I get frustrated at times when discussing policy with people. I’m not actually particularly attached to a particular set of policies more than any other, personally. I’m against consolidation of power into one place to too great an extent. Other than that, I tend to analyze policies from a fairly objective standpoint. Since it’s been in the news and I’ve discussed it here before, I’ll use healthcare as an example.

I’m actually not against the idea of a nationalized health service or a single payer system. I am not really specifically for the current distributed free-market care system in the United States. I’m against the idiotic rhetoric that most of the people who espouse changing the current system spout. The discussion of which system is “better” shouldn’t end with “other people manage to do it” or “x group of people will suffer if we don’t do this” or “it’s the good/moral/right thing to do.”

Any choice of systems needs to be analyzed from an effectiveness standpoint. What’s the point of trying to accomplish a good end if you wind up making the situation worse than it was when you started? Which system to choose shouldn’t be analyzed solely by saying “our goal is to ensure everyone gets healthcare when they need it.” There’s a lot that goes into making that happen. Can everything that goes into making that happen be provided for? If so, what’s the best way of doing that? I’m more concerned with finding the structure that can accomplish the end goal – whatever it might be.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46303.html

http://www.breitbart.tv/michelle-obama-on-child-nutrition-we-cant-just-leave-it-up-to-the-parents/


I have a novel idea for how to fight childhood obesity; how about parents start paying attention to what their kids are eating instead of expecting others to do it for them? Making people take responsibility for their own choices... I know it seems like a radical idea but maybe we should give it a goddamn try!

I got into an argument recently.

The argument was about whether an individual's judgment is better than a community's judgment. This friend of mine who I argued with is a self-described liberal. Who claims that the judgment of the community is more important than the rights of the individual.

It occurred to me afterward, I wish it had occurred to me then, that their stance is somewhat inconsistent when you consider their opinion on certain issues. Proposition 8, for example. They consider it a good thing Prop 8 was struck down. But they had also said, during the conversation, that it was okay for the community to decide on rules and laws that individuals didn't agree with and that as long as it was the will of the majority, it should be followed. Yet Proposition 8 was proposed and voted on in California. Where a majority of those who turned out to vote on the proposition decided they wanted it as law. So that was the will of the majority. That was the will of the community. The decision to try and overturn it is the will of individuals. The decision to try and claim it is unconstitutional is the judgment of an individual.

I generally trust an individual to have better judgment than a community, I'll be honest. At least when it comes to THEIR OWN LIFE. Not necessarily when it comes to what constitutes public policy and the public good. The truth is that if you fully embrace individual choice with no communal structure, what you have is anarchy. And if you fully embrace community with no individual choice, what you have is a machine dictating the lives of the people whose individual lives, devoid of choice, lack meaning.

There has to be a communal structure for people to co-exist on a larger scale. What that structure should be depends on the individuals involved in it. There have to be some rules people can agree on. Some areas that the communal structure - the system - that we can call government are responsible for. But what areas should the community be responsible for and what areas should an individual be responsible for?

If a farmer works hard, by himself, and has a surplus of his crop - more than he needs - he might decide to sell or trade some of his surplus to those who need it in exchange for something he needs or wants. In that way, he benefits from his efforts, his time, energy and resources he expended on growing those crops. If the community decides it's important to feed those who can't feed themselves, I believe the community should PURCHASE the excess from the farmer. Not take it. The community should not force charity. And there are a lot of reasons for this.

Moral reasons: Forcing someone to labor for others without being able to benefit from their efforts and without a choice in the matter is basically slavery. People have the right to benefit from their labor. They have the right to make certain choices when it comes to what to do with their life.

Practical reasons: Motivation. If the farmer knows he's not going to be allowed to keep the surplus, why would the farmer ever grow a surplus? Maybe some people would. But a lot of people won't spend their time, effort and other resources on something so labor-intensive if they can't in some way benefit from it. And if the farmer decides he's not going to make a surplus anymore, the community can't take a surplus that doesn't exist. So the only thing the community can do is suffer because now, instead of people being able to trade their goods and labor that the farmer may need to get the surplus, the community as a whole has less food. Unless the community decides it's okay to take what the farmer grew for himself. And leave the farmer without enough food to feed himself and his family. And when that sort of thing happens, it never ends well. History has shown that it never ends well. Best case scenario? The farmer decides "screw you guys, I'm going to take my stuff and leave" and the community loses all benefit from having the farmer at all. Worst case scenarios tend toward violence.

