Philadelphia must have waited for Obama’ State of the Union speech for today out comes the news they fully concur the rich should pay for everyone. Of course their definition of the rich seems to be anyone now with a job and a home. All property taxes are DOUBLING or more in the business and better sections of the city – not the welfare areas. Philadelphia is the 5th largest city and it has a City Wage (INCOME) Tax on top of the State and Feds. The sales tax is also higher. With all that, they still are dead broke. They chased the wealthy out of town so they instituted the City Wage tax to get those who just worked in the city but wisely moved out.
There is just no solution to this entire Sovereign Debt Crisis until we crash and burn. If we both worked for the state and then I represent them to negotiate your pension, doesn’t anyone see this is a conflict of interest since whatever I agree to with you, I get myself?
Taxes are NOT part of the CPI because it is your obligation. These people have promised everything to themselves and then demand the private sector must pay. This is NOT going to end nicely. Tax Revolts emerge when people just can no longer afford to live. Remember the American Revolution – no taxation without representation. The British just kept raising taxes and the people had nothing to say about anything. Then paper money emerged because whatever you paid Britain had to be in gold or silver, but when they paid Americans for anything it was only copper. Money became a rarity.
Eventually such unfair arrangements ALWAYS, and without exception, lead to revolution, revolts, and civil unrest. History repeats because government, no matter what its form, only pursues its own self-interest – Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Predicting such chaos is even mathematically possible for it follows a simple bell curve. There was a famous debate recorded by Plato in his Republic between Socrates (Σωκράτης) (ca. 469 BC–399 BC) and the sophist Thrasymachus (Θρασύμαχος) (ca. 459-400 BC). The former wrongly believed that a democracy would always be just where the latter said all governments are the same regardless of what form they may be for they always pursue only their own self-interest. Many throughout the centuries have observed this curse of mankind. It is always government that presents the greatest threat to liberty. Socrates was wrong and it was a Democracy that sentenced him to death because of his ideas were corrupting the youth. Thrasymachus wisely disagreed. He said:
“the different forms of government make laws democratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests; and these laws, which are made by them for their own interests, are the justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses them they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust. And that is what I mean when I say that in all states there is the same principle of justice, which is the interest of the government; and as the government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is, that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.”
