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Col Joseph Lenertz
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The whole article is written under the premise of 'Socialism is good'. This non-question: "But will the U.S. join much of Western Europe in developing a successful socialist political tradition?" is really just advocacy for socialism. And if the historical lower GDP growth rates, lower individual productivity, and lower labor participation rates are what you call successful, then we are today lurching East, towards socialism and success! It has been our fierce independence, love of individual liberty, and the value we place on self-reliance, that has prevented America from sliding down the mud-hole of socialism. Maybe some or all of those can be correlated or even shown to be causal from being (largely, disproportionately) a people of Faith.
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PO3 Steven Sherrill
PO3 Steven Sherrill
9 y
Col Joseph Lenertz another beauty of our system is that faiths are mutually exclusive of each other, banned from the government, and equally protected individual liberties.
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COL Ted Mc
COL Ted Mc
9 y
Col Joseph Lenertz - Colonel; If you toss in "blessed with the sole possession of one of the largest 'unowned' natural resource bases and one of the largest 'unowned' tracts of land in the temperate zone" to your factors which resulted in the US becoming a dominant nation, and we are almost completely in agreement.
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PO3 Steven Sherrill
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COL Ted Mc Our constitution does not guarantee anything as to how much we will have. It makes no guarantee that we will be equal in the material side of life. We are all granted the freedom to pursue our dreams. We are granted the freedom to pursue a higher quality of life. We have a free market economy. It is not based on government intervention. Does the government intervene? Sure it does. How is that working out for Social Security? Look at socialist nations. High tax rate some as high as 40%. Taxation was one of the things that led up to the revolution in the first place.
Religion (which has nothing to do with true spirituality) is big business. There is no way that the institution of religion ANY religion wants a socialized government. The more the government is involved, the less room there is for the church. The less room for the church means less money in their coffers. If we had a tax rate of 40% and a church that demands a 10% tithe, you are asking people to give away 50% of what they earn before they see a dime. Ask any American to take 50% of their gross away and see what the reaction is. Better put on a cup before you ask. For those who truly believe, they will do what they feel is right.
Would it be nice to have truly free access to higher education, medical care, and social services? of course it would. Problem is that it isn't free. It is still paid for in our taxes. All it does is punish those who do well by making them pay for those who do not. There is no such thing as free. Everything has a cost. It may not be a cost you can see, but anything that costs money, has to be paid for either directly by the individual, or indirectly through our tax dollars. That is why socialism is not going to work in America. It is because we don't want our tax dollars going to a lot of the useless programs they go to now nevermind increasing the bureaucracy that would be involved in expanding them.
I love our constitution. It give me the right to say you are an asshole, and you the right to tell me to piss off. It grants me the right to keep firearms in my home so that in the event that I am needed to protect my country I can have the tools to do so at my disposal. It guarantees me the right to petition my government for answers when they need to be held accountable to the people. In order to implement any kind of socialism, large parts of the constitution I love will need to be gutted, altered, manipulated, or otherwise tweaked. No thank you.
Finally, as it currently is being run, couldn't manage a wet dream. Who in their right mind would trust this group of incompetent, infighting, asshats with implementing any real socialized programs. so in light of that, I wouldn't trust them to implement a bathroom attendant program for the Hard Rock Cafe, let alone trust them to implement the types of programs that socialism would bring.
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COL Ted Mc
COL Ted Mc
9 y
PO3 Steven Sherrill - PO; Making the assumption that the taxes are actually being paid

[1] The US has the second highest MAXIMUM corporate tax rate in the world - 35%
[2] The US has the seventh highest MAXIMUM individual tax rate in the world - 55.9%
[3] The US has the seventh highest EFFECTIVE tax rate in the world - 27.7%
and
[4] The US has the 41st highest "payroll tax" rate in the world - 15.3%

[NOTE - US tax rates DO NOT include amounts spent for health/medical insurance.]

http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Effective_Tax_Rate_Study.pdf
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LTC Psychological Operations Officer
LTC (Join to see)
9 y
COL Ted Mc - is that data old? I think the max individual rate is 39.6%, but since it doesn't apply to me, I haven't checked lately. :( As to the corporate rate, while that 35% is on the books, I don't think any corporations actually pay that due to all the loopholes and exemptions they get.
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COL Ted Mc
COL Ted Mc
9 y
LTC (Join to see) - Colonel; It's the most recent that I could find but it may well not be either 2015 or 2016 rates.

As I started my post "Making the assumption that the taxes are actually being paid ..." I rather think that they aren't being paid because once you have enough money it becomes cost efficient to "avoid" taxation (which is legal - it's only "evasion" that isn't).
[EDITED TO ADD - Maybe I should have made that "Making the RASH assumption that the taxes are actually being paid ...".]

In any event, the statement "The USA is a low taxation country because it isn't a socialist country." is a myth on at least two levels - but I'll stick with the first one which is that the US is a "low taxation" country. [Remember that there are 196 countries (that is counting Taiwan as a country) in the world today and being the seventh highest puts the US in the top 3.57%.]
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PO3 Donald Murphy
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"Too religious?" Jesus was a socialist.
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