Dear Mind-numbed Robot,
"I had written a lengthy response to your post addressing each of your points."
Well, what would you call this response? Short?? If this is short, I shudder to think what's long. LOL.
"In the end I decided to trash it." And write an equally-long response instead. ;-)
I shouldn't talk. I figure I can outpost in length all but a few FR posters. * chuckle *
"Your concerns are not so much with the NRST as they are with people, specifically politicians but politicians are just people in particular positions of power."
Well, certainly I have some concerns with the NRST.
But you're right to say that my focus, if not my concern exactly, is with the politicians.
The NRST doesn't change human nature.
"I assume the desire of all of us is to minimize that power and to make what is left work equally well for all of us."
No, not exactly. I do think that our politicians right now do have too much power, because money is power, and would like to reduce it from current levels. However, I don't believe that zero government is the ideal, and if the power of the federal government were reduced too much, I might wind up fighting for more.
I'm comfortable with how politics works, and with the fact that politicians are, well, politicians. I don't see that human nature is going to change, and I regard many of the things that some folks condemn in our system of government as actually being good things, or at least, better than the alternatives.
So, politicians argue, debate, compromise, swap favors, take half-loaves, etc. I view this to be usually superior to the alternative, which is that folks don't compromise, don't swap favors, don't take half-loaves, and one side wins everything, and the other side is left desolate. Usually, this either is, or leads to authoritarian and unstable government. When the losers think that they will be stripped of everything they wanted or previously had, and may not be able to recover it as the levers of power are used to keep them out, well, that encourages armed conflict.
When "losers" get some of what they wanted, or get to keep much of what they had, and when they have a fighting chance to take back power, they tend to stay within the legal and customary system.
So, I'm pretty much okay with politics as we practice it in the US, because, lots of times, folks on either side of most issues DO get something, if not everything they want.
And politicians survive and thrive on negotiating those compromises.
There are certain issues where I'm unhappy with how that process works, especially issues that fatally compromise certain human rights, like the right to life.
But from my perspective, income taxes are not intrinsically evil. Neither are consumption taxes. Nor tariffs. In fact, I don't view taxation as intrinsically evil, at all.
But, when the federal government must collect 20% of GDP, give or take a percent or so, to fund itself, then any system of taxation turns ugly. And must be highly coercive. And will eventually fill with "loopholes" in the effort to make it "fairer." I put both words in quotes, because frankly, one man's loophole is another man's fairness.
Because I'm a small business, I can pretty much write off all my capital investment every year. Because I'm a small business, I don't pay any business taxes at all. I view that as fairness. Others view it as loopholes.
We'll get these loopholes (if they aren't already embedded in the new code) in the NRST. Just give it a little bit of time. That's what politicians do, and they do these things because they have constituencies who want these things.
As for Dr. Keyes, I find him an inspiring speaker, a guy with a lot of ideas, a personally charismatic and charming man (at least on the few occasions I was privileged to meet him), but I'd hardly say that I agree with him on nearly everything.
As Always Right points out, we certainly diverge on the matter of reparations to African-Americans. LOL.
"The NRST will clean it up and make it transparent."
I just don't believe that. I see no evidence to suggest that is true.
sitetest
As for Dr. Keyes, I find him an inspiring speaker, a guy with a lot of ideas, a personally charismatic and charming man (at least on the few occasions I was privileged to meet him), but I'd hardly say that I agree with him on nearly everything.
As Always Right points out, we certainly diverge on the matter of reparations to African-Americans. LOL.
It seemed evident to me, a mistake I make many times as what seems evident to me apparently isn't, that I was referring to Dr. Keyes' opinions as expressed in the article posted, rather than in every word he has ever uttered or every position ever taken. It is mischaracterizations like that by Always Wrong that I no longer respond to him. I consider him a gnat, a pest that adds little to nothing to the discussion. People just waste time swatting at him.