polls can be made to say whatever we want - and in recent years they've been used strategically to try and push fence-sitters and the cynical into either not voting or switching.

2016 showed that in spades.

Interesting, everything I read had it a bit narrower or at least framed it as narrower.

I also for some reason read that as RCMP and was like "the fuck canada got to do with this"

I'm kind of baffled by this.

Its a close race, seems to me Buldoc (a warmongering RINO shill) is perfectly aligned with the can do attitude of Mitch McConnel.

My only thinking is that they are confident that the Gabbard nod and and Jerry Kaufman campaign will be enough to split the right-voting block.

inquiring minds want to know.

I'll draw this out as simply as I can.

You view taxes as justified - I view them as the theft, because when you take money from people without their permission under threat of government violence... its theft..

You want a "progressive tax" that funds a government by taxing (robbing) wealthy people more than it taxes (robs) poor people - I don't want people robbed.

I want the government to do FAR FAR less - and suggest funding those few services with more voluntary market based taxes or by simple agency of cooperation - agency that doesn't require force.

You have this notion that government should do less, but advocate for its collection of more revenue (which progressive tax codes are always aimed at) - further that it should do more things with more of the things you think are "redistributive" and less of the things you don't like. This is where we fundamentally disagree. Because:

1 - You are describing the system we already have, you are just disappointed it doesn't do more of what you want. - I know it doesn't do what you want, because its not designed to do what you want.

2 - You think if the tax code was just a bit more progressive - they'd be able to finally do all that stuff you want - I know that the feds pull in about 3 Trillion dollars a year and could do all the wonderful things you want ... if they actually wanted to. Further, when they don't have money to do the things they want to, they just print more of it. They don't provide those redistributive services you want... not because of revenue, but simply because they don't actually care to do them.

3- You have faith in a system that has done nothing to prove itself. - I understand its working exactly as designed to exfiltrate money from you for its own growth and profit.

We may agree on whats fundamentally broken - but our fixes are polar opposites. I don't need to insinuate you're liberal to make that determination.

Like I said, we are talking past each other. We agree, but you see government as the solution to those problems - I see them as the cause. So we are both just making those points endlessly.

Your last paragraph is the only thing I need to answer to reflect that (my opinion if you'd like me to expand I'm happy to). Companies can't pay dirt poor labor wages in third world countries without government backing their capital needs. All of the shipping, importing, exporting costs are ASTRONOMICAL... if not for IMEX loans at next to zero percent backing it. Full stop

That labor has an intrinsic value - that value is only undercut because globalism makes it cheaper to have children in sweatshops doing the work vs an adult who expects a wage. A US built refrigerator put food on the table and provided a market for repair, service, and upkeep that kept it running for decades. Now you just buy a new one made in mexico by 50c an hour labor. Those CEO profit margins are even worse than you think and only possible because of global labor markets.

I'm not a big fan of trump - but if he slapped a 10% tariff on all manufactured goods imported to the US and made IMEX charge 2% on their import loans. Maytag would have new facilities across the US because it would instantly make foreign labor a losing proposition. Biden could get my vote tomorrow if that infrastructure bill was designed to end global labor exploitation and put billions toward divesting from the chinese.

The internet wasn't built by private companies - most of the backbone infrastructure it runs on was paid for by government using AT&T\Bell\Comcast to do the work. Telecomms didn't suddenly decide to connect the planet. Not to mention all the research. The internet and race to the moon in my opinion are the only and best arguments for government organization and spending. Free Markets would have never accomplished the task as quickly - and the tech gains we made were ... immeasurable.

All that domestic government spending driving up inflation, cost of living, cost of housing - while wages stayed flat.

I've had fun discussing this and I think you've been very fair minded.

90% of what government does... it shouldn't be doing; the other 10% can probably be done without government - just because we haven't seen a model for it doesn't mean its not possible.

The very very very few things I think government organization is beneficial for (military and domestic peacekeeping) could easily be funded through voluntary line item tax funding people vote for or against. Or get funded by voluntary market\excise taxes that don't constitute a death sentence if you refuse to participate in. VS a system that threatens you with death for not surrendering a portion of your labor value to it (income taxes and some sales taxes)

So, we'd vote locally for our fire department spending - as a consumer model for emergency services is something I can't really picture. but we wouldn't charge sales tax on things like - heating and lighting your home like MA does.

Edit - By Vote - I don't necessarily mean on a polling day for representatives. Think more like ben franklin funding the first libraries. Some dude who wants to run a fire department going around saying "hey, I need 1000 dollars a year from 100 house holds in the area to provide fire services - will you be one of them and give me 83 dollars a month "

Renters and sharecropers probably wouldn't give a fuck, but a landlord or major property owner would.

