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Liberals believe a compromise that gets us closer to a goal is better than no progress at all. But compromise can lead to the dead end of dilution and a false sense of resolution.
The early 20th-century progressive and presidential candidate Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette argued that politics played into different a psychological dynamic. “In legislation no bread is often better than half a loaf,” he observed. “Half a loaf, as a rule, dulls the appetite, and destroys the keenness of interest in attaining the full loaf.”
Nothing in recent history demonstrates La Follette’s viewpoint more clearly than the evolution of the health care debate. When Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008, health care — particularly its expense — was such a big worry for American voters that the ruling classes came to view the problem as a crisis. The system was expensive, dysfunctional and despised. Despite an economy reeling from the Great Recession, the new president quickly moved to address the issue by pushing for passage of his 2009 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and even a divided Congress went along.
Obamacare was a classic political compromise of the variety that moderates adore: it made nobody happy. The health care industry — though their concerns soon proved to have been wildly unfounded — worried about losing some of their precious profits. Patient advocates preferred a European-style, fully socialized system in which doctors and nurses are government employees to the ACA, a market-based system originally conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Figuring that the ACA would move the center of gravity closer to socialized medicine, leftists supported it despite their reservations.
By most accounts, the ACA has failed to fix the problems it was supposed to address. In many American counties (health plans are designed by county), the government “marketplace” has just one or two plans to “choose” from. The only high-income nation without universal health coverage, the U.S. spends more by far on health care, both per person and as a share of GDP, than other countries. Yet we still have the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest death rates for avoidable and treatable conditions, the highest infant mortality, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions, and an obesity rate nearly twice the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average. Premiums are high but copays are low, so we see physicians less often than patients in most other countries. A whopping 650,000 Americans go bankrupt each year due to health care bills, accounting for 60% of all personal bankruptcies. Americans are extremely dissatisfied with the cost and access to health care.
A decade and a half later, health care ranks near the bottom on the hierarchy of policy priorities articulated by voters. How can this be?
La Follette’s dictum at work! The half-loaf of ACA dulled the appetite, creating the illusion that the health care problem had either been resolved — an opinion common among those with employer-supplied health insurance and/or those who live in one of the big cities where the online marketplace has competition — or had been as fixed as is reasonable to expect from the current system. As a result, there is no indication that politicians of either party are inclined to propose a legislative improvement anytime soon.
Nevertheless, the need is acute. People want affordable health care (even if they despair of ever getting it). Affordable — no, free — health care is a basic human right. Without it, after all, people quite literally drop dead.
According to a 2020 estimate by the nonpartisan Urban Institute, Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan — the most thoroughly thought-out, frictionless plan on the drawing board that salvages as much from the existing network as possible — would cost about $3 trillion per year. However, a Yale study concluded the government would save about half a trillion each year “by improving access to preventive care, reducing administrative overhead, and empowering Medicare to negotiate prices.” Working net cost: $2.5 trillion per annum.
Medicare for All would replace our current, highly wasteful system. “We’re already paying as taxpayers for universal basic automatic coverage, we’re just not getting it,” economist Amy Finkelstein says. “We might as well formalize and fund that commitment upfront.” She points to the fact that the federal government currently pays $1.8 trillion a year for Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ services and other government-funded health care costs — all of which would vanish after they were replaced by a holistic Medicare for All scheme. Third-party programs, which are often government funded, and public health programs eat up an additional $600 billion per year.
Medicare for All would also save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die annually due to lack of insurance. The IRS would collect an additional $1 billion a year in tax revenues as a result.
So the net cost of treating everyone who needs medical care is about $100 billion per year, which is just over 2% of the $4.5 trillion we’re currently wasting on wars and other things that make our lives worse.
Most analyses of Medicare for All focus on how it would save patients money. Even if they had to pay higher taxes, this is indeed true. For liberals, such an improvement might be a triumph worth celebrating. The Left, however, must be as ambitious as possible, even under the bourgeois electoral democracy currently in place pending the revolution for which we are waiting and ought to be working for. Health care, a basic human need every bit as essential to life as food and clean water, should be provided by the government gratis. The good news is we can afford it. What we require to enact a real, first-world health care system is for the Left to come to power.
Next: A college education is a right. So is the choice not to attend college yet still be considered for a job.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
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Agreed, now go tell your leftist friends and democrat politicos who are flying Ukrainian flags.
