World Eyes that see unreality

[MoreCoffee]

God told the Israelites to take in strangers. That would include refugees - back then mostly from famine.

 

[psalms 91]

Once again then talk to your government and leave ours alone, we take in plenty of immigrants

 

[MoreCoffee]

Once again then talk to your government and leave ours alone, we take in plenty of immigrants

Why talk to the government? The example given in the Law and the Prophets is one that we can follow. We don't need to rely on governments. We can do good ourselves. We can do it both by voting for people who want to do good things and by doing good things ourselves.

 

[Highlander]

The thread is about distorted perceptions of danger and even delight in the plight of some refugees because of fears and other things that are felt and believed by some of the public in many wealthy nations.

You seem to have such little regard for the safety & sanctity of innocent life. Answer this for me: would you go to one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, as they sit there without legs, and tell them that any perceptions of danger they have is "distorted."

I'm sorry to say that, with your flippant answer, YOU are the one who is distorted, Coffee.

 

[psalms 91]

Why talk to the government? The example given in the Law and the Prophets is one that we can follow. We don't need to rely on governments. We can do good ourselves. We can do it both by voting for people who want to do good things and by doing good things ourselves.

Then by all means take some in and lead by example

 

[tango]

Why talk to the government? The example given in the Law and the Prophets is one that we can follow. We don't need to rely on governments. We can do good ourselves. We can do it both by voting for people who want to do good things and by doing good things ourselves.

I must admit this kind of situation is just one of many reasons I prefer a small government approach. Jesus told us to look after people, not to vote for someone else who will tax someone else to look after whoever they think is deserving. The Good Samaritan saw a need and met it, he didn't canvas for votes for someone to raise taxes on something he happened to dislike in the hope some of that money would go to help people somewhat like the man he found beaten at the roadside.

Aside from a natural desire to keep proven criminals away I don't see why immigration needs to be such a big deal. If we didn't give any government money to immigrants at all, whatever their circumstance, it wouldn't be an issue. Sure, you want to come live in London / New York / Singapore / wherever? Go for it, but be aware it's an expensive place to live and if you don't have a place to stay it's brutally cold sleeping on a park bench. You do have a job, right? If not you're going to be sleeping on that bench begging for handouts until you either freeze or go somewhere you can support yourself. If an individual takes pity on you that's their call but the government won't give you a bean.

The smaller government becomes the more scope there is for people to provide for whoever they consider deserving, rather than handing over ever-more money to a government machine to hand out to whoever it considers deserving. With the best will in the world, governments of all flavors are going to do more than hang onto power than to put the people first. Obviously shrinking government has its limits because some things don't work unless they are centrally funded, but I reckon the government could be shrunk to be vastly smaller than it currently is while still doing more good than harm in the process.

Of course there will be winners and losers, as there are with every centralised change, it's just that the set of winners and losers would be different.

 

[tango]

You seem to have such little regard for the safety & sanctity of innocent life. Answer this for me: would you go to one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, as they sit there without legs, and tell them that any perceptions of danger they have is "distorted."

I'm sorry to say that, with your flippant answer, YOU are the one who is distorted, Coffee.

No Highlander, you're the one with a distorted view here.

Nobody is saying that there aren't dangerous people out there. I've tried to get that through to you repeatedly but you don't seem to want to hear it. There's a huge difference between your strawman arguments like this, and the reality that a vast majority of Muslims don't blow people up. The distortion is the idea that every young man with brown skin and a beard wants to kill us all - if that were the case I'd have died many times over given how often I passed through overwhelmingly Muslim parts of London. In one market I visited you'd be forgiven (aside from the weather) for thinking you were in a Middle Eastern country because the majority of men had brown skin and beards and the majority of woman were wearing assorted Islamic dress. Yet somehow they managed to just walk past me, every single one of them, without beheading me or blowing me up. They didn't even make any comments about the infidel among them.

As I've pointed out in other threads but you didn't reply, preferring to throw around insults and strawman arguments, food allergies kill more people over time than terrorism and the deaths on our roads in three months outnumber the deaths due to terrorism in a decade. And yet whenever someone points out the irritating facts you seem to revert to form and highlight a specific example of danger from terrorism.

