How can a cheap American buy a HOUSE in the 1st. World ?

Sorry..
What do you mean by "tension"?
I'm able to translate but not to understand ..

 

Union membership has destroyed many of their unions. Ignorant but security hungry members vote for a "no strike clause". Sounds good, but they're not understanding they just gave up they're ratification rights. Now the union bosses hobnob with the company and here's your new contract boys, like it or not.
States citizens vote for "Right to work" not realizing they are effectively outlawing unions. Sounds good, but you can't have a company half unionized.
People vote for silly laws because they were "sold" on it by politicians, union or govt, same kinda liars are politicians.

 

You're kind of one-sided too, Troy. Boeing, Boeing. I never said all employers are benevolent philanthropists, but more of them are than the politicians you support.

 

When things are not going well, political people spend their time blaming "the other guy" instead of getting anything done.

The harder you work, the more you have to pay for others to draw on?
The Social Security system was supposed to be to provide for your own retirement. You pay in so the money is there when you need it in retirement.
Now you've changed it to a tax like all other taxes Yobarnacle.
I don't like that.

 

stress

 

Yes we need to go back onto the silver and gold standard. Gold isn't more expensive. Dollar is worth less.

 

As per Troys post #1079-- recall-- greedy-ignorant-non compasionate- Just plain evil employers are the breeding grounds for unions -- If a company allowed employees substancial shares in the company as well profit sharing but not insult them by mega million yearly payouts(GREED & MORE GREED) to management there would be no need for unions.

Off to the Shop

 

It is like molecular tension that holds a soap bubble together. When the stress gets to great the soap bubble tension is overcome and the bubble collapses.

 

When they started the social security, they debated was it to be a savings program? or an entitlement. They chose entitlement. First recipients had never paid a dime in fica because it hadn't existed. Each working generation pays benefits to retirees. Excess is spent by government just like other revenue. On paper, the government owes the SS trust fund 2.6 trillion dollars and pays 5.5 % interest on it. But the money is spent. 2.6 trillion of the 15 trillion national debt was "loaned" by SS. So it's a tax and always was. Says so on your W2. Fica tax

I worked at a dangerous difficult job for 43 years and paid in tons of money. Now I'm retired, I'm LAZY?

 

Maybe more accurately, fogged windows are obscured by tiny droplets of water that cling to each other by surface tension. If politicians can create enough tension, their true agendas are hidden in the fog. Or it could be what we think is fog, is backroom cigar smoke and whiskey haze from the good ol boys running govt.

 

something to read (if you want) from France in 1848.
Is there really anything new under the sun ...

Frederic Bastiat
The State

(1848)


Note

This article was published in the Journal des Debats, September 25, 1848.

I wish that you should set up an award, not five hundred francs, but a million francs and given laurel wreaths, crosses and ribbons of merit, to reward the one who will offer a definition of good, simple and smart of this term: the state.

Which would not be rendered immense service to society!

The State!
What is it? where is it? are you doing? What should I do?

All we know is that it is a mysterious character, and certainly the most stressed, the most tormented, the busiest, most recommended, as accused, the most invoked and urged that there is more to the world.

Lord, I have the honor to meet you, but I'm willing to bet ten to one that for some months you dream grandiose schemes, and if this is true, yet I'll bet ten to one that you assigned to the State the task of achieving them.

And you, Madam, I am sure that deep in your heart you want to be healed all the ills of this poor humanity, and that would not be not at all unhappy if only the state accingesse to this task.

But, alas! The mean, like Figaro, who can neither listen, nor which side directed. The hundred thousand mouths of the press and in the stands shouted to him, all together:

"Organize the work and workers.
Eradicated selfishness.
Repress the insolence and tyranny of capital.
Promote experiments on fertilization and egg production.
Fill in the country of railroads.
Irrigated plains.
Afforested mountains.
Evidence of the model farms.
Based laboratories which will work all in harmony.
Colonized Algeria.
Give milk to children.
Educated youth.
Assist the elderly.
Notify me of city dwellers in the countryside.
Equalize the profits of all industries.
Lent money without interest, to those who so desire.
Freed from foreign rule in Italy, Poland and Hungary.
Farmed and improved the breed of riding horses.
Encourage art, give us the musicians and dancers.
Prohibited trade and, at the same time create a merchant marine.
Discover the truth and let us get into our heads a little bit of reason.
The State has as its mission the task to enlighten, develop, enlarge,
fortify, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people. »

"Oh! Gentlemen, a little 'patience "says the State, with a resigned air.

