In lieu of a FC thread.
Normally I try to entice your kind to our side but you were so quick with the usual tropes "Fox news" and single-year studies I dismissed you out of hand as the female equivalent of Omaha Steve, only with smaller breasts.
Then I read you have a Ph.D.
All right, then. Have at, you!
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It has been a generation-long contention of the Democratic Party that the "rich" ought to "pay their fair share." Now, I have long maintained that any text without a context is a pretext for a proof-text in that terms such as "rich" and "fair" are both dubious and ambiguous. It is one of the many standards Prolodytes advance in the hopes of encroaching on the opponent's territory but they refuse to define lest it encroach upon their territory, i.e. does life begin at conception, the 2nd trimester, the 3rd trimester or when one ceases to be liberal? Any definition allows for the setting of standards and no liberal doctrine can survive standards; just as the Supreme Court's 3rd trimester standard could not survive Kermit Gosnell's state-sanctioned abortion clinic once 2nd trimester children screeched "like little aliens."
But that is a side issue. I will pay you the courtesy of accepting your argument that "the rich ought to pay their fair share" as it has been intended.
Whenever someone preens in front of the cameras or sits at their desk and posts on DU saying that "the rich ought to pay their fair share" what they are saying is: the rich ought to provide such funds as are required to provide adequate (another deliberately undefined term) education, food, housing, healthcare, roads, public safety, etc. for the majority of the population that is Non-Rich. Essentially, what is being said is: Rich shall provide for Non-Rich the same as the Rich provide for themselves.
This is an astounding thing when one considers that nearly half of the US population draws more from the Treasury in some form of benefit or pay-out than they put-in. Nearly half of the US population does not pay for the very education, food, housing, healthcare, roads, public safety, retirement etc. we are told they are entitled to gain for no reason other than the accident of their birth. The Non-Rich are told they're allowed to use the roads, schools and hospitals but they are not told they must pay for the roads, schools and hospitals.
They aren't even told to use the roads to go to schools and hospitals so that they might be productive. To demand the Non-Rich be productive is to be shouted down for being cruel and unsympathetic or seeing the Non-Rich as nothing more than wage slaves. Don't believe me? I dare you to go to DU and say that the Non-Rich owe society for the services provided to them. You wouldn't be able to close your web browser fast enough to avert your eyes from the 300-post torrent of vitriol that would come your way.
So, now we have a situation where the Rich are expected to provide all things for themselves and all others and the Non-Rich need provide nothing for themselves. This has the ironic result of making the Non-Rich dependent. Those who provide nothing provide -- well -- nothing and the skills required for provision soon atrophy as demonstrated by the inner cities where literally dozens of trillions of dollars have been spent only to find they are less fit for industry than they were before the money had been spent (would that we had simply thrown the money in to the streets). Why the Rich or the Non-Rich sub-set of Self-Providers would endure such an arrangement for any appreciable amount of time is beyond reason. In fact, it is so far beyond reason history shows time and again that they will not. They will stop providing and those who embraced the doctrine that the Non-Providers be kept at high station will be caught flat-footed. A cursory glance of the miserable scandal-ridden Mssr. Hollande will prove this out in more contemporary terms.
Or worse.
The second option open to the rich is to insulate themselves by insinuating themselves into the government that seeks to penalize them. Once industry and government become wedded we have the definition of fascism with the attending super-state that can impose its will upon the populace and compel all manner of evil.
But in order to maintain this fiction that cripples and imperils those it pretends to serve a casus belli must be cited for the class war. We are then told that the Rich became rich unfairly (yet another deliberately undefined term). This is exactly what the secessionist movement Occupy foments when it villifies the "1%." In their depravity they never inquire about actual crimes, the mere possession of wealth over amount X is confession enough. No hearing of evidence. No opposing counsel. No appeal. Nothing can be done to assert one's innocence. (Kinda like abortion, huh?) If they're rich they're guilty.
SIDE BAR: Unless they're like Soros and Buffet who can buy Indulgences so that they may continue to sin without consequence by using hedge funds to bankrupt pension systems or simply not pay taxes.
And here is where the self-contradiction of the entire scheme becomes manifest and this is the only part you need answer:
The Rich are to provide all things to such a degree that the Non-Rich are to be allowed to consume without burden of expectation. Yet, the Rich are simultaneously to be prosecuted. Without the prosecution there is no justification for confiscating. If the system is to perpetuate it needs the Rich. The Rich should be encouraged to be Rich but the system portrays the Rich as evil by nature of their very existence. Yet, as soon as the Rich cease to be so or refuse to be so then those who have been told to consume without expectation will find themselves without provision.
How do you advocate -- or even reconcile -- such a blatant contradiction?
