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Income tax; Flat tax; National Sales tax; No tax

Which do you prefer:

  • Total voters
    133
AlbqOwl said:
I agree that there needs to be a national debate--with our fearless leaders listening--as to what constitutes the national defense. And we should be rethinking about those things that qualify for that; however, if our presence someplace is an honest to goodness deterrent against armed conflict, that should be a consideration.
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So far that has not been the case according to the Generals on the ground. We have not diminished al Qaeda's capabilities after 8 years of war.

But if you include affordable healthcare as appropriate for the general welfare, why not affordable housing, affordable food, affordable transportation, affordable clothing/heating/cooling all of which are more critical to life than is most healthcare?
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The constitution was written to give WE THE PEOPLE the ability to determine what is in the General Welfare. That is how we implemented Social Security and Medicare. To date, we have not deemed the other things you mention to be included under that provision.

The Founders definition of the general welfare was that which benefitted all of society equally from the poorest to the richest. The Founders, to a man, believed it dishonest to confiscate one person's property who legally acquired it and give it to somebody else who had not earned it. The right to one's own labor, property, and self determination, so long as the rights of others were not infringed, was the pure definition of what they meant by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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No where in the document is there a definition for General Welfare. The Founders specifically did not define General Welfare because they meant it to be a living document.
 
Ethereal said:
And I would agree with you. Two wrongs don't make a right, you know.
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I see no comparison between helping people in our own country and unnecessarily killing tens of thousands of people in other countries.
 
Catawba said:
So far that has not been the case according to the Generals on the ground. We have not diminished al Qaeda's capabilities after 8 years of war.
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A different discussion for a different thread. A principle or fundamental needs no anecdotal references to be established.


The constitution was written to give WE THE PEOPLE the ability to determine what is in the General Welfare. That is how we implemented Social Security and Medicare. To date, we have not deemed the other things you mention to be included under that provision.
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No, the Founders were quite explicit in what they meant by the General Welfare and not one would have approved of either social security or medicare as a function of the federal government. The Constitution was not intended to be a document that could be molded to fit whatever ideology was presented to it, but it was intended to be a document to defend the people against those in government with fuzzy notiond concepts or ideology.


No where in the document is there a definition for General Welfare. The Founders specifically did not define General Welfare because they meant it to be a living document.
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Nowhere in the document is there a definition for freedom or liberty or national defense or taxes or elections or those required to be elected to office eiher. The Constitution is therefore understood in the context of how the people who wrote it understood it, and we understand that by reading the large amount of material they left behind that pretty well fully spells out their intent. Anybody who hasn't read some of that material probably doesn't understand or appreciate the Constitution of the United States at all.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
In this thread I hear the violins bellowing for poor people quite frequently.

How much of a yearly income do you all think is "poor?"
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Any full-time worker making less than a living wage ~

"The Living Wage, based on the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), is as of January 1st, 2009, at $10.31 an hour for employees with health benefits and $11.57 for those without."
Coalition for Economic Justice: 2009 Living Wage
 
AlbqOwl said:
No, the Founders were quite explicit in what they meant by the General Welfare and not one would have approved of either social security or medicare as a function of the federal government. The Constitution was not intended to be a document that could be molded to fit whatever ideology was presented to it, but it was intended to be a document to defend the people against those in government with fuzzy notiond concepts or ideology.
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Please copy me then where in the Constitution they included a definition for General Welfare. Otherwise, I will continue to interpret it as have the courts for the last 70 years just as Social Security was determined to be in the General Welfare.
Nowhere in the document is there a definition for freedom or liberty or national defense or taxes or elections or those required to be elected to office eiher.
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That is why those issues are still being addressed today.

The Constitution is therefore understood in the context of how the people who wrote it understood it, and we understand that by reading the large amount of material they left behind that pretty well fully spells out their intent. Anybody who hasn't read some of that material probably doesn't understand or appreciate the Constitution of the United States at all.
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That is not how the courts have interpreted it and I believe in the rule of law.
 
