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Nah....

Nevermind.

A few more good ones:

tallmike wrote:The sound bite makes it sound like he is taking away all credit for individual accomplishment, but the entire statement is far from that and his point is valid.

What we achieve is not in a vacuum. We all benefit from the society we live in, including the infrastructure and security our government provides.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Yes, some of his words could have been chosen better when you put it all in context and give it some rational thought you can see that it is true.

Well, if you want to defend him, how about admitting the other side of that coin is true. The 47% of Americans that take from the government instead paying any taxes got their because they squandered all the same advantages and opportunities, functioning as a taker instead of contributor.

On a more serious note, this reminds me of a conversation from Atlas Shrugged.

"Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."

She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"

apostate wrote:On a more serious note, this reminds me of a conversation from Atlas Shrugged.

"Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."

She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"

The book was long and had some drivel in it, but it had a few points that just hammered home, especially in our current times. Because my wife is going into the healthcare field, I always found this quote particularly poignant.

"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything – except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards – never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind – yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it – and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.

tallmike wrote:The sound bite makes it sound like he is taking away all credit for individual accomplishment, but the entire statement is far from that and his point is valid.

What we achieve is not in a vacuum. We all benefit from the society we live in, including the infrastructure and security our government provides.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Yes, some of his words could have been chosen better when you put it all in context and give it some rational thought you can see that it is true.

Again, I understood his message. I disagreed with it, but I understood it. But I did not hit the boiling point until that sanctimonious creep took the conversation there. The reaction is on his head. In broad terms, roughly 1% of taxpayers pay 95% of all federal taxes, and 47% pay NO taxes (so technically, they aren't even "taxpayers"), and the remaining 52% of taxpayers pay about 5% of all federal taxes There isn't a single member of that non-taxpaying 47% who have who built any single part of my business. I BUILT IT! MY effort. MY financial investment. MY risk. MY hard work, long hours, short pay, and little sleep. They didn't even pay for the technologies which made my business possible. And they aren't even the ones who will buy my services because A) they have no use for them; and B) they mostly can't afford them. Since that 1% who paid 95% of the taxes—again of which the 47% paid none—paid for the roads that the 47% use to get to their jobs or to drive to the welfare office, I reject that they had anything to do with building my business. That is simply untrue. Furthermore, that portion of those who fall between the 47% and the 1%, in other words, those who collectively paid about 5% of all taxes paid, and who actually DID build the roads that I use......GOT PAID FOR IT. It wasn't their gift to me, or anybody else. In fact, many of them were members of unions which extorted exorbitant contracts out of the contracting firms which were contracted to build the roads, thereby driving up the cost of the contracts to the entire taxpayer base.

The only power that government has over wealth is to destroy it. It cannot create it. If you don't believe that, simply look at North Korea or the former Soviet Union, where the economy is/was controlled 100% from the top down by government. Show me someone who became a billionaire in the USSR in the "above ground" economy. You can't. There are none. In the top down economy, billionaires are impossible unless either A) they were already so before the top down economy came to pass, or B) they made their billions in the black market—which necessarily exists, by the way because top down economies are incapable of meeting even the most basic needs of their populaces. Again, if you don't believe me, read up on the Soviet famines of the 1921 and 1932, or the more recent famine in North Korea in the past 10 years. Here in the U.S. with fundamental capitalist principles in play and encourage by government until perhaps the past 50 years or so, there has never been a nationwide famine in our entire 236 year history. Individual hunger and poverty, yes, but systemic hunger and poverty, NO. Capitalism did that. Capitalism is the engine of democracy and freedom and prosperity, not the other way around. People who built their businesses did that. I am a website designer and I have no employees (and never will until government gets out of my business). The Internet, when it wasn't busy being invented by Al Gore, was actually created by Darpa, with funds paid for at the source almost entirely by the top 1% taxpayers. The additional research that made it accessible to universities was paid for at the source almost entirely by the top 1% of taxpayers. The venture capitalism which led to the massive burst of IT technologies of which we are the direct beneficiaries, was funded at the source almost entirely by the top 1% of taxpayers. Obama's salary is paid for at the source almost entirely by the top 1% of tax payers. The top 1% of taxpayers paid to redecorate the White House when he moved into it.

