Spareink

Utilitarian.

i am a welfare state liberal who WANTS taxes raised. so i am generous both with my capital and others'. what does this make me?

Question: do you want taxes raised on yourself and your family? Or do you only want taxes raised on the really wealthy (ie, "other people")? (Or you can answer "both," if you consider yourself to be super wealthy:)

yes, my taxes are too low. i want higher taxes imposed on me, as well as the mythical 1%.

... can you please tell me how you sent aid to the victims of katrina, morgan, being the rightist that you are? can you please tell me what you are doing about poverty in new york? please tell me how your actions are helping support a cure for AIDS, or your actions are supporting women with fistulas in africa.

my point is this: you are seeking a justification for an underlying uncertainty about your own selfishness. so why not blame the deranged left, yet again?

i am willing to pay higher taxes so that the displaced of katrina can rebuild their lives. i am willing to pay higher taxes so that every child- and every adult, god willing, but i know we can't go there yet- does not have to worry about health care. i am willing to pay higher taxes so that you five men do not have your lives utterly ruined if the unthinkable happens and you find yourselves without jobs, savings or recourse. because, in my mind, this is the highest function of government- to protect its citizens.

i am particularly offended, morgan, at the callous way you (and alex!) take what seem to me to be nightmarishly selfish and restrictive viewpoints and positions and call them emblems of generosity and freedom.

i want to know how you've been so generous with your capital lately. because you seem to be bragging about it.

No one is stopping you from paying more in taxes. I have it on good authority that the government will accept and cash any and all checks you send them, even above and beyond the amount they suggest you pay.

And there's nothing nightmareish about selfishness -- only selflessness.

but, wouldn't it ultimately be more cost-effective for him to simply pay the difference as a contribution to whichever political group he feels would better effect the taxation he desires? if he simply sent it to a government undisposed to his selfless views, they might not spend it with the generosity of spirit he favors.

Sure, he could maximize his return by donating specifically to organizations furthering whatever cause he had wanted the difference between his actual tax and his "higher tax" to be used for.

The point was that his desire to pay higher taxes is a completely obtainable goal and no one will stop him.

The comments were not intended to be "bragging" whatsoever. You are deeply reading into it. I have not done anything particularly different recently.

Generally, I think that it is an unfair debate technique to make the debate personal, as you're doing here.

But, since you asked: a few years ago, I started a company dedicated to making Latin America a wealthy continent through creating good, (relatively) high-paying jobs there--creating opportunities for hard-working, professional people that, otherwise, have very few opportunities--and now I have eight people working for me there. I'm trying hard to demonstrate to everyone in Latin America how being professional and hard-working can pay off financially, to set the example and encourage it. You tell me: what is the greater good, to declare to the world you would hypothetically be willing to pay more taxes (excellent point, Matt, on how you can overpay already now if you want to!) and maybe donating a few hundred dollars a year to a few charities; or to dedicate yourself to the mission of making a poor continent wealthy, one job at a time, and being successful so far by already making eight people really happy and wealthier?

What have you done lately, Josh?

re personal: you took a label i am quite proud of- leftist- and defined it as its opposite to make yourself look clever and innovative. that's why i was offended.

but.

wait wait. i'm almost prepared to back down here, if you tell me the nature of the company you started.

your definition was quite broad: i consider our little iraq adventure to be quite the fiasco, as you know, but if you ran an oil company, you could just as well say that if you were haliburton, you were making iraq a better place by providing jobs over there. you see? a matter of context. so i'm ALMOST prepared to withdraw my attacks, depending upon the nature of your 'altruism'.

because if it's just exploitative nonsense masquerading as altruism, my attacks stand.

My company is a graphic design and software development firm.

It would be fun to run an oil company, though ;)

so context matters. radical idea.

Personal attacks tend to abort useful debate, but so do bumper-sticker quips about politics. After all, despite Josh being a died-in-the-wool welfare state liberal, your fiscal observations really only make sense if you're referring to some year prior to about 1988 (unless you were talking about some other country perhaps)

as for boiling everything down, I believe there are 10 types of people in politics; those who udnersatand binary code and those who don't...

ba-dum.

Josh, you fit Morgan's definition of Leftist to a tee. You could earn lots more taxable income if you wanted to do so. The fact that you have chosen a low-income lifestyle and then demand taxes be raised on those who don't is exactly what Morgan is describing.