Bill Dawg's Journal: the glass is half-empty, evidently

Just saw this comment: "Tax cuts benefit those who pay more taxes - the rich."

What a warped (AKA Leftist) way of looking at things. Reducing the tax burden on someone is not an increased benefit, it's a reduced punishment.

If I'm one of the people chained up in a dungeon, being tortured every day, and this one chap is especially hated by the king and tortured more than the rest of us, if it's announced that due to the kingdom's gold running low, torture time will be reduced 25% across the board, I'm supposed to think of that as a *bad* thing, because it means one guy will see a greater drop in time on the rack (even tho he'll prolly *still* spend more total time there than I)?!?

Taxes are punishment?

[mcgrew]

If taxes are punishment then the rich need their taxes tripled after all the unpunished evil they've done so far this century. The poor are being punished enough - by the rich. If having to pay for roads and bridges is punishment, then having to pay for food and water is, too.

As a Christian, I have no problem with taxes (Mark 12:17). Of course, if you worship mammon rather than God, taxes would indeed be punishment.

Re:

[Bill Dawg]

Of course they are. It's overhead, taken from the sweat of your labor, to fund law enforcement etc. Anything forcibly taken from you is a bad thing, innately. It's just that having *some* government is good, and therefore mandatory funding of it is a necessary evil.

p.s. I can see now how you can jibe Christianity with Leftism. That verse doesn't mean what you imply it to.

Actually, it's true

[BarbaraHudson]

That money gets diverted to the common good, paying for infrastructure, etc. The better the infrastructure and the better off people are, the more that capitalism will benefit. You can't have a working economy with no roads, sewers, water, police and fire services, and you can't build new and innovative products with an uneducated population. Basically, the rich won't do it voluntarily, even though, because they're at the top of the economic ladder, they will reap the greatest benefits.

Re:

[Bill Dawg]

Wall them in (economically), and the rich will do it voluntarily. AKA Trumpism. The problem is we allow the rich to pillage the U.S., via Free Trade, rather than having to invest in the U.S. to be able to take the chance to grow their wealth. Cut off their opportunities outside the U.S. Let them move their whole business to whatever shithole country they want to hire workers from, and let them see how they like the legal systems and corruption there.

TL;DR: Forcing things on people is always immoral, but