"I'll try to give satisfaction to your requests, but to do what I need resources. I prepared the resolutions for five or six of all new taxes and the most benign in the world. You will see that it will be a pleasure to pay them. »

Then a great cry rises to heaven:
"What! What! that there would be merit in getting resources to do anything! To do so is not worth the effort to call the state. Far from hitting us with new taxes, we will asked to suppress the effect.

Delete:

The tax on salt;
The tax on alcoholic beverages;
The tax on the correspondence;
The consumption tax;
Licences;
The mandatory services. »

In the midst of this tumult, and after that the country has changed two or three times the state government for not having complied with these requests, I allowed myself to point out that they were contradictory.
What I am hanged, for heaven's sake! I could not keep to myself consider this unfortunate?

So here I am disgraced forever, and now it is a fact that I am a heartless, liver, arid a philosopher, an individualist, bourgeois, and, to sum it all, an economist at the school's English or American.

Oh! I ask pardon of you, sublime men of letters, that you stop at nothing, not even in front of the contradictions. Am I wrong, no doubt, and I humbly withdraw. I do not ask for better, you may be sure, if indeed you have discovered, outside of us, a benefactor of the inexhaustible resources called the State, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all economic enterprises, the credit for all projects, ointment for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all the indecision, the solution for all doubts, truths for all thinking beings, distractions for all the tribulations of baby milk, wine in old age, a benefactor who provides all our needs, prevents all our desires, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, all our shortcomings, and exempt us henceforth from any provident, prudent, judicious, wise, experienced, neat, economical, temperate, active.

And why should I desire it? God forgive me, the more I reflect, I find it more convenient, and I look forward to, too, in my service, this inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment, this elixir universal, this treasure without end, this adviser you call infallible State.

So I ask that you show me that you define, and that is why I propose to establish a prize for the first to reveal this phoenix. Because, after all, you will quite agree with me that this precious discovery has not yet been made, since, until now, everything that comes in the name of the State, the people reject him immediately, just because it does not meet the conditions, however, some 'conflicting program.

It should just say so? I fear that we are all in this regard, under the influence of one of the most bizarre deceptive illusions that have ever taken possession of the human spirit.

The human being escapes the pain and suffering. And despite what is condemned by nature to the suffering of deprivation if it does not take upon himself the penalty of Labor. So is not that the choice between these two evils.

How to avoid them both? So far he has not found and will never find that only one half, which is to enjoy the work of others, is to ensure that the penalty and Enjoyment is not incumbent upon each one according to a natural relationship, but that all the punishment falls on one and come all the other enjoyments. Hence slavery, exploitation, whatever the form taken by these phenomena: wars, deceit, violence, restrictions, fraud, etc.., Monstrous abuses, but in line with the idea that gave them origin. You should hate and fight the oppressors, but we can not say that they are absurd.

Slavery disappeared, thank goodness, and, on the other hand, this state of mind for which we commit ourselves to defend our property, makes the robbery pure and simple is not so easy. Despite what something is. It is this unfortunate tendency to divide into two parts of the complex experience of life, rejecting the other la Pena and retaining for themselves the enjoyment. You have to look under what new form it manifests this unfortunate trend.