The US decided, ages ago, that US citizens should be subject to various forms of taxation. No matter where they are in the world. There are US citizens who have been living and working in foreign countries for years who are giving up their citizenship because they are being taxed to support a country they haven't seen in years, don't know if they will ever see again and which is spending its resources on things that in no way shape or form that they can see benefit them more than becoming a resident of the countries in which they live and labor. People do decide "I'm taking my stuff and going away. Screw you guys." You can't stop them from deciding that. Unless you want to try to force them into full on slavery. And there's no way to pretend it would be anything other than that.

That's not a strawman. That's not an exaggeration. Yes, it addresses the extremes of the spectrum. But we move further and further toward the extreme ends of the spectrum as long as we let one side keep pulling us in one direction. Unless you really truly believe, somehow, that the much-vaunted idea of the "community" is so perfect, that the people who make up the community are so perfect that such a thing could never happen. And if you believe that, go read your history books. It already has happened. It has happened before and it could happen again. Communities are not noble. Communities are built on self-interest. The choice, then, is which you would rather have. Individuals pursuing their self-interest? Or the community forcing individuals to bend to its self-interest even if it means giving up their rights?

I know which one I choose.

So, I've been in Europe and the United Kingdom for the past several weeks.

I'll keep this short. Before I left, I got into an argument with someone about the police. Now, I used to work for the police department. I tend to be pretty pro-cops. I do know that you have some bad cops. And that even good cops are just ordinary people doing the best they can under the circumstances and sometimes they lose control or they have a lapse in judgment. People screw up.

The other side basically attempted to say that cops are all bad and used all the stories that have been in the news about all the times cops have been found to have used excessive force or overstepped their bounds. I have a hard time figuring out what he was actually trying to say, mind you. Because he claimed he wasn't advocating the lack of a police force. That he even acknowledged the necessity of a police force. But kept going on about how cops are bad and cops shouldn't do these things.

Yes... and? Cops should not lose their temper. Ideally, they should always be aware of their surroundings and use proper judgment. And ideally there should be no bad cops. But we don't live in an ideal world and cops are still people. And you have some people who are going to abuse their authority no matter what. And you have people who are going to screw up from time to time. And when you're a cop, your screw-ups may have bigger consequences than those of the average person. But there's not exactly a "solution" to that problem. You train the cops the best you can and have oversight, investigations and disciplinary action when they step out of bounds. We have that. Of course, that doesn't work exactly the way some people would like it to since it sometimes clears cops of wrongdoing when some people believe they shouldn't be cleared. I'm not saying there aren't cases where a cop has been cleared when they shouldn't have been. But I AM saying this; if a cop is in a dark alley, responding to a call for assistance or pursuing a perp and sees someone holding something that looks like a weapon and that cop calls for the person to put it down and that person raises it pointing in the direction of the officer? The officer should fire. If the officer was close enough to discern whether or not it was a weapon and found it wasn't, that's different. But when the officer doesn't know? That officer's life is on the line. And not firing his weapon could mean his death. And an officer should be cleared in a situation like that.

An officer should be cleared in an investigation where he used his taser to gain compliance from a subject who is flailing about and resisting arrest in a manner that is likely to end up causing serious injury to the subject, the officer or bystanders. An officer should be cleared for using pepper spray on a violent drunk.

Now there are a million things an officer shouldn't be cleared for, too. But all these people insisting how bad cops are happen to be forgetting; the officer's job isn't just to arrest someone. It's to keep the peace and ensure the safety of themselves and the general public.

If you don't like the cops, do everyone a favor; before you start badmouthing them, at least have a coherent point to make. Don't just point at things they've done wrong over the years without an endpoint to your argument. If you think there should be no cops and it should be lawlessness, I vote we petition the US government to send you to some third world country where things are basically that way so you can live the kind of life you claim to want. If you just think we need to be more effective at oversight, investigation and discipline? Ok. I can grant that. But keep in mind we're also severely shorthanded in law enforcement in the US. We're trying not to let go of officers where we don't have to in a lot of places (though from what I've read lately, that may be changing). So how do you balance those priorities? The need to have officers out there is real and significant.

Fair? You wanna talk about fair?

