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Topher’s new video: The Forbidden History of Terrible TaxesA video that ought to be shown to all students in every school. A concept that I don’t remember being mentioned during my education. I like his clean uncluttered style, the snappy irreverent wit. Thanks Topher, and thanks to all the people who supported him to make this possible (like The Australian Taxpayers Alliance). Note the first ever First Australian Libertarian Conference will be held in Sydney on April 6 and 7. Now that would be fun. Send this video around 🙂 The short killer summary:
The Skeptics Handbook. The most deadly point:
The Missing Hot Spot. February 21st, 2013 | Tags: Tax, Topher | Category: Big-Government, Economics, Global Warming, Politics |
 Print This Post | | 135 comments to Topher’s new video: The Forbidden History of Terrible Taxes |
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Does the Australian Libertarian Movement represent the views of libertarians the same way that the Shooters and Fishers Party representes fisherfolk? i.e. only representative of conservative right wing liberterians?
231
Mattb, if “fisherfolk” do not become members of the Shooters and Fishers Party, then they do not get to be represented. An organisation represents its active members. The Australian Libertarian Movement will represent its active members. However since liberty is the antithesis of the radical left wing, I gues that it is unlikely that you would be represented by the ALM.
251
The point being is if their active members are essentially highly conservative rednecks then more liberal liberterians will not join. Which is quite a similarity to the shooters and fishers party, which I note wants to cancel all immigration.
220
So Mattb, the liberties that you agree with are OK but the ones you don’t agree with are not?
How liberal of you …
71
and that works both ways.
00
What’s the liberty in cancelling immigration?
03
By more liberal “liberterians”, what Matt means is radical socialist liberals like himself will not join.
If Matt was a libertarian he might actually know how to spell it.
60
I’ve spelled it right more than I’ve spelled it wrong this thread.
02
oh puhleeze Mattb. Please educate yourself by grabbing a dictionary and learning what the term “libertarian” means. I am not at all surprised you are not one, but instead a downright bigot.
221
Oh I know what it means… I just hope its members do!
216
Oh yes Mattb. I’m sure you think you know what libertarian means. Did you know that some pure libertarians believe in open borders – meaning anyone would be free to take citizenship in any country they wanted? Your comment that libertarians are similar to the shooters and fishers party and your belief that you know what libertarian means can’t both be right. Which is it?
241
Bingo Jo… but you miss my point. I’m a fisherman and a libertarian. Knowing what libertarian means and wondering if the libertarian party and libertatian society area representative of libertarians or a bunch of right wing nut jobs are completely different things.
224
Does Mattb represent the views of all socialist bowel movements or just his own? Counting the days to the switch off of your largesse.
141
Gosh, Matt…I go away for yonks and come back to find your ignorance has aged like rancid fish sauce.
Dude, there is no such animal as a left-wing libertarian…. The left- Labor and the Greens – are the self-proclaimed parties of collectivist serfdom, not individual liberties for all.
True, Labor and the Greens do support one “liberty” ….the government’s liberty to dispose of your life, limb and property as it sees fit.
But Labor and the Greens are opposed to the 2 most fundamental Civil Liberties of all.. (1) .The right not to be killed by government policy and (2) the right to freedom of expression.
Let’s start with (1)… the right to LIFE…. Labor and the Green policies have lured over 1,000 people to die at sea trying to get to Australia to collect citizenship, a government apartment, free smokes, TV, pensions, healthcare for life…. It’s like playing lotto, but if you lose, you’re tossed overboard in the Indian Ocean to dog paddle 500km back to Sri Lanka…. It’s the Labor-Green way! They could not care less about the ~1,000 people that have drown because of policies that offer rich incentives to risk life. Nope, their blind-hatred of Howard and willfully ignorant commitment to regressive lefty dogma is more sacred than even human life itself multiplied by 1000.
Let’s also put to rest the idea that our compassionate one-eye Aunty in the attic, the ABC, gives a rats’ bum about human life either, unless of course loss of life can somehow be used to further their swarmy policy agenda. A thousand people die at sea because of labor/Green wickedness and the ABC hasn’t even raise an eyebrow from the hate-Abbott 24/7 narrative.
I wonder how many have to die at sea before the ABC and Labor-Greenies grow a moral conscious? 3,000? 5,000? 10,000? The left-wing of Australia is starting to rack up numbers which might look a tad genocidal in the cool retrospection of history. I think they have a court for this sort of thing in the Prague.
Naturally Labor/Greenies want to make it illegal to compare their policy of unintentionally drowning migrants at sea with genocide. Heck, they want to make it illegal even to mention it…Or did Mattbo not get the memo about Gillard and the Greens planning to make it illegal to express anything but opinions so innocuous that not a single soul in the whole nation can possibly claim offense?
The Greens and Labor want to silence your freedom of speech.
Of course, the bill will exclude the government from censorship, so Labor and the Greens will be free to speak, while the public is forcible muzzled by a police state!
Or maybe Mattbo didn’t hear that if you are accused of offending some one with your speech, you must prove that you didn’t…. How impossibly stupid is that?. After all, if someone accuses your speech of offending him or her there is no possible way for you to prove your speech didn’t since their word is rolled gold proof that you did! (Unless you claim mistaken identity.)
