What three things would we all have to agree on?

NO

I doubt many Liberals will answer that question.

Consider this: each child in the U.S. is provided with opportunity for education. They are brought into this world by their parents and the parents have the resposibility to see to it that the children take advantage of education so that they can be a productive member of society. One day at a time they shirk this resposibility. Each day for 12 years. So the offspring get what they have earned: failure. They had every opportunity and chose to fail.
Now why should we as a government support them? give them advantage? provide food? provide shelter? provide chothes? provide digital converters for their analog TVs? provide free health care and hospitalization? provide free birth control?
They chose their lot in life and now they are not happy with their choice. Should our government provide?

Concerning human worth: is a pedophile of equal human worth as a policeman? or have they destroyed their own worth by their own actions and failures?
All things being equal, nothing is ever equal.
Don't you agree that felons should lose certain rights in relationship to government and civic actions? Don't you agree that drunk drivers should lose certain rights? This is because they have degraded themselves and are of less value to society. This is also true of people who have chosen to be a financial burden to society.

I believe we should start with education.

The Viking wrote: OK, simple question to determine if we are even close to common ground. Do you believe that the government has the right to determine who makes too much money and that they should take more from them to give to those who have less?

Oh... You mean the progressive income-tax... Yes...I do. I believe that those at the top of the income ladder should pay more. Of course, the usual framing of it as "determining who makes too much money" is the expected line of b.s.

The issue of "to give to those who have less" is your usual red herring. The money is distributed by Congress based on the conditions imposed by the legislation they pass. Trying to make it all one process, is of course, the usual "rob from the rich to give to the poor" (the mythical "welfare queens") screed that you always revert to.

The red herring is that the question implies that the money goes directly from the rich to the poor. In fact, most of the money goes to military, paying the national debt, social security, roads & bridges, etc. Only a small percentage of the money goes to welfare and other similar programs.

Scruffy wrote: The red herring is that the question implies that the money goes directly from the rich to the poor. In fact, most of the money goes to military, paying the national debt, social security, roads & bridges, etc. Only a small percentage of the money goes to welfare and other similar programs.

Not even close to true. About $1 trillion per year now under Obama will be spent per year.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54400

And the military spending under obama is only $663 billion. And without the military, we wouldn't have social programs, we wouldn't have jobs, in fact we wouldn't have a country. So that is a necessary expense. So there is much more spent on social programs than anything else. We have become a welfare nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_b ... ted_States

And the sad part is that we only spent I believe, $58 billion last year on education which is the lowest in several years. But this year it is budgeted for just over $100 billion. So we spend 1/10 as much educating people as we do on taking care of them later with social programs. Isn't that backwards? Shouldn't we spend more on educating them so they can work for their money rather than having the government support them later?

That's not the info I found.



It looks like we spent almost 20% of Social Security, about 19% on the Military, 16% on Unemployment/Welfare/Mandatory Spending, etc. etc. You can see for yourself.

How about one thing we can agree on?

The current economy sucks!

Oh wait, Obama says we have turned the corner. (Turned the corner south, if you ask me.)

SS109 wrote: How about one thing we can agree on?

The current economy sucks!

Oh wait, Obama says we have turned the corner. (Turned the corner south, if you ask me.)

Yes, the economy does suck. It's difficult to refudiate that.