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(51,378 posts)Roberts and Scalia tried to make the ACA sound like an overreach by asking Verrilli if the government could also force people to buy broccoli or cell phones, since they would help people too. Verrilli said no and went into a muddled discussion about how all consumers are already buying healthcare and so aren't being forced to buy anything, they're just being regulated in how they buy it. What Verrilli should have said is the government already does make us buy a whole range of crap. It forces everyone who pays taxes to buy cell phones--and healthcare--for the justices, and broccoli every time it is on the menu at the Supreme Court's cafeteria. Hell, the government makes us buy whole wars we don't even want and that don't help us in any way.
TheKentuckian
(24,949 posts)a range of things that the government spends on.
The government is empowered to levy taxes to fund its self, projects, programs, and affairs of all sorts.
You are not sent out to buy bullets or widgets or food or give the park ranger your three cents a year or whatever it is.
The whole idea is absurd. Hell, we could get rid of taxes and institute a series of mandates for government programs, so we can make sure the full brunt goes on poor and working folks, giving the wealthy their "flat tax" via the backdoor
A tax rate is how WE get to know how much money WE AS INDIVIDUALS HAVE TO WORK WITH.
Hell, you are fucking PLEADING for double taxation on steriods. You go through and tax the income and then turn around and dictate how the remainder is spent, not a tax on how the remainder is spent but dictating the spending takes on the assumption that post tax dollars are also a part of the general fund
A concept that is particularly dangerous in a taxaphobic society that exists to funnel resources to a tiny percentage of very greedy fuckwits.
Anyone that would be free and not a slave should stand strong for a line between funds raised in taxation and their pocket. They'd be wise to have little tolerance for the ability to compel activity, especially to compel one to enter into contracts with some of the greediest and unreformed fuckheads among all mankind.
This is worse than conscription, at least then you are not made the property of some evil fuckers answerable only to profit.
The funny thing is I'm sure that there are more than a few that have seperate accounts either from a partner and/or themselves, maybe some that cannot readily be accessed or not at all until such and such a time or earmarked for a purpose.
If one can wrap their minds around various and/or seperate accounts or can grasp a budget should be quite capable of getting why the government's spending and our's as individuals should maintain some bright lines.
Even fees should be dealt with cautiously to avoid conflicts of interest. Nothing required should come with a fee, if it is compulsory then it must come from tax revenue. That should apply to the states too, a fee for a license is regulating freely entered to activity but a fee for an ID requires one to produce such a document. A fee would be tolerable for an ID if the state did not require one.
I do not get the recent fixation on regressing to unlimited government. Fuck, demanding it and arguing tirelessly for it from all along the political spectrum, depending on hot buttons, be it trying to tell women what to do with their bodies to the drug war to turning the people over to a predatory cartel so out of hand that they maintain an anti-trust exemption to abandoning all thought of due process and dismantling and/or running roughshod over civil liberties and privacy in fear/under the cover of terrorisim to Teri Schivo to screaming against accountability for public officials.
Taxes are our joint account, the government must pay for "household" expenses out of it.