End Edit

Lol, yeah those greedy liquor stores... jacking up prices to cover the endless DOR taxes, thousands in licensing fees, and hundreds more in municipal fees.

great example of a free market ...

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/different-types-of-alcoholic-beverage-state-licenses-abcc

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/dor-alcoholic-beverage-excise-tax

https://www.boston.gov/departments/licensing-board/fees-licenses

ITs like seeing Hailey's comet.

Yeah, I forgot the only choices are state income taxes or cottage booze industry. universal truths are hard to escape...

If it works out so great for booze, why not have the state do it for everything. State run roofing companies, state run lawn care, state run prostitution - we can all just work for the state and prices\controls will be dictated by the few to serve the many...

>It would make you cry to see bourbon prices in other states lol.

I've bought booze in probably five different stats over the last few years... shed not tear one. Beyond a few collectors bottles or rarer whiskey' (Pappy) I've never noticed a difference between any region - I might just be a less experienced drunk.

I'm glad the state is using that "massive income" to support its children, build a nest egg, and establish generational success as a small business... oh wait? Sounds like its just denying other people an economic opportunity while it enjoys the benefits of a captive cottage market.

>I'm not trying to frame any argument. I have heard and read people say taxation is theft. You are the first person I read use that phrase but make a distinction between some taxes and others.

I'm absolutely not the first person to make that distinction. I may be the first to say it in a way you understand, but I'm not the first to say it. If you are paying a tax because there is a gun to your head, its no different than being robbed. Nobody is putting a gun to buy pot... hell even in most legal states you can grow your own and never even worry about it.

>On the face of it, taxation being theft seems stupid to me. But I am willing to learn why, I just have not heard anyone explain it. Clearly, we need government, many examples show we have no modicum of effective, civil society without some organization. Keeping that organization effective is a constant challenge, but even effective needs revenue, which it gets from taxes, of one sort or another.

I don't agree with your premise at all. I reject it entirely. We had roads, schools, libraries, universities all voluntarily funded long before an income or sales taxes.

The idea that government is required for basic cooperation is absurd to me. If anything technology has made it even more irrelevant. I'll agree that a limited government is useful in providing some aspects of that organization - but if fucking aliens landed tomorrow you wouldn't need to pass a bill to get rednecks with 12 guages protecting the homeland.

If ruskies landed at myrtle beach there is gonna be a whole shitload of empty shells, spent pbr cans, and dead russians to clean up before congress even gets to session.

>I am not for government picking winners and losers. Which is why I hate the fact that people who make money with their money have a much lower tax rate than those working for a living. Sales versus income versus property is to some extent picking winners. Efficiency comes in having one, so why not, which is effectively what we have in NH. MA sales tax does something like what you seem to favor: essentials such as groceries and clothes, but not extravagant ones do not suffer from a sales tax. I haven't spent much time down there in years, so I am not sure how that might have changed.

Those people making money with money wouldn't be able to without a government propping up a stock exchange and providing financial safety nets for speculative derivatives market. All of which are largely modern inventions. The regulations designed around that written by people with the most to gain from it.

Before financial markets got regulated into safe casinos; if the market had a bad day - you saw my favorite thing in the world... flying investment managers. then government rallied to protect them.

I can fix that shit in a jiffy. Transaction taxes on every individual stock trade and derivatives share. Congrats I fixed the stock market. Its also an entirely voluntary market, there is no life-blood need to own shares of twitter. Ergo, not theft. You can even make exceptions for Index and ETF markets if you want to protect private retirement accounts like 401ks.

The thing you say government is good at - efficiency, fairness, redistribution - don't exist in my book. Look at the homelessness industry in CA - you have managers making millions a year to manage homeless... so why would they actually improve the problem?

Same with education and unions - that spend more on administration than they do on teachers and salaries.

Cities pay billions in damages for cops who go overboard to enforce laws that only exist becuase otherwise it would cut into someones profit margins.

Hell Fauci has more blood on his hands than Dr. Mengele did with how he basically marched gay people to their deaths during the HIV\AIDS crisis - and literally did the same playbook for covid... He's going to retire with one of the biggest pensions in US History. Who did any of that benefit besides pharma?

Everything you say the government does more betterer... is in my opinion only a problem because government did it to begin with. Mostly to serve cronyism and fascism (as defined by Mussolini)

I think you and I are talking past each other - so let me kind of boil this down. I think we fundamentally disagree on what "corporate welfare" and "fraud" looks like.

