05-21-2009
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Senior Member
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Mass. and RI
Posts: 905
Rep Power: 4
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Having picked fruit and hoed rows....yes, there is some price that some people might do it for. But your average America is just not gonna do it reliably. I'd love to be proven wrong, but constant reading of history shows me that it was this way even hundreds of years ago. Who do you think sat in all the factories as our country was industrialized? Yep, immigrants, women and children.....I am reading a book about early RI (1830) and you could pull a page from that book and hear the exact same drivel you hear today about immigrants, rights, etc......
It's fine to debate whether Americans would do it, but the reality is that as long as there is ANY chance of anyone else doing it, I say they will not.
I'm laughing just imagining kids from a suburban high school in a hot field all day. Of course, the cost of those crops to you and me - after they are picked by $25 an hour Americans - will be VASTLY higher. The right has a name for that - A TAX.
Yeah, quite a few Americans do work in chicken plucking - I'm familiar, having lived in WV and traveled down through the eastern shore. Good for your buddy.....I wouldn't want to work there, and I don't consider it a high quality of life. Many of the beef, chicken and other plants, though, are filled with immigrants - some legal...some maybe not legal (I have no way of knowing, obviously).
Use taxes are simple and something that many people, when asked, would stand behind. The Libertarians promote these as their perfect solution. It really just means - "you play, you pay". Sales tax is a use tax, road tolls are a use tax, airport fees are a use tax. If you use the service, you pay a tax. That would mean, for instance, that the price of gasoline would reflect 100% of the cost - the cost being the roads, the pollution (and health care required to mitigate it), etc. etc.
In other words, no free lunch.
Despite the moniker, there is no "fair tax", rather there is perhaps a better or best way of doing it within the current society. Our current system encourages consumption (and therefore lack of savings, lack of conservation) by taxing in the wrong manner. You can buy a million dollar house and a big truck and deduct the interest and prop taxes. You can buy a second house or big boat and do the same. But save the money and you'll be taxed heavier.
I'm sure we made this point before, but it would be nice if the original poster spelled Capitalism correctly. It would make many of us assume a bit more knowledge of the subject.
BTW, I am very much a member of Capitalist Pig class...having started many businesses, created wealth, obtained patents and spent quite a number of millions of dollars. It's a great economic system....but falls a bit short as a system of government or total life philosophy.
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"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the state governments extends over the individual states"
-George Washington
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