From: Case (Case@iSpots.com)
Date: Thu Sep 22 2005 - 15:40:35 BST
[Platt]
> I favor eliminating all Federal taxes except for a single percentage
> sales tax on all purchases by businesses and individuals.
[Case]
What public services to you invision funding with that level of funding?
[Platt]
> I would say there are no individuals without other individuals to trade
> goods and services with, except on a desert island.
[Case]
There are of course individuals living in isolation. But if that's your
defination of the value of other people, it surely explains a lot of the
other stuff you say. You seem to want to reduce all human interaction to an
exchange of money for goods and services. So in your view we should all pay
for love, rent friends, buy children. I think this is exactly the point I
was making, your view of capitalism seem to reduce everything of value to
cash.
[Platt]
> It's human nature to be more concerned with one's own than with strangers,
> especially when the strangers want to kill you.
[Case]
Perhaps we should be asking why these strangers want to kill us. Why do you
think they do?
[Case]
>> Chomsky like many patriots loves his country but hates what it does.
[Platt]
> Like his protege Michael Moore, he loves to hate America.
[Case]
Actually Moore is a protege of Ralph Nader. What exactly have any of these
men done or said that makes you think they are not patriots?
[Case]
>> I think if you look again you will see that the vast majority of
>> terrorism
>> originating in the Middle East stays in the Middle East. When you get
>> outside of the Middle East, terrorists are a much more eclectic bunch.
[Platt]
> Tell that to Russia, Spain, Britain and the families of the victims of
> 9/11.
[Case]
The point is that terrorism is not conducted by armys. Iraq's government was
not attacting us. I am just as upset about terrorist activity of any kind as
you are. But do you seriously believe that invading countries will have any
impact on the level of terroist activity?
[Case]
>> So Capitalism is a system that creates wealth but does not distribute it
>> and Socialism is a system that distributes wealth that is not created?
>> What
>> good is wealth that is not distributed?
[Platt]
> The good is that you get to keep what you worked to earn.
[Case]
You are still missing the point. If all you did was keep it that would be
pretty useless. Instead you get to make exchanges money for goods and
services. This process of exchanges is in fact a redistribution of wealth.
As I said at the onset all economic systems are about redistributing wealth.
[Case]
>> How do socialists distribute wealth if none is created?
[Platt]
> By taking from those who do create it at the point of a gun. People will
> always create if they have to, even if it's only a little cabbage patch.
[Case]
Can you provide some examples of social democracies that arm their tax
collectors? If what you say is true about the cabbage patch, then a tax rate
of 90% would have only a marginal impact on productivity.
> [Case]
>> How do you explain our willingness to exchange about one third of our
>> allotted time on earth in the pursuit of rectangular pieces of paper and
>> small disks of metal?
[Platt]
> Money is a convenient measure of value, better than buffalo hides.
[Case]
How does this abstraction: Money attain its value?
[Case]
>> So you are living in a small town and Wal-Mart builds a Super Center.
>> This
>> puts the local merchants out of business. You don't like it but what are
>> you to do? Where are you to shop?
>[Platt]
> Why don't you like it if you can get the same quality of goods and
> services at a lower price?
[Case]
It really doesn't matter why, the point is there is no choice.
>[Case]
>> I suppose you would have to grant, as the courts have done, that privacy
>> is
>> a right. Then there is piss testing which seems to me to be an unlawful
>> search and seizure but the courts have upheld that. Also read any End
>> User
>> Licensing Agreement and see what rights you surrender.
>
> There ain't no free lunch.
[Case]
So you are willing to give up the rights that patriots died to defend
because it is expediant?
[Platt]
> The Constitution limits what the government can do to "we the people."
> Unfortunately, liberal courts have expanded government's nose into
> everybody's business.
[Case]
So are you acknowledging that the constituion is in effect establishing the
relationship between individuals and the state?
[Platt]
> I have no objection to taxes used for proper government purposes like
> national self-defense.
[Case]
And you think that can be funded with a 1% sales tax?
>> [Platt]
> What you ought to do is pass an amendment to the state constitution
> reducing the number of school administrators and instituting a right to
> teach law to break up the teachers union's iron grip on the educational
> system.
[Case]
I live in a right to work state. Our teachers are not allowed to strike and
frankly our schools suffer as a result. Your vision has been realized here
and the result is a substandard system.
[Platt]
> Waste is paying $300 for a screwdriver.
[Case]
Who is paying that much for a screwdriver and why?
>> [Platt]
> France's unemployment rate is over 10 percent.
[Case]
Unemployment in Europe is pretty consistant across countries and it in the
10% range. You saying that this is a result of what?
[Platt]
> "In 2003, the average Canadian waited more than four months for treatment
> by a specialist once the referral was made by a general practitioner." --
> The Fraser Institute.
[Case]
As I said before that is about the waiting time to see a specialist in my
neck of the woods.
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