I wish Obama was retarded, because it would more charitably explain his complete fecklessness and I could simply worry that he's just not up to the intellectual rigors required of a president. But he's not retarded, and his language in that speech wasn't stupidity talking. It was a taunt from a mean spirited little policy wonk who thinks that the people work for the government, not the other way around. For a brief moment, he displayed his true marxist, Alinsky colors. I'm not only not going to let go of that, I'm going to trumpet it from the rooftops. I'm going to hammer on Obama until election day with this, and with the long list of other grievances he has accrued to his name. I've spoken to roughly 24 different small business owners just since yesterday, and this is ALL they are talking about, and they are ALL incredibly insulted and angry. He has permanently alienated most of the small business community, which according to the SBA (http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24):

Small firms:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
• Hire 43 percent of high tech workers ( scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.5 percent of all identified exporters and produced 31 percent of export value in FY 2008.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.

But apparently, Obama doesn't believe that. He believes that if it weren't for the efforts of almost anybody except the business owner, these businesses wouldn't exist......as if the blood sweat and tears invested by these business owners were the last reason for their success. He is a deeply evil and deceitful man, and he has demonstrated that he is morally not worthy of the office.

Jumping Frog wrote:Well, if you want to defend him, how about admitting the other side of that coin is true. The 47% of Americans that take from the government instead paying any taxes got their because they squandered all the same advantages and opportunities, functioning as a taker instead of contributor.

That statement is a bit extreme. I agree with some of it, but not completely.

I admit that there are some Americans who take from society and do not provide anything in return, but it's not as high as 47%, that is an artificially high number because it is based on only 1 of the taxes we all pay. 47% may not pay federal income tax, but they certainly pay lots of other taxes (sales, property, fuel, etc). I don't know about you, but my federal income tax bill is only a small part of the taxes I pay throughout the year.

Some of those who take more than they receive from society are there because they squandered every opportunity in their life, but quite a few are there because they did not get many opportunities.

I know I have had quite a few opportunities in my life provided by the situations my family was able to put me. I squandered many of them and made good use of others. Consequently, I am comfortably middle class. I know that I have not had any where close to the same sorts of opportunities that were provided to someone like Mitt Romney during his life. I also know that I was given significant advantages over a kid who grew up living day to day in a hotel or homeless shelter with parents who had very little education or money.

Can a kid coming from a poor uneducated family make his life turn out great? Absolutely, but it is much harder and far less likely than if your parents were Harvard graduates.

Can you honestly tell me that a single mom HS dropout, who works for $8 per hour, lives in an inner city hotel where she raises 3 kids can provide her kids with the same opportunities in life that a doctor mom and lawyer dad making $400k per year would be able to provide for their kids?

I'm certainly not saying that government charity is the best answer, but its part of the answer. If you were having a conversation about this with Jesus do you think you would be able to convince him that he should be against paying an extra 3-5% income tax next year?

The Annoyed Man wrote:Again, I understood his message. I disagreed with it, but I understood it. But I did not hit the boiling point until that sanctimonious creep took the conversation there. The reaction is on his head. In broad terms, roughly 1% of taxpayers pay 95% of all federal taxes, and 47% pay NO taxes (so technically, they aren't even "taxpayers"), and the remaining 52% of taxpayers pay about 5% of all federal taxes There isn't a single member of that non-taxpaying 47% who have who built any single part of my business. I BUILT IT! MY effort. MY financial investment. MY risk. MY hard work, long hours, short pay, and little sleep. They didn't even pay for the technologies which made my business possible. And they aren't even the ones who will buy my services because A) they have no use for them; and B) they mostly can't afford them. Since that 1% who paid 95% of the taxes—again of which the 47% paid none—paid for the roads that the 47% use to get to their jobs or to drive to the welfare office, I reject that they had anything to do with building my business. That is simply untrue. Furthermore, that portion of those who fall between the 47% and the 1%, in other words, those who collectively paid about 5% of all taxes paid, and who actually DID build the roads that I use......GOT PAID FOR IT. It wasn't their gift to me, or anybody else. In fact, many of them were members of unions which extorted exorbitant contracts out of the contracting firms which were contracted to build the roads, thereby driving up the cost of the contracts to the entire taxpayer base.

Your numbers are WAY off. The top 50% pay 95% (actually closer to 98% - http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) but the top 1% only pay 36% - and that is only a measure of the federal personal income tax.

That top 1% also brings home 25% of the nations income and they control 40% of the nations wealth (http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 22655.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Yep, it sounds like they are being taxed to death.

tallmike wrote:
Can a kid coming from a poor uneducated family make his life turn out great? Absolutely, but it is much harder and far less likely than if your parents were Harvard graduates.

Can you honestly tell me that a single mom HS dropout, who works for $8 per hour, lives in an inner city hotel where she raises 3 kids can provide her kids with the same opportunities in life that a doctor mom and lawyer dad making $400k per year would be able to provide for their kids?

I'm certainly not saying that government charity is the best answer, but its part of the answer. If you were having a conversation about this with Jesus do you think you would be able to convince him that he should be against paying an extra 3-5% income tax next year?

Wealth and privilege carries its own burden. The news is rife with the tragic lives of the offspring of the rich and privileged; J Paul Getty, Kennedy, Hunts, the son of Nicholas Cage, and most recently, allegations of Sage Stallone being a big time drug dealer. Being born into wealth often robs the child of motivation, drive, resourcefulness, and hunger for a achievement. Born into poverty often nurtures such traits. There is no distinction between bad choices made by social class. Lack of resources does not negate character.

America is about its people being free to make their own choices and, being allowed to reap the consequences; either good or bad.

I bear no responsibility for the choices the Gettys or Kennedys made, and I certainly dont "the single mom HS dropout who works for $8. per hour". She made choices that I can bet didnt include being a responsible or serious student. Since the early days of man there has been inequality and regardless of the dreams of the foolish, our world will never be a utopia.

I dont have a problem with helping those who I personally determine are worthy; I call it helping those who help themselves; but I am being denied the right to determine who those people are.

The people who should have have had conversations with Jesus are the very ones who decided to live a life differently than what he advocated. I dont know about your Jesus, but my Jesus tells me not to waste my time on certain people. He also tells me that I shouldnt buy parasites a new LED flat screen television. If you believe in his teachings you will know that he says those who dance have to pay the fiddler; and that is an individual debt.

tallmike wrote:Can a kid coming from a poor uneducated family make his life turn out great? Absolutely, but it is much harder and far less likely than if your parents were Harvard graduates.

Can you honestly tell me that a single mom HS dropout, who works for $8 per hour, lives in an inner city hotel where she raises 3 kids can provide her kids with the same opportunities in life that a doctor mom and lawyer dad making $400k per year would be able to provide for their kids?

I'm certainly not saying that government charity is the best answer, but its part of the answer. If you were having a conversation about this with Jesus do you think you would be able to convince him that he should be against paying an extra 3-5% income tax next year?

You may feel that you're being sympathetic, but I see your attitude as perpetuating the problem. You apparently think that having children you can't provide for is some kind of right. Not only is it not a right, but having children you know beforehand you can't provide for is immoral.

Let's take the single mom story, which you present as if she has no responsibility for her situation. Why is she a single mom? Did her husband leave her or did she get pregnant out of wedlock? Why did she drop out from HS? Most significantly, why did she have three kids she can't provide for? The fact is, her situation is largely the product of HER bad choices....her choice not to finish school and her choice to have children she can't support. How am I responsible for that? I would have loved to have more children, but my wife and I limited ourselves to the number of children we could support. I waited to get married and have children until I was in the financial situation necessary to do right by them. But by your philosophy, those of us who take responsibility for our actions are supposed to give our money to those who don't. As Thomas Sowell says, when you pay for something, you get more of it.

And btw, neither of my parents were Harvard graduates and I'm doing just fine. Neither even went to college. They were born during The Depression era and both came from poor families. They did without. They worked for what they got and they saved for the future. No one handed them anything.

The welfare system doesn't work in the way your sympathies would like it to. I works, and was designed to work, to foster dependency. The welfare system facilitated those three children from a single mother. The bad choices of her parents were perpetuated by her, and will be again by her children.

tallmike wrote:That top 1% also brings home 25% of the nations income and they control 40% of the nations wealth (http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 22655.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Yep, it sounds like they are being taxed to death.

It's not the nation's income, it's their income. It's not the nation's wealth, its their wealth. That's the problem with the progressive paradigm. It assumes that the money belongs to the nation, and the nation's proxy, the government. It does not. It belongs to the people who earn it. That is a fundamental tenet of the right to property, as understood and promoted by the Founders—that the acquisition and accumulation of wealth is private property just as is the acquisition and accumulation of farm acreage, cows, houses, pitchforks, and lanterns. Wealth is the fruit of one person's labor and it is his/her property. If he/she is so blessed as to have residual wealth upon his/death, then that wealth is properly inheritable by that persons's heirs just as is any other acquired and accumulated private property.