Sez you. Unfortunately, you are again wrong. Too many people think babies are born with “rights”. They aren’t. You earn or take what rights you want. No one should be given anything for free, without any cost at all.
You want healthcare? Then pick a broom and start cleaning the streets. You need to earn your right to receive that benefit.
The problem is that “liberal” politicians don’t actually want universal health care. Oh, they say they do, but when they had control of the presidency, house, and senate — we ended up with Obamacare. They didn’t even try to fight for universal health care. They just rolled over and “compromised” with a plan that pretty much came from the Heritage foundation. Such progress.
I think it is time for liberals (the real ones) to face up to the fact that we do not have a political party that represents us. Not even a little bit. Sure, they’ll work hard to make sure dudes in dresses can invade women’s spaces and gaslight women into thinking they are bigots if they complain. They’ll fight hard to make sure drag queens can twerk in front of kids and teachers can provide 5th graders with information about how fisting works. But real progressive issues that aren’t just moral degeneracy disguised as progress? Nope. They aren’t interested.
The greatest thing that happened to the Dems was having Roe v. Wade overturned. While they are screwing women over with men like Liar Thomas or Dylan Mulvaney, they can whip women into a frenzy over the idea that they’ll be forced to give birth ala Handmaid’s Tale if the Republicans win. Never mind that there has never been a more educated population regarding pregnancy and how to prevent it as well as more birth control methods available than ever before in history. Nope. Women and men don’t have to be responsible and prevent that pregnancy. They need access to abortion up until the little sucker pops out because having mature conversations about birth control is too much to ask when there are so many tinder hookups to plow through.
This genocide in Gaza has once again proven that there are NO real liberal options. If all you want is to force old people to learn new bizarre pronouns and shame them if they object to fetishists who get off on flashing their junk to women in the locker rooms, you’re good to go. Want a party that will vote to stop providing $ and weapons and political cover to a psychopathic, genocidal apartheid regime? Welp, you are shit outta luck.
As far as I’m concerned, we need Trump back. Not because he will be the better option, but because he will indeed be worse. He sucks up more to Israel than Biden does. We might as well light this mother on fire and watch the entire country burn. I know I won’t vote Biden or any Democrat ever again. My only decision now is whether I want to hasten our demise by voting for the absolute worst candidates possible. Screw the lesser evil. I want to punish the US with the greater evil.
Medicare for All does not go far enough. We need to end private equity or for profit ownership of medical practice and we need to nationalize all drug companies. Drugs should be sold into the system at the cost of manufacture. Let Congress pay for drug research. To create “incentives” give big cash rewards to scientists who create cures. Give smaller cash reward to scientists who create maintenance meds that must be used for life.
We also need a few changes to Medicare for All. It must mean no copayments or deductibles. It also must end any private health care for which you can pay outside the system. And it must end medical tourism. That is, all citizens rich and poor must use the same medical care system. If there is a queue, rich people should be last in line, and politicians and elected officials at the very back.
☮
Good job, buddy! Only, Health care is not a human right. Health is a human right. Hey, how about next time, we can skip the shitlib slogan and Read the Fuckin Manual?
Terminally corrupt Medicare and ACA make your doctor a pill & procedure salesman, a programmed extension of his Pharma computer like the most hopeless call center cubicle worm. That’s why dendritic clots are slowly strangling you from within as you struggle to finish your magnum o’pus.
Half marks for the dim inkling of resource allocation, the fundamental basis of rights-based development. But until you begin at the beginning and structure the state around its duties and your rights, you will have died of vaccine poisoning in vain.
No, Ted, health care is not a right. Neither is a college education. Here’s a test: if everyone just leaves you alone–does nothing to you or for you–are your rights violated? If you think so, you’re claiming rights that don’t exist.
Health care is a service, not a right. It is provided to a person by someone else. It is no different in principle than providing housing, massages, or food preparation, which no one has a “right” to.
That being said, since health care is a service, it is the prerogative of the server to provide it for free OR to charge for it. This brings it into the realm of supply and demand, which is the dynamic of a need in one area of a person’s life being filled by another person. The service of health care CAN be given freely, but if mandated by law, it is no longer a service. This transforms it into an obligation, a duty, which some people MUST perform on behalf of others. Those who provide the service become the SLAVES of those who receive it.
Furthermore, it is not “free” since “involuntary contributions” (a.k.a., taxes) are used to fund the system. Someone has paid (will pay) the cost. TANSTAAFL. Neither is there such a thing as free health care. Or free retirement. Or free college education. Or free…you name it. Someone always, always, always, pays.