So, I made the mistake of watching an "amateur comedy night." I'm sure they'd take offense with my referring to it as "amateur night." But they were definitely amateurs. Not just at comedy - at thinking. Apparently, most would-be comedians seem to be under the mistaken impression that volume = quality. They yell and scream into the microphone until it hurts your ears. They get upset if you don't clap - or don't clap loud enough. Their jokes are generally tasteless and not funny, ex. "So, they released the report about what killed Gary Coleman. It was a different kind of stroke. Well, at least Michael Jackson now has someone to play with. And it's not technically pedophilia."

I'm not making that up.

I don't think it's wrong to make jokes about celebrities. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to make jokes about dead people or about death. But every single joke told by these people was told in a manner that made it apparent that they believe themselves smarter, wiser, somehow more worthy than the rest of the world. And don't even get me started on their so-called social commentary. Or their political bits. Now, I understand so-called "entertainers" have a tendency to be fairly liberal. I get that. And I get that it's because they've generally either a) been raised privileged enough not to have to worry about a real career, b) been raised to believe that education somehow makes up for intelligence, c) been indoctrinated by the culture of their industry. I get that. I get that most of them won't have a 9-5 job for the majority of their life. I get that most of them probably don't want a 9-5 job, preferring a job that allows them to have their nights free to pat each other on the back and drink too much. I understand how attractive a drug and alcohol induced haze can be compared to the realities of life.

I understand how people feel like something is wrong as long as some people starve to death. Or freeze on the streets. Or die of heatstroke. Or just don't have a home to go to, don't have the money for clothes. All while a minority of our population live in luxury. I understand how that can look like some form of injustice must be being perpetrated. And I'm not saying there isn't any injustice. I'm not "pro-wealth." I'm pro-reality. I'm for realizing that there's more to it than just seeing that everyone has a good meal and place to sleep. And it is beyond ridiculous to try and blame the wealthy "because they're wealthy" for the state of affairs. What would be a perfect solution to hunger? Hmm? Making sure everyone gets enough to eat isn't "the solution", it's the goal. The solution is how you're going to make sure everyone gets enough to eat. First, determine "how much is enough?" Because the more you have to give everyone at each meal, the more you have to somehow produce. Then ask yourself "how will we produce this amount of food?" Let's assume it's all crops. Someone has to grow the crops. Someone has to plant them, see to irrigation, keep pests away, harvest and process and transport the crops. Who's going to do all of that? And who's going to pay for all of that?

The government isn't an endless supply of money. "Government cheese" is a ridiculous idea, the government is already hemorrhaging money. Is everyone going to chip in and donate money to this endeavour? Or are we going to somehow do all of this without any money? That's not going to happen, not in this world.

What should the government provide for people? What should people provide for themselves? Does equality mean everyone has the same things and the same amount of everything? Or does equality mean providing a system in which a person's hard work, dedication and drive to succeed can give him the opportunity to acquire for himself what it is he desires? Some people denounce greed as evil. Greed is not evil. Greed is a human motivator. The desire to have something you do not have or to have more than you have. Greed is not evil. Greed motivates people to succeed. It motivates people to study, to work hard. It motivates people toward accomplishment. Greed can be taken to extremes. There are those who are greedy to have everything but who do not want to work or expend resources to acquire the things they desire. Those who want others to provide for them. These people are lazy. They are greedy AND they are lazy. That is when things start going bad. They want what others have. They want more than what others have, in fact, because they don't want to have to earn what others have. When people have no incentive to put forward any effort, they don't. The struggle for achievement, for improvement, for advancement of the self-interest is motivated by the promise of some kind of reward. Perhaps the reward is peace of mind. Perhaps the reward is access to greater resources. Perhaps the reward is self-fulfillment. When someone else provides everything for you, you have no incentive to advance your own interest.

In short, I understand the sentiment behind being upset and thinking it is "unfair" that some people have more than others. But that is life. That is the way the world works. Things aren't always fair. And I don't begrudge people their grumbling. Everybody grumbles. Especially on the bottom of the ladder. The person who goes out and works sixty hours a week swinging a hammer and hauling cinderblocks and shingles around and gets paid less than the scrawny twerp who sits in an office counting pencils all day is going to bitch. That's normal. I've been that kind of guy.

But the kid whose only job has been waiting tables, not because they were too poor or stupid to go to college and pursue a better career but because they were too LAZY.... the kid whose parents are still paying their bills ofr them... the kid who has never had to worry about such basic things as budgeting and making sure they had enough to pay the light bill and buy groceries for the month... that kid has no damn right to bitch about unfairness. And more to the point, that kid has no damn right to sit there and tell me - when I'm working 60+ hours a week - that I have to give up a pile of the money I'm earning to try and provide for myself and my family so that someone can make things "more fair."

