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#31
08-07-2007, 02:18 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
"
assuming your conclusions in one sentence. Awesome!" No it's common sense. Taxes, in and of themselves, never help anyone. Taxes is just the simple act of the government stealing money from me. "No. I was trying to illustrate that GDP/c can go down while poverty also goes down." The problem here is you have inserted this arbitrary factor 'poverty'. "But, since you believe Canada has no people who live in poverty, and common usage of the term 'live in poverty' leads people to conclude otherwise, you seem to have made up some other definition for the term. Im curious as to what it is." Well, the common argument is anyone under say $17,000 (arbitrary number) is in poverty. Well, if that's your definition, it's fine... but I think if you compare someone making $10,000 a year (or even $5000 a year) in Canada to the rest of the world you see they're doing pretty good. "I love how you brush something off as semantics, when we are trying to come to a definition of a key term. Yes. This is semantics. Literally." No, you are dodging the fundamental question : do taxes and government spending help things. "(specifically, I make the commonsense assumption that one who makes $1/day cannot afford to feed themselves). " This is a false assumption. It is bascailly impossible to strave to death in Canada; it's much easier to freeze to death actually. "And thus, the country WOULD have a poverty problem (assuming that a country in which %50 percent of the people live in poverty has a poverty problem, again, commonsensical). " I really don't understand why you're talking about all this stuff that has nothing to do with the topic at hand... " Imagine a third scenario where someone uses a hypothetical to try to get someone else to define key terms in a debate, but that someone else keeps ignoring on topic discussion in favour of tangents, since its clear that his argumentation skills are poor." Just because I have no [censored] clue what you're talking about, because you keep talking about people making $1 a year, doesn't mean my "argumentation" skills are poor. I think it means you talk about random [censored] that has nothing to do with the topic. "Anyway, can you please A) give your definition of poverty." Well poverty is intentionally vague and non specific... I think someone who couldn't afford to buy food or buy used clothes could be considered to live in poverty... but I don't think some arbitrary dollar figure is a good indicator. "B) answer this: is it possible for someone to live in a wealthy country, yet make so little money that they are considered to 'live in poverty'? For example, do homeless peope live in poverty? " Well, of course poverty isn't an issue of the money you make but rather the goods you can get. Does a 4 year old, who has no money, live in 'poverty'? Is it possible for someone in Canada to starve to death? No. That is my definiton of poverty, starving to death / not being able to get any clothes or a warm place to sleep. I mean, a few people froze to death in toronto, so maybe there's like 6 or 7 people living in poverty in Canada... so you could be right to some tiny degree that simply doesn't matter. 
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#32
08-07-2007, 02:33 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
No it's common sense. Taxes, in and of themselves, never help anyone. Taxes is just the simple act of the government stealing money from me. [/ QUOTE ] You've gone off the deep-end here. This is totally wrong. Taxes help and hurt people, but it's impossible for money to come into and leave a governemnt (without all of it being embezzeled) and no one to be helped. Argue it's immoral or theft sure, but saying no one is helped by taxes is silly. Cody
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#33
08-07-2007, 02:44 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
GCYW,
Before we go on, lets get an answer here: If I put a gun to your head, and make you give $50 to a homeless pesron, have I made you help the homeless person? Also, since you seem to claim that a person who makes $1/day in a first world country isnt poor, then there really isnt much point in talking about helping poverty, since your definition is just silly.
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#34
08-07-2007, 02:52 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
"If I put a gun to your head, and make you give $50 to a homeless pesron, have I made you help the homeless person?"
Not really... the homeless man probably isn't $50 short of a better life... that money will likely have little to no beneficial effect on the homeless man. "Also, since you seem to claim that a person who makes $1/day in a first world country isnt poor, then there really isnt much point in talking about helping poverty, since your definition is just silly." Who makes $1 a day? I have no idea what you're talking about...
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#35
08-07-2007, 02:57 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
Not really... the homeless man probably isn't $50 short of a better life... that money will likely have little to no beneficial effect on the homeless man. [/ QUOTE ] So, a few nights worth of a hot meal, not something that benefits him? OK. my bad. [ QUOTE ] Who makes $1 a day? I have no idea what you're talking about... [/ QUOTE ] Can you not fathom the possibility that somewhere within the billion people who live in first world countries, someone, somewhere, begged for a year and made about a dollar a day? Even if its, perhaps, 3 dollars a day, the argument still holds.
