Starve The Beast Is the Most Ill Concived Peice of Political Theory

[Fragony]

With the conservatives, starve the beast. The government isn't there for you, you are there for the government.

[Ironside]

Tax the super-wealthy at rates higher than 50%

The big one is classing capital gains as income -> income tax rates on that. Say for example, Mitt Romney would about double his taxes, while he would tax dodge away from those 50%, like he does now. It's also quite hard to paint in "evil pinko commie" light with a bit of traction, since it's forcing them to pay the same as everyone else. Needs to be grasrooted though, too many in the top uses it.

With the conservatives, starve the beast. The government isn't there for you, you are there for the government.

Starving the beast requires that you're willing to cut the stuff you want to remain. That's the fundamental problem with the idea. The last decade pretty much shows that it might start working when the US is in the same situation as Greece (and the sane economical recovery would include rising taxes).

It really stems from the question "why should we pay any taxes at all?" and not "what taxes are fair?"

[Fragony]

We pay taxes because the government needs our money, simple as that. I am a big fan of the libertarian viewpoint (I know that's not what tea party is) not as an absolutism but as a direction, the less is handled by the government the better.

[rory_20_uk]

Mercenaries were so common that in Europe Switzerland was banned by treaty from utilising the Swiss Guards.

There are the black and white: civillians and soldiers. Then the grey.

The grey can be private contractors, bodyguards, CIA agents, foreign persons (Foreign Legion, Ghurkas), those who are indirectly paid (be that from the central government to the country's central government or the CIA to private contractors), partisans supported by weapon drops to local armed guides, security support and I'm sure I'm missing loads of other variants.

Of course, the numbers isn't relevant. A small team could be engaged in, ah, sweep and clear missions several times a week and having more impact than a force orders of magnitude greater who are passively sitting in barracks.

I think that government should be mainly there to undertake legislation and oversight, rather than directly running services, if for no other reason that as soon as sometihing is a government enterprise Unions think that any lay offs are out of the