If you have played the game for any amount of time and have not figured out who the sucker is, then it is you. Unfortunately, Ted Rall has not figured this out and neither have those who subscribe to his theories.
Roger,
Quote: “Health care is a service, not a right.” and “Neither is there such a thing as free health care.”
You are incorrect in your blanket statements. (Lifetime) (free) healthcare is a RIGHT for every U.S. Representative and Senator who has ever held office, thanks to the taxpayers, who foot the bill.
Quote: “Someone always, always, always, pays.”
You are absolutely right in this statement. SOMEONE is paying the multi-million dollar salaries and perks of individuals who run the Healthcare Corporation of America and most of the other fraudulent “healthcare” organizations. It is the patients and the taxpayers.
By the way, Americans are spending more on healthcare than ever before and are actually the sicker for it. FACT.
Thank you!
Well, no such thing as ‘rights’, other than natural rights using natural law. Supposed paper ‘rights has been a temporary scheme, until cons obtained the weapons they wanted, and control of food and water, so only they use natural law.
– ‘ A decade and a half later, health care ranks near the bottom on the hierarchy of policy priorities articulated by voters. How can this be ‘
The same reason as every other situation, because selfish ignorant people don’t do anything to stop tyrany or steer the future or territory, so they get what cons dictate.
health’ care’ is our own responsibility. Most ‘pharma’ is poison, and surgery wouldn’t be as expensive if not for ignorants allowing con ‘govt and ‘courts and their corporate co-schemers to exist and do what they do.
We lived over a milion years without any of it, and opposite what the cons claim our lives were not ‘brutish and short’.
Real ‘health care’ is – not ignoring con schemers scrawling ‘law claiming people have no right to defend ourselves, or speak, can search patriot act, or Hedges ndaa lawsuit refused by the ‘supreme’ cons, or other paper ‘law, or see ‘first amendment, then search ‘kol nidre’ lying.
That said, underlying premise of article would be socialism, which without ‘govt’ would be good, tribalism, the difference being voluntary, to make equal freedom, which affects health. How we once lived. Actual health isnt expecting to be handed pharma, its self control of food land and water, stopping ‘gmo’ and ‘fluoride poison and mass in-migration etc.
Real ‘health care’ is making sure no one but you has ‘predator drones.
Important to prioritize, while able.
Rights in the first instance are fictions. None exist. But when humans live in society, society is defined by rights. Rights are always claims made on others. No one can ever leave you alone in society. If someone in society avoids you, they have sent a message.
Basic rights in society include income, housing, medical care, safety, eduction, and sex (typically through marriage).
People typically deny those rights as a way to assert domination over others. Anyone who opposes those rights typically is seeking to dominate and exploit others. Exploitation is a natural state for humans.
These are needs, not rights
Quite the opposite. Those who assert needs as rights typically seek to dominate and exploit those who are able to satisfy those needs. For instance, a man who claims a right to sex wants to force women to sleep with him if they won’t do so willingly.
You missed my point. I said there are NO rights. Rights exist because we live in society and then I identified the basic rights required for a society to function. Those who deny rights, such as you, are seeking to exploit others. Rights are demands on others, and as a member of society you are entitled to make demands on others and have expectations for society. People have no personal autonomy and are entitled to none–that is the price of society.
Your example of sex is misplaced–and for basic reason. Society will cease to exist if there are no children. Thus it is to be expected that to live in society people must have children. The celebrate are anti-social. Those who avoid having children (because they get in the way of career or something else) are profoundly anti-social.
Absent the rights I have identified society breaks down–and we see that every day in Americas’ cities.
The communists (Satanists) who run the federal and state governments in the U.S. don’t even recognize a person’s God-given (and therefore pre-political) right to merely exist, let alone a “right” to health care (or more realistically, a right to affordable health care).
For example, shelter from the elements is necessary for the existence of human life, yet everywhere in the communist U.S., “government” demands that people pay an arbitrarily high annual property tax on residential property (as per the first tenet of Marx’ Communist Manifesto). And those who cannot pay or refuse to pay will have their properties sold to others at a tax sale and will be removed from their shelter at gunpoint if necessary – and for all the “government” cares or believes it is responsible for – left to die by exposure to the elements.
In communist America, only the state has a right to exist, and “the people” exist at the fickle discretion of the state.
