Tag Archives: Sounds Like Socialism

Life Expectancy

It may be true that America has already outlived her expected lifespan.  Most societies don’t make it much past 200 odd years.

It saddens me that we are showing symptoms of aging:

Redistribution of wealth rather than emphasis on its creation is surely a symptom of aging societies. Whether at Byzantium during the Nika Riots or in bread and circuses Rome, when the public expects government to provide security rather than the individual to become autonomous through a growing economy, then there grows a collective lethargy. I think that is the message of Juvenal’s savage satires about both mobs and the idle rich. Fourth-century Athenian literature is characterized by forensic law suits, as citizens sought to sue each other, or to sue the state for sustenance, or to fight over inheritances.

Queue Sean’s very sad Hobbit singing clip.

Taxes

I think the reason we find our government in such a position of stalemate is because we no longer agree on what taxes are meant to be.

I think that a long time ago we all mostly agreed that taxes were something that we all, in some way, paid to run the Federal government.

I think that today more and more of us feel that taxes are a means of redistributing wealth.

I don’t think we will see much in the way of compromise until that conflict has played out.