Quote:

God, it's amazing how many people are promoting a little theft to "prevent" a lot of theft.

The local school has a hole in its wall. You're spending a lot of extra money in the budget on heating/cooling. Someone proposes shelling out a rather low amount to cover the hole and stop the fiscal hemmoraging.

"No! We must keep the gaping hole in the school! Taxes are theft! We can't prevent theft WITH theft!"

...but it has something to do with sex and religion, so it's a totally different situation. Apples & oranges. ...well, except that the math works the same way. You still end up paying the dollar figure listed at the bottom line. Only the most bloodyminded anarchocapitalist would oppose the insulation fix on the school on the principle of the thing.

...which leads us to the current catchphrase, for some, a phrase said in passing as they make arguments on principle or pragmatism, but for many others, charged with meaning.

Quote:

Why should I have to subsidize her lifestyle

This is code. A bit of nudge-nudge wink-wink between those with the same religious values.

This is an elegantly compact phrase that manages to hit a bunch of emotional buttons very hard while its appearance is relatively bland. Its main strength is of course the way it reframes reality in the act of asking the question.

Lifestyle - By using a word typically used by liberal/left, one conjures up a whole host of enraging "lifestyle" images. Gay marriage & childrearing, gender change operations, guys on floats on gay pride day wearing those ridiculous short jeans shorts with mustaches and leather biker hats. Rrrrrr! It mashes all the buttons at once.

Subsidize - A certain segment of christians face constant frustration from responses like "No I'm not going to agree to a 20ft tall granite monolith of the 10 commandments in the town square/no I'm not going to agree to prayer in schools/ no I won't agree for a gigantic cross to be painted on the side of the city water tower - I'm not interested in having the government subsidize your religion"

We've probably all known someone who engages in moral equivocation - who believes that surely no one is a better person than them and if someone else acts like they are a good person, well they're just hypocrites... and they use this as a justification for their own actions. "They're no better"

That's a type of assertion made when arguing with Atheists - that they just have a competing belief/value system instead of a simple absence of belief in one particular thing. Or with humanism, which is to totally misunderstand what it is. This is intellectual equivocation. You're not doing anything different/better than us (ours IS better though...) The idea is to reframe a particular THING from being considered on its own merits/drawbacks and real world consequences. Instead, it's a matter of Turnabout Is Fair Play where a competing (but ours is better) belief system is asking for subsidies. "They" blocked us, we'll block "them."

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Why should I have to subsidize her lifestyle

Those are the arguments implicit in the phrase. By encapsulting them IN such a phrase, one can both make the argument AND, by not coming right out and saying it, avoid counterargument. It's a way of preaching to the converted in public while flying under everyone else's radar. And since it is all done on the downlow (nudge-nudge wink-wink) if someone tries to argue with the implict arguments, one can always react aghast, offended. Why, how dare you put words in my mouth! (Smirk. Nudge. Wink.)

Mind you I am not saying everyone is automatically making this argument if they merely say the phrase in passing, I'm saying it would be intellectually honest to consciously aware of the memes implicit in the phrase and I'm of course opting to address them openly and directly.

Quote:

The local school has a hole in its wall. You're spending a lot of extra money in the budget on heating/cooling. Someone proposes shelling out a rather low amount to cover the hole and stop the fiscal hemmoraging.

Well...since I don't have any kids in the school to begin with...it was theft that I helped build the ****ing thing. However, it is FRAUD that the school didn't save money for regular maintenance which caused the hole in this stupid example...

Quote:

Why should I have to subsidize her lifestyle

Joe, you're an inch away from leaving.

This sort of horse**** circular argument, run on my Ticker threads, is good for a Strike. A second one and my tolerance will be exceeded.

y'know, most of the arguments in this thread are essentially this:

Its OK to steal a pack of gum, but its not OK to steal a refrigerator.

Think about that.

Yep.

-- "The local school has a hole in its wall. You're spending a lot of extra money in the budget on heating/cooling. Someone proposes shelling out a rather low amount to cover the hole and stop the fiscal hemmoraging.'No! We must keep the gaping hole in the school! Taxes are theft! We can't prevent theft WITH theft!'"

Horrible analogy. Try this: local kids keep breaking windows out of schools all over town because it's so damned fun. Largest glass company in the state is located in this school's district, employing half the town and responsible for much of the tax base. "Let's fix the windows OVER AND OVER AGAIN so we can save on heating costs!" says the superintendent. Everyone who is dependent on the glazing company for jobs and revenue think that's a fabulous idea. Besides, it's cheaper to fix the school windows on a regular basis than to face an idle Acme Glass Works, shut down from lack of orders. Extremists who question why the kids are simply allowed to break the windows without facing the consequences of their actions are ignored because they are not clever enough to figure out the role of the mischievious kids in the success of the broader economy. The continued existence of the glass manufacturer, its jobs and its tax revenue is the consequence of the chiildren's mischief.