The government legally forces the taxpayer (whether it's the 1% or the 50%) to cough up a percentage, by act of Congress, as empowered in the Constitution. The Constitution does not argue for a progressive tax. It merely empowers taxation. It is up to Congress to make taxation politically palatable to the people who have to pay it, but there is no constitutional imperative requiring a progressive tax structure—or a flat tax structure, or a VAT tax structure, or any other structure. In fact, the Constitution does not require a tax. It merely empowers Congress to do so, should it so will.

So whether or not my numbers are off, and there are smart people with whom you obviously disagree who would likewise disagree with you, the principles are the same, and that doesn't in the least change my argument that roads are not a gift from government. They are paid for by those taxpayers who actually pay taxes (regardless of which percentage group they fall into). That tax money did not mysteriously appear. Somebody had to work for it, and then had to surrender a part of their earnings (which is their private property) to the state in order to stay out of jail. When anybody else does that to you, that is extortion. Only government can do that, and make no mistake....taxes are paid under duress and against the taxpayer's will. Believe me, if there were no criminal penalties for income tax evasion, the federal government would cease to exist in a matter of weeks......and that includes the "sainted middle class" and not just the "evil capitalists." Don't lie. If you didn't HAVE to pay income taxes, you know you wouldn't. If Warren Buffet didn't HAVE to pay taxes, you know he wouldn't. (I actually know a little something about the man, and he is biggest cheapskate ever, despite being a billionaire many times over. He says he wouldn't mind paying higher taxes.....well what's stopping him? NOTHING. But he's still not volunteering to pay them.)

Those roads that Obama talks of are NOT paid for by the 47% who don't pay any income tax. They simply aren't. But that same 47% uses those roads, and even claims an entitlement to that use and gets upset when they fall into disrepair—even though they won't volunteer to pay money to fix them anymore than a rich person wants to volunteer it.

So any claim that this 47% which paid nothing for the development of the Internet (my place of business), paid nothing for the time and effort I put into learning how to do what I do (building and hosting of websites), and for the most part cannot afford my services (a completed and functioning well designed site OR a hosting account), in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM helped me to build my business. That's just a down and dirty lie. When Obama says it, that makes him a down and dirty liar.

I am NOT saying that those 47%-ters did not work hard at whatever it is they do, and I'm not saying they are bad people lacking good character. I AM saying that they in no way helped to build my business anymore than I helped to drive their truck or mop their floor or serve those burgers or teach those first graders (or whatever they do), or anymore than they helped to build the roads we both use—unless they actually worked on building those roads, in which case, THEY GOT PAID FOR IT, and that is ALL the credit they get or deserve.....the paycheck for the work done.

And to reverse that for just a moment, I would never be so morally corrupt to claim that I built the road and try to take the credit for their labor. I don't personally believe in stolen valor; and I do believe that one who claims stolen valor is a corrupt thief and a liar. I did not build those roads. But I did pay for it, through my taxes. That is not a claim that non-taxpayers (who also benefit from the Internet too, by the way, just like they do from the roads) cannot make. NOBODY gets to claim glory for something they didn't do (like claiming glory for fixing the economy when everything you did makes it worse), and it is doubly repugnant with a bald-faced liar of a president picks out the single biggest group of job makers in the nation—the small business owners—and tries to steal the credit for the sacrifices that those people made.........and let me tell you, the sacrifices are many. I can tell you about small business owners I know personally who ate rice and beans for a month or longer so that their employees would not miss a paycheck. Who took out seconds on their mortgages so that their employees would not miss a paycheck. Who passed on taking a vacation so their employees would not miss a paycheck. Who actually took home less pay than their employees, so that their emplyees would not miss a paycheck. Who had nothing left in the bank at the end of the year so that their employees would not miss a paycheck. And then that lying buffoon of a president says that those employers didn't make that happen? It makes me want to puke. He is disgusting and sickening.

When Obama claims that I did not build my business; that it wasn't my blood sweat and tears that built it, and then ties to "steal my valor" so to speak and give it away so cheaply to people who did not have a thing to do with it, then he has earned my undying emnity.