I know, I know it’s mind-boggling that Labor and the Greens could be so bloody minded, so brutally totalitarian, so shamelessly pigheaded to even whisper such ridiculously anti-Aussie fantasies to themselves while sitting in the loo first thing in the morning cursing THE AUSTRALIAN opinion page….. But NOOOOO, these brazen, wannabe jackboot morons actually have proposed outlawing free speech as legislation pending before parliament. Good on em too, because we will live to see it chiseled on their tombstone…HERE LIES THE LABOR/GREEN GOVERNMENT THAT SOUGHT SILENCE AUSTRALIA. Lest the generations after us forget who the real danger to our freedoms are.
And yet Mattb is so deep in denial he can actually hallucinate that such an unlikely beast as a left-wing Libertarian could possibly exist?
LOL…Maybe Mattb should join the Unicorn & Drop Bear Liberty Party while he’s at it.
391
Lol Wes I guess you’re a card carrying member then!
120
Matt, you are being dishonest with us and with your electorate and probably even with yourself. After all, if you can’t successfully lie to yourself, who is going to believe you?
One thing I’ve never understood, though…help me out here…How do trolls wake up every morning pretending that we’re all so stupid we don’t remember their comments from yesterday? How can you live with knowing that we know, but pretend that we don’t? One thing you have proved over and over again is that psychological denial is a real clinical condition, not a slag, but a serious mental health issue.
Maybe you really can’t remember your political position from day to day?
Well we do, because you told us.
You were (are still?) an elected “independent” (Ha Ha!) council member somewhere in Perth… who is so deceitful and unethical that you won’t even use your real name while making public policy statements online because you’re afraid if your electorate knew your real deep Green jackboot faith in UN Agenda 21, one world totalitarian Green government, they’d kick your green bum into the Indian Ocean and make you dog paddle to Sri Lanka.
Mattb, in your many hundreds of posts we have come to know you as a supporter of unlimited government regulation and intrusion into even the most private individual business…You have constantly advocated for the coercive and confiscatory powers of the state to be expanded and for the freedom of individuals to act and innovate on their own volition without interference to be curtailed. Moreover you have spruiked for centralised government control of the economy and collectivist values including the Lysenkoist practice of “scientific research” by compulsory consensus.
If you’re a Libertarian, then so was Chairman Mao.
http://www.lp.org/platform
So, Matt-Mao just what part of the above Libertarian “statement of principles” can you agree with…you know, like for the next couple of comments before you come back tomorrow as the usual Greenie Matt as if today never happened.
171
“You were (are still?) an elected “independent” (Ha Ha!) council member somewhere in Perth… who is so deceitful and unethical that you won’t even use your real name while making public policy statements online because you’re afraid if your electorate knew your real deep Green jackboot faith in UN Agenda 21, one world totalitarian Green government, they’d kick your green bum into the Indian Ocean and make you dog paddle to Sri Lanka.”
Oh dear. Nice rant. WTF?
217
Try not to be a [Snip crass] Wes.
25
on the contrary I, being a libertarian at heart, completely oppose this bill to “make it illegal to express anything but opinions so innocuous that not a single soul in the whole nation can possibly claim offense?” although I see that did get watered down. Likewise I oppose the internet filtering. Noting of course that I am an open minded soul with no political affiliations or obligations who on March 9 will be voting conservative for the 1st time since I voted for John Hewson!
76
Then McTernan turned to the Prime Minister and said:
“Julia, when we’ve lost Mattb, we’ve lost the Brit…I mean the Australian people.”
190
that’s actually quite funny. well played sir.
71
But you are right Wes maybe they are just a nice bunce of representative free thinkers…
uh-oh “The ALS was a co-sponsor of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), hosted by the Heartland Institute.”
I mean seriously the idea that libertarians would all be climate skeptics is an absurdity. They may not like carbon taxes… I note they do support market based solutions to climate change… but Heartland??? crikey.
116
“I mean seriously the idea that libertarians would all be climate sceptics is an absurdity. ”
That’s funny because I move in libertarian circles, and consider myself one, and I find far more libertarian climate sceptics than believers. Generally because libertarians are able to think for themselves and look at facts.
Libertarianism has a place for both the left and the right. I come from the left myself. The reason why is because it is based on facts without any of the rhetoric that both the left and the right engage in.
As for libertarian political organisations, well colour me sceptical. Collectivism of any kind is generally against the principles of libertarianism as we are all individuals. We may voluntarily form groups but it should not be in order to coerce other people to do what we want.
131
A good friend of mine runs in libertarian circles, and you have the group who disbelieve in global warming because taxes and greenies are evil and the group who understand that when a transaction between two parties imparts a cost on a third party (such as any sort of damage to the environment, it doesn’t have to be climate change related), then the third party must be offered compensation, as to do otherwise amounts to infringing on the rights of said third party.