If counterterrorism was as easy as "brown skin plus beard equals bad" life would be so much easier. But sadly that kind of distorted perception of danger is what drives people into all sorts of irrational thought processes. Sometimes people really get to show their genius by seeing brown skin and a beard, ignoring a turban, and assuming that Mr Sikh is actually Mr Muslim and wants to kill us all.

Oh, and if I forgot to mention it before, I was riding the London Underground and London buses on July 8, 2005 (the day after three suicide bombers hit the Underground and one hit a London bus). But hey, what would I know about the threat of terrorism?

Just out of interest Highlander, since the sum total of your allegedly marvellous political insight seems to be little more than strawman arguments, what would you do to guarantee the safety and sanctity of innocent life? Would it consider the danger of anaphylactic shock, would it consider making roads safer, would it do anything to prevent the next Timothy McVeigh? Would it do anything to encourage people to take more exercise and thereby reduce deaths from heart disease and other issues related to obesity? Or would it just focus on the small chance (*) of being harmed by terrorism?

(*) Note I said "small". "Small" and "zero" don't mean the same thing.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I must admit this kind of situation is just one of many reasons I prefer a small government approach. Jesus told us to look after people, not to vote for someone else who will tax someone else to look after whoever they think is deserving. The Good Samaritan saw a need and met it, he didn't canvas for votes for someone to raise taxes on something he happened to dislike in the hope some of that money would go to help people somewhat like the man he found beaten at the roadside.

Aside from a natural desire to keep proven criminals away I don't see why immigration needs to be such a big deal. If we didn't give any government money to immigrants at all, whatever their circumstance, it wouldn't be an issue. Sure, you want to come live in London / New York / Singapore / wherever? Go for it, but be aware it's an expensive place to live and if you don't have a place to stay it's brutally cold sleeping on a park bench. You do have a job, right? If not you're going to be sleeping on that bench begging for handouts until you either freeze or go somewhere you can support yourself. If an individual takes pity on you that's their call but the government won't give you a bean.

The smaller government becomes the more scope there is for people to provide for whoever they consider deserving, rather than handing over ever-more money to a government machine to hand out to whoever it considers deserving. With the best will in the world, governments of all flavours are going to do more than hang onto power than to put the people first. Obviously shrinking government has its limits because some things don't work unless they are centrally funded, but I reckon the government could be shrunk to be vastly smaller than it currently is while still doing more good than harm in the process.

Of course there will be winners and losers, as there are with every centralised change, it's just that the set of winners and losers would be different.

Be careful of any system that relies wholly on the generosity of the relatively well off towards the relatively poor. Israel's history showed that generosity is not common among God's people. It is likely no more common among those who are not God's people. Nineteenth century England was an example of reliance on personal charity. So too was nineteenth century USA. The philosophy of social Darwinism was invented in those two countries. The idea that the well off are genetically superior and the poor genetically inferior was born in these countries. It is also true that in sixteenth and seventeenth century England the religious Puritans regarded poverty as a sure sign of moral turpitude. For them a godly man ought not to have any need of charity. Because of these considerations I am inclined to think that taxation for things like universal medical care, pensions, and unemployment benefits is just.

 

[psalms 91]

Be careful of any system that relies wholly on the generosity of the relatively well off towards the relatively poor. Israel's history showed that generosity is not common among God's people. It is likely no more common among those who are not God's people. Nineteenth century England was an example of reliance on personal charity. So too was nineteenth century USA. The philosophy of social Darwinism was invented in those two countries. The idea that the well off are genetically superior and the poor genetically inferior was born in these countries. It is also true that in sixteenth and seventeenth century England the religious Puritans regarded poverty as a sure sign of moral turpitude. For them a godly man ought not to have any need of charity. Because of these considerations I am inclined to think that taxation for things like universal medical care, pensions, and unemployment benefits is just.

