Why doesn't the Golden Era extend to the 50s or early 60s?

[vitanola]

Even Al Smith figured it out -

Al Smith on Social Security Old Age Pensions and Unemployment Insurance when he was promoting these programs: "The American people never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine."

Of course he opposed them strenuously after his star was eclipsed by that of President Roosevelt. Thwarted ambition is a terrible thing, though the Happy Warrior ended up making pretty good living from his own thwarted ambition when it aligned with Irinee Du Pont's financial interests.

 

[John in Covina]

And the idea that mortal man can somehow be perfected by his own devices fails on both theological and practical means: the concept of a "super man" has been promoted by all sorts of fanatics, cultists, eugenicists, and despots over the years, but somehow in practice they've never managed to live up to their billing.

I've always found it amusing that the supporters of the various "super man" theories are always careful to include themselves in their own particular definition of what constitutes "superiority." It's like the way believers in past lives always seem to remember being nobles in the court of Louis XIV, and never plague-ridden, scab-encrusted serfs.

The concept of a perfect man in Christianity has nothing to do with a physical specimen "ubermensch" but the sense that no mortal can be without sin. Noble or slave the first instance is original sin which is passed on from the Fall, passed along with birth. Second, sin is either thought, word or deed, so the fleeting idea of harming the guy that just cut you off while driving is murder. Sin can be by comission or omission. So nobody can say they are without sin. That is a tenant of most denominations.

The concept is the Son of Man was without sin pays the price for all sin. He had to be sinless for the payment to work.

 

[John in Covina]

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names———liberty and tyranny.

Lincoln

 

[vitanola]

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures..."

A. Lincoln

Some stand with the wolves.

 

[John in Covina]

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures..."

A. Lincoln

Some stand with the wolves.

Some of us feel the tax man is the wolf.

 

[vitanola]

Some of us feel the tax man is the wolf.

And others feel that he funds the shepherd.

I'll agree that there is a problem when on-budget Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP exceed those of the late Eisenhower administration.

Last year (2011) they were lower than at any time since 1942. Taxation feels higher for the great mass of us because our tax system is rather less progressive than it was in the Golden Era.

Of course this is an area of discussion which is not strictly related to the forum, and one about which well-meaning, patriotic Americans have disagreed since the beginnings of our Republic, so for my part I'll drop this line of discussion, for it can lead only dissention between the participants and distress the onlookers.

 

[John in Covina]

And others feel that he funds the shepherd.

I'll agree that there is a problem when on-budget Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP exceed those of the late Eisenhower administration.

Last year (2011) they were lower than at any time since 1942. Taxation feels higher for the great mass of us because our tax system is rather less progressive than it was in the Golden Era.

Of course this is an area of discussion which is not strictly related to the forum, and one about which well-meaning, patriotic Americans have disagreed since the beginnings of our Republic, so for my part I'll drop this line of discussion, for it can lead only dissention between the participants and distress the onlookers.

Love the way you get your last licks in and try to close the discussion as being above the fray.

Progressive is a great term when you're the one recieving and not paying.

Regressive is what those tax levels were.

I earned the money,
I sweat to make it,
I gambled my savings to make something
and I get to choose how I spend it.

 

[vitanola]

Love the way you get your last licks in and try to close the discussion as being above the fray.

Progressive is a great term when you're the one recieving and not paying.

Regressive is what those tax levels were.

I earned the money,
I sweat to make it,
I gambled my savings to make something
and I get to choose how I spend it.

Well, since you insist, let me point out that the concept of and the term for "Progressive Taxation" date to the Seventeenth Cantury.

It is generally considered bad form to blithely redefine terms to suit one's immediate needs, don't cha know.

A poster here on this board who is, I think, wiser than I, hit the nail on the head when he wrote in answer to another thread:

Anyway, when I see people screaming about their rights then I know for a fact that they have forgotten all about the obligations that go along with those rights. The really good people of the world will be thinking more about the obligations they have instead of their rights and they are the ones who I admire, not some strident person out screaming for their right to do something or the other.

 

[John in Covina]

I hope you'll enjoy living in the United States of Greece.

People don't mind paying taxes for what the government is suppose to do but they object when taxes are too high because government is doing way more than what it is supposed to do. It's always easiest to spend other peoples money. BTW - if anyone feels like they're not paying enough feel free to write a check

If one is simply incapable of learning the lesson from the story "The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg" then we get what we have now. The faith in that socio/economic view makes one blind to facts and the way the world actually works. The use of higher moral tone is borish.

As to people screaming about their rights I will simply say - The only thing good men need to do to allow evil to triumph is to do nothing.

The encouragement of seeing oneself as a vicitim to create a divide and concour political atmospere, creating dependence and institutionalizing dependence to isolate and control a voting block as well as being an enabler of bad decisions and lifestyles is not a virtue.

We consider a helping hand to be a help up not using support money like heroin and creating a party of pushers.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. teach a man to fish and he has a vocation. Use ACORN to register a man to vote and we can force the rich to pay for the free fish to be delivered daily to the voter. As to the fisherman's business: If it moves tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, if it stops moving subsidize it.

Liberalim unrestrained always kills the goose that lays the golden egg.