Religions > Atheism > 19th Century Slaves "Freer" Than People Who Pay Income Tax Today?
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Yang" |
| Date: |
29 Jan 2004 02:14:36 AM |
| Object: |
19th Century Slaves "Freer" Than People Who Pay Income Tax Today? |
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
From Prof. Brad DeLong
"Eugene Volokh's Jaw Drops
Eugene Volokh's jaw drops as he contemplates the views of Paul Craig
Roberts:
The Volokh Conspiracy: Columnists Paul Craig Roberts begins a recent
column with a criticism of the income tax -- something that certainly
could be criticized -- but then says (emphasis added):
Compare an American taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th century American
slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with marketable skills
were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for
money wages. Just like the wages of today's taxpayer, a portion of the slave's
money wages was withheld. In those days the private owner,
not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave's wages.
Slaves in that situation were as free as today's American taxpayer to
choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food
and clothing, and entertain themselves.
IN FACT, THEY WERE FREER THAN TODAY'S AMERICAN TAXPAYER.
By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom.
No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are
pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its
ownership rights for years after an American gives up his citizenship
and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS need only claim
that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax reasons.
Conspicuously omitted from the comparison: Pre-Civil-War slaves
could be sold by their masters. The masters could sell one's spouse,
or one's children, and you might never see them again. The masters
could sell one's daughters into prostitution. In some states, it was
illegal for slaves to be educated. Slaves naturally didn't have
constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech. Masters could, to
the best of my knowledge, engage in a broad range of corporal
punishment (all of course without any requirement of due process). The
masters surely could try to stop slaves from running away, and to my
knowledge many slaves were murdered while trying away. Need I go on?
Seriously, would any of you trade your modern status, even with
high income taxes, for being a slave in the 1850 South, even a favored
one such as the sort Roberts describes? Hey, I'm a big believer in
economic liberty, which too many people wrongly devalue. But it's
ridiculous moral blindness to overvalue it, and to undervalue the
panoply of other liberties that we as free men have and that Southern
slaves did not. "In fact, [certain pre-1860 American slaves] were
freer than today's American taxpayer" is just an appalling statement
to make.
Oh, and here's the crowning touch, from later in the column:
The "Civil Rights revolution" destroyed equality before the law. Today
rights are race-and gender-based. We have resurrected the status-based
rights of feudalism. The new privileges belong to "preferred
minorities" rather than noble families.
Readers of the blog know that I'm happy to complain about ways in
which civil rights laws (and other laws) restrict liberty, or erode
equality. But saying that "The 'Civil Rights revolution' destroyed
equality" and that "Today rights are race- and gender-based" suggests
that somehow before the 1960s we had more equality and didn't have
race- and gender-based rights.
Jim Crow; segregated schools; legal prohibitions on women working
in various jobs; government tolerance of race-based lynchings; routine
discrimination against nonwhites and women in a vast range of
government jobs; systematic police abuse of blacks -- all that somehow
didn't involve and "race- and gender-based" rights, and hadn't yet
destroyed equality. But set up race- and sex-based affirmative action
(which, I stress again, I oppose) and other aspects of modern civil
rights laws; now, all of a sudden (even though women and racial
minorities have more nearly equal opportunities with men and whites
than they've ever had in American history) that's "destroy[ing]" some
preexisting equality. What sort of moral and practical blindness is
this?
Consider: This is the kind of guy whom Ronald Reagan chose to be an
assistant secretary of the Treasury. This is one of the core original
supply-side group. We economists have been dealing with Craig for
decades now. "
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Socerey Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec
The Bush 'balanced' budget: -525 billion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: -3 million jobs and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -514 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: 19th Century Slaves "Freer" Than People Who Pay Income Tax Today? |
29 Jan 2004 08:11:57 AM |
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And so upon Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:14:36 +0000 didst Yang speak thusly:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
From Prof. Brad DeLong
"Eugene Volokh's Jaw Drops
Eugene Volokh's jaw drops as he contemplates the views of Paul Craig
Roberts:
The Volokh Conspiracy: Columnists Paul Craig Roberts begins a recent
column with a criticism of the income tax -- something that certainly
could be criticized -- but then says (emphasis added):
Compare an American taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th century American
slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with marketable skills
were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for
money wages. Just like the wages of today's taxpayer, a portion of the slave's
money wages was withheld. In those days the private owner,
not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave's wages.
Slaves in that situation were as free as today's American taxpayer to
choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food
and clothing, and entertain themselves.
IN FACT, THEY WERE FREER THAN TODAY'S AMERICAN TAXPAYER.
By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom.
No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are
pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its
ownership rights for years after an American gives up his citizenship
and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS need only claim
that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax reasons.
URK!