Libertarians who acknowledge the science of climate change usually do not want direct action plans ala the LNP but a market based mechanism such as a carbon tax (the implementation being open to debate). They also don’t support subsidies, of which the fossil fuel industry gets billions annually, because that equates to an artificial distortion of the market. Not that we hear much mention of that here. I feel that too many libertarians are libertarians of convenience rather than libertarians of conscience.
00
Yeah, right………
SO what are you Tristan?
00
Well, I’m not a libertarian – I think their economic model is too simplistic.
I’m pretty happy with the idea of capitalism with compromise. A society needs rewards for people to strive for and care for those in need.
00
I think you’ll find it’s the Hague, Wes.
00
FISHERFOLK???
wtf?
You forgot to mention the Beavertrappers, Furriers and Lumberjacks, you metrosexual greenie whanker who has probably never been more than 20km from the CBD in your 4-wheel drive Subaru.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL7n5mEmXJo
10
Government big enough to give you everything you want is government big enough to take everything you have.
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That’s worth repeating Mark.
Lot of truth in it.
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The exercising of a Right cannot be converted into a crime.
20
Dictators, who write the laws of their country, then have the right to fulfil the letter of those laws. Is this truly how you feel?
Usually rights are based on the God given rights, or similar. Based on humanitarianism. But yours seems a twisted version of Might = Right.
10
MattB: The ALM represents the views of its members and of those non-members who share the same visions. What’s wrong with that?
Unlike members of the “tax payer community” (i.e. everybody), ALM members can freely choose to be members and to pay member fees. If they are not happy with ALM, they can leave and join another movement.
111
Wrong I suspect. There just might be enough “non payers” to get %)$..
…
Sorry, I can’t write it
00
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”
Ayn Rand
20
The big corporations and the ultra-wealthy have mastered the art of moving money offshore and using loopholes to make their tax burdens as low as possible.
So our politicians just keep finding more ways to squeeze more money out of the middle class and small businesses in order to make up the difference.
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These “loopholes” are legit and legal, they are due to the fact that different nations have different tax systems, tax rates, financial requirements and resources. A slim government, a government that spends money wisely needs less money. Why shouldn’t potential taxpayers take advantage, they same way people tend to try to buy the cheapest product when they have a choice. Governments use low tax rates expressly to attract business to get more income for infrastructure development (e.g. Ireland).
It’s a give-and-take game, also called “free market”.
61
Good point benpal
I understand that within Switzerland the Cantons can vary local taxes and such to either attract or repel business.
As you say; other countries do the same.
The biggest problem for the average tax payer is that governments use our tax money, illegally, to buy votes.
Look at the Desal Plants nationwide, and public roads construction in Victoria as examples of spreading the moolah.
KK
60
They do so in the USA as well.
40
In the USA we are almost at the halfway point of those who are on the public dole. Americans have resisted socialism for years. So, the politicians, as Topher demonstrates, basically bribed the voters with public (taxpayer) money. We are approaching the point where it is akin to the mob of Rome. Give the mob bread and circuses and the government stays in power.
This worked well for Obama. The following link is to a story about a woman who voted for Obama six times! Amazingly, she is a poll worker! http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/19/ohio-poll-worker-obama-supporter-investigated-for-potentially-voting-six-times/
This video is typical of a welfare freeloader https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio
America is a country in decline. We can still turn things around but the window of opportunity is closing fast.
50
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
00
“Free market”, or “Free taxpayer subsidies?” ’*Honeywell * Profits: $4.9 billion-Taxes: -$34 million / *Fed Ex* Profits: $3 billion – Taxes: -$23 million / *Wells Fargo* Profits: $49.37 billion-Taxes: -$681 million / *Boeing* Profits: $9.7 billion Taxes: -$178 million *Verizon* Profits: $32.5 billion-Taxes: -$951 million/ *Dupont* Profits: $2.1 billion-Taxes -$72 million / *American Electric Power* Profits: $5.89 billion-Taxes -$545 million
31
Tim, I don’t necessarily doubt what you have here but do you have a reference? Also, taxes are assessed and paid for the previous year. Was that considered?
I’m against government subsidies unless for security or defense reasons. This includes farm subsidies, (not crop insurance) as well.
20
Mark, The US situation. This explains it better than I can:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/06/1552251/corporate-tax-45-years/?mobile=nc
00
Hi Tim, Thanks for the link.
I should have typed more there in my reply. I’m against direct subsidies (cash payment) and tax breaks that benefit select companies or groups.
That said, I am not all that excited about corporate taxes either. Here’s why; Corporations & businesses are owned by people. People are the only entities that have an income (whether shareholder, owner or employee). Taxing a company is a double tax. It is my opinion that business and corporations should not be taxed and taxes should only be due when a dividend, royalty, wage or benefit is received by a person (whether shareholder, owner or employee). Corporations and businesses use profits for new product development and growth. The double tax merely stifles that. Nearly everything a business spends money on is a legitimate business expense and need not be taxed until the recipient of that spending takes it home as income. Taxing corporations is fallacious because they simply pass that expense on in some fashion until a human pays it anyway.
20
I forgot a bit more detail. Corporations and businesses SHOULD be taxed on any asset other than goods, materials or products for resale that are permanently moved out of the country. I know this would be too simple in practice but I’m hoping people get my point.