A U.S. state/district/territorial “government” requires that only residential property owners pay property tax on residential property; that “government” does not require that those who are not residential property owners also pay residential property tax.
The first “tenet” in the Communist Manifesto is
If the U.S. were communist, there would be no property in land in the U.S., and thus there would be no individual or corporate owners of U.S. residential property, and thus no U.S. residential property tax. But since there is residential property tax for individual and corporate owners of U.S. residential property, there is property in land in the U.S., and thus the U.S. cannot be accurately called communist.
Your pedantry is amusing but my point stands: Every human in the U.S. needs shelter from the elements in order to exist, right? And all residential property in the U.S. is taxed by “government”; therefore, generally speaking, every person must pay to the “government” (or have someone else pay on his or her behalf) an arbitrarily high tax in order to merely exist. If you “own” the property you pay the tax directly to the government; if you rent the property you pay the property tax indirectly through the “owner.” The point is that everyone must pay “government” in order to be allowed to exist.
Your statement makes no sense. My obvious point is that if you must pay “government” an arbitrarily high annual tax on “your” property in order to keep it, you don’t actually “own” it. IOW “government” is the de facto owner of all real property in the U.S. and all a person can do is rent it from “government”; and this proves that America has embraced communism, and no amount of hapless pedantry can change that unfortunate fact.
To live decently, yes; to exist, not necessarily—being without shelter in San Diego vs. being without shelter in Nome are two existentially different situations.
Someone with no residential property owes no government any residential property tax. Landlords do not pay residential property tax on their renters’ behalf; they pay residential property tax only on their own behalf, simply because they own residential property. It makes no difference whether their rental units are rented out or not; only the landlords owe residential property tax on their residential property. If a landlord had his residential property seized for not paying residential property tax, his renters would not become liable for that unpaid residential property tax.
Everyone has both rights and responsibilities in a society. In the U.S., the right to own residential property is accompanied by the responsibility of paying residential property tax if that right is exercised.
If the U.S. were communist, then it would follow the “tenets” of the Communist Manifesto. The first of those “tenets” was 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Since individuals and corporations can own residential property, the U.S. has not abolished property in land. Since the U.S. has not abolished property in land, it does not follow the first “tenet” of the Communist Manifesto. Since the U.S. does not follow all of the “tenets” of the Communist Manifesto, the U.S. is not communist.
Your point is neither obvious nor accurate. Property taxes, not only on land and buildings but also on personal possessions, go back to the colonial era, well before the Communist Manifesto was written. The existence of property taxes in the U.S. does not prove that the U.S. has embraced communism.
More absurd pedantry from you. Yes necessarily. Every human needs some degree of shelter from the elements. I suppose there are some homeless people living in cardboard boxes under bridges in certain places in the U.S. who don’t pay “government” anything to exist in that situation. And for that matter there are also some people who do full time RVing, for example, “boondocking” out in the countryside, staying in Walmart parking lots, etc., who don’t have to pay “government” to exist in that situation either, but of course I was speaking in general, so it seems you’re just wasting time and bandwidth being contrary for some reason.
LOL! So you ignored and omitted from your quote of my paragraph the following sentence, just so you could argue about it? I said:
“If you ‘own’ the property you pay the tax directly to the government; if you rent the property you pay the property tax indirectly through the ‘owner.’ The point is that everyone must pay ‘government’ in order to be allowed to exist.”
Well it’s your strawman so you might as well have your way with it. I neither stated nor implied the irrelevant legal technicality that “landlords…pay residential property tax on their renters’ behalf.” My point is that in general, anyone who lives in a house/apartment anywhere in the U.S. directly or indirectly pays property tax to the government.
Last summer for example, both the town where I live and the local school district raised property taxes, and shortly thereafter my landlord notified me that my rent would be going up by $50/month. He said “don’t blame me, blame the town council and the school board.” Property taxes are a significant cost driver of rent, and you know it as well as I do.
It seems you keep trying to change the subject. Maybe a simple syllogism will help:
Major premise: A necessity of humans life is shelter from the elements.
Minor premise: Government levies and collects (an arbitrarily high) tax on all such shelter.
Conclusion: Government taxes human life itself.
Do you get the point?
Did I suggest otherwise? No, so why keep wasting time and bandwidth with your pedantic red herrings? For the Nth time, my point is that in the U.S., a person generally cannot have access to shelter from the elements – a necessity of human life – unless he or she pays an arbitrarily high amount of money to the “government.” Period. The end.
