On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:38:14 GMT, "mark" wrote:

Let's say your interests in the election are economic as opposed to social
agenda.
The tax system that Bush is pushing is aimed at helping that top 10%. If
the government
is actually going to get paid for, guess who pays for it. The lower 90%.
That's pretty simple arithmetic.
Fair? How much of the wealth is concentrated in that top 10%? I don't
know the number accurately, but it is
way way over 50%. Do 10% of the people need over 50% of the wealth? I'm
too much of a socialist to believe that.
I don't advocate an immediate uprising aimed at taking that back directly,
but I don't like to see the political
system set up to accentuate that disparity in a runaway fashion, which is
where Bush's priorities are.

If there are tax breaks accruing to anyone below a rarified upper economic
class, I haven't seen them in any paperwork
I'm doing.

I'm not sure if I'm buying this logic. Don't the top 5% pay something like
58 plus % of the taxes? Socialism seems to penalize the thinkers, the
doers, the people who take the chances. So you're a working stiff, you
invent something, you make a ton of money, become rich and suddenly you're
the bad guy? I always got ****ed about all the fuss Microsoft's competitors
make. You know, Bill didn't start out worth 42 billion. He started out with
a set of balls, and an operating system he sold to IBM before he had it
written.

Agreed. That's what America is supposed to be about. My problem with
the Bush regime is on social issues- though I do not respect the
fiscal policies of the Republican party either. Both sides are
bleeding the upper, lower, and middle classes dry for the sheer joy of
it.

Did you ever read Atlas Shrugged? If not, I suggest it highly. I think it
should be required reading in high school, and then again in college, and
then once more when you actually have to go out and work for a living. The
dems always seem to see the evil corporation as a single entity -- they
never see the thousands of workers (guys like you and me) who make that
corporation up. I'm sure there are lots of people at Haliburton besides the
CEO and Dick Cheney who are glad they have a contract. It lets them feed
their family. Granted, the CEOs probably make too much. But so do
professional athletes. It's all in what people see as your worth.

Re-read Atlas Shrugged. Rand protagonizes the Individual business
owner, not multinational corporation. Reference the various
descriptions of Boyle's Associated Steel verses Readen Steel. Or the
descriptions of the Phoenix-Durango verses Taggart Transcontental
(excluding Dagny) The overwhelming theme is that the individual
businesses controlled by a strong leader who retains control of his
stock and makes direct decisions and takes direct responsibility for
the actions of his company and the products it produces is to be
admired. The board-of-directors approach to business, supported by
government welfare and redistribution of weath was decried as the
worst evil imaginable by Rand. The text should speak for itself, with
the clarity and vehemance that Rand used in her various writings, but
if you'd like to debate it, I can site passages and sources.
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam