From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 19:07:18 MDT
On Thursday 29 August 2002 16:41, Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:28 PM Brian D Williams talon57@well.com
>
> wrote:
> >>I haven't been in this country's or any country's military service
> >>but I still pay a dear price every April 15th, lemme tell ya.
> >
> > Military personnal pay taxes too, subtract from both sides, your
> > back to zero.
>
> I was going to try to stay off this thread...
>
> All government employees are paid out of taxes. This includes Marines
> and all other servicemen and women. I.e., they are net tax receivers.
> Since they are paid out of taxes, they are receiving stolen goods. It
> doesn't matter if the thief -- the government -- takes some of it back.
> That is no different than a mob boss paying his enforcers, then charging
> them for using his cars and guns and being paid back out of the same
> monies he paid them with. (Imagine if taxes were reduced to zero in
> stages. The salaries of all government employees would eventually also
> go to zero! The salaries of net tax payers would rise.)
>...
> Cheers!
>
> Dan
> http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
To be fair, there is no equivalence between a tax payer paying a share of his
federal reserve notes, and a soldier putting his life on the line. It just
isn't commensurate. The soldier is working at a usually quite low paying
job, and putting himself, sort-of willingly, into a position where his life
is endangered. There are lots of easier ways to avoid starving, and lots of
jobs that are both safer and better paying, for equivalent levels of skill.
(And this is ignoring night watches, etc. and being on duty 24 hours a day
... only when on leave is a soldier nearly as free as a tech who is on-call
to a beeper.) The investment level is just too much higher. But that very
investment is what tends to cause a change in the perspectives adopted.
Right? Wrong? I can't say. But it sure happens! And just because it
doesn't make sense to someone who hasn't made the investment doesn't mean
that it isn't right. The problem is, it also doesn't mean that it is right,
and *nobody* seems to be in a fair position to judge.
But one thing is reasonably obvious: If there had not been those people
making that investment of their lives, we wouldn't be here now. That job is
one of the most important around (though frequently misused by their
commanders). So it's important that I try to understand the viewpoint. I
can't. This is obvious in advance. (I can't even understand the draft
resisters, who on the average made a much smaller comitment. I was medically
unsuited, and I knew I would be found so.) But it's important to do my best.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:32 MST