It is providing that the wealthy cant escape paying their fair share

 

[tango]

Be careful of any system that relies wholly on the generosity of the relatively well off towards the relatively poor. Israel's history showed that generosity is not common among God's people. It is likely no more common among those who are not God's people. Nineteenth century England was an example of reliance on personal charity. So too was nineteenth century USA. The philosophy of social Darwinism was invented in those two countries. The idea that the well off are genetically superior and the poor genetically inferior was born in these countries. It is also true that in sixteenth and seventeenth century England the religious Puritans regarded poverty as a sure sign of moral turpitude. For them a godly man ought not to have any need of charity. Because of these considerations I am inclined to think that taxation for things like universal medical care, pensions, and unemployment benefits is just.

I don't see a problem with a very basic level of background provision by the state but believe it should be rolled back from what it has become, especially looking at some specific areas in the UK and the US.

When my brother was being put back together again in hospital following a nasty motorcycle accident a friend of his was in hospital having cosmetic surgery on his nose, paid for by the taxpayer. Why the taxpayer was paying for cosmetic surgery remains something of a mystery. In the UK we have supposedly universal healthcare but it's still something of a lottery whether you'll get good care or shabby care - some of the examples I've personally seen illustrate the extremes on both sides. I've seen a family member receiving care from nurses who could only be described as angels - nothing was too much trouble and the care received was incredible. I've also seen a family member in an overcrowded ward unable to sleep at night because someone else had the TV on loud because they were mostly deaf. I've seen bathrooms where the same bar of dried out dusty soap remained for a week despite allegedly being cleaned every day. I've personally helped someone with a suspected broken foot who was expected to walk the length of the hospital to get an X-ray. So on that basis I wouldn't have a problem with centrally funded provision of life-saving treatments, with consideration given towards treating smaller issues before they became life-threatening, but wouldn't expect it to be free to see the doctor. And a couple of doctor friends have given me an insight into the truly terrifying levels of waste and mismanagement within the NHS.

Likewise in the US I've personally seen a few situations where people take a fully loaded cart to a checkout, ring up north of $100 worth of junk food (mostly popcorn, potato chips and soda), swipe their welfare card and end up paying barely $5 for it. There's a big difference between public assistance to pay for food, and the taxpayer giving you enough junk food to keep a large family in junk for a month.

There is merit in your argument that a system that relies purely on private generosity will leave people to starve but on the flip side a system that is centrally managed is wide open to be abused by some while not offering much help to others.

 

[tango]

It is providing that the wealthy cant escape paying their fair share

The trouble with this line of argument is that you need to define "the wealthy" and "their fair share". Many people get offended by perfectly legal means the wealthy use to reduce their tax bill, while at the same time doing everything they can to legally reduce their own tax bill. If you (generically speaking) claim allowances to reduce your own tax bill you can't really complain when "the wealthy" (whoever they are) claim the allowances the government allows them to claim to reduce their tax bill.

Tax evasion (i.e. illegal ways of not paying tax) cover everything from a wealthy businessman creating a shell company in Panama to deflect some of his income to a foreign front, to a waitress claiming she got $40 in tips this week when she really got $50. It's just that it's easier for the average person to identify with, and sympathise with, the waitress than it is for them to identify with the billionaire businessman. And of course anyone who receives any part of their income in cash has the opportunity to underdeclare it, while most of us will never be wealthy enough that it makes financial sense to set up a front company in Panama to hide some of our invoices.

 

[psalms 91]

Lets make it easy, if you make so much then you pay a percentage, all pay the same percentage without loopholes or breaks or anything else, we all pay equally by percentage

 

[tango]

Lets make it easy, if you make so much then you pay a percentage, all pay the same percentage without loopholes or breaks or anything else, we all pay equally by percentage

It all depends on how you define whether or not you "make so much".