He is an evil man. Not just wrong as Hades, but evil. And he is just downright ignorant. Willfully stupid. How anyone like him got elected president is a perfect study in crafting messages that mean nothing. Oh yea, the "most transparent administration in American history," which turns out to be the most opaque administration in history, which turns out to circumvent congress at every opportunity and rule by executive fiat, which places dozens of unelected unaccountable czars over the affairs of the people, an directs those csars to repeatedly violate the laws passed by congress........

Obama is more corrupt than Richard Nixon was. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, THE most corrupt and morally bent president we've ever had. He got elected purely on the vapid stupidity of voters who very obviously knew nothing about the man and studiously ignored any suggestions that he might be unfit for office, choosing instead to vote for him based on the color of his skin rather than the content of his character.

And THAT is racist, exactly as Martin Luther King described it when he preached of looking forward to the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

If he is reelected, we are doomed.

tallmike wrote:

Jumping Frog wrote:Well, if you want to defend him, how about admitting the other side of that coin is true. The 47% of Americans that take from the government instead paying any taxes got their because they squandered all the same advantages and opportunities, functioning as a taker instead of contributor.

That statement is a bit extreme. I agree with some of it, but not completely.

I admit that there are some Americans who take from society and do not provide anything in return, but it's not as high as 47%, that is an artificially high number because it is based on only 1 of the taxes we all pay. 47% may not pay federal income tax, but they certainly pay lots of other taxes (sales, property, fuel, etc). I don't know about you, but my federal income tax bill is only a small part of the taxes I pay throughout the year.

Some of those who take more than they receive from society are there because they squandered every opportunity in their life, but quite a few are there because they did not get many opportunities.

I know I have had quite a few opportunities in my life provided by the situations my family was able to put me. I squandered many of them and made good use of others. Consequently, I am comfortably middle class. I know that I have not had any where close to the same sorts of opportunities that were provided to someone like Mitt Romney during his life. I also know that I was given significant advantages over a kid who grew up living day to day in a hotel or homeless shelter with parents who had very little education or money.

Can a kid coming from a poor uneducated family make his life turn out great? Absolutely, but it is much harder and far less likely than if your parents were Harvard graduates.

Can you honestly tell me that a single mom HS dropout, who works for $8 per hour, lives in an inner city hotel where she raises 3 kids can provide her kids with the same opportunities in life that a doctor mom and lawyer dad making $400k per year would be able to provide for their kids?

I'm certainly not saying that government charity is the best answer, but its part of the answer. If you were having a conversation about this with Jesus do you think you would be able to convince him that he should be against paying an extra 3-5% income tax next year?

I might be completely off-base, but all I hear is envy. I don't care how much money Romney has, or Obama has, or even that manipulator Gore has...all I care about is how much they want to take away from what I have and from what I can earn. Yes, there has to be some government, and yes folks have to pay something to make that government function. But the government today does things that no government should be doing, period. They have grown it and grown it and grown it, until many people believe that everyone would die tomorrow if the government stopped doing the things they are doing...and maybe they are right...maybe people would die. But why is that a good thing for people to be so dependent upon the government taking money away from some to GIVE to others, not simply to build and maintain infrastructure or defend the nation or other similar tasks? I've been called "dogmatic" before and I may well be...but I'm not going to apologize for my beliefs. Those days of me feeling bad about it are long gone...and the political left made sure of that.

It's easy to understand why Obama thinks the way he does. He never had to work hard. He just has to show up.

He smoked pot and goofed off, putting the high in high school, and he gets into an ivy league school ahead of smarter, harder workng students with better grades and test scores.

He gets a Nobel Prize for doing nothing.

It's no wonder he doesn't understand.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

tallmike wrote:That top 1% also brings home 25% of the nations income and they control 40% of the nations wealth (http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 22655.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Yep, it sounds like they are being taxed to death.

It's not the nation's income, it's their income. It's not the nation's wealth, its their wealth. That's the problem with the progressive paradigm. It assumes that the money belongs to the nation, and the nation's proxy, the government. It does not. It belongs to the people who earn it. That is a fundamental tenet of the right to property, as understood and promoted by the Founders—that the acquisition and accumulation of wealth is private property just as is the acquisition and accumulation of farm acreage, cows, houses, pitchforks, and lanterns. Wealth is the fruit of one person's labor and it is his/her property. If he/she is so blessed as to have residual wealth upon his/death, then that wealth is properly inheritable by that persons's heirs just as is any other acquired and accumulated private property.

Exactly, bingo, nail meet hammer, on and on.