america wakens?

You do if you want your claims to be believed.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that has ever been found to cast any doubt about evolution while there is literally millions of mutually substantiating evidence that all points to the same thing: we are evolved from simpler ancestors. The theory of evolution is the soundest, solidest scientific theory out there. There is absolutely no question regarding it's validity amoung the scientific or educated religious community.

What on earth are you talking about?

If statistics are to believed between 40 and 50 per cent of the American electorate believe the entire universe is less than 6,000 years old.

wakens? I'm hoping they just fall asleep....

Not selfish, but very ignorant.

You don't know anything about taxes or who pays for what. Sadly the majority of citizens don't either, thus they gobble up the 'cut taxes' bullcrap all too readily without ever realizing that their paycheck just got smaller while that of the Bill Gateses got bigger.

Unfortunately Adrian, you'll never be in that league of super filthy rich that actually benefit from a republican mindset - no matter how much you wish for it (intelligence and success have not much to do with it either – unfortunately). Most likely you'll make less than $200K (of todays money) annually, once you are all grown up, of which pretty much the majority is salary only (not dividends, not capital gains, etc.) and you will pay taxes through your nose - like the rest of us.

I consult on taxes for a living. There is a reason I don't do taxes for individuals: there are no tax savings opportunities (regardless of what cuts are being promised) and where there are no opportunities, there are no fees of any significance for me. I did, however, consult high net worth individuals on their taxes (part of an all round experience type thing ) - high net worth means >$3 M in AGI. Now, we are talking about opportunities and fees that are worth my time. Unfortunately, the government (no particular party) has been hitting us out-of-the-box thinking CPAs pretty hard with fines and punishments for taking advantage of their poor phrasing of the tax code, which has made the entire endevour 'uneconomical' (and in my firms case: illegal *sigh*) .

Now that is on a federal level.


Let's look at your state and local level since you brought up schools and stadiums. Will you deny your children a higher education in case you won't be able to afford that private school? I can predict that you won't be having a lot of spending money for private elementary schools and colleges while you sock away your money for that retirement and nursing home for yourself and your family members. However, for argument sake, let's assume you will get really filthy rich with your 2 year college degree (not minimizing but the average salary isn't astronomical for a 2 year degree - hell not even for a 4 year degree or graduate degree). Will you not let your kids play in public parks? The local baseball team? Will you build your own sewage system to not having to rely on that evil state government? What about the roads - you'll only use the backcountry road and never ever travel on plane (using airports) or public transportation, right? I am sure you'll make enough money to pay for the private helicopter, while writing checks for private colleges and nursing homes. Certainly you won't be attending any concerts in that stadium or any other city operated/funded theaters and venues. No city celebrations or state fairs for you and your kids either, right? No museum visits for your family or libarary visits. Correct?

Further, never ever call 911 (which you won't have to cause you've got that gun under your bed with which you will defend yourself and family members at all times and it WILL protect you from all evil possible - I am sure), or the fire department or ambulance. In fact, make sure you know where all the private hospitals are in your area - the ones that don't use public funding. I hope there will be one on that gravel road of yours since you can't use public roadways. Let’s hope neither you nor any of your loved ones will ever come down with a disease for which the quest for a cure has been subsidized with tax dollars, cause you wouldn’t be able to buy those medications, cause you opted out of paying for it in the first place. And just to be clear, you will have saved up enough to pay for, hm, let's see, a new highway to that new development that they are putting up to accommodate all those new employees drawn to the area by the biggest taxpayer in WI (xyz corporation), cause you sure don't want your tax money be used towards paying interest on those government bonds issued to pay for all of it.

In fact, here is a report on where WI got its revenues and what it was used for, use it as a reference to avoid any and all projects funded by the state/city/county/townhips: http://www.dor.state.wi.us/slf/cotvc/cmreb04.pdf


I don't want to sound condescending, Adrian, because I really think you are a great young person, however, I do have to dare you this: work, support yourself and a family and actually PAY taxes .... then you can start complaining, but I am sure once you actually get out of the woods of Wisconsin and view the world and what it takes to financially survive and realize how co-dependent we all are, your perception will change. That is not to say you would change your political views, but you won't be spouting quite such righteous and ignorant gobbledigob about taxes and who pays for what.


One quick note on this comment:

You just can’t have your pie and eat it too, Adrian. You don’t want to raise the minimum wage, yet you don’t want to support medicare and Medicaid. Well, surely you see the direct relationship between how much a person makes during his wage earning years and his dependence on medicare/Medicaid in old age? Don’t pay people shit and they won’t be able to afford their healthcare. It’s really quite simple.

Don’t you work for a national chain store (or used to)?