The oppressor no longer acts directly sull'oppresso relying on his own strength. No, our conscience has become too prudent to do so. There are still the tyrant and the victim, but between them stands a broker who is the State, namely the law itself. What more aseptically to silence our scruples and, what is it extremely valuable to overcome the resistance? So, all under any title, under one pretext or another, we turn to the state. We say:
"I find that there is, among my pleasures and my pains a working aspect ratio that satisfies me. I would love to restore the desired balance, take something from the resources of others. But this is dangerous. Not by chance could you facilitate the thing? You could not you get me a good place? Or block appropriately industrial activities of my competitors? Or better yet, lend interest-free capital that you have taken to their owners? Or educate my children at the public expense? O grant me the reward? Or make sure a good life when I'm fifty years? In this way achieve my goal with peace of conscience, because the law itself, which will be done for me, and I will have all the advantages dell'accaparramento without having either the risk or hatred! »

Being certain that, on the one hand, we turn to the State all such requests, and that, on the other hand, it is undisputed that the State can not provide enjoyment to both without increasing the work of others, waiting for another definition State, I feel authorized to give her my own. Who knows that it does not get the first prize?
Here it is:

The State
is the great illusion
through which all
try to live at the expense of all others.

In fact, today as yesterday, more or less, each would certainly benefit from the work of others. This angle does not have the courage to show it openly, there is also hidden themselves, and then what do you do? One imagines an intermediary, we turn to the state, and every class, one after the other, would say:
"You who have the power to expropriate legally, honestly, take from the public, and we leave it all."

Alas! the state also has a great inclination to follow this diabolical suggestion, since it is composed of ministers, officials, in a word that humans, like all human beings, carry within them the desire and grasp always the concern ' see opportunities to increase their wealth and influence. The State, therefore, soon learns that it can glean something from the role that the public entrusts to him. It will be the arbiter, the master of the destinies of all: collect a lot, and therefore to remain well for himself, multiply the number of its representatives, will extend the scope of its powers, eventually overwhelming proportions.

But what is absolutely necessary to note, is the astonishing blindness of the public in this. When the soldiers reduced the lucky losers in a state of slavery, they were barbarous people, but their behavior was not absurd. Their aim, like ours, was to live by the other, but, like us, they reached their goal. What are we to think of a people if it does not seem to doubt that reciprocal plunder is not the less spoliatore for being mutual, which is not less criminal by the mere fact that it is completed according to law and in an orderly manner, it adds nothing to the public welfare, that it, on the contrary, it decreases the amount it costs to keep this expensive intermediary we call the state?

And this great chimera, we have placed, for the edification of the people, the beginning of our Constitution. Here are the first words of the preamble:

"France has been incorporated in the Republic for ... calling all citizens to an even higher level of morality, wisdom and wealth. »

So is France, or an abstraction, recalling the French or the realities of life to the moral, welfare, etc.. This does not mean sinking into the bizarre illusion that leads us to expect everything from an energy that is not ours? Is it not give us to understand that there is, alongside and outside of France, a virtuous, enlightened, and rich, who can bestow upon them his charity? Is it not suppose, and certainly in a totally free, there are between France and the French, the simple designation of condensed and abstract of all individuality and these same individuality, relationships similar to those that exist between the father and the son, the tutor and the pupil, the teacher and the pupil? I know that it is sometimes said in a metaphorical: The country is a tender mother. But to grasp the emptiness in the act of constitutional provisions, it is sufficient to show that it can be turned over, not only without inconvenience, but even with some advantage.
Maybe that accuracy of expression would suffer if he recited the preamble:

"The French Republic is established in France to call for an even higher level of morality, wisdom and well-being? »

Now, what is the value of an axiom where the subject and the attribute can be exchanged without any hiccups? Everyone understands when you say the mother breast-feed the baby. But it would be ridiculous to say the baby suckle its mother.

The Americans have made a different conception of the relationship between citizens and the state, where they placed at the beginning of their Constitution these simple words:

"We, the people of the United States, to form a more complete union, to establish justice, ensure peace at home, provide for the common defense, to increase the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our descendants , decree, etc.. "

Here we find no chimerical creation, no abstraction at which people demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and from their own willpower.

If I'm allowed to criticize the first words of our Constitution, it is because this is not, as one might believe, a mere metaphysical subtlety. I contend that this personification of the State has proved in the past and will in future be a fertile source of calamities and upheavals.

Here the public on the one hand, the other state, considered as two distinct beings, must remit the first gifts to the second, the second feeling entitled to claim from the first a torrent of human satisfactions. What needs to happen?

In reality, the state is not crippled and can not be. It has two hands, one to receive and the other to give, or otherwise stated, the rough hand and soft hand. The activity of the latter is necessarily subordinate to the activity of the first.