Nonsense; you don’t know what you’re talking about. First, you apparently have trouble grasping the concept of ownership. Put simply, if you have to continually pay someone in order to remain in possession of something, you obviously don’t own that thing. If you have to pay “government” an arbitrarily high amount of money every year to be allowed to possess real property, e.g. to live in your own house, then possession of such property is obviously not a “right” but merely a privilege of wealth/high income, capisce?
Moreover, since property tax in the U.S. is levied and collected without any regard for property owners’ actual ability to pay (i.e. it is “arbitrarily high”) it is not only immoral and textually demonstrably unconstitutional under many if not most state constitutions, but it would also seem to be in violation of the doctrine of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
If by your “reasoning” the “state” can legitimately levy and collect an arbitrarily high tax on land and shelter, and can evict someone from their property if they can’t pay (at gunpoint if necessary), thus presumably leaving the evictee(s) to die e.g. from exposure to the elements, then by logical extension, the state can also make us all breathe through a valve, and tax the air that we breathe, and then simply shut off the valve if we can’t pay. The two tax schemes would be morally and legally indistinguishable. Do you see the absurdity of your “reasoning”?
On the contrary, since it’s clear that nobody can actually own real property in the U.S., your statement is incorrect. You’re lying.
In your subjective opinion, that is, and your opinion is rather silly, because: (1) according to Marx, the list isn’t an exact set of requirements, just “pretty generally applicable”; (2) the first and apparently most fundamental, ideologically important tenet, #1, the “[a]bolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes” has been embraced, fully implemented and well protected in the U.S.; (3) many if not most of the other tenets have been implemented in some form, e.g. there is an income tax; there is an inheritance tax; the state often confiscates property, infringes the rights of, and/or murders, not just “rebels” against the state but any target of opportunity; e.g., gun owners, Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver & family, Ken Trentadue, etc.; the state presides over the means of communication and transportion, e.g. FCC and DOT; and there is “free education for all children in public schools”; and (4) some of the tenets are obsolete.
On the contrary, yes it is. Your lack of understanding reflects poorly on you, not on me.
First of all, back then – unlike the case of modern communism, where property taxation is an ideological imperative – it was was not motivated by ideology but merely because there was no other practical way to assess taxes, as it was assumed that property value was a valid indicator of someone’s ability to pay. Second, back then, the taxes were not nearly as burdensome as they are today. Third, up until the passage of the federal Tax Injunction Act of 1937, the people at least had a somewhat meaningful legal remedy against unconstitutional and immoral state “government” tax schemes. Finally, back then, if someone couldn’t pay the property tax, the delinquent taxpayer wasn’t forced out of his or her home (at gunpoint if necessary), after their property was sold to someone else; at worst the delinquent taxpayer lost the right to vote or something like that.
All things considered, on the contrary yes it certainly does.
https://www.nj.com/middlesex/2015/06/woman_faces_aggravated_assault_charges_after_7-hou.html
https://www.poconorecord.com/story/news/columns/2018/02/14/standoff-ends-in-apparent-suicide/14793898007/
Words have their own meanings, and “exist” is not an exact synonym of “live decently”. I don’t consider that to be “absurd”.
I omitted those two sentences because I disagree with your paragraph’s premise, and in my view those sentences were omittable because they were a consequence of your paragraph’s premise. I repeat: a landlord does not pay residential property tax on his renters’ behalf, because his renters owe no residential property tax.
This is what you had stated:
Your original point was that
and that has been the context of our discussion. Your subsequent premise, which I agree with, is that all residential property in the U.S. is taxed by government. The conclusion that you drew from your premise is that every person must either pay an “arbitrarily high tax” to the government to exist, or have someone pay an “arbitrarily high tax” to the government on his behalf. Given the context of our discussion, you have most certainly implied that the “arbitrarily high tax in order to merely exist” that everyone must pay is residential property tax — in your view, either directly or indirectly, as your quotes above stated.
Yes, I agree that residential property taxes certainly play a part in the price of rent. Whether those residential property taxes are “arbitrarily high” is another matter. Do you believe that your town council and school board are arbitrarily plucking numbers out of the air by which to set and increase residential property taxes? Have you contacted your town hall to find out what the extra tax dollars will go toward?
The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. If your conclusion were “Government taxes a necessity of human life”, it would be more plausible than “Government taxes human life itself”.
