Well put.

Oh I know, I just wanted to point out I was one of those.

Yeah, I saw your initial post. BTW how does it feel to be a minority of the minority?

is that like a double negative?  So now Charles is in Charge?

lol

Shouldn't some left-winger come on around now to try to insist that we're all part of the "fringe right wing nuts of JU?"

Liberals, contrary to their beliefs, aren't the majority. They're only apparently 47% of the population.

I believe Dr. Guy banished him back to his protected lair! Maybe you should name a character in Elemental after Doc, Brad. It looks like magic to me!

This year I was supposed to hire five people to launch my E-book publishing house. Now that we have Obama care, I was only able to give a $2000 bonus to my employees, and not hire new staff. I guess I just became a graphic artist, editor, proof reader,writer, and publicist. All the ones I had interviewed are poor, two on welfarelooking for a way out. hell, for of them were white. (just so you don't think i discriminate) anyway since I don't know how bad it will be I will have to hold off hiring until the laws stabilize, maybe wait till the next presidential election. For me to hire a person at 50k I have to have 80K in profits, since Mr. Obama does not like it when companies make a profit, I can't hire anyone.

Oh, and I am part of the 47% that don't pay taxes. Thanks for the 154 dollar refund.

Hmm.... We can start a debate on that.  I do not think they are 47%.  Of that 47%, many are young just starting out, so of course they do not earn much (and so pay no taxes).  But they are not all gullible and stupid.  They understand they will be paying taxes, and as things are going, will be losing.  So I say 33% of them are more conservative than liberal.  Leaving about 30% liberal (or more accurately just selfish).

I was born at the wrong time.  I remember my first professional job, paying about 10k a year, and 25% of that went to taxes.

So that is where my $365 payment went to!

Hey Doc, if I take that 154 and divide it over the 15 years it took to write my book, and then find a publisher and get it published the write off of my computer and some programs, it does not make much money. Wow I can go to the movies once a year.

The Movies?  I can only afford Chicken McNuggets!

Luxury!

We could afford ONE nugget, for the four of us. And it had to last a week.

(We were not allowed to eat it either. It was only for looking at.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Because I wanted to know what qualifies a "poor" people, income-wise, in the USA, and if the breakdown was before or after the 47%. If you happened to HAVE a fixed limit of income defining "poor", and not simply taking the X% poorest and defining them as the "poor" class of a nation, that would have been limited.

In the end, I was curious to see the % of poor of your country, and checking if what was qualified as "poor" would pay taxes (meaning there were more than 47% of poor in your country), or, the other way around, many people who weren't considered as "poor" still did not paid taxes.

But the point is nill, because of the stupid definition of being poor described by Guy.

No one ever said government was run smartly.

I wasn't ranting against you. I do not shoot the messenger

I was ranting about the stupid definition.

I know.  I remember a quote from a MASH episode where Col Potter asked a supply sergeant if he ever wondered why he was bringing Mosquito nets to a MASH unit in Korea in Winter.  His reply? "I use to wonder about that, but it was keeping me awake at nights, so I stopped".

Same here with why government does what it does.

Government does what it does because it is exactly what we want done only we are not smart enough to know it.

I think Health care belies your statement.  The government is a bunch of self important blow hards who do what THEY want which is not always what we want or why we elected them.

Hey, you got the system that you voted for.

(not talkin' about the party, but the system)

Yes, and at that it still beats the alternatives. 

Long ago in the time of dinosaurs, slates and my college days, I remember reading something about forms of government and what was best.  In an ideal world, the worst form of government is a democracy, with a Monarchy being the best.  Since god kicked us out of that world 6,000 to 6million years ago, the best form of government in the non-perfect world is the democracy (or representative democracy) and the worst a monarchy.

I do not love it, but I do not like the alternatives a whole lot more.

Besides, I can vote for the opponent every 2 years, even if I agree with the cretin's promises!  Yea, I know, tilting at my windmill again.

Monarchy is not technically a form of government but a form of state. Monarchies are different from republics in that the sovereign is not the people (as it is in a republic) but a prince (possibly even a foreign prince) of some kind.

The United States and the (past) Soviet Union are republics, but the Soviet Union wasn't democratic.

The United Kingdom and Saudi-Arabia are both monarchies, but the United Kingdom is not a dictatorship.

Both monarchies and republics can be democracies (or representative democracies). And both can be dictatorships or anything in between.

My own definition of "dictatorship" puts in contrast to legitimate government, which in my opinion doesn't have to be democratic. I define a "dictatorship" as any system in which the ruler's power is limited neither by a constitution nor by tradition. (Both a constitution and traditions may allow for elections as a method to control the ruler.)

North-Korea is a republic. As is Libya and Saddam's Iraq. Jordan and Luxemburg are not. Nevertheless I consider the last two states with legitimate governments. (I don't consider the Saudi "king" legitimate. He says the constitution is the Quran, but in reality Saudi power is limited by absolutely nothing.)

Personally, I like monarchy and democracy and accept a republic only as a worse alternative. I find that having the people be the sovereign only creates an imbalance when one group has power over another. (This is not a problem when the nation is formed by agreement as in the US or Switzerland.)

But the three most important features of any state are stability, justice, and democracy; in that order.

I see why you are not an American.  Before the time of dinosaurs, slates, and my college days, an American said "those who would sell their freedom for security, will find out they have neither".  So stability, while high, is not the highest.  I do not see freedom on your list, but if you represent that with Democracy, that has to come first.  All else will flow from that.

Those are easy words for those who live in a land as naturally safe as the USA.

Because your land is so naturally safe, it is easy to put freedom above safety.

About a form of government... hmm.. What do you think of the one proponed in Starship Troopers? (the book). The one where only people who gave parts of their lives to the government, but are no longer part of the service, can vote and take office?

I always thought people didn't took their voting right seriously because it was an automatically-granted right in our countries. Since it's so easy to have it, people don't value it.

whenever I’ve brought up that nearly half of Americans pay zilch to the fed in income taxes they scoff that it’s probably some far right propaganda. Nope. It’s real.

Here's where the propaganda comes in: they know people are going to mistake "47% pay no income tax" for "47% pay no tax at all."  If the statistic were, "47% pay no Social Security tax," no one would be repeating it on talk radio and blogs because it would be obvious that those people are paying other taxes and are not worthless deadbeats.  (Even though the effect would be similar -- Social Security tax collects 75 cents for every $1 the income tax collects.)

The actual number of people who pay no net taxes at all is 10%.  I think the 47% figure is propaganda for creating the image of lower income people as freeloaders.

(I had links for the percentages but removed them to get this comment to submit -- fourth try now.)