Strictly speaking, the State could take without giving. This has been seen and explained by the porous and absorbent nature of his hands, which always retain a part and sometimes the totality of what they touch. But what has never seen, that you will never see and that you can not even conceive, is the possibility that the state returns to the public more than it takes. It is therefore folly to take the total to the State the humble attitude of beggars. It is radically out of the reach of the state to confer a particular advantage to some individuals forming the community, without inflicting more damage to the community as a whole.

It is thus placed in relation to our needs, in a clear vicious circle.

If it refuses to do the good expected from him, it is accused of impotence, ill will, of incapacity. If it tries to do good, he is forced to hit the people of charges in double measure, to do more harm than good, and attract, in other respects, the general disaffection.

Thus, in the hopes the public is fed by the government and express two promises many benefits and no tax. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, never materialized.

Is not this the cause of all revolutions? Because, between the State bestows impossible promises, and unrealistic hopes the public understands, is to interpose two classes of individuals: the ambitious and the utopians. Their role is entirely marked by the situation. Just these courtiers of popularity cry out to the ears of the people:
"The power will deceive, if we were in their place, we really fills you with every good and frees you from taxes. »

And the people believe, and the people hope, and the people make a revolution.

The new courtiers do not have time to occupy the command posts, which they are told to decide to do.
"Give me, therefore, work, food, health, credit, education, colonies, say the people, and at the same time, according to your promises, deliver me from the jaws of the Treasury. »

The new state is no less awkward than the old one, because when it comes to things that are impossible, it is easy to promise but not keeping promises. Then tries to gain time, and it needs to mature his vast projects. First, does the timid attempts, on the one hand, extends a little 'primary education, and second, a little change' the tax on alcohol (1830).
But the contradiction stands always before him: if he wants to be philanthropic, tax is required to be, and if the tax waiver, it must also renounce to philanthropy.

These two promises always and necessarily clash against each other.
Making use of credit, that is devouring the resources of the future, this is certainly a practical way to reconcile the promises you try to deploy some 'benefits many faults in this building for the future. But to proceed in this way evokes the specter of bankruptcy, which extinguishes the credit. What is it then? Then the new state takes the initiative boldly, gathers the strength to hold on to power, suppresses freedom of expression, he resorts to arbitrary measures, ridicules the ancient proclamation, declare that you can not administer that long to be unpopular; In short, claims to governmental power.

And that's where I await others who are eager to popularity. They use the same illusion, pass through the same paths, obtain the same success, and soon going to be swallowed up in the same abyss. That's how we came to February. At that time, the illusion that is the subject of this article had penetrated more deeply than ever in the minds of the people, through the socialist doctrines. More than at any other time, it was expected that the State under the republican form, fully opened and closed the source of the tax benefits.
"I was often deceived, said the people, but I shall make sure they do not tease me once again. »

What could the provisional government? Alas! what it always does in similar circumstances: promise and gain time. Is certainly no lack of promises, and to give greater solemnity to them, seals them in some decrees.
"Raising the well-being, decreased workload, service, credit, free education, agricultural settlements, land reclamation, and at the same time reducing the salt tax, beverage tax, postal stamps, meat, everything will be voted ... the first meeting of the National Assembly. "

The National Assembly met, and since you can not give way in two contradictory demands, his job, his sad task, was to withdraw, in the most silent, one after another, all the decrees the Provisional Government.

At the same time, not to make too cruel disappointment, it was necessary to make exceptions. Certain commitments were kept, others received a small sign of approval. So the administration currently in office can make an effort of imagination on new taxes.

Now I guess to see what happens from here a few months, and I wonder, with sadness in my heart, what will happen when all the agents of the state will go in our new campaign to collect new taxes on inheritances, on income, profits of agricultural production. That Heaven denies me, but I can see still a role for all those who are hunting for popularity

Read the last manifesto of the Montagnards, what they have issued on the occasion of the presidential election. It's a bit 'long, but, after all, can be summarized in two words: the state must give to the citizen and expect little from them. It is the same tactic, or if you want, the same error.

