saving, while the value added is redistributed upwards as interest to the private stockholders of the Fed, etc.
Your little photo indicates that it would take $135 billion to totally eradicate world poverty.
I understand all of that. There is clearly a difference between taxes paid to military personnel and taxes paid to feed the poor- whether or not taxpayers see any direct benefits from their money. It could be argued that, say, helping homeless people might reduce crime or improve the atmosphere of a city for everyone else, but to keep it simple, let’s assume that taxpayers get no personal benefit from government-run programs that help the very poor.
Which is not true, unless we wish to argue that all military personnel can only be morally paid by a voluntary transaction from each citizen. Military personnel do indeed deserve their pay, and it is moral for our government to tax the populace in order to pay them. This means that taking things from people by force is not necessarily always theft. And I do think it is “by force”, since the military is run by the national government. You can’t escape it by moving to a different city if you disagree. You can escape it by leaving the country, but the same is true of taxes to help the poor.
Is this where you got your information?
No. I found it here: huffingtonpost.com/martha-j-bailey/war-on-poverty-programs_b_4556319.html
Thank you. I don’t know whether to be encouraged that it’s doable, or angry that we haven’t done it yet.
The sources state that this value is the amount it would cost per year to stop extreme poverty- the starving children that Robert is concerned about, those who live on less than one dollar a day. It won’t get rid of poverty in America- most poor Americans would be in “relative poverty”, not extreme or moderate poverty.
You are missing an important point regarding government.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of **expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constitutents.” **
“…the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. **Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government**.” -James Madison