I hate to tell this guy this but while the level of taxes today and the
tactics of the IRS may well be onerous, there's this bit about, oh, you
can ***** at Congress and get things changed.
A slave that "petitioned for redress of grievances" would, at best, get
*nowhere. At worst, talk about punishment.
Obviously idiots like this are just ***** because most of the public
doesn't seem upset enough to whack Congress and make them change things.
Maybe they should be upset. But apparently they aren't.
When the public *has risen up on its hindquarters, Congress wets its
collective pants and changes the law overnight. Under slavery, that would
be an "uprising" and instead of changing things, they'd *shoot at you...
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels."
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| User: "Mekkala" |
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| Title: Re: 19th Century Slaves "Freer" Than People Who Pay Income Tax Today? |
29 Jan 2004 09:35:12 AM |
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On Thu 29 Jan 2004 08:11:57a, "Mark K. Bilbo" <y@hoo.com-amikchi> kicked
back with a beer, ruminated at length, fell asleep, woke up, lit up a
joint, then fell asleep again after thoughtfully blurting out:
And so upon Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:14:36 +0000 didst Yang speak thusly:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
From Prof. Brad DeLong
"Eugene Volokh's Jaw Drops
Eugene Volokh's jaw drops as he contemplates the views of Paul Craig
Roberts:
The Volokh Conspiracy: Columnists Paul Craig Roberts begins a recent
column with a criticism of the income tax -- something that certainly
could be criticized -- but then says (emphasis added):
Compare an American taxpayer's situation today with that of a 19th
century American slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations.
Some with marketable skills were leased to businesses or released to
labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages
of today's taxpayer, a portion of the slave's money wages was
withheld. In those days the private owner, not the government,
received the withheld portion of the slave's wages.
Slaves in that situation were as free as today's American taxpayer to
choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food
and clothing, and entertain themselves.
IN FACT, THEY WERE FREER THAN TODAY'S AMERICAN TAXPAYER.
By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their
freedom.
No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are
pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its
ownership rights for years after an American gives up his citizenship
and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS need only claim
that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax reasons.
URK!
I hate to tell this guy this but while the level of taxes today and
the tactics of the IRS may well be onerous, there's this bit about,
oh, you can ***** at Congress and get things changed.
A slave that "petitioned for redress of grievances" would, at best,
get *nowhere. At worst, talk about punishment.
Obviously idiots like this are just ***** because most of the
public doesn't seem upset enough to whack Congress and make them
change things. Maybe they should be upset. But apparently they aren't.
When the public *has risen up on its hindquarters, Congress wets its
collective pants and changes the law overnight. Under slavery, that
would be an "uprising" and instead of changing things, they'd *shoot
at you...
I personally think taxes are ridiculously high. I made about $40K this
year and I'm paying over $9000 in taxes. NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Now, why are taxes so high? Considering that the government seems
always to have problems with money shortage, one might say that they
simply must take all that money from the American people or the
government will be broke -- except that, right off the top of my head, I
can think of many, many things the government spends massive amounts of
money on that I personally believe we can do quite well without. Here's
a short list:
1. War in Iraq
2. Drug war (This is the biggest one -- I wonder how many people know
how much of their own hard-earned money is going into this war that is
accomplishing precisely nothing?)
3. CIA meddling in other countries' governmental systems
4. "Police action" and various troop deployments in other nations who
don't want or need us there
And so on... I'm sure I could think of some more if I sat thinking about
it for a while, but just those four alone, if they were eliminated or at
least greatly reduced in scope, our taxes could take a massive drop
without bankrupting the government. Also, I wonder how much money the
IRA itself spends to stay up and running.
The fact of the matter is that I always have and probably always will
want a government with as little duties and authority as possible --
ideally, it would be a government that does nothing but protect its
citizens from one another and from external threats. All other things,
such as space exploration, should be done by the private sector for
profit (assuming we could convince corporations to take on such
enterprises on nothing but the hope of future long-term profit). I
don't know if that is workable, though; I'm not a political scientist.
But in any case, the American people spend a ridiculously high
percentage of their income on nothing but running the government.
There's something wrong there, and I simply don't buy excuses that the
government can't survive without wallowing in half of our hard-earned
cash. I'm willing to pay taxes; I'm NOT willing to pay a quarter of my
income in taxes. And yet, if I don't, the IRS will utterly destroy me
financially. It IS slavery, though I agree it's not as bad as 19th
century slavery.
--
Mekkala, Atheist #2148
"Atheism is ... the bed-rock of sanity in a world of madness."
--Emmett F. Fields
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| User: "SMChristenson" |
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| Title: Re: 19th Century Slaves "Freer" Than People Who Pay Income Tax Today? |
03 Feb 2004 07:22:22 AM |
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Well, I don't think slaves _had_ an income to tax.
But they could take it out on your hide.
Silly.
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