Most if not all of the big tech billionaires have had their products subsidized - if not directly, then indirectly by the fact that we publicly paid for most of the internet backbone the y run off. This is a derivative "you didn't build that" argument that is ignorant in my opinion and just a way of justifying theft from profitable companies. A trucking company that uses roads isn't subsidized, just like a tech billionaire using the internet isn't subsidized.

Bezos almost got 10 Billion dollars in Blue Origin money because he literally has senators and congressional reps in his back pocket - fraud.

Banks and Hedgefunds who have the SEC re-write rules for them while they lock out commercial investors. Banks that got bailouts because their former VP's are all members of the potus cabinet or vice versa - fraud

Nestle electing california senators to secure water rights to steal water from aquafers for profit during a draught - fraud.

Tesla and SpaceX wouldn't exist without massive subsidies from the federal government for EV's\Space Exploration - hell the entire EV vehicle market wouldn't exist without billions being pumped into it. Same goes for big oil\LNG, Healthcare, College, the MIC. All of it propping up industry profits so that politicians can go buy up shares of and make themselves wealthy - all corporate welfare all fraud.

What you are saying - is that you are okay with government stealing money from profitable industries and people so long as they steal more from them and less from you. "redistribution" is a joke. They don't redistribute anything to individuals, the scraps you get in social spending or new infrastructure pales in comparison.

The reality of it is corporations are paying governments for access to public coffers and backing - and the exchange rate is hella profitable for them. You're looking for government to be Robin Hood when what you're getting is people robbing the hood.

"Helping Americans" is just the cloth they drape their crime in. Bailouts didn't help a single american, they got thrown into the streets while the bank got to keep the bailout and their house.

Best case ... Billionaires and Government is just one hand washing the other. Worst case its velvet glove covering an iron fist (Pfizer\Vaccine Mandates)

As far as wealth and redistribution... that used to be the salaries and wages people made, there was no better job in this country fifty years ago than a manufacturing gig. You'd walk right out of public high school with entry level competency in how to use tools and a tape measure from your shop or autoclass - into a career that would support you the rest of your life.

All those good jobs that supported the middle class were exported to China, South East Asia, and Mexico... by people like clinton, obama, and bush - all backed by IMEX loans that made it easier to secure capital to ship jobs west and south...

Whats left of the American labor market is now involved in a race to the bottom of the wage floor because we'll import laborers to do hard jobs for pennies to live 8 head to a bedroom. Wages stopped growing in this country in 1971... right when the immigration caps got lifted and we started normalizing trade with Japan and China.

this isnt' late stage capitalism... its just early stage globalism.

Edits (for clarity and piss poor grammar)

Ah, got ya.

I was thinking more like specific states that have draconian liqour boards.

My biggest thing is don't tax it into oblivion like California and Oregon did. When your legal market is so heavily taxed its worth buying mexican dirt weed instead...

Leave it to the left coast to fuckup legal pot. I like MA's system of distributors, I just wish it wasn't as tightly limited like liqour licenses, until very recently I had to go damn near into boston proper to find a distributor.

You're paying for marked up booze to... except the profits from that booze and the taxes levied are miniscule and going to state coffers. State run vice-markets are wacky to me. Like state lotto's, when gambling is illegal...

I'd actually be interested in a side by side comparison of price\volume.

>One way or another, government has to be funded, and the State Stores in NH are well run, efficient, generate much revenue for the state and offer a good service at a great price. So, I'm okay with it.

Not only do I not believe government -has to be funded- I don't even believe it should be funded in 90% of what it does.

I have no intentions of going to town - I just think we have a difference of perspectives. which is why we we won't find common ground.

I will agree, many things are seemingly made easier by government organization and safety nets that catch people are genuinely good. I think overtime though the inherent corruption of government+money makes this trend downward over time.

I will never concede that a free market system isn't better for the 90% of things. and just because you don't see an operating free market healthcare system - in a world dominated by authoritarian centralized governments - doesn't prove its not possible.

I'm not insistent on a free market system for healthcare - that industry is entirely captured and until the Gordian knot of government interference is untangled, you'll never see a remotely free market.

As far as tycoon capitalists - most instances of that throughout history can be almost directly linked to government interference. From railroad tycoons to insulin shortages - government puts its thumb on the scale.Bezos\Amazon and Musk\Tesla is the best example of that. the left screams bloody murder about how wealthy he is... then passes billions of dollars that subsidize his products on the market... wacky.

>BowTied, So help me understand, some taxes are theft, but taxes on pot are not?

Are you required to buy pot? Do you trade your labor to an employer or to customers (services rendered) for pot, only to have 40% of it taken directly out of your check or back side?

Or is buying marijuana an entirely voluntary action you can easily avoid?

>Sales taxes are not? What is the breakdown?

Never said sales taxes weren't also theft - especially on necessary goods like food and healthcare products\services - but excellent attempt to frame my speech into words you wanted to hear.

You just answered your own question.

Free Markets

Private citizens managing and profiting off of the sale and distribution vs a state thats going to keep it as restricted as humanely possible. I come from a liqour board county in MD. There was ONE fucking liqour store in the entire county and all they stocked was trash - and you had to buy your booze from a fuckin cop who was probably makeing six figures ROAD to poorly run a liqour store.

1/5 times you'd buy booze then get traffic stopped within three blocks because he didn't like the looks of you.

I mean... who hasn't been.

>Again, not a huge fan of Democrats but at least they are actually trying to make things better for people

Yet you give them a pass on literally everything you accuse Republicans of? I'm of the opinion that its all one big uniparty for and by the kleptocracy - they just have different ways of attracting naïve voters. Republicans with nostalgia\Christian morality, Dems with hedonism\post-modern morality.

I'd be happy to give you a list of everything I think Republicans have done in the last 30 years that was beneficial, but being as you proved yourself disingenuous with your original comment - I figured it would be better to show you your own hypocrisy. IE Supporting some of the worst warcrimes in the last 20 years because a Dem did it.

Hey remember that time Joe Biden drone struck an innocent family of 10! For literally no reason...

Here is my short list though:

- Dole\Gingrich Deal with America - an example provided above you promptly ignored

- Bush funding Africa - reduced the spread of aids, increased malaria drugs, and access to water

- Trumps border policy - actively combatted sex trafficker's, took money from cartels coffers, and a whole host of human misery reduced - despite rhetoric about kids in cages

- Trump again - Historic levels of funding to black colleges, lowest black unemployment rate in fucking generations, only president in the last 50 years to not get us involved in a brand new shooting war. (your entire idea that dems are anit-MIC is sooo far off base)

- Energy Independence - Trump focusing on domestic\north american energy production has been something we've needed to do... since Eisenhower. better yet if we actually started working with south America to create energy independence for the entire western hemisphere so we can stop playing around in sandboxes with inbred saudi royals. We really needed to scale up our domestic refinement oil refinement to minimize the exportation of crude.

Progress that was promptly aborted by Pedo Peter in the name of climate change, despite the fact that we reduced emissions further than the kyoto\paris agreements would have required.

- Tax cuts - link already provided (you chose to ignore) that actually benefited the poor\middle class more than the rich - as proven by IRS data in the link provided. Less theft by government is inherently a good thing, I don't care if its from millionaires or people on food stamps.

In a sane world - less taxes would be less bombs dropped on children - but here we are.

Its just like the "record job growth"

Yeah, when you eliminate millions of positions from the economy over covid and then suddenly let people go back to work - best time for a victory lap. So gas ticked down 10 cents after going up three dollars - *cheers*

Like fucking your wife's sister then paying for the abortion and expecting gratitude.

Not only will they gut domestic spending happily, they'll also print every single dollar they need to wage war, buy off foreign governments, or fund the surveillance\police state...

but hey, money to support addiction, basic healthcare, social security raises for retirees... nah sorry *slaps pockets* we just don't have it.

Legalization of the good stuff (Marijuana, Psilocybin, Hash, Ayahuasca)

Decriminalization of the bad stuff (Coke, Crack, Meth, Heroin, Manufactured Narcotics)

Our entire cultural and human experience has been influenced by natural plants that cause entheogenic experience or intoxicating effects. Most of the earliest religions, including Judaism and Christianity were likely influenced by mind altering substances - keeping those plants illegal is tantamount to a violation of the 1st amendment in my book.

Decriminalization of possession and distribution of the rest will let us actually redirect cash resources from police\prisons into treatment while we actually target the real fucking villians - cartels.

I don't want to live in a society that is happy to take tax money from junkies - many of whom will end up committing crimes against me and other law-abiding citizens to get their fix.

I have this other funny idea where all the gear we confiscate at the border is centralized, tested, and made chemically safe with regulated dosages - so we can used confiscated gear to provide safe injection sites with safe drugs for free and entirely undercut dealers.

If it weren't for single issue voters, most people wouldn't vote - considering party politics means most politicians have dogshit views on most issues. I don't know anybody who actually likes the D\R's ... its just they like the other party less.

Except don't - especially in state with state run liquor stores - which are the worst.