The more we lean on insurance, the greater part of the economy insurance companies become and the more expensive medical tratment becomes. If we needed insurance only for bankruptcy-level events costing thousands of dollars, and home equity was something we had to borrow against for large out-of-pocket medical bills (instead of for new swimming pools and vacations), insurance companies would be a fraction of the size they are now, while our actual medical costs would be a smaller portion of our paycheck due much less overhead and much leass cost shifting to deal with. This issue is not about women's rights, its about government depending on the FIRE sector to remain big business AND be a major cog in wealth redistribution.

Break windows? Replace with plywood. **** em.

Poid wrote..

Its OK to steal a pack of gum, but its not OK to steal a refrigerator.

Its more like:

Its OK for someone else to steal a pack of gum for me, but its not OK to steal a refrigerator except in those situations where if someone else does steal a refrigerator, especially if they are wearing the _magic_clothes_ , for me, then I am OK with that as well.

I had to pay for a window I broke in school. Make them pay.

Of course I did other things that I should have had to pay for too... But fear was a good lesson.

Gas heat, unit for each room. I took the cover off the thermostat and flipped the little thing around so that it couldn't cut off.

Monday morning, you could feel the heat radiating from the cinder block walls from 6-8 feet away just walking down the hall. It was at least 150 or more inside the room, it was several hours before it cooled off enough to be used. The walls were still warm to the touch at the end of the day, even with it being winter and the windows open all day.

Damn good thing I didn't cause a fire. I actually meant to fix the thermostat before I left friday, I was just ****ing with the substitute teacher and wanted to make it too hot in the room. I forgot too though... So it ran from friday about noon till monday about 8am full blast.

I didn't get caught on that one. Thank god.

Asi, lmao!

"Magus, I'm sure we all have anecdotes. Especially re behaviors that rarely are based on logic. And re topics in which data, and truthful accounts, are vanishingly scarce. Anecdotes that are generally from people who are our friends, and of our own gender."

Just look at it logically.

There are two reasons to try to impregnate someone else 1) Attachment to the other person 2) Financially (which is typically why I hear of this)

#1 lets argue is equal between both sexes. #2 is very lobsided in one direction. Let's say 50% of the time it's #1 and 50% of the time it's #2.

25% Men and 25% women total in #1 for a total of 50%. #2 is probably 90% (or higher) women and 10% men so ~45% women and 5% men for a total bucket of 30% men and 70% women. And in my opinion, that is being very generous as I think #2 happens a lot more than #1, especially since a woman is literally always in control of her pregnancy if she's on any form of birth control such as a pill or the like so guys have relatively smaller control over whether the impregnation occurs.

It's going to be very hard to get people to admit to doing this purposefully for any study purpose.

"Depending on the stats, women are breadwinners in from 33% -54% of households, so your 'obvious' isn't so obvious anymore. check your assumptions."

Unfortunately the 54% stat is from the % of households that pay no income taxes
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/5....

If you just look at aggregate income in the median from the .gov men earn about 70% more and therefore probably pay ~85-100% more (graduated income tax)
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-....

Most likely though there are a lot more men in the high net worth category (fortune list etc) that would probably skew this more towards men. Based on 2009 & 2010 data that gap is closing and probably has been for some time. It's not likely to swap anytime soon (if ever)

"God, it's amazing how many people are promoting a little theft to "prevent" a lot of theft."

I don't think promoting is the right word.

I have 3 choices laid in front of me

1) No free ****
2) Free **** that is going to cost the taxpayer ~200/yr for approximately 15-20% of the population
3) Free **** that is going to cost the taxpayer ~10,000/yr for approximately 5-10% of the population

I'm going to choose in order
#1
#2
#3

Doesn't mean that #2 is a good choice, but it's a hell of a lot better than #3

I'll crawl through broken glass to vote for #1 anyday. I'd vote for #2 ONLY if we are currently in #3 (we are)

Except that statistically, voting for #2 does not reduce #3.

Persons on public assistance have something like 3x as many kids as those who are not. So this is a fail right up front.

I posted in the other thread:

it is unconstitutional for .GOV to demand anyone buy ANYTHING

This is a rouse so they can say— "ok, we won't make you by BC coverage when you buy your MANDATED HEATH INSURANCE"

and ppl puff their chest out and say "we showed them!"

all the while taking it up their ignorant ass again

lets not forget the ROOT of this issue:

— ALL .GOV MANDATED PURCHASES ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL— PEROID!

"Its OK to steal a pack of gum, but its not OK to steal a refrigerator."