Catawba said:
Any full-time worker making less than a living wage ~

"The Living Wage, based on the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), is as of January 1st, 2009, at $10.31 an hour for employees with health benefits and $11.57 for those without."
Coalition for Economic Justice: 2009 Living Wage
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A living wage in San Francisco or Washington DC would be luxurious wages in Salina, Kansas, or Plainview, Texas. A living wage in Salina or Plainview would be starvation wages in San Francisco or Washington DC. So how do you get around the pesky cost of living issues?

And you're allowing $1.25/hour for health benefits? That would be about $220/month. That's less than most people's car payment or credit card payments each month. Sure doesn't make much of a case that we're in crisis and it is necessary for the Federal government to take over and micromanage the nation's healthcare, huh?
 
Catawba said:
Please copy me then where in the Constitution they included a definition for General Welfare. Otherwise, I will continue to interpret it as have the courts for the last 70 years just as Social Security was determined to be in the General Welfare.


That is why those issues are still being addressed today.



That is not how the courts have interpreted it and I believe in the rule of law.
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I believe in the rule of law too, and the number of us are now legion who believe the courts have not followed the law in the matter of the general welfare.

Please read these two discussions, and then I will be happy to provide some additional direct quotations from the Founders themselves regarding the issue of the General Welfare and the powers that they intended the federal government to have:

The General Welfare Clause

general welfare
 
AlbqOwl said:
A living wage in San Francisco or Washington DC would be luxurious wages in Salina, Kansas, or Plainview, Texas. A living wage in Salina or Plainview would be starvation wages in San Francisco or Washington DC. So how do you get around the pesky cost of living issues?
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That figure was a national average.
 
AlbqOwl said:
I believe in the rule of law too, and the number of us are now legion who believe the courts have not followed the law in the matter of the general welfare.

Please read these two discussions, and then I will be happy to provide some additional direct quotations from the Founders themselves regarding the issue of the General Welfare and the powers that they intended the federal government to have:

The General Welfare Clause

general welfare
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I agree there were many opinions regarding the definition of General Welfare (then just as now), but the founders made the decision not to include those definitions, wisely leaving it for future generations the ability to interpret according to the needs of We The People.

Unfortunately for your position, the Rule of law does not recognize "the legion" as legal entity.
 
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Catawba said:
I agree there were many opinions regarding the definition of General Welfare (then just as now), but the founders made the decision not to include those definitions, wisely leaving it for future generations the ability to interpret according to the needs of We The People.

Unfortunately for your position, the Rule of law does not recognize "the legion" as legal entity.
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You didn't even read the two documents I linked, did you. And you probably haven't read any of the Federalist papers or any of the other many many documents the Founders left behind to inform us of what was intended by the language of the Constitution.

They did not intend for it to be subject to different interpretation by anybody.

And judges who do not respect the Constitution will probably come to respect the legions pretty quickly if we are able to throw lot of self-serving bums out of Washington DC and replace them with men and women who love this country and the principles it was founded on, who respect the letter and intent of the Constitution, and who will see to it that judges who also do replace those who don't.
 
AlbqOwl said:
You didn't even read the two documents I linked, did you.
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I scanned through them enough to determine there is nothing that has successfully challenged the interpretation by the courts that has not been successfully challenged in 70 years.

And judges who do not respect the Constitution will probably come to respect the legions pretty quickly if we are able to throw lot of self-serving bums out of Washington DC
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Well that hasn't been done in the last 70 years........ even though most of those 70 years the Republicans were in control of congress, so I'm not sure who you think will change it.
 
Catawba said:
I scanned through them enough to determine there is nothing that has successfully challenged the interpretation by the courts that has not been successfully challenged in 70 years.



Well that hasn't been done in the last 70 years........ even though most of those 70 years the Republicans were in control of congress, so I'm not sure who you think will change it.
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Ummm, I think you need to brush up on your math skills and your history if you think the Republicans were in control of congress for most of the last 70 years.

Were they during FDR's administration? No.
Were they during Truman's adminsitration? No.
Were they during Eisenhower's administration? No.
Were they during JFK's administration? No.
Were they during Johnson's administration? No.
Were they during Nixon's administration? No.
Were they during Ford's administration? No.
Were they during Carter's administration? No.
Were they during Reagan's administration? No
Were they during George H W Bush's administration? No.
Were they during Clinton's administration? Yes, six of the eight years.
Were they during George W. Bush's administration. Yes, six of the eight years.
Were they during Obama's administration? No.