Millionaire taxes
Apparently some liberal lawmakers are advocating millionaire taxes as a way to help offset the massive deficits throughout the US. I can’t believe I have to explain why this is a bad idea. But here we are.
First, let’s break down where income comes from. There are two primary sources of income for most people - employment income and investment income. Employment income is your salary or wages, the amount you earn from working. Investment income is what you earn on your investments over the course of the year.
Right now, the federal income tax rate (for a single person) is 33% if you make between (approximately) $171,000 and $370,000 a year. After that, it goes to 35%. Then you pay state income taxes. Which, depending on where you live, could be anywhere from nothing (or practically nothing) to another 11%. Let’s pick a well known location for a point of reference. NY. Their high end of the state income tax is about 9%, last I checked. So someone making, let’s say, $400,000 in employment income will pay approximately 44% of that in income taxes. Now, I personally could live on the remaining 56% of that quite comfortably, even in NY. The new millionaire’s taxes they’re proposing could add another 10% or more to the taxes. So the person making $400,000 would actually be bringing home less than half of what he is technically getting paid. I hear some of you saying “that’s still a lot of money.” And maybe it is. But what is the person doing to earn that money? If they’re working 12 hours a day, six days a week… well, if I were that person, I’d be rather upset that I don’t even get to keep half of what I earn. But people whose primary income is employment income aren’t the real problem with the millionaire’s tax, even though they’ll suffer the most from it.
Before I get into discussing investment income, I have to point out to the more idealistic people out there that a plan is only worth investing in if it has some hope of success. A plan that gives short-term benefits and causes long-term harm isn’t a good plan, no matter what the idiots in office would like you to think.
The truly wealthy people in the country have often amassed assets such to the point that they don’t have to work. They don’t rely on employment income. Once you earn your first few million or so, a savvy investor can live on a portion the interest for the rest of his life and watch his investments grow his fortune. Let’s take NY again as our example. There’s a federal capital gains tax on “short term capital gains” and on “long term capital gains.” Short term is anything that’s an investment of a year or less. Long-term is something that goes on for more than a year.
Short term capital gains are taxed at the same rate as the income tax. So, for the wealthy persons we’re discussing who are likely earning hundreds of thousands if not millions a year off of their investments, the tax rate on short term capital gains is already likely around 35%. Long term capital gains are taxed at 15%. Let’s add in the state tax rate on capital gains now. In NY, it’s almost 7%. So they’re getting taxed at 42% and 22% respectively. Let’s add in the millionaire’s tax at a modest 10% rate now. They’re losing over half of their short term investments and about a third of their long term investments.
You might argue they can afford to lose it, that they can afford to get by with a little less. That’s not the point. Hell, my point isn’t even that it’s immoral to jack their taxes up for no other reason than because they earn more money than the rest of the populace (though it does seem kind of messed up to me, trying to force them to pay to fix idiot legislator’s screw-ups). No, my point is this; those investments of theirs? They can invest elsewhere. Instead of putting their money into the NY economy (if NY were to pass a state millionaire’s tax) they can put it into the SC economy and that would seriously harm the NY economy. If the US passes a federal millionaire’s tax? The US has a provision that says that all US citizens are subject to income and capital gains taxes no matter where in the world their investments and employment are. This means that a contractor who hasn’t seen the US in 10 years who happens to be a US citizen has to pay the taxes of the country where he’s residing and working and still pay US income and capital gains taxes. There have been a lot of people working abroad over the past decade or so who, because of this, have decided to expatriate. They’ve decided to forsake their US citizenship and take citizenship where they are to avoid paying taxes to a government halfway across the world (taxation without representation, anyone?). What makes you think millionaires couldn’t do the same? What incentive would they have to remain US residents? Even if some of them decided not to expatriate, they still don’t have to keep their investments in the US. All that money which, through investing in US businesses and investing with US banks and firms, stimulates the US economy could just as easily go into another country’s economy. What country wouldn’t benefit from a few billion dollars of venture capital being injected into their economy? Even if they still paid taxes, their investment dollars would be gone. And they wouldn’t be paying the state taxes, only the federal ones.
Liberal legislators are a romantic, idealistic lot of idiots with their feet in the clouds and their heads in the sand. And no, I didn’t mess that up, I meant it that way. It’s true that raising taxes could generate some more capital for the federal government. But it sure as hell wouldn’t stimulate the economy. It wouldn’t create more jobs. It would encourage individuals and businesses to try and cut costs and spend less money, which means fewer jobs, not more. Between the house and senate, there are approximate 535 people in the two houses of congress. This isn’t counting the various staffers, special seats or executive branch seats. Their base salary is approximately $175,000 a year. That rate also applies to various federal judges and other government personnel. I’m sure if you looked into the financing, you’d also find they don’t actually pay for much. There are all sorts of perks to that kind of job. I think they could get by with $50,000 less a year in salary. You’d save over twenty six million dollars a year off of just those 535 seats. That’s not a big drop in the bucket, I know. But I, for one, would at least like to see our leaders – in a time of financial crisis – be willing to sacrifice a little bit out of their own pockets to contribute to fixing the problem instead of expecting the citizenry of the US to foot the bill for their screw-ups. Leadership by example, you know?
We can’t spend our way out of this deficit by throwing money at programs that only perpetuate the problems. We need to put people to work. We need to create more than just temporary employment. We spent our way out of the great depression, yes. But we did it by creating jobs. People going off to war, production of weapons, troop transports and supplies – the war created a demand for soldiers and for supplies to equip them with. The government wasn’t just “giving” people money. The government was actively putting people to work. Soldiers got paid by the government. And to supply the soldiers, the government ramped up their purchasing of various supplies that were necessary to wage a war. Manufacturing and construction were ratcheted up. And since so many people were off at war and the demand for supplies was so high, employment was plentiful for a great many people.
We hit a big hitch when the war was over and our soldiers came back and left the military and found that there weren’t any jobs, though. Thankfully, the money that had been earned during that time period allowed a lot of people to start their own businesses, allowed existing companies to grow and expand and create more jobs… it created a situation of ongoing positive growth – with some hiccups. But the growth wasn’t sustained through government spending. The growth was sustained through private spending and people working. Jobs are the only proper measure of a healthy economy. And our government needs to stop throwing good money after bad and sinking further and further into debt and expecting unemployed Americans to somehow pay for it all.

