Neil Boortz tells the truth

Yeah, before 1913 we lived in a fascist state. Where do you come up with this crap? Opinions are not facts and vice versa. Oh and you misspelled SOPHOMORIC. The spell check is right next to the preview button.

 

The CDC classified a smoker by asking, "Have you smoked 100 cigarettes in your life?"

Hardly something that would move the needle in percentage of taxes even a thousandth of one percent.

And the subject for this discussion was CIGARETTE smoking. The more expensive kinds of smoking (cigar, pipe) as well as the illegal kinds (narcotics) are more easily purchased by wealthy people. Check out Cigar Aficionado magazine sometime. Not exactly a publication targeted toward the poor.



Know any poor people interested in the world's best luxury hotels?

 

Oh waaah. If you can't get a refund at a journalist's salary, you're not trying very hard.

 

Finally someone with something to say. Good points. After a little Googling I found that the average smoker smokes about 10 packs a month and that the average cigarette tax is about $1.10 a pack. That works out to about $130 a year or roughly 0.6% the income of someone making $20,000 a year. Not huge, but not inconsequential. And of course this doesn't factor in the total cost of a pack of cigarettes. I'd still like to see what the numbers would look like minus so called sin taxes, but I'll concede that it might not move the needle much either way. However, I think we can both agree that if someone is barely living paycheck to paycheck they should probably reevaluate their vices.

BTW, I never posed for the cover of Cigar Aficionado so what is my picture doing there?

 

No, prior to 1913 (1914 here) there was no income tax so your point is kinda pointless.

But tell you what?

I promise to spell "sophomoric" correctly next time.

 

I see you are back from your "Karl Marx Appreciation Society" monthly meeting. Did FB come dressed as Lenin again? This proves my point. Prior to the establishment of the income tax and hence progressive taxation the American Republic was alive and well and had been for nearly 150 years. So I guess now you are agreeing with me that progressive taxation is NOT "one of the fundamental tenets of living in a free and democratic society".

 

Lordy, it's like talking to a small child.

There have always been taxes in one form or another. Customs duties at one time were the primary source of government funding--in the late 1800's they made up about 75% of the revenue.

Income taxes in Canada (and presumably in the U.S) were used to fund the war.

And yes, progressive taxation is the mark of a civilized society where the most vulnerable members are treated with respect.

The fact that there was no income tax prior to WW1 is irrelevant.

 

I should heed my tag line, but for the love of the game I soldier on. First, have you ever started a post without an insult? Just curious, must be a Canadian debating technique. Anyway, I'm confused as your posts aren't very clear on the topic. At first I thought that you were arguing that in order to have a "free" society you MUST have a progressive income tax but now I think you arguing that you can have a free society without an income tax but if you DO have an income tax it must be progressive in order to have a "free society"? That must be the case because anything else is clearly contradicted by historical fact. If that is the case then I think we can reach a compromise, just abolish the income tax. See, I'm a uniter not a divider. When responding please use small words because with my limited intellect and government school education, I get confused very easily.

"In the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:..a heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto

 

That's more of an argument for Karl Marx being right about something than against a graduated income tax. Hell, if Steve Forbes can't even gain traction in Republican primaries for the idea of getting rid of the graduated tax, I don't think there's a groundswell to dump it.

 

Just because there isn't a groundswell of support for something doesn't make an idea bad (and I'm not just talking about a flat tax). Forbes couldn't gain traction because he had ZERO charisma.

 

Well, if it makes you feel any better, it's a bad idea too. But of course we should go back to what we had the first 150 years. Like slavery, Jim Crow laws, zero protections for labor, zero product safety, etc., etc.

 

Holy shit.
You can't have learned history from subprimates, so I'm concluding you're a troll.
Alive and well for 150 years.
Yeah, if you ignore the fact that the first attempt fell apart, and that the second one had that unpleasantness between 1860 and 1865 to contend with, and slavery, and child labor, and the Gilded Age plutocracy, and the Klan, and anti-Catholicism, and white supremacy, and male-only suffrage, and...
Fuck this. I'm not going to be the one that has to come on here and defend TEDDY Roosevelt against the bag of hammers.