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#36
08-07-2007, 02:59 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] No it's common sense. Taxes, in and of themselves, never help anyone. Taxes is just the simple act of the government stealing money from me. [/ QUOTE ] You've gone off the deep-end here. This is totally wrong. Taxes help and hurt people, but it's impossible for money to come into and leave a governemnt (without all of it being embezzeled) and no one to be helped. Argue it's immoral or theft sure, but saying no one is helped by taxes is silly. Cody [/ QUOTE ] This is absolutely true in the short term. However the argument can be made that giving people or companies government money trains them to become good at getting government money rather than perfecting their skills. Take the example of agribusiness. They have pretty much stopped investing in research and technology to get better yields and improve profits that way, rather they have become political experts playing the game to get more and more tax money. Imagine if the government had mandated that every household be bought a playstation (at full $300 price or whatever) back when they first came out. Sony would have had no incentive to improve, lower prices or bring out the PS 2 or 3. They'd have kept rehasing the playstation perhaps spending a little money on token improvements. That's how it works for agribusiness that's how it works for the most part for those on welfare. Why do you think education hasn't changed nearly at all in over 100 years?
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#37
08-07-2007, 03:04 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
"They have pretty much stopped investing in research and technology to get better yields and improve profits "
cite?.. because, I knew aggies in school, and this seems really wrong
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#38
08-07-2007, 03:05 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
"If I put a gun to your head, and make you give $50 to a homeless pesron, have I made you help the homeless person?" Not really... the homeless man probably isn't $50 short of a better life... that money will likely have little to no beneficial effect on the homeless man. [/ QUOTE ] WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!!! Then by your own logic, nobody is hurt by taxation, either!!! Because if people with near nothing aren't helped by government giving them a monthly stipend, then people with a decent life can't really be hurt much by a monthly tax. Not like they will be destitute or anything. I love your consistent use of logic. Well done.
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#39
08-07-2007, 03:11 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] "If I put a gun to your head, and make you give $50 to a homeless pesron, have I made you help the homeless person?" Not really... the homeless man probably isn't $50 short of a better life... that money will likely have little to no beneficial effect on the homeless man. [/ QUOTE ] WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!!! Then by your own logic, nobody is hurt by taxation, either!!! Because if people with near nothing aren't helped by government giving them a monthly stipend, then people with a decent life can't really be hurt much by a monthly tax. Not like they will be destitute or anything. I love your consistent use of logic. Well done. [/ QUOTE ] haha, nice. Also, what's funny about this "logic" is that he seems to have problems with arbitrarily setting cutoff points (see his views on defining poverty), yet, if $50 doesnt help you, then certainly giving a homeless man $100,000 wouldnt help him either, unless you want to set some ARBITRARY point at which the amount given begins to help. (fwiw, arbitrary points are an unfortunate necessity of all kinds of policy, but I dont think he understands that)
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#40
08-07-2007, 03:16 PM
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Re: Oh Canada! Let\'s get rid of the income tax.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] No it's common sense. Taxes, in and of themselves, never help anyone. Taxes is just the simple act of the government stealing money from me. [/ QUOTE ] You've gone off the deep-end here. This is totally wrong. Taxes help and hurt people, but it's impossible for money to come into and leave a governemnt (without all of it being embezzeled) and no one to be helped. Argue it's immoral or theft sure, but saying no one is helped by taxes is silly. Cody [/ QUOTE ] This is absolutely true in the short term. However the argument can be made that giving people or companies government money trains them to become good at getting government money rather than perfecting their skills. Take the example of agribusiness. They have pretty much stopped investing in research and technology to get better yields and improve profits that way, rather they have become political experts playing the game to get more and more tax money. Imagine if the government had mandated that every household be bought a playstation (at full $300 price or whatever) back when they first came out. Sony would have had no incentive to improve, lower prices or bring out the PS 2 or 3. They'd have kept rehasing the playstation perhaps spending a little money on token improvements. That's how it works for agribusiness that's how it works for the most part for those on welfare. Why do you think education hasn't changed nearly at all in over 100 years? [/ QUOTE ] Tom, I appriciate it but I understand economics and dependence. Let me ask you then, Can taxes be helpful to a single person or group of people? Ignore the amount of the tax for this question. Cody
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