20
If you can arrange an offshore tax haven account or accounts you then have one of them obtain a company credit card for you, all of your spending goes to company and is paid directly to the bank or card provider. It is as if your are a tourist passing through.
30
So what you are (inadvertently?) saying is….. People who pay the normal tax rates remain poor, while those who find ways of reducing their tax burden end up wealthy? I guess that means we should ALL try paying less tax…
00
Tim,
Is your complaint that they never buy anything from you? They have money and you do not?
Is it that they have Scrooge McDuck swimming pools filled with money for frolic? They do not.
It matters not WHO makes the money. It matters more HOW the money is made. In commerce one company will usually perform better than another and seem richer. That’s not a reason to vilify it. It does not sit on its money. It is still moved through the economy.
Some people get terribly upset because when the money moves to the community, it does not go via a government that takes its handful to do things, usually inefficiently, and usually less useful than would have been done by those who made the profit.
Try adjusting your thoughts so you come to dislike bloatocracy and come to like the honest sweat on the brow after a hard day of work.
10
We are just too stupid to stop the corporations and super rich from getting a free ride. They scream blue murder when we try and tax them appropriately, and a whole lot of mugs spring out of the woodwork to bat for people who earn in a day what they earn in a year.
02
Tax is pointless John, you need to learn supply-side economics. Money from the wealthy trickles down to the rest of society naturally, just like it does from Gina to her children.
00
How are corporations getting a “free ride”? Explain why corporations should pay taxes at all.
00
Businesses do not pay tax. It is the shareholders who are liable for the tax. Businesses remit money to the government. When they pay a dividend to their shareholders, the money paid to the shareholder in net of the tax paid. The Shareholder then can cliam a credit for the tax they have notionally paid as an owner of the business.
Ultimately the only tax payers are individual salary and wage earners and private business owners. Public servants do not pay tax. Their income is paid out of the tax revenue received by Government – it’d be more honest is public servants were exempt from having a grossed up “salary” and were just told here’s what you get to take home.
00
The global warming theory and its tax imposition on us all via government is one of the clearest illustrations of the state delegitimising itself. No truly independent arbiter of justice would disagree.
110
And no one with any brains would every try and convince you otherwise.
01
Hahaha, that made me laugh out loud John.
00
Socialist Justice, up the workers.
40
They’re sticking that “Socialist Justice” up the Workers alright ! Funny, I’d wager that there are more socialists on welfare payments than any other group 😉
130
Standing up for Australian Taxpayers.
Yup! That’s all it is, whether you’re a labourer, truckdriver, CEO, accountant, geologist or even a councillor. The ever increasing taxes by local, state and federal bodies of government are out of control. The elected federal ALP representatives are now the worst quality and the biggest self serving bunch that ever governed. Gough, Paul and Bob would have been much better than Gillard, Rudd and Swan.
The video is great – the government spending, red tape, controls and the big noting pollies have to be stopped.
80
Tax has fallen quite a lot since I was young. But its much more fun to pretend that they are “ever increasing taxes”. Reality should never get in the way of having fun.
12
Really John?
Do you have some reference that includes All the taxes you pay?
00
It puts the courage of Campbell Newman (Qld Premier) into perspective … laying off 14,000 teat suckers. Sorry for them, maybe, but from my experience having been in among them, they were the cause of their own demise … I even once entertained a deputation of these miserable types trying to convince me that the goals set for their performance were too optimistic and that I should just adopt their status quo and everybody would be much happier. True story.
131
The alternative for Newman is to be a southern hemisphere version of Greece, a country so corrupt with rent seekers from top to toe that nobody has the gumption or honesty to take such unfortunate but necessary decisions. Such decisions would not be necessary but for the incompetence of successive Labor governments, and an ideological nonsensical bent by the left to have everybody employed by the government, thereby cutting the effective tax base from the general public toward zero.
91
That alternative sounds like QLD during the Joh era.
02
.
MattyB
This is a question on one of the political parties websites? Which one?
Clue “Queer department UMSU” provides a link.
Yes – there is a Queer Department – taxpayers again fork out.
30
Mattb,I would like to ask,if you approve of the proposed changes that reverse the onus of proof as well,as “it’s worth noting is that no changes have been proposed regarding the reverse burden of proof under the draft Bill. In practical terms, a complainant need only make out the barest case – a prima facie case. This is the test courts usually employ to determine whether a claim should be dismissed before it is even heard. But under the draft Bill, the prima facie test is all the complainant needs to prove. The burden is then placed on the defendant to show that he is innocent of wrongdoing…
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/roxons_backdown_not_good_enough_does_she_hate_me_so_much/
20
Perhaps Mattb prefers the unidirectional brand of liberty – I.e. I have liberty, liberty is great – the rest of you can go pound sand. I remember Mattb completely failing to defend free speech in the past – and nothing he has written since has suggested that anything has changed.
Feel free to defend yourself Mattb.
50
“I remember Mattb completely failing to defend free speech in the past”
ORLY?
06
Hi Mattb, it was some time ago on this site, I can’t remember the exact post – but your stance was clear.