Yes, you did suggest otherwise, since you’d stated that renters indirectly pay residential property tax.
Again, your view of what is “obvious” is only your own. Ownership is rightful possession, legal title; it is a creature of law. Law determines the conditions of rightful possession and legal title; in the case of U.S. law, among the conditions of ownership of residential property is property tax. To this day, states like Virginia still have personal property tax on items like cars, trucks, boats, machinery, securities, etc., and Virginians own those items.
Many states have property tax abatement programs. Vermont has an income sensitivity provision to its residential property taxes called “prebates”. Regarding “arbitrarily high”, as of 2015, only four states had no major state-imposed rate, levy, or assessment limit on property taxes: Hawaii, Tennessee, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Do you see the absurdity of your example? First, you presume that an “arbitrarily high” residential property tax is what will be legitimately levied; second, you presume that every evicted person will “presumably” be left to die due to being evicted; and third, you presume that the state can legitimately demand that every citizen breathe through a valve.
No, I’m not lying, and my statement is correct. As I’d noted above, ownership is determined by law, and in the U.S., ownership of real property is subject to property taxes.
No. Property in land in the U.S. has not been abolished. If it had been abolished, then individuals, partnerships, and corporations could not buy or sell property, obtain mortgages to buy property, use property as collateral for loans, etc. Property in land in the U.S. still exists, despite your particular definition of “ownership”.
In my view, the “most fundamental, ideologically important tenet” in the Communist Manifesto is a few paragraphs before the ten “pretty generally applicable” measures:
Do you believe that the U.S. proletariat is the ruling class in the U.S.?
How do you define “modern communism”?
Do you believe that all property taxes are unconstitutional and immoral?
How does attempting to serve an eviction notice to someone holding a handgun demonstrate that the U.S. has embraced communism?
The Pocono Record wouldn’t let me read the article there because “your [i.e. my] browser is not supported”.
What’s absurd is your pedantic, time-and-bandwidth-wasting digression into the exceptional and irrelevant-to-the-point realm of homeless people who make up a very small percentage of the population.
I’m not sure you understand what I meant, which might be partly my fault. Okay, here’s the whole paragraph again:
“Your pedantry is amusing but my point stands: Every human in the U.S. needs shelter from the elements in order to exist, right? And all residential property in the U.S. is taxed by “government”; therefore, generally speaking, every person must pay to the “government” (or have someone else pay on his or her behalf) an arbitrarily high tax in order to merely exist. If you “own” the property you pay the tax directly to the government; if you rent the property you pay the property tax indirectly through the “owner.” The point is that everyone must pay “government” in order to be allowed to exist.”
By the phrase “or have someone else pay on his or her behalf,” I was not referring to a landlord paying tax on his renters’ behalf. I will explain what I meant by this paragraph and the parenthetical phrase by way of a real life example:
A couple and their three year old son moved into a small “starter” home. Two years later they had twin girls, and because their house was small they had to put an addition onto it, and when they did that their property tax bill went up, even though their ability to pay did not increase (if anything it decreased). This demonstrates the immorality (and the apparent unconstitutionality) of property tax on residential property.
The twin girls didn’t ask to be born; their births were an act of God. Their right to exist comes from God, so because God gave the couple two girls to raise, they now owe more money to the state. God says the two girls have the right to exist, but the state has created a tax system which imposes restraints. According to the state, if God wants to increase the size of that family, somebody has to pay the state more money in property tax. This is a case which exemplifies how the state usurps God, and this is what communism – at its core – is really all about.
So what do you exactly disagree with here? (This is all the time I have right now; more later if I get a chance).
Total ommission of natural law. And no one should be breeding. We are lteraly drowning in ignorant scum because breeders refuse to stop breeding and fight back. Every scum whose bred since ‘covid’ bs is a selfish ignorant scum. Every person is to shove back, not sit breeding. STOP.
.Supposed paper ‘rights’ are the blatant fiction. Natural rights are the only real rights, and only if you use them, natural law the only real law, each used to enforce the other. Failure means others subvert your ability or ‘rights’, by force, natural law. Should make note.
Supposed social whatever is separate from basic on what rights are or not. ‘social’ bs isn’t sitting there as a juvenile spewing what you’re entitled to. Tribablism is to be part of first priortiy. Again, human failure, instead squatting spawn into a death hole when you are to stop threat, all threat, before you breed. Supposed social or morals is separate subject, only connected when whatever moral you claim to have show up in your actions. Failure of action means whatever morals you claim to have are non existent.
