The Progressive Income Tax

In the TEA Party, like any party, there is a whole range of people from those who started it (like Ron Paul) to the phonies that jumped on the bandwagon (Rick Perry). Since the TEA Party went mainstream it has gotten rather watered down with those that want to cut spending but not their spending. Overall it's still much closer to where we need to be than either of the major real parties.
 
Given that SS is the..

bete noire of the deficit and entitlement hawks supported by the Tea Party, how can anything they say be taken seriously when they have positons like this:
3 Jun 2011 07:30 PM
A new poll from Missouri shows a huge majority - 78 percent - opposed any cuts in social security benefits. Not far behind, 59 percent of the Tea Party voters are opposed. In the debt battle ahead, it seems clear to me that the GOP hasn't even come close to sealing the deal on spending. But there is a glimmer of hope in the data:
There is strong bipartisan support among Missouri voters for lifting the cap to impose Social Security taxes on all wages above $106,800 and requiring both employees and employers to pay (68 percent). This was supported by large majorities of Republicans (62 percent), Independents (70 percent), and Tea Party supporters (61 percent). By a margin of 59 percent to 18 percent voters say they would be more likely to vote for a Senate candidate who supports requiring employees and employers to pay Social Security taxes on all wages above $106,800.
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Yes, more taxes for the successful is far more popular than any cuts to actual benefits.
 
Actually even I support lifting the cap but also means testing as well. That is until we can phase it out entirely.
 
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And what would these....

true reforms look like? Hmm? Privatization? Means testing? Raising the retirement age? What?

Here is the next test of the GOP. Come Thanksgiving and the deficit supercommittee has failed to come up with a plan that can pass-will the Republicans just ignore the promise of across-the-board cuts and undo the pledge. They have violated pay-go on three major occasions now-Bush tax cuts, war funding, and medicare drugs. All expenditures with virtually unlimited pay horizons and all unfunded by any cuts or any revenue. Why would anyone trust them with the nation's wallet? I'd much rather take my chances on Paul and put up with his oddball thinking on things he can't effect anyhow than let the same bunch who gave Bush a by on everything (Dick Armey in his pre-Teabagger days) get there fingers on the pay button. The GOP the party of 'spend-and-don't tax'.-something for everyone.
Memories are real short here in OZ!
 
usta in Portland said:
make it viable. Why then phase it out? Just to do it?
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The idea is to make sure that people who expect it, have planned for it and need it aren't left out in the cold. It's dangerous for the government to be in charge of a system like SS. If a private retirement system was run like SS people would be in jail for it. There is just too much conflict of interest never mind the unconstitutionality of it.
 
Where does the Constitution prohibit it?

:hmm: And where is the SCOTUS ruling it such.

Also, if the government doesn't run this sort of thing who will?
The corporate entities under the heaviest fiduciary restraints were incapable of keeping themselves solvent nd required a bailout. So who is to be trusted with what amounts to a defined benefits plan for say 400M people? Or is everyone supposed to be on their own to 'invest' as they have in 401K programs and take their chances on the market-which raises the question of what sort of market volatilty would be introduced with such huge sums of money pouring into it,'bubble machine' might be a good guess.
 
Fundamental Differences

You wrote, "Where does the Constitution prohibit it?"

Ah, an illustration of fundamental differences in understanding what the Constitution was supposed to be all about.

Silly me, I thought a document understood to be a bill of particulars establishing a limited federal government and specifically naming what that goverment is allowed to do, does not need to be a list of prohibitions of what that govt can't do.

However, long ago I stopped revering the Constitution and its writers. They sucked. "Binding them down from mischief with the chains of the constitution" my ass.
 
It seems to me that....

if the sainted founders had been the unambiguous champions of 'limited government' that they have been made into recently, they would have used the term and defined in a way that required no interpretaiton. They were perfectly capable of attaching an arithmetic value to a slave at 3/5 of a freeman, but somehow were incapable of defining 'the general welfare' with sufficient precision to avoid dispute on the point? Or to leave gaping holes in the 'actual' powers of Congress as against the merely enumerated ones (meaning those they are required to execute).
And the Amendments do prohibit Congress, so it isn't quite true that that is not a feature of the document.
 
usta in Portland said:
And the Amendments do prohibit Congress, so it isn't quite true that that is not a feature of the document.
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Hence one of the arguments against including a Bill of Rights at all, that its viewpoint is contrary to the Constitution itself.