I remember that I wrote that you were a “moral imbecile” for your inability to defend the right of others to speak what you disagreed with – I’ve spent some time looking for the exact comment – but have not found it.
30
I believe that it was JB who you tagged. Link
20
Bernd Felsche.
You sir – are absolutely correct, I tip my hat at your sleuthing skills, and thank you very much for bringing this point to light.
Mattb, my sincere and heartfelt apologies – I mistook you for John Brookes.
Any claims that I make in the thread above with regards to yourself – I fully and and without reservation – retract.
Cheers ExWarmist
20
phew… it could have been me. No worries Ex-W.
20
Yeah, free speech. But because this is Jo’s blog, I won’t say what I want to Ex-warmist.
01
I do so hope that tomorrow’s entry will be that hillarious meme where on Jan 18 greg hunt “guarantees” that china will not be taxing carbon… then Jan 21 China announces a tax on carbon!!! You couldn’t make this stuff up!
26
China announcing anything green is a hoot. They announce and they announce. They been telling the gueilo for years about planned environmental initiatives, carbon taxes etc. Anything Malcolm Turnbull and the doctors’ wives want to hear…
This time they’re deadly serious. At some remote date there will definitely be a minuscule carbon tax…allowing for delays, transitions, special concessions, compassionate exceptions, phase-ins…
When you think about it, they do what Gillard does…only they’re good at it.
31
Sounds like the announcements are from the Ministry of Truth.
10
That “tax” is everything but a “Carbon Dioxide Tax” … they need to clean up their air quality.
20
Yes, level of taxation is completely out of hand and ridiculous.
Jo is right, that if the society does not push back, the bureaucracy will consume all.
30
Funny though, but the bureaucracy was bigger in the old days. The rules were stricter. I was in the public service when (if you had the staying power) you stayed until 65, and got to retire on some really good fraction of your final wage, indexed for life.
To Australia’s great credit, we would all that stuff back under Hawke and Keating, thus saving ourselves from a Greek tragedy.
I’m as fond of fantasy as the next guy, but sometimes reality is more interesting.
03
“wound” not “would”
02
NZ experience (but I suspect just as relevant in Au). When I started work the top tax rate was 48% and going from memory I tripped into that bracket about 3 years after I started work. I was in a private super scheme and I used to get some rebates in my annual tax return.
I have been in the top tax bracket ever since. But the rate has reduced to now being 30%.
Now my net salary after tax and my deductions for superannuation (still in a private scheme that does not get me any rebates) and ACC Earner Premiums et al is %wise more than it was in the early 1980s. But the subterfuge of the Governemnt is such that as Topher points out my “spending power” is much reduced.
Income tax rates have come down. But at the same time as that happend GST was introduced at 10%, raised to 12.5% and now 15%.
For example I open my power bill and I see a Government levy which attracts GST (in NZ at 15%). When I pay my vehicle registration, there is an ACC levy (for my motorbike it is about $300/yr out of a total cost of $525).
Fuel prices at the pump are made up of about 50% product cost, refining and distribution and the rest being excise, LAPT and GST (GST is a tax on top of the other taxes). (I used to work for Big Oil and the administration of this tax collection was quite complex – accountants in oil companies must wonder if they are working for the company or Inland Revenue).
And finally John, when you were paid by the public service, what was the source of your salary? How did your empployer earn the revenue form which you were paid? did you really pay tax, or did you receive an income net of tax?
00
My apologies for being quite OT – but some visitors may wish to read this insightful essay. Global elitism the character traits of truly evil people.
But then again, wrt the tax laws & elites… perhaps not so off topic.
20
There is a simple solution to saving the country the damage caused by populist politicians, like Julia and her cronies, and that is to give more say to those (the taxpayers) who fund the government, as opposed to those who are dependent, and/or leech, on it.
Everyone gets to have two votes – but you lose one vote if you are in net receipt of government cash funds. The sole exception being those who actually protect the nation, like the police, the armed voices, doctors and nurses but not their hangers on (the ‘support’ bureaucracies).
Any chance of this sensible approach ever happening? Absolutely none, so incompetent, wasteful and corrupt politicians can breath a sigh of relief.
31
Why not go the whole way and have the Heinlein system: Votes are only obtained by national service.
In the original democracy, ancient Greece, any state affected by a decision were excluded from the vote on that decision.
10
Another off-topic.
John Brignell writes about the statistical bludgeon. Extract:
Read all of it at the link.
10
Excellent link,
On a related topic I am currently watching America: Freedom to Fascism which is all to applicable to the EU, Britain & Australia as much as the USA.
00
Can a leftist be a libertarian? Yes, if what you are talking about the libertarian position on drug use.
00
Taxation is punishment.
Governments tax behaviour they wish to see reduced.
Pretty obvious our governments are opposed to property ownership, hard work and creation of new wealth.
What could go wrong?
What is the value of government?
What is civil society and civilization?
My definition is civilization is a shared illusion that you and I can cooperate and both share the reward of doing so.
That the energy we would devote to basic survival, self preservation and paranoia can be redirected.
That we can create wealth, infrastructure that would not exist without civilization, so all benefit.
