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Originally Posted by Bababooyee
No prob. You owe me, btw (and I might call on you soon for that! ).
What does history show about nations that place the "common good" as the paramount concern of the state? Well, the wealthy can afford it...yeah, well Pol Pot had some warm fuzzy feelings for the rich, too.
And if you really think that we need to start paying back for Iraq or whatever, surely you are putting your money where your mouth is and volunteering some extra cash to help right the ship, aye?  |
As an NYC resident, I pay more taxes than anyone else in the country (well, not me myself, as I am not rich, but as a proportion of my income, NYCers pay more). So I don't have an issue with taxation. And, as a believer in progressive taxation, I don't have an issue with the wealthy, who got a heck of a tax cut in the past six years, finally ponying up to deal with the deficit and the cost of Iraq. We're going to have to pay for it, and I don't fancy taking food stamps away from nursing mothers, thanks very much.
Well, European nations made national health care a priority, and for all the things we criticize about their national health plans, they spend less, per person, than we do on health care AND they have lower infant mortality rates and longer life spans than the USA. Can you imagine buying a car that gets less milage, breaks down sooner and paying more for it than any other car? And yet we do that with our health plan because we're not interested in the common good.
Pol Pot's genocide was racially-based more than class-based, Bababooyee. He went for the the Cambodian Muslims (the Cham) first, then the ones of Vietnamese descent, and then, I believe, onto the military, professionals and intellectuals (or as Timm would call them, the Democrats. Sorry Timm, I'm going to be teasing you about the "liberals think they're smarter than everyone else" for a long time.
). My stepmom's first husband was Cham, and in the military and was one of the first ones to be executed.
And I think comparing progressive taxation to a mass murderer is really tasteless. I'll be sure to pass along your thoughts to my stepmom and ask her whether she thinks the tax cuts on the rich being repealed compare to the four years she spent in a labor camp. Very classy, B.