Tax avoidance is usually geared around one or another means of claiming allowable deductions. As a business if you sell $1000 worth of goods that cost you $400 to make, you made a $600 profit. If you can fiddle the figures a little to show that your goods actually cost you $460 to make you just made 10% of your profits go away, and so reduced your taxable income. If you apply a flat rate of tax to turnover you make life much easier for businesses with a substantial markup while making life much harder for businesses that have a lot of front-loaded costs and businesses with relatively small markups. If you vary the percentage based on type of business you create an opportunity for people to be creative in defining just what type of business they are running. If donations are tax-deductible it creates an incentive to set up entities that are notionally charitable but actually do something over and above their official mandate, and so on. And when you get utterly ludicrous situations, like when the IRS helpline can't explain what is required on a particular IRS form (I have personally experienced this, it's not a scare story from the press), the chances of errors either intentional or otherwise escalates, while the chances of catching errors diminishes. If the numbers on a form don't add up that's one thing but if, for example, someone fumbles the numbers on one form and underdeclares their income, then calculates everything else from the fumbled figure in good faith, they could quite conceivably file a return that is inaccurate yet internally consistent despite having no intention at all of defrauding the taxman.

Tax evasion is usually about hiding income and acting as if it never existed. If you've got a billion dollars tucked away in a Swiss bank account owned by a Panamanian shell corporation operated by directors living in the Cayman Islands, the chances are the taxman is never going to know about the interest so you won't be paying any tax on it regardless of what the tax law says you have to do.

I agree entirely that taxes need to be fair, simple to process and difficult to avoid, but the problem is that the terms "fair", "simple" and "difficult" are very subjective. In many ways it would make at least some sense to do away with taxes based on income and levy taxes based on consumption. There could be minimal (maybe zero) taxes on things deemed essential (think bread, milk, and a certain quantity of electricity/heating oil/natural gas etc), and then sliding taxes based on how much an item represented luxury/opulence/status etc. So if you have a modest home and a modest lifestyle your tax bill all but goes away. If you live in a mansion, drive a Ferrari, bathe in vintage Dom Perignon and eat unicorn steaks you pay more - the heating required to heat a mansion would push into a higher tax bracket, the Ferrari would carry more tax to buy, servicing a Ferrari would be taxed more, and the Dom Perignon would be taxed more heavily. It would mean that you could work as a hedge fund manager but live like a janitor and pay minimal taxes, but I'd suspect most people with a seven or eight figure income would want to enjoy a better lifestyle.

 

[psalms 91]

That also makes sense but unfortunately our government seems to have lost its common sense

 

[tango]

That also makes sense but unfortunately our government seems to have lost its common sense

I never assume ineptitude on the part of the government, you don't get elected to high office unless you've got some smarts. I figure the government is doing what the government wants to do, they're just selling it to the people based on something else. When the government says their new program will achieve something when any fool can see it will achieve the exact opposite, I figure the government knows exactly what it will do and is just pushing a lie to get people to back it. Life makes more sense that way.

 

[psalms 91]

Yes I too believe in a hidden agenda

 

[Rens]

I never assume ineptitude on the part of the government, you don't get elected to high office unless you've got some smarts. I figure the government is doing what the government wants to do, they're just selling it to the people based on something else. When the government says their new program will achieve something when any fool can see it will achieve the exact opposite, I figure the government knows exactly what it will do and is just pushing a lie to get people to back it. Life makes more sense that way.

I don't understand how people can be so stupid to fall for it.
We have one party here, they're for the rich. Everyone knows that. It's obvious. This guy says blablabla and all the not so rich socialists vote for him. Just unbelievable and now they complain that the poor get less and the rich more. No really? What a surprise.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Governments see things through distorting lenses. Many people do too. Possibly everybody does. God see things as they are. I guess the idea working in Christianity is to get the faithful to see things as they are. It will not happen fully until the resurrection but those in heaven now do see far more clearly than do most people on Earth. Theology ought to make the faithful more sane more sound in mind and clear in vision.

 

[psalms 91]

It should

 

[tango]

I don't understand how people can be so stupid to fall for it.
We have one party here, they're for the rich. Everyone knows that. It's obvious. This guy says blablabla and all the not so rich socialists vote for him. Just unbelievable and now they complain that the poor get less and the rich more. No really? What a surprise.

Like the saying goes, under capitalism man exploits man and under communism it's the other way around.