This requires trust, laws that apply equally and justly.
Civil society is an illusion we pay a bunch of actors to maintain, government is a morality play, which the actors beg and volunteer for the privilege of playing the roles.
There is a reason they are all such drama queens, clamouring to play on the national stage.
Therefore punishment of transgressions against our codes by these actors must be melodramatic overt reactions.
Today government, in all its forms, cripples the makers ability to create wealth and steal more from us than civilization is worth.
People have recognized the negative benefits of playing by the rules and working hard. Productivity falls every year now.
If govt steals a greater share of the return on my labour, so that the harder I work the less I keep, I reduce my effort.
This is the logical consequence of progressive taxation.
When lying, cheating and thievery are the standard behaviour of government and rewarded by the voters, civil society is dead.
Knowing that I will be robbed of the return on my labour and investments, I am financially better off returning to tribal conditions.
Barter between trustworthy people still works.
If I do not know you its not worth trusting you.
This cheerful thought was brought on by my consideration of the CAGW scam and the culpability of our bureaucracies and politicians there in.
Your opinion of your government, will never be higher than it is today.
51
September 15 is my birthday. I will wake knowing that Gillard and her mob will be gone, gone gone for 20 years. The above Topher video is just the plain truth. Yes it should be shown in schools. Thank you for posting it Joanne.
Great to see so many Libertarian’s here. If not for the internet we would be screwed for ever by the scumbag, warmist, consensus loving useful idiots. Keep up the good work, we are slowly winning, I take my hat off to you all. Thank you!
112
I hope you are right about waking on September 15. But don’t ever stop working to achieve that end. And remember, another Gillard may be just around the corner. Never let up the fight.
May your birthday be a happy one. 😛
BB
20
Oxymoron springs to mind.
surely, ‘useless’?
00
I think that Piers Ackerman of the Telegraph (Sydney) says it best …
Pure gold I say …
70
Everyone here should acknowledge and respect the fact that Kiwis who work over here who arrive after february 2001 and pay just as much tax as everyone else, but also get Iced out of the welfare lifestyle or safety net.
So in order to practice what is being preached, join your new zealand cousins and collectively ask the question – why are we being taxed so much when we’re being discriminated against?
Personally, I think every taxpayer should be able to refuse to pay for a certain expenditure of their taxes – i.e. if the Govt want’s to spend 5% of my tax take on something I completely disagree with, I should have the option to opt out of paying it (and also ensure I opt out of any outcomes from the said expenditure). I know too difficult to do properly, right?
30
Change the accent and some words and it could have been produced here in the U.S. about the U.S. But how do you change the rules from $5 – $10 = $15 to $5 – $10 = -$5? You’re in a hole any way you look at it and will have to climb out under your own power one way or another.
I wonder if inventing money wasn’t a bad idea in the end. Money allows the mistaken idea that money is the wealth to take hold and grow until all sorts of fantasies are possible. If we had to exchange value for value — you give me a tank full of your gas and I’ll fix your plumbing problem — then delivering the goods would be a requirement you couldn’t dodge with a printing press, an IOU or any amount of political huffing and puffing.
Because confidence in our currency is dropping, some places are turning to barter. I read that some have actually begun to use silver and other things of value as a medium of exchange rather than the dollar.
A turnip has only turnip juice in it and only so much of that. Ain’t no blood there to squeeze out!
10
Great video. This shoulde be in schools. This should also be viewed by every POLITICIAN – repeatedly.
20
Won’t do any good, they only see the movie thats playing in their head.
If they could comprehend reality they would not be politicians.
Desperate actors, that is.
60
Here is how the Australian federal government wastes our money, borrowed and wasted;
http://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/files/labor-waste-booklet.pdf
21
All tuckered out from a long tree-hugging session (see photo in story) Rajendra Pachauri sits down and explains how a 17-year “pause” in warming would need to last another 13 to 23 years before he considers it a break of the warming trend:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nothing-off-limits-in-climate-debate/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134
Usual paywall thing … just Google the title and follow link to circumnavigate. He defends scepticism in the piece, and even mentions natural factors affecting climate:
But then he goes on to say:
I didn’t follow the ice melt this year, but know that in years gone past the Arctic currents and winds had a lot to do with the previous melts … surely this one was caused only by AGW …
20
surely he means record ice melt last summer, and an accumulation in winter? Or does he mean antarctic? Or is he nuts? Or is the journalist nuts?
There is certainly no record accumulation right now though: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
28
lol 2 thumbs down for pointing out the arctic ice does not accumulate in summer and melt in winter!
14
It is the Artic winter right now and the accumulation of ice is indeed a record. Maybe that’s why you got the thumbs down ?
31
Streetcred… read the quote “Dr Pachauri said the record accumulation of Arctic ice this northern summer” .. northern summer = arctic summer.
Where is that record accumulation of ice in the north this arctic winter anyway? There isn’t one.
13
Besides, the record accumulation is pretty obvious. Crouch down low. Now stand up. Now crouch down lower, and then stand up. The lower you crouch, the greater the rise when you stand up. Bad analogy finished.
