Taxation... again...

Here's a thought...

In my previous blog, I mentioned that the philosophy behind the progressive tax is that those who receive the most benefit from the protections of our society should pay the lion's share for those benefits. I still believe that this is a valid approach to taxation. The problem is: how do you effectively implement it?

Taxation

Any way you look at it, taxes are functionally the same as protection racket payments. When you pay taxes, you are paying someone else to protect your assets. When you pay the "Mob", you pay to protect your assets from the "Mob" and its competitors. When you pay the government, you pay to protect them from a larger variety of hazards, including those same criminals, as well as natural and man-made disasters, and ignorance, just to name a few.

What Would You Say? - Redux

The text of this post originally appeared as a response to comments upon a previous post, left by my beloved brother. That is not tongue-in-cheek, folks. I really do love my brother, though we frequently disagree. 

Given that his comments generally cause me to expend vast amounts of energy in composing rebuttals, they are among the few that I would have gone to the effort to reproduce here, but they disappeared when he vacated his MySpace™ profile. In the text that follows, the quoted segments were contained in my rebuttal, and excerpted from his original comments.

People Look At Me Funny...

I go through life with a soundtrack.  I grew up during a time when people sang, or played instruments, or both, all the time.  They did this instead of going to concerts or watching a performance on TV, mostly because at that time, no one could afford those things. But you know what?  I think they were happier, better adjusted people.

Heart Health

Hurrah!

Yesterday was a good day, in spite of the fact that my doctor tried to kill me.

You see, I've reached an age when both he and I want to establish the baseline state of my health, and what the impact of that is going to be on my future lifestyle. This requires that some tests be performed.  We just don't always agree on which ones should be done first.

What Would You Say?

Yesterday I got, as did some of you, a forward from Uncle W, containing a pic of a young boy, being handed a folded American Flag, at what was obviously intended to portray a military funeral. The subject line was:

"WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO THIS KID????"

Appliances

Life was simpler, before appliances. You might not believe that I'm old enough to remember, but I am.

You see, while I was growing up, some homes actually did have TV, washers, and dryers, even dishwashers!   Not everyone could afford them, though.  My parents didn't usually have to cope with broken appliances, for the simple reason that they usually didn't have any appliances at all, to speak of.