The viewpoint of the Constitution is that the government can do nothing but what we allow it to do. From here, it's a matter of "we didn't say you could do that".

The Bill Of Rights viewpoint is that the government will try to do anything it wants, and we must list things it's not allowed to do. From here, it's a matter of "you didn't say we can't".

"For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" [Federalist #84]
 
It was exactly the realization....

that not much stood betwen a sufficiently ruthless Congress and near absolute power that prompted the Ten Amendments. There is really nothing in the main body to preclude a Congressionally funded Army and the Navy (enumerated and permanently funded) from being used to supress the political minority and establish one party rule in perpetuity. It would all be a matter of who got to the door first and how forceful they might be in keeping everyone else out. It would not have been easy but in the absence of any more or less perfect rights to speech, press,assembly, bearing of arms by state militias..it would not be impossible by any means. If the US has some legitimate claim to 'gloire' in its Constitution it is in those Amendments. Otherwise it just one more way to organize mob rule-every mob being a sort of democracy and every democracy a sort of mob.
But, if I understand your larger point, the Bill of Rights does rather let the cat out of the bag that the unamended document is not sufficiently specific and not sufficiently limiting-maybe I'm just projecting my thought onto yours, I don't know.:hmm::hmm:
 
I think that the original document was intended to be sufficiently specific and limiting, from the context of "we are listing the powers being granted to our new governmment, which currently has no powers, and here they are".

I think it fails to spell this out though, leaving it open to a different interpretation "we are creating this new government, and here are how a few of the powers that it has will work".

The Bill Of Rights somewhat legitimizes this second interpretation by listing things the new goverment is specifically not allowed to do.

This shouldn't have been necessary with the first interpretation, given they were never given the power to do what the BOL forbids in the first place. Therefore the government does have powers not listed in the Constitution, right? :hmm:

I'm not positive which was the true intention, though I personally believe it was the first. I do try and read up on the history of it all but I'm no scholar and it quickly gives me a headache. :)

usta in Portland said:
that not much stood betwen a sufficiently ruthless Congress and near absolute power that prompted the Ten Amendments. There is really nothing in the main body to preclude a Congressionally funded Army and the Navy (enumerated and permanently funded) from being used to supress the political minority and establish one party rule in perpetuity. It would all be a matter of who got to the door first and how forceful they might be in keeping everyone else out. It would not have been easy but in the absence of any more or less perfect rights to speech, press,assembly, bearing of arms by state militias..it would not be impossible by any means. If the US has some legitimate claim to 'gloire' in its Constitution it is in those Amendments. Otherwise it just one more way to organize mob rule-every mob being a sort of democracy and every democracy a sort of mob.
But, if I understand your larger point, the Bill of Rights does rather let the cat out of the bag that the unamended document is not sufficiently specific and not sufficiently limiting-maybe I'm just projecting my thought onto yours, I don't know.:hmm::hmm:
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Whatever the intentions...

and, really, who knows at this point, and really who cares when it comes to it. The damage or the potential of the ambiguities has been realized over a very long period. While I do not have religious like feelings towards the Founders, I do think they were reared in and highly sophisticated in the use of their language. Consequently where they are explicit, I am willing to believe they were being explicit, where ambiguous (even if only apparently so) I am willing to believe it was by design. They wanted to 'form a more perfect union' for instance-clearly more perfect than the Articles of Confederation was able to deliver-but why form a union at all (perfect or otherwise) if there is no intention of making the new government of that union effective. Given that the Constitution is, amongst other things, an example of horse trading, and given that it was cobbled together by politicians, what makes us believe that those who wanted it open ended didn't get some of what they wanted and those who wanted it more limited got some of theirs?
When I read the document (which I do frequently) that is how it appears to me. All the recent hermeneutics notwithstanding, this is not some holy document, but very much a piece of compromise-probably-and in the case of Franklin- very likely flawed but with as much chance of being right as being wrong, to paraphrase him.
Limited government like small government, is a relative thing, How limited? There are those who will claim they know to a certainty; but there are those who know to a certainty, even unto murder, the real intentions of God too.
 
Not when that is what you...

already want it to mean. This stuff is simpler when you start with the answer and work backwards leaving out anything you don't like,they have a name for this, it is called 'special pleading' and isn't well thought of generally.
 
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