01
Maybe “accumulation” is a reference to the fast catch-up after the big melt then dispersion by storm of 2012. Perhaps it’s the most substantial gain on “record”, which means post-’79. Which means nothing.
Antarctic ice has been mostly at “record” high levels lately. Which means nothing. And that Arctic ice goes up and down like Berlusconi’s trousers (with melt alarms in early 20s and late 50s, and even in the 19th century.)
It all means nothing except that climate changes, and nobody knows much about how or why. Here on the mid-coast the nineties did a rough impersonation of the thirties. Now we’re back to the fifties. How come climate change boosters never notice climate change when it actually happens?
20
Very skeptical of you Matty. I didn’t give you the thumbs down.
00
Pachauri is indeed a man with no credibility and it would be no surprise that the ‘journalist’ is unhinged … journalism ? What’s that ? Just look at the ‘colour’ of the universities that spits these fools out.
11
Gee wiz MattB, maybe the Arctic ice is just going through a normal cycle? If they would have used a starting point of five years prior they would have started from a time when the ice was thinner. The planet has not warmed in 17 years. Rajendra Pachauri has confirmed the findings of the UK Met Office. Since the planet is not warming, the current condition of Arctic ice cannot be blamed on global warming, can it Matt? Perhaps wind directions and the Arctic Oscillation play a part?
Besides,many of the “scientists” said in 2007 that the Arctic would be ice free by 2013!
https://fp.auburn.edu/sfws/sfnmc/web/bet5.html
Then again, New Scientist made a prediction, in 2008, of a possible ice free Arctic in 2008!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13779
To be fair, there were some scientists who gave a wider time frame.
Yep, just keep on moving those goalposts, dude!
I would ask you to bet, Matt, as to whether or not the Arctic will be ice free and when but when it comes to betting with someone on this site you have a track record of welching!
42
In view of historical evidence of a usable northwest passage during the latter 19th century, actual photographs of submarines surfaced at the North Pole in open water in 1967 (or might have been 1961) and other things of that nature I’m wondering why I should even worry about the state of the polar icecap. It certainly is a scientific curiosity. But is it a crisis? No!
I give anything to do with the IPCC a failing grade. Matt, so should you.
00
Bulldust, you’re smarter than me, has it occurred to you that the arbitrary 30 year = climate meme is because that is about the career time span for someone in science? In other words there won’t be anyone left with half a brain after 30 years go by..
Just sayin.
41
A lot of discussion on liberty and finance.
As far as finance goes, in the real world, Western states are all so totally adrift on a sea of debt so vast that their eventual collapse is pretty much inevitable. Its like you are all arguing over the method by which you are going to be executed whilst work on the gallows proceeds quietly in the background.
As for liberty, it is pretty much a certainty that all European states and I dont know, maybe Australia, will be Muslim majority societies well inside this century. This is just a demographic fact on current trends. For example, in the UK the percentage of the population that is Muslim doebles every ten years. It is now between 5 and 10 %. By mid century the majority will be Muslim. No civil liberties exist in any such society apart from Turkey, where they are working hard on removing such freedoms as still exist.
I would find the first of these scenrios scary but for two things, firstly that all parties have a vested interest in staving off disaster as long as they can and secondly, I am having great difficulty seeing how I am going to be able to survive financially to the end of this year anyway.
As for the second scenario, why should I give a monkeys I’ll be gone by then.
20
Ace,
If you’re trying to scare me you’re doing a good job of it. The U.S. won’t be very far behind the UK and Europe.
I do have a reason to give a monkey’s because I have family that won’t be gone by then.
00
Great video by Topher because of the question it prompts people to ask.
“Heyyyy, do things really have be the way they are now?”
Found an appropriate quote from an old video from the Von Mises Institute, it’s in the 25 seconds from 11:03 to 11:28, transcribed here:
But tax is merely the yearly tip of the corrosive interventionist iceberg. The other way they impoverish us is through credit expansion via low interest rates. Every time the interest rate is cut and GDP rises the Treasurers swan about gleefully as though an escalation in inflationary theft is some kind of gift. Suddenly every low margin project and hare-brained idea can get Easy Money.
One thing von Mises did not explain well is what “frightens” the banks [4.XX.68] into ceasing further loans. However…
The chairman of the RBA is appointed by the Treasurer and is theoretically answerable to Government. Do successive governments think this artificially boosted inflation is fine as long it doesn’t collapse on their watch?
We the people are always here, it’s going to collapse on our watch regardless of who sits in Canberra.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In Ludwig We Trust.
30
[…] The downward spiral succinctly identified here is why no one supports either party, but many citizens feel too afraid to vote out the liberals and the Rube Goldberg Perpetual Economic Machine. H/T JoNova from down under. […]
00
A very good article on the intolerance of “tolerant”.
20
Gubberment ministers need a performance based pay, something they can’t increase at their whim. Cut their retirement benefits down to our level. Let them live off their super.
31
I have had this idea to stop the “professional politician” from dominating the landscape. My idea is that a constitutional amendment is made that would prevent any person from standing for re-election for local, state or federal parliament once they have served 10 years as an elected member at any level of government.
