Mike Hendrick's of the Kansas City Star wrote an op-ed on 4/18/07 suggesting that the solution to mass shootings is more gun control. This is the most perverse logic.
Can you imagine a world where someone is free to shoot and kill 32 people with probably hundreds of witnesses, all of whom would have had an easy shot to put a stop to the killing after his first or second shot. But not one of them had the tool needed to end the killing and the killing went on till the maniac was satiated.
Virginia is a must issue concealed carry state but the university campus is under special laws. The state legislature, in its idiocy, made the campus (and every campus in Virginia) a gun free zone. Thus, the crazies that will always be among us can shoot up a school without opposition till the police arrive. Even if they show up in 5 or 10 minutes, many will die because no one on the scene can stop the insanity.
Isn't it obvious that it was gun control that killed all but the first few fictims? Isn't it obvious that more of the same poison is not the solution?
The results are in. Where people can defend themselves, mass shootings do not happen! It is an unspeakable crime to force people into a defenseless position.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Those Dirty, Rotten Taxes. The Burden on Civilization.
Liberals worry about the regressive nature of the Social Security tax (FICA) and the sales tax is somewhat regressive as well. We are also burdened with a very progressive (in the sense that the rate goes up the more you make) income tax. Conservatives used to worry about that a lot. The combined result of both of these taxes is a full fledged caste system. It prevents new upstart families from having a fair shot at getting rich. It locks the already rich families into positions of wealth and power.
In a lightly taxed (free) nation, the path to wealth is to get an education, learn a useful skill and use that knowledge to earn some money via salary. By working for someone else, you get the advantage of his capital investment and you can accumulate savings until you have enough to invest in your own business and start making more money. At this point, savings becomes capital.
Our current tax system impedes your progress in two ways. When you are young and still learning, you are heavily taxed by the regressive taxes. This is a burden but not a full fledged stopper on your path to wealth. But when you start earning a good salary, the income tax comes in to suck up your surplus and prevent that critical capital accumulation phase. This hurts you terribly and it also hurts society. Society at large should have its standard of living improved by the capital accumulation of individuals as overall productivity increases. We have that down to a trickle thanks to the progressive income tax.
The leaders of our current, very unfree, nation care more for their wealth and relative privilege than they do your standard of living. This is not any different than the Kings, Sultans, Pharoahs, etc of the past. They lived well at the long and short term expense of their subjects. In our nation, we do have the power to stop this if we could just got over the two party paradigm and start thinking as free people again. I prefer that to being a subject.
I consider the income tax as fractional slavery. If they are taking 40% of your earnings, how is that different from requiring the surfs of the Middle Ages to work 40% of their time on their master's crops before they could work on their own?
In a lightly taxed (free) nation, the path to wealth is to get an education, learn a useful skill and use that knowledge to earn some money via salary. By working for someone else, you get the advantage of his capital investment and you can accumulate savings until you have enough to invest in your own business and start making more money. At this point, savings becomes capital.
Our current tax system impedes your progress in two ways. When you are young and still learning, you are heavily taxed by the regressive taxes. This is a burden but not a full fledged stopper on your path to wealth. But when you start earning a good salary, the income tax comes in to suck up your surplus and prevent that critical capital accumulation phase. This hurts you terribly and it also hurts society. Society at large should have its standard of living improved by the capital accumulation of individuals as overall productivity increases. We have that down to a trickle thanks to the progressive income tax.
The leaders of our current, very unfree, nation care more for their wealth and relative privilege than they do your standard of living. This is not any different than the Kings, Sultans, Pharoahs, etc of the past. They lived well at the long and short term expense of their subjects. In our nation, we do have the power to stop this if we could just got over the two party paradigm and start thinking as free people again. I prefer that to being a subject.
I consider the income tax as fractional slavery. If they are taking 40% of your earnings, how is that different from requiring the surfs of the Middle Ages to work 40% of their time on their master's crops before they could work on their own?
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