[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
What are you talking about Alpha…
The guy who has a job earning 40K is still creating value, as is the guy earning 200K. In a flat tax the 40K person is paying 4K while the other guy is paying 20K – 4K means more to the lower earner than 20K to the 200K earner. [/quote]
I am talking about myths.
This is a superficial observation.
If I value the freedom that a 40k job affords me 4k means actually less to me because less stress and a less responsibility job and more time with my family or in self-indulgence is obviously what is more important, means more, to me otherwise I would be exerting myself to be on the 200k job.
Also the 20k is more important to the 200k earner is more important to me because it affords me to have a 40k job.
Without his industriousness I might not have the freedom of a low responsibility job.
If you however, told me: But Alpha I feel better if I give more than 20k of my 200k income to the man who gets to enjoy his $1 Papst Blue Ribbon watching the super bowl with his mates while I am working late nights managing the company so he can have the security of coming into work in the morning.
Then I would say: You are welcome to do so if it makes you sleep better at night.
But hurting the stronger members of society in the name of equality is a feminist doctrine of faux equality.
To each according to its own value.
Think equity not equality.
The 40k earner is not equal to the 200k earner - they are both equitable to society.
On the other hand we can talk about the psychology of the the 40k earner who feels the need for the 200k earner to be hurt.
Why is this good to society?
And why is it that the “old myth” that has proved its wisdom with millenia of proof not good for society?
Please include why the Jewish community is strong and prospers where ever their communities are founded.
[/quote]
But again, more importantly, none of this has anything to do with the law of decreasing marginal utility.
[/quote]
No, smh.
I do not believe decreasing marginal utility is more important to talk about. And from the standpoint of debate technique, a topic you seem to find it important to harp on, it’s an ineffective debate technique to repeatedly, futilely demand that others stay on sidetracks of your choice. Perhaps if one succeeded in these demands it would be an effective technique, but your repeated efforts at this either always or almost always fail. This particular instance is an excellent example. It’s in your mind that diminishing marginal utility proves what is just. It’s fine, and laudable, to express that you believe this. But demanding that others return to this idea of yours and keep talking about it, particularly after it’s already been thoroughly responded to, shows you up as a lightweight with a list of talking points and a mistaken idea of his skills at meaningful discussion.
A second aspect here, beyond the above, is the hypocrisy. Fundamentally you demand that others keep returning to the aspects you deem important, but you rarely if ever apply such a principle to yourself.
Yet a third aspect is that what goes on with you is clearly not discussion, but lecturing. You have your prepared lecture and set of points, gotten from wherever, and nothing can deviate from that. Not the flow of discussion, and certainly not your own “thoughts.” So that makes any exchange with you inherently not a discussion. But discussion is what most of us are here for, and is what I am here for. You’re here, it seems, for your talking points, for your demands that your side-tracks must become the new topic for everyone who responds, and to polish your balls.
Of course there will always be such persons on forums, but when they show themselves they can be recognized for what they are.
Returning to this specific thread, I’ve already dealt with how diminishing marginal utility is not the be-all, end-all of what is just, let alone even a part of what is just, without bringing personal philosophical grounds into it. However, when we bring this into it it makes it even more the case that I really cannot care less about your sophomoric belief that diminishing marginal utility is the definition of what is just, which most likely you “learned” from some leftist professor or other. I find the shallowness there to be extreme. Wisdom does not reside in such shallowness as comes from your youth and leftist indoctrination. For example it’s entirely your prerogative to discard Biblical wisdom if you wish, but there are also thousands of years of deeper philosophy to which you’d compare your utterly simplistic concept of what is just, if you were in fact engaged in intellectual thought. But clearly you are not.
With regard to wisdom, I made that very clear right at the start when I first replied to you that the Principles of Justice as respected through the Divinely inspired Judeo system of taxation is greater than a man made new age doctrine that leads into progressive taxation.
We disagree fundamentally, above and beyond your lecturing style and your repeated insistence that everyone must return to your talking points.
There is no discussion when not only you dodge any actual discussion but use this style. From the standpoint of other readers there is no discussion to be read between us. From the regard of whether there’s even the potential of a trace of value to me from your writings, first intellectually there is not for the reasons I’ve given already, and then further my core beliefs are completely different from yours and so personally, on top of your arguments being utterly shallow and not standing up to factual analysis as already shown, they’re philosophically anathema.
You don’t get to dictate what is more important to talk about. You’re utterly mistaken in thinking that because you demand to talk about diminishing marginal utility, that that is what we will now talk about,. What is more important for you to talk about is utterly meaningless for me and a non-reality with regard to what is just.
On the other hand, feel free to elaborate on how you, with your tender years ( I have studied the Jude-Christian system for 20 years - your conscious life time ) have come to make such a bold statement that the wisdom of Judeo system of taxation is a superseded “old myth”.
And, just saying: “I used the law of diminishing marginal utility” as an argument does not count because that would be like a religious fanatic telling you to go look up Genesis chapter 1. I care no more about you making that your law than you do about his way of deciding. But, again, you are hypocritical and demand from others different than what you yourself do.
I repeat: the law of diminishing marginal utility as a measure of what is just is to me what the fable of the Bible is to you.
We can agree to disagree or you can go ahead and explain why you think the Judeo system of taxation is an “old myth” without just saying that is so because it has been replace by a man made doctrine they gave you as a suppository of “truth” in College - and that is superior because it came from the church of college education.
Having said that, you are welcome to express your self as you please. Your continuous demand that I return to your sidetracks however, will not be entertained further.
Again however your hypocrisy rises in yet another way, with regards to what you consider the proof of what is just: Either you have decided to give up your washing machine and your car because there is a child in Africa who experiences greater marginal utility of the dollars those sales could raise more than you do, or you have not and you are an unjust person in your own eyes. As typical for a liberal, you’re so generous with taking other people’s money and so deft at applying your concepts of justice to others but not, I expect, to yourself.
Or perhaps you do indeed give away everything you have past the subsistence level of a child in Africa: if so, and only if so, then I’ve misjudged what you are.
And now that my post is covered by using the lives of the innocent, no liberal can say anything about my logic because they would constitute and insult and I therefore have the higher moral ground.
As you’re so fond of saying, but I expect that hypocritically you won’t accept as proving anything in this case: End of story. Case closed.
It is in fact however the end of the story with regard to my replying to you. It’s unlikely, however, to be the end of you pretending to be engaged in intellectual discussion when what you do is actually entirely different.