You have the opportunity right now to minimize, but not stop, a theft at your house. Your choice is a cost of $10,000 or $200 to you. Which one do you pick? Do you like either one? Of course not, they are both ****ing terrible options, but you're going to do option #2 if that's the only two viable choices you actually had.

You are assuming that #2 actually prevents #1.

It does not.

Magus

what part of UNCONSTITUTIONAL do you not get??

you can not be a little bit UNCONSTITUTIONAL

it is akin to being a little bit pregnant.

Fact is— RIght now I pay state taxes that run clinics where by people can go and get BC on the cheap

Fed .Gov has NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to make me pay for anything!

Here is the fundamental problem with those advocating theft. At what point do you draw the line. If you are forever ceding such line, what do you ever really stand for? Everyone here advocating for the theft is a part of the status quo. Period. Spare me the faux outrage that it sucks. Because this was the same kind of tripe I heard with the bailouts and all of the other frauds that were perpetrated against the people of the United States of America. America is going to go down the toilet, soon, SPECIFICALLY because we in America REFUSE to make the rights decisions and act in accordance with what is right.

"Except that statistically, voting for #2 does not reduce #3.
Persons on public assistance have something like 3x as many kids as those who are not. So this is a fail right up front."

I guess what you are getting down to it is if the Fed gov was to provide "free" birth control, would it reduce unwanted pregnancies that result in all of the costs (tax deductions, child tax credits, "earned" income credit, WIC, free lunches, education expense, etc). I would be inclined to believe that it would, but I certainly would love to see any kind of numerical analysis if one existed on the net net benefit. Most insurance plans cover birth control so it would be difficult to judge how much it would cost the government. My gut still tells me that it would be far cheaper to pay for birth control.

Disclosure: My wife and I have made the conscious decision to not have kids and would be very happy to pay for IUD out of pocket (I was actually shocked 3 years ago when she got it that insurance paid for it but the co-pay which I think was ~$700 total, plan on "renewing" at the right time)

"Magus
what part of UNCONSTITUTIONAL do you not get??"

Why make such a huge stand on this issue with regards to constitutionality? Virtually every line item the federal government has now is unconstitutional at its core IMO--Social Security, Medicare, Department of Education, Energy, TARP, EPA, Federal Reserve, TSA, the drug war, the way we handle "wars", etc, etc etc etc.

I know Karl is 100% consistent but even a ton of people on here see no problem with social security/medicare. How is that any different?

Magus: Stealing is stealing.

As a practical matter poor people outbreed middle-class and wealthy people, and Medicaid has provided free birth control for a very long time, so your hypothesis has been tested (even though unconstitutional on its face) and found bereft of fact.

The simple fact of the matter is that "mommy can I steal a little?" is still stealing.

I guess I look at it different. I'm trying to outsmart them by making them steal less; I'm not condoning it. I don't think that most people on Medicaid are the target IMO. One of the biggest groups of people without insurance are 18-25 year olds in college or right out of college. A lot of unwanted pregnancies happen there that do not result in Medicaid/WIC (this group of young college/out of college people suffer from two problems--they frequently don't have much money and they don't "think" it can happen it them). I'm certainly not married to this thesis and could certainly be convinced with a (semi) compelling mathematical case.

In my former role at my company, one of the things that I was in charge of was trying to minimize internal theft. You can never eliminate it and sometimes I purposefully let small theft (by not bothering to audit typically, we never let theft we caught go) to go after the big fish. It doesn't mean I condoned it, but I was able to reduce internal theft by about 40% in half a decade, FWIW.

I should also note that I 100% agree that women should make the dude protect themselves with a condom in addition to pill/IUD. STDs are a huge issue in and of themselves

last edit: I would also like to note that this is certainly a minor issue for me; my bigger concern is that people in the US are going to be divided again on a very minor issue that has plenty of other options (Karl and others have mentioned several) and this certainly isn't one I think libertarian leaning people should hang their hat on, but thats JMO .

Genesis wrote..

The simple fact of the matter is that "mommy can I steal a little?" is still stealing.

Yup

"Just look at it logically.

There are two reasons to try to impregnate someone else 1) Attachment to the other person 2) Financially (which is typically why I hear of this)"

Magus, you are appealing to logic in an area where logic does not prevail. At all. If logic were applicable, sure, your point would be reasonable. However, there is a third reason to try to impregnate someone else (or to get pregnant,for that matter): irrational desire. Duh. If people were even slightly rational their behavior would be ENTIRELY different.

BTW, Mother Nature does not select for rationality. She selects for REPRODUCTION, and nothing else. You and your wife have reasoned your way to the decision to not have kids. So have I and my husband. Guess who's passing on their genes - in large part the folks who are guided by irrational desire. God bless 'em.