Oh, come on.

What the liberals I know tend to believe is that society provides a lot of things that allow individuals to “earn” their money and that the individuals should therefore pony up society’s cut of the loot.

You are missing the point. The very fact that you put “earn” in quotes makes my case. It’s not “society’s” (government’s) decision to seize an individual’s property. The only right they have to our property is that which is given by the people. The people give their consent for government to tax them. They may not consent to every detail that government will use their property for. But the principle stands. And when government misuses taxes that have been granted it by the people, citizens have a perfect right and obligation to throw the rascals out.

ed.

All these things are heavily taxed, many by the feds. Poor people, in whole, will not get more in return than they ‘paid-in’.

I would call that philosophy “mob rule” because at its heart lies the notion that the individual is completely at the mercy of “society” when it comes to keeping the fruits of one’s own labors.

It’s no answer to say that society, by virtue of having created social conditions that made it possible for you to accumulate wealth, is thereby entitled to take your wealth away. That would be paradoxical: If society reserves the right to deprive you of the fruits of your own labors, then it ipso facto has not “created social conditions that made it possible for you to accumulate wealth.”

It makes no sense to speak of a “society,” i.e., a system of rules and customs, that reserves unto itself the right to dispense with rules and customs as the price you pay for enjoying the benefits of such a system of rules and customs. And whereas arguably the most fundamental of all of society’s rules and customs is the idea that you get to keep what you earn, you simply cannot square that right with the notion that society can take what you earn at any time as the price you pay for having been allowed to earn it in the first place.

Society enforces contracts, jails thieves, etc. so that people can pursue their individual happiness in relative peace and with the assurance that their efforts will not be looted by marauding mobs. I don’t think even “the left” (certainly not as we think of the term in this country) rejects the idea of property rights. Again, that would be tantamount to supporting mob rule.

I think the real crux of the difference between the left and the right, in contemporary political terms, is the scope of things BEYOND enforcing contracts, jailing thieves, building roads, etc., that the two sides consider to be within the appropriate sphere of government. Because the more government does, the more demands it places on individuals. And the more demands placed on individuals by the government, the less time and energy individuals have to pursue their own happiness.

To take the most immediate example, when Obama and the Dems enact legislation to guarantee health care to another 30 million currently uninsured individuals, they are forcing people to (a) pay more taxes, (b) pay higher health insurance premiums themselves, and/or (c) get less coverage than they would otherwise be able to get for the same money. Those are all costs borne by at least certain individuals in order to support the needs and wants of other individuals. IOW, society is taking some of the fruits of my labors in order to give it to someone else.

This, I think, represents the real nub of disagreement between the left and the right, or at least I think this is the fault line going forward.

You collected that stack of presidential engravings in an environment of government-supplied “externalities”, a legal system that makes contracts enforceable, a road system that makes it easy to get around, a social safety net that keeps poverty-driven crime down and a penal system that tries to keep those that commit crimes anyway out of circulation, the list goes on.

This “list” might be at the heart of the biggest disagreement amongst liberals and conservatives - how much power/reach/responsibility should the federal government have? Conservatives would argue that they gain wealth IN SPITE of that “list” and liberals will argue that they gain wealth BECAUSE of that “list”.

It was a good plan, although fairly modest in its workings. It didn’t help the economy much at all and the reason most Americans think their taxes haven’t been cut is probably due to the fact that the average taxpayer’s take home pay was increased by only around $13 a week.

And when they hear through their brother-in-law (who pays no attention to politics) that “you just have to pay it back at the end of the year, anyway”, the Obama administration has a communication problem.

When people generically say “tax cut”, most think of income taxes. To my brother-in-law, it felt more like an accounting gimmick.

I have met very few tax cuts I didn’t like, but a few extra bucks per paycheck is definitely hard to organize rallies around.

But if we’re going to criticize the president, let’s do it for his disingenuousness in claiming credit for tax provisions he had absolutely nothing to do with creating.

I find it hard to get too wound up about that. Every president takes credit for the previous administration’s “good times” and blames them for any “bad times” they’ve inherited. Each one benefits from the previous administration in some way and Obama is no different. Supporters on either side will never admin it (which, again, is just growing more and more tiresome).

You only have wealth because society made that wealth possible. So you have both a moral obligation and a self-interest motivation in preserving that structure, and simply by the self-evident fact that you have “wealth”, you have obviously gained more from it than those that do not, and should expect to kick more into the pot.

I find it amusing that you mention how these tax cuts/rebates didn’t really work, without following that line of thought and discussing whether Republican’s only economic plan for the past 30 years (lower taxes) doesn’t actually work. Sure it had some impact when marginal tax rates were 70%, but they’ve been in the 30s for a while now. Surely at some point lowering taxes actually hurts the government? Obama tried to appease Republicans by making 1/3 of the stimulus package tax cuts/rebates, and what did he get for it? Very little economic impact, 0 votes from the Republicans (on anything) and a majority of Americans don’t even know he cut their taxes (which I blame on horrible PR by Obama and the Dems mostly, but also on conservative media lying to people).

Obama promised those tax cuts during the campaign. He promised them not to appease Republicans but to get the votes of the middle class.

Might I suggest that you leave political analysis to those who know a little something about it? Your painfully amateur attempt here only served to embarrass you.

ed.