"The state must provide free education and education for all citizens. »

It must:
"A general and professional education appropriate to the extent possible, the needs, inclinations and capacities of each citizen. »

It must:
"Teaching the citizen's duties to God, to men and to himself, develop his feelings, inclinations, and his faculties, then give him the knowledge to carry out its work, to secure its interests and to enforce his rights. »

It must:
"Putting the reach of all the letters and the arts, cultural heritage, treasures of the spirit, all intellectual enjoyments which elevate and strengthen the human soul. »

It must:
"Offer reparation for any disaster, fire, flood, etc.. (So ​​that it says more than it sounds) suffered by a citizen. »

It must:
"Intervening in the relations between capital and labor and be the regulator of credit. »

It must:
"Providing support to agriculture in the safe and effective protection. »

It must:
"Acquiring the property of railroads, canals, mines," and no doubt administer them with the managerial skills that characterize it.

It must:
"Encouraging companies bold, encourage them and help them through all the resources able to make them triumph. Regulator of credit, will direct the State with its directives, industrial and agricultural associations, in order to ensure its success. »

The state must take care of everything, not forgetting the tasks that it currently serves, and, for example, need to keep it forever, against foreigners, a threatening attitude, in fact, say the signatories of the program, "united by Mindful of this holy solidarity and glorious enterprises of republican France, we deliver our desires and our hopes beyond the despotism raises barriers between nations: the rights that we claim we want them also to all those that the yoke oppressive tyranny, and we want this is still our glorious army, if necessary, the army of freedom. »

You will realize that the loving hand of the state, this good hand that gives and distributes, will be very busy under the government of the Montagnards. Perhaps you believe that your other hand, the rough, which penetrates and empties our pockets, will not be as busy?

Give up your illusions. Those who seek the popularity would not know their job if they had not acquired the art of showing the benevolent hand, while hiding the rough hand.

Their rule would otherwise be the greatest happiness of the taxpayer.
"It's unnecessary, they say, do not you need to be struck from the tax."

Would not it be a good one in which age, to cover us with benefits, the tax to be content to take only our excess?

But that's not all. The Montagnards who aspire to 'the tax to lose its oppressive character, and is nothing more than an act of brotherhood. »

Goodness of heaven! I well knew that it is fashionable to put all over the fraternity, but excludes certain that it could be implemented among the papers of the tax.

Coming down to details, the signatories of the program state:
"We want the immediate abolition of the taxes levied on basic necessities such as salt, drinks, et cetera.
"The reform of land tax, the excise duties, concessions.
"The free administration of justice, namely the simplification of procedures and reduction of costs. '
(Here we are undoubtedly on the cost of stamps)

Thus, property tax, consumption tax, licenses, stamps, salt, drinks, postal stamps, everything is put into the cauldron. These gentlemen have found the secret to grant unbridled activism to the good hand of the state at the same time paralyzing the rough hand.

Well, I ask the reader balanced, this is not making a show of infantilism, infantilism and most harmful?
How can the people do not make a revolution after another, since he has decided to stop their protest only after understanding the existence of this contradiction: "Do not give anything to the state and receive much in return! »
Perhaps there is someone who believes that if the Montagnards came to power, would not themselves the victims of the scams they use to seize it?

Citizens, in all ages, have presented two political systems, and both can advance good reasons for their existence. Under the first, the state must do much, but it also has the right to take a lot. According to another, the double action of give and take should be greatly reduced. You have to choose between these two systems. But, as regards third system, which takes some of the other two, and which consists in exacting everything from the State without giving anything, it is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory, dangerous. Those who support it, in order to gain the satisfaction of all governments accused of impotence and thus expose them to your invectives, they will delude and deceive you, or at least deceive themselves.

As for us, we think that the State is not and should not be anything else but the power sharing, not for all citizens of an instrument of oppression and dispossession, but on the contrary, to guarantee to each his own, and let justice prevail and peace.

 

anybody that quotes Gian on this long post should be tortured!

 

which means that those have read my post has earned a place in heaven. Well, well.

The next one will be worse!

 

yob, all the talk about exhaust air reminds me
cowboys eating too much beans ....

 

I'm strong! I'm powerfull! I'm a human infernal combustion engine. Fueled on BEANS!