The 10 years would not have to be contiguous and is calculated over their entire life. That means a max of 2 terms for Senators and four terms (usually) for the House of Representatives, and it does mean that people cannot go from local government to state government and then to federal government over a 15 or 20 year period.
Also only standard industry super for this service. That will at least force most of them to get a real job for the bulk of their working life, either before or after they enter politics.
60
WEll “standard industry super” would be an improvement for a local govt councillor, who gets nothing.
03
good god how stupid
01
Truthseeker, in addition to your service limit, how about the house representatives are not elected but instead drawn from the ranks of any taxpayer like juries are drawn. This would mean very few career politicians at that “representative” level of government. Their employers would have to secure their position when their service in the House was finished. Sure you’d get some dogs once and a while but you’d also get some great ideas.
00
Well thats a good thing about the USA, noone can ever be president more than twice.
Since Roosevelt.
Up until….well we’ll see.
00
…I dont think the Dems are that bonkers yet though.
00
This is O/T but still very important.
Marc Morano interviews some of the crazy loons at the Washington rally.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2174209184001
James Hansen endores the Una bomber’s message of blowing up power stations and dams and the Robert Kennedy Jnr idiot isn’t much better.
Hansen is the top scientist at GISS NASA and Kennedy is a member of Congress. How do these delusional, dangerous numbskulls keep their jobs?
Also why doesn’t the left MSM pusue their extremist ideas and call for Hansen to be sacked?
30
I wonder what would happen if the likes of James Hansen advocated blowing up jumbo jets? After all do not these spew CO2 and cause global warming? Lol, he would be arrested for saying “Blow them up” yet it is ok to blow up dams and power stations. The weird thinking of the warmist’s holds no bounds.
00
Jonathan,
I’m sure you are aware that the Greenies harbour fantasies of mass murder, although it is considered impolite to point out the similarity between the Greens and Nazis or Pol Pot.
So let’s just let their million dollar plus advertising campaign (which they had to pull due to protests) speak for itself…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfnddMpzPsM&feature=player_embedded
In the Green fantasy utopia, those who are not murdered in first wave of Green genocides will have to apply for licenses for life…
Green Eugenics.
– David Brower,
first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
10
I think its important to keep up the unabomber references…
04
And I think it would be a good idea if you, Brookes, thought before opening your pie-hole.
30
In the UK a girl was imprisined for writing POEMS praising terrorists.
OK, she did also work at Heathrow, though only in a shop.
The point is the existence of a crass selectivity in how laws are applied. Many people are in US prisons for saying less than what you report Hansen stated. If that is indeed something he said, its disgusting. I oppose Jihad, but talk of blowing up damns is as bad as many of those Muslim guys have done. And they were “done” for it.
00
What a coincidence that 2 days ago I wrote on a uni rag blog “The Conversation”
.In reply to Felix MacNeill
Felix MacNeill
In logic, a tax on profits from mining the minerals that belong to the people is not different to a tax on the dirt on unwashed potatoes that belongs to the people, or the minerals that the people own, taken from the ground by animals we kill then eat, or on the very air we breathe, that belongs to all people.
You cannot make a logical, definitive case for selective taxation of whomever might be making a profit at a given time.
Try making a case. You’ll not be able.
You main fault is to assume that taxing bodies know better how to spend profits than the people who make them. I’d contest that with utmost vigour.
20
But … but … we have ter have a carbon tax et al
else our army of public servants’ll end up w/out
productive employment!!!
00
OK, so I listened to the video. He’s pretty slick. But he says that 50% of people say that money from the government is a substantial part of their income. I’m a pretty low income earner, but its been quite a few years since I got any form of direct monetary assistance from the government (apart from my wages and medicare refunds). What am I doing wrong?
01
Let me get this straight:
No monetary assistance from the government “except” your wages and medicare refunds?
What about e.g. your employer’s compulsory superannuation contributions?
You are at least 109% taxpayer-funded. You expect more assistance?
Did you miss your $900 taxpayer “bonus”?
00
I can only quote others who have been much more eloquent that I ever could.
First is Alexander Tyler; this is only part, and the whole should be read aloud multiple times per day on every TV and radio station across the globe:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasure. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship.”
In the Federalist Papers, number five, Alexander Hamilton observed:
” … and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found to be a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
While I cannot address the situation in Australia directly, I can tell you that it seems to be the politicians in both Australia and the United States have undergone the conversion from ‘servents of the people’, to masters of the people. The ‘rule of law’ has been replaced with the rule of men. A persons “rights” are what the government decides they are (and subject to change without notice)on any given day.
Tyler listed the cycle in his complete article; it is worth your while to search it out. We are approaching his ‘250-year’ time frame, almost as if by magic!
My best to all,
Mark Hladik
Casper, Wyoming
United States
10
Perhaps it is not magic after all, Mark.
Strauss and Howe presented in 1996 a record of these cycles dating back to the Etruscans. Their predictions from 1996 are pretty much spot on.
But there may well be another explanation as well.
00
Thanks, Topher, for the clarity of your message on taxes.
Here’s my attempt to do the same for government science:
http://tinyurl.com/aynmbpv
01
Topher for PM !
00