No one can or will protect natural rights ‘for’ anyone, you are to yourself, direcly, personally, and with tribe as able. And no, ‘govt’ is not a tribe, they are they’re own and you are not part of it.
The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a warrior; the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error. – Ragnar Redbeard, Might is Right
Note, if decide to find whole thing, copy paste to word doc, and first thing go through, edit with ‘find’ tool, change capital ‘j and c’ to lower case, then also put in smaller font, otherwise repeat name is distracting. Let-ers are symbols made to disract. ‘c’ is a cut moon, s is a snake.
– ‘your view of what is “obvious” is only your own. Ownership is rightful possession, legal title; it is a creature of law. Law determines the conditions of rightful possession and legal title;
No, what determines property possession or ‘ownership’ is whether you have the weapons to defend it or not, which you do not at this time.
Beside the con of ’eminent domain’, which people never should have allowed, nor any paper ‘law, there is also now kelo v. new london, taking private property to hand to a private individual or business, and whatever price ‘they’ dictate as ‘fair’ which someday will be zero, because you don’t have the weapons to dictate otherwise.
Further, the cons in some ‘states have setup so state cons including ‘judges profit from foreclosures, which of course ‘judges ‘decide, or cons posing as ‘judges.
Natural law is the only law. Also, nonsense question – ‘is tax ‘con stitutional’ when the ‘constitution’ is a fraud. Further there is no ‘tax; that could ever be ‘worth’ sitting on your az while milions are murdered in your name,. and as the fake ‘money used to extort others, ‘police’ ‘forcing’ tax’ which all of it is, and, at base, they dont need ‘tax since ‘money’ is thin air. ‘digital’.
Thats how they claim you ‘owe’ trilions ‘debt’, so they have predator drones, and can take what ‘property’ you think you have.
Of course it does. You’re just being contrary. Because of conditions created by God, every person born into the U.S. requires sheltered living space in order to exist, and because of law created by “government” (i.e created by man), property tax must be paid to “government” for every square foot of that sheltered living space necessary for human existence. So in general, the more people there are, the more sheltered living space there has to be to accommodate them, the more money that has to be paid to the state, just because they happen to exist. Thus it is perfectly valid under the circumstances to conclude that in essence “government taxes human life itself.”
Nonsense. If words mean what they say, then my view of what it means to “own” property is “obvious” to anyone who can read.
No; our state and federal constitutions make that determination. I live in PA for example, and here’s what Art. 1 Sec. 1 of the PA constitution says about ownership of property:
Could the relationship between citizens and property – the conditions we agreed to a long time ago -be stated any more unambiguously clearly than it is here? I think not.
Either I have the “inherent and indefeasible right” of “acquiring, possessing and protecting property” – in this case real property, shelter, which I need in order to enjoy and defend my inherent and indefeasible right life and liberty, i.e. my God-given right to exist – or the state can stop me from acquiring property by taxing it beyond my ability to pay (i.e. cause the bank to not lend me enough money to buy property); or having acquired and being in possession of the property, as in the case of Michael Pogers in Monroe county PA, the state can forcefully evict me from my property, some point in the future by way of an arbitrarily high tax that I have no ability to pay, etc. We can’t have it both ways. Either I own the property or the “state” owns the property and I am nothing more than a tenant who can be evicted from it at any time.
To this day, states like Virginia still have personal property tax on items like cars, trucks, boats, machinery, securities, etc., and Virginians own those items.
That’s ironic because George Mason was from Virginia, and IIRC the relevant part of the PA constitution I quoted above was taken almost verbatim from George Mason’s “Virginia Declaration of Rights.”
But we’re a communist country today, as our lawless federal and state “governments” have usurped God, and our constitutions are nothing more than meaningless words on paper.
Don’t tell me about “property tax abatement programs.” I can tell you that in PA, every band-aid the “state” has tried has failed miserably, e.g. rebates from tax revenue on gambling were supposed to be the answer; they tried to impose limits on how fast rates could rise (while allowing for all kinds of exceptions), etc.
I’ve been involved with various groups in PA fighting to end school property tax for a long time. We spent years trying to get legislation passed (HB 76/SB 76) that would’ve solved all the problems by eliminating the tax. And studies were conducted showing that the idea would work.