So I count 12 years out of the last 70 or so that the GOP has been in charge of Congress. (There was a period during the Reagan administration when he did have a slight GOP edge in the Senate.)

But never say never when you have an electorate as angry as the one we have now. I hope they can hold on to their passion until the next elections so that we can begin to begin to reverse some of the damage that has been done over the last four administrations.
 
AlbqOwl said:
So I count 12 years out of the last 70 or so that the GOP has been in charge of Congress. (There was a period during the Reagan administration when he did have a slight GOP edge in the Senate.)
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That was a guess I made based on our history of a majority of Republican presidents. It makes no difference to the fact that Republicans have also not ended Social Security or Medicare when they were in control.

But never say never when you have an electorate as angry as the one we have now. I hope they can hold on to their passion until the next elections so that we can begin to begin to reverse some of the damage that has been done over the last four administrations.
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Which Republican do you think will make the stand to do away with Social Security and Medicare. I must be out of the loop. I have heard none of the potential candidates take this position.
 
AlbqOwl said:
You didn't even read the two documents I linked, did you. And you probably haven't read any of the Federalist papers or any of the other many many documents the Founders left behind to inform us of what was intended by the language of the Constitution.

They did not intend for it to be subject to different interpretation by anybody.

And judges who do not respect the Constitution will probably come to respect the legions pretty quickly if we are able to throw lot of self-serving bums out of Washington DC and replace them with men and women who love this country and the principles it was founded on, who respect the letter and intent of the Constitution, and who will see to it that judges who also do replace those who don't.
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God damn. That is some good stuff.
 
the idea of a flat tax seems ok, but i think percentages should change based on income.
I also think there should be direct democratic control over where our taxes goto
 
Flat tax benefits only the rich... it is also promoted by the rich and the uneducated.

Consumption tax only punishes the poor and benefits only the rich.

Only thing that is fair for society (not the individual) is a progressive tax systems without too many deductions.
 
AlbqOwl said:
But if you include affordable healthcare as appropriate for the general welfare, why not affordable housing, affordable food, affordable transportation, affordable clothing/heating/cooling all of which are more critical to life than is most healthcare?
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Actually, we already provide affordable transportation in the form of public roads and public transportation, and we provide affordable food in the form of food stamps and subsidies. I also advocate the government providing affordable housing by giving housing companies an incentive to construct smaller homes affordable to lower-income wage earners.

AlbqOwl said:
The Founders definition of the general welfare was that which benefitted all of society equally from the poorest to the richest. The Founders, to a man, believed it dishonest to confiscate one person's property who legally acquired it and give it to somebody else who had not earned it. The right to one's own labor, property, and self determination, so long as the rights of others were not infringed, was the pure definition of what they meant by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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And yet they allowed for racial slavery, which shows how hypocritical the Founding Fathers, or at least the myth of them, can be.
 
I find it intresting that several of those who voted for no change to the current system of income tax are from the party of change as opposed to the party of the status quo. It seems that conservatives are more intrested in seeing a changed to the current system. Does that mean that in this instance conservatives are about change?
 
SgtRock said:
I find it intresting that several of those who voted for no change to the current system of income tax are from the party of change as opposed to the party of the status quo. It seems that conservatives are more intrested in seeing a changed to the current system. Does that mean that in this instance conservatives are about change?
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Perhaps, but there's a difference between progressive change and regressive change, a difference between positive change and negative change. Which forms of taxation would be positive or negative is what this debate is about.

EDIT: As an example: Going back to a system of racial slavery for the economic benefit of a different race would be a change from how things are now. However, it would be regressive change and have a negative impact on those made slaves.
 
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PeteEU said:
Flat tax benefits only the rich... it is also promoted by the rich and the uneducated.

Consumption tax only punishes the poor and benefits only the rich.

Only thing that is fair for society (not the individual) is a progressive tax systems without too many deductions.
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How much makes you poor?
 
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