We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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So that explains it! I had a good chuckle after reading this over on Goat in the Machine:
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is concerned that her Pakistani hosts have failed to grasp the nettle of good governance, and reminds them of the high purpose and duty for which democratic societies entrust their representatives with the sovereign power:
“We (the US) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.”
That sure explains Pakistan’s little handful of problems at present. I’m ashamed I never thought of it. I had some childish intuition that they might have something to do with a civil society sufficiently dysfunctional that making a living by taking other people’s stuff off them, was far too easy in comparison to getting paid for producing stuff they wanted.
How could we have been so blind? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are pissed off at the world because they are under-taxed! Oh the humanity.
The creepy thing is I am sure that really is, in essence, what Clinton thinks.
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This is what she said (from http://mediamatters.org/research/200910310006):
“… it is difficult to go to our taxpayers and say we consider Pakistan a strategic partner, we consider it a long-term friend and ally, we have supported it since its inception in 1947, we want to continue to do so, and have our taxpayers and our members of Congress say, well, we want to help those who help themselves, and we tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see happening in Pakistan.”
Not quite what you made it out to be.
I got smited by your fascist smitebot. Hopefully, my comment will appear later. If not, see here: http://mediamatters.org/research/200910310006
Oh sure, Dom, the analysis of the Hildebeeste’s remarks were not entirely serious… but nevertheless not entirely frivolous either” “… and that’s not what we see in Pakistan” is kind of hard to get around.
Mrs Clinton got the position wrong (no shock there). Ask any Pakistani if the official taxes are the only forced payments they have to pay – after they stop laughing they will tell you that the offical taxes are not even most of what they are forced to pay.
This is not just true of nations like Pakistan – it is also true in most of Latin America (Mexico being an obvious example).
The official “tax as a percentage of G.D.P.” stats are a joke.
With her being all evil and stuff, she’s not very bright either, is she?
Alisa some years ago I was complaining about the Clintons – in particular I was complaining about the strange way that people who were a problem for them kept turning up dead.
The person I was talking to replied by saying “name one INNOCENT person the Clintons have murdered Paul”.
I was stumped (as we say in England) I could not think of a single decent person they had done away with – they were all scumbags (partners-in-crime), the world was better off without them.
If Hillary Clinton had been elected President she would most likely spent four years having all sorts of “accidents” and “suicides” done for DEMOCRATS who had offended her in one way or another.
“Stimulus spending”, “healthcare takeover” “cap and tax” – all this would have recieved much less attention than it has under Comrade Barack.
A long winded way of saying “yes” Alisa.
“Meanwhile back at the ranch”.