The property tax system in PA is not only unconstitutional but administratively burdensome and wasteful and fundamentally flawed in so many ways it needs to be scrapped. But guess what happened: as it turned out the politically powerful and influential people who opposed us did so on purely ideological grounds. They had no logical argument against what was being proposed. We were up against communist ideologues, not reasonable people wielding compelling counterarguments.
First, by the phrase “arbitrarily high” I mean that the amount of property tax demanded (which historically increases over time) has nothing to do with the “owners” ability to pay, ambiguous “limits” or not. Once we agree that the state has the authority to tax property, particularly residential property, the camel gets his nose under the tent, and we’re screwed. Do “limits” save you from a tax sale if you become disabled and your ability to pay is reduced? No. Do “limits” help you if there all kinds of built in exceptions that aren’t difficult to invoke to get around the limits? No.
Yes I do see the absurdity of it, and that’s why I mentioned it. Being indistinguishable from the absurdly immoral and unconstitutional present system of property taxation, it is a good analogy; reductio ad absurdum.
Well of course I do, since it is not even pretended that the amount of property tax demanded has any bearing whatsoever on someone’s ability to pay, and the robust historical record of tax sales and documented cases of people being forced out of their homes proves it.
Exactly; which is a reasonable presumption since AFAIK there is no provision in any state law anywhere which forces the state to provide affordable housing for the people it makes homeless or to take care of them in any way for that matter. If you know of any such laws please link to them.
Pennsylvania has passed laws making it a crime to leave your dog outside in cold weather for example, but if you’re someone like Michael Rogers who was made homeless because of an inability to pay the arbitrarily high property tax, you’re apparently better off killing yourself.
https://www.pennlive.com/weather/2022/01/doggie-its-cold-outside-pa-has-rules-to-follow-for-taking-care-of-your-pets-in-winter.html
https://www.poconorecord.com/story/news/columns/2018/02/14/standoff-ends-in-apparent-suicide/14793898007/
No I don’t (at least no more so than it can legitimately drag a disabled old lady out of her family homestead at gunpoint and put her in jail because she can’t pay an unfair and unconstitutional tax).
As we see, nothing that the communist state does nowadays has to have any pretense of legitimacy or reasonableness. For example, as I type this, the U.S. “government” seems to be trying to start a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, which would bring about the end of the world as we know it, right? Is that a “legitimate” function of “our” “government”; no, of course not. The point is, lawless communist “governments” such as we have at both the federal and state levels can do whatever they want to do; there are apparently no limits.
To the extent “ownership (of real property) is determined by law” it is only so to the extent that the “law” itself is constitutionally valid in the first place. And that’s where the problem lies.
Well of course the “property” is still there but it’s all owned by the state, which is obviously the situation Marx was referring to in #1, euphemisms and obfuscatory legal BS notwithstanding. Private citizens may occupy property, but they obviously do not “own” it since in order to occupy it they must pay annual property tax, the de facto rent, to the state, the de facto owner of the property. Thus the levy, collection and enforcement (at gunpoint if necessary) of the annual property tax is obviously the perfect de facto implementation of the first tenet of Marx’ communist manifesto: The people who live on the land pay rent to the state which is used for “public purposes.”
You write as if the confiscatory property taxation found all across America today doesn’t stop anyone from buying the properties they would like to buy (and that they would be able to buy if not for the arbitrarily high property tax); as if there are not tens of thousands of tax sales all across America every year which wouldn’t happen but for the arbitrarily high property tax; as if thousands of people, aren’t forced to sell their homes every year because they can no longer afford the ever more burdensome property tax; and as if confiscatory property taxation isn’t a significant factor in the ever increasing problem of homelessness in America.
https://libertas.org/op-eds/elderly-people-shouldnt-become-homeless-because-of-property-taxes/
Maybe I’m all mixed up and you somehow know better than I do, but I can’t think of any reasonable definition of “ownership” of anything that wouldn’t exclude the “owner” having to make regular payments to someone else in order to remain in possession of the thing that he allegedly “owns.”
Michael Rogers (deceased) formerly of Stroud township, PA, and Noreen Ziobro of Woodbridge, NJ – and tens of thousands of other people all across the land – would disagree with you on that. They found out the hard way that “government” owns all real property.
No, of course not; Marx’ communism is a fraud. Communists rise to the top not by their own merits, but but bringing everyone and everything else down. In a sense “the people” are deceived, corrupted and manipulated into destroying themselves, and the communists rule over the ruins.
This comment is getting long and I’m out of time right now. I will respond further later if I get a chance.