A few weeks

So, no updates for awhile.

See, I'm a law student. The past several weeks were finals for us. I was a hermit living in the library. Then I was gone for the whole weekend to go visit family. Then I started my summer job this week and have been busy recovering from finals and family visits and a heavy workload.

But all that is over now.

A little about me.

I'm 26. I'm a white male. I grew up in a small town in the southeastern united states. I grew up in a family that believes in God but is mostly quiet about their belief. Not an evangelical family, but a family which taught me the value of faith and the good it can do in a person's life. They also taught me to be critical of those who would tell you how to live your life. That how we choose to live our lives (the key word is choose) is up to each and every one of us. And that no one can make the decisions for us. I firmly believe that. It was a lesson I kept in mind throughout my life. I saw the good that religion can bring into the lives of others. But I also saw the harm it can do. I now have my own personal faith. My own personal understanding of God and of faith. I believe in God. I struggle to understand more about God and God's plan all the time. But I don't go to church. Because I got tired of being told how to live my life - more specifically, I got tired of being held to a higher standard than the people who were lecturing me held themselves to. I do not respect those who wish others to "do as I say, not as I do." Leading by example, I respect.

I'm not really a conservative. I'm not a liberal, either. I don't affiliate myself with either of the two big parties. I self-identify as libertarian although I disagree with the libertarian party on god knows how many things.

I believe in the ideal of freedom. Life, liberty and happiness. Freedom of choice is a big issue with me. But freedom means nothing without responsibility. Freedom of choice means, it necessarily means, freedom to take the consequences of our choices. The thing that bothers me most about today's society is that no one wants to accept the consequences of their choices. No one wants to make a hard choice and have it not work out. And when it doesn't, they don't want to own up to their choices. Everyone, even our best leaders, makes bad decisions. We learn from them. We hope we will make the best choice when it's important. But we don't always. And when it happens that we didn't make the best choice, the most damaging thing we can do is try and sweep it under the rug. When you ignore a problem, it gets worse. Short-term solutions are a big problem. That's what our leaders and, honestly, most people seek in their lives. A way to get themselves into the best position in the short term, the long-term consequences be damned. At best, that's a temporary solution. At worst, it's cosmetic and lets the problem get worse and worse until it can't be fixed anymore.