Ever heard of the Big Box Tax? (not passed, yet proposed in various forms in several states). It’s a tax that would be imposed on the gross receipts (revenue) of retail stores that have more than $20 million annually in sales and either do not provide employee compensation worth at least $22,000 per year (including wages, insurance, vacation, and other benefits) or have more than one-quarter of their employees working less than 40 hours a week. It absolutely FLOORS me that we should support businesses that do not even compensate their employees worth at least $22K in wages AND benefits? What on earth? Hey, but at least we get that VCR nowadays for $35 at XYZ. Sad.


Oh and another one:

Now, how many of those people do you really think there are? But speaking of people coming to this country to rip you and me taxpayer off: let’s not eat any more apples or other produce from the grocery stores as they most likely were picked by migrate workers who are underage with no opportunity for education, health care or a decent level of living. Let’s be sure we don’t buy any of those new houses that are being put up like anthills, put together by poor immigrants who aren’t paid minimum wage (hopefully cause we don’t want to lose our jobs). Instead, let’s make sure we all have our homes custom built by All-American workers from the architect to framer. Since we all want to be rich, I am sure we’ll be able to swing it financially. You don’t want a new house in the suburbs you say? Oh that’s ok, go for those 10 acres on that private gravel road and check your local yellow pages for a carpenter and someone to lay that tile floor and carpet and someone who can remodel that kitchen including plumbing and electricity for you --- ask for citizenship first and foremost since we wouldn’t want to support those minimum wage earning immigrants. Good luck, I say, in finding anybody who even speaks English.


Now, I do have to come back to that stadium comment of yours. How naïve. How shortsighted. How ignorant.

So you are not interested in ever attending a baseball game or rolling stones concert and neither will your children (no matter what they think) and thus you don’t see why you should pay for something you do not derive any benefit from. Correct?

Do you know what the amount of revenues the new stadium is supposed to generate? Do you have any idea what effect the construction has financially on the local manufacturers, laborers, vendors, businesses? Do you have any idea how much business a stadium brings to the surrounding restaurants/shops/parking lots/etc? Do you know what increased revenues mean to YOU? Where do you think your customers got their money from when they pay for that CD or DVD or whatever else you might be in the business of. It’s from the wages one earns in that beer stand in the stadium, or the restaurant across the street, or the entrepreneur who rents out parking spots on his empty lot during the game, or the tax consultant that earns fees by providing services to all those businesses when it comes to minimizing their taxes.

As much as you wish for it, you are not alone and certainly not almighty to do it all by yourself.

you forgot about street lights maria.

a little comment i remember an old economics tutor of mine saying back in the day when someone put forward the idea that we should be paying taxes.

Thank you Maria - well said.

Kathleen

Never said I was going to be super filthy rich. Said I wanted to be and I'm gonna try.

I certainly see some areas where taxation is a good thing. I've never said all taxation is bad, yadda yadda yadda. I think we could do with a bit less of it if we shrunk government down to a proper size, but I'm not going to dispute that state government taking care of roads and putting out fires is a good thing (though that road business could be done better). I'm going to send any children I have (God forbid) to private school or I'll homeschool them. I've seen examples of both and quite like the results.

Re:The minimum wage. Why don't we jack it up to $50. Or better yet $100? The fact is, most of the work that is done at the minimum wage level is not work that deserves $50 or $100. Hell, I'm working at barely above minimum right now, and I certainly don't deserve $50/h. I don't even deserve $20 or $15/h. Do you think that if the minimum wage were suddenly jacked up to $15 an hour, the company I work for would just keep on paying its workers twice as much for the same job? Or do you think they'd fire some of them? Which would be worse?

I have no problem with people emigrating to America to find work, as long as they do it legally. Matter of fact, I'd be more than happy to set up a gate at the border and start handing citizenship out to anyone who walks through it, just so long as those who can work, work, and do not expect a free ride. That goes for everyone else in the country.

We shall have to agree to disagree on the stadium. There's no just way to tax everyone in an entire county and use the proceeds to benefit what's supposed to be a private enterprise. If that's the case, I'd like to sign up to receive the proceeds for a .05% sales tax on Brown County for the book I'm writing.

Adrian

just out of curiosity adrian apart from the legality of it what exactly is the difference between a mexican coming across the border at night or one flying in by plane with a visa?

It shows a respect for the law of the country they want to emmigrate to.

There are places in the United States where the highway speed limit is 95. There are places where it's not. What's the difference between doing 95 on their highway and 95 on highway where the limit's 55? The law is the difference.

Not that all law is good law, mind you, but it doesn't make sense to let non-citizens vote, does it?

Adrian

Well, the problem is that we have found some things. Darwin said that if we were to find certain things, then that makes his theory totally wrong. And we found them. I'm not arguing for or against evolution, but to make some grand statement like "There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that has ever been found to cast any doubt about evolution" is 100% incorrect.

what "things" have been found to disprove darwinism and where did he claim that?

unsubstantiated claims are flying around flippantly in this thread for some reason.

there's plenty more actually empirical and scientific evidence that proves or furthers darwin's theories on evolution and natural selection than to prove god created it all in one fell swoop.