OT: Higher taxes..

That's a keeper.

Thanks, Jeroen Belleman

It's true. Ironically, it's the people of Bill's persuasion here that've made it so, and who keep it that way.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

he

m.

Your memory is deceiving you. Time, date and thread?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Not that I really want to have a long discussion on this point here, but here in Oregon there happened to have been a number of landmark cases regarding whether or not it's child abuse to deny your kid access to physicians and drugs for what are generally considered readily-treatable (but potentially life-threatening) illnesses... vs. just praying about it, because your faith happens to believe that faith healing is the only approach to treating such illnesses.

In almost all cases, the courts rule that it is child abuse to deny such care. There are various parents now serving long prison sentences because they failed to seek such care and their kid ended up dying.

I have a hard time seeing this as a violation of the 1st amendment, but hey, I know you've thought about these things enough that if you believe it is, you have a solid argument behind it as well.

---Joel

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: [lots of people receiving entitlements in James neighborhood]

From having talked to case workers in the system, I've become fairly convinced that it's actually not that easy initially -- and staying in the system past 2-3 years is very difficult these day if you're able-bodied.

But I do know it varies a fair amount from state to state as well.

OK. Are you advocating, then, pretty much getting rid of entitlements altogether? Or trying to re-define the qualifications for them so that they aren't abused as much?

I think many people -- myself included -- are supportive of the later effort there.

The idea is that government lends a helping hand -- not that they're running peoples' lives. It's the very abuse I think you're trying to prevent, though, that causes the government to take a legitimate interest in peoples' personal circumstances when they apply for that help.

Mmm... no, I can't say I have.

Where'd all the rest of the money go?

Hey, it's probably a lot easier to fix the cheating in specific cases you know than try to roll back government tax and entitlement policies to something approaching what we had a century back? :-)

I think she mis-interpreted what she heard from Obama in that case. (Although I recall many months ago we had that discussion about just how much better or worse such "strategic defaults" are than subsidiaries of a company where the parent company chooses to let the subsidiary default, even though overall they could have managed to pay its debts.)

Well, I'm not sure you're the right man to tactfully try to get her to realize that accepting food stamps when you'd have no problem working and paying for groceries yourself would be both the ethical thing to do and what's best for the common good, but perhaps someday someone will.

---Joel

Michigan took care of that problem :-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Should have confiscated the entire winnings.

Ah, I missed the phrase "lottery winner" in James' post. I remember hearing about it a bit -- wasn't it just some procedural thing where, e.g., you have to submit your current financial status information every three months or whatever to qualify for benefits, and she won somewhere in the middle of those three months? But of course as soon as the deadline hit and they received her updated financial information, they cancelled her benefits?

I don't know the details, except she lost her food stamps. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I'm speculating here, but I could see that if one won the lottery today, but won't be getting their check for another month or two, being a little lax in getting around to telling the welfare office about the windfall...

Not very upstanding behavior, but I suspect many people would do it.

Now, once you have that lottery check in hand and have deposited and cashed it, your next stop should absolutely be the welfare office. Give all the case workers who had to deal with you a hundred bucks each or something as a little bonus... and next time you're doing your taxes, toss the IRS an extra few grand...

Cashing the check is fraud. Try keeping SS payments from a deceased relative.

So you think fraud is acceptable?

No, just don't cash the check.

Nice.

Let's not get carried away.

=20

=20

And you are making a big mistake there. Here is the problem, if cheating is punished fairly reliably, and fairly promptly it stays a minor = problem, however, currently it is ignored and thus leads to massive cheating. = Thus what James is reporting.

Capiche?

?-)

=20

You sound like you might like exploring this:

It discusses the basics and gives references for deeper learning of what has been subjected to critical thought on the topic. Personally i am working in the self actualization range.

?-)

=20

=20

changes=20

I am rather more hard line than you are. The government does NOT belong in the charity operation. Their presence requires that it becomes = abused. The legislatures are guaranteed to see to that.

Workfare like WPA (which was also widely abused) is ok, but not = government entitlements.

You're talking theory i.e. dreamtopia, not reality. The reality is that th= ose who work and save pay more and more tax to support those who the govern= ment thinks it can bribe with increased handouts. The "socialist" governme= nt therefore has a vested interest in creating a state of dependence and th= e appearance of caring for the downtrodden while it actually treads more an= d more underfoot.=20

=20 Funnily enough, its proponents are the chattering classes who don't produce= or provide anything much, except hot air and have a better than average in= come. =20

No - many criminals are not in jail but working hand in hand with governmen= t and police.

but since Russia never embraced actual socialism, but

Russia didn't embrace either socialism or communism. Just as a middle clas= s was beginning to develop and before they had left the middle ages behind = them, totalitarianism was foisted on them by a bunch of terrorists. Then t= here were serfs in both factories and farms. =20

which failed precisely because it didn't spend

You are joking.....or haven't you been paying attention?

this may reflect the fact that your ideological convictions

PcKB - pot calling kettle black

If you'd like to catch up with the last 30 or 40 years, or even the last we= ek, I can give you a reading/viewing list. Try to forget your ideology - i= t is only really good for stereotyping, deceiving and killing people.

The US is very vigorous at R&D, they're very intelligent people.

Slomanians can't achieve success without mommy? Ken

n y

But not uniquely vigorous, and while the US does accommodate a lot of intelligent people, quite a few of them have been imported from foreign countries.

My mother's degree was in chemistry, sub-major biochemistry. I got my Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry - the family moved from Tasmania to Melbourne around when I started my Ph.D. project, and I wanted to get my mother to do some part time demonstrating to first year chemistry students, as she'd done after she graduated, back in 1938. She was interested in the idea, until I made the mistake of showing her some of the course materials, which included some elementary physical methods with which she wasn't familiar.

I'm sure she would have liked to help, but the one thing she did - for which I was very grateful - was to notice that there were two page 98s in the copy of the thesis I took home. I had to snip the second page

98 out and stick it into one of the three copies I'd given to the university - this all played out before they'd put them into the post to the examiners. My father had actually read the first draft of my Ph.D. thesis, and got me to express myself a lot more clearly, which did help rather more.

In so far as I've been a success - which is debatable - it's been in electronics, where neither of them was in a position to help.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It's a simple fact. One group attacks the other, using the government.

"The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." --Bastiat

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." --Bastiat

Funny that the ones who receive the most socialism are the mostly likely to be drop-outs and in prison. The more they receive, the more likely, a dose-dependent relationship.

Explained more than a century ago...

"As long as the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder." --Bastiat

If it's a spectacular success, why's everyone going broke?

--=20 Cheers, James Arthur

Agreed, yet, I don't mind tending the 5% who really need it. But, not 60%, like today.

Those are difficulties. My best guess is to let communities decide, since they know who's worthy and who isn't. Washington hasn't a clue.

"Entitlement"--the very word is a fraud. It means "something earned," but is today used to rationalize things which were not.

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve..." -- Bastiat

(I'm in a Bastiat mood tonight. Adam Smith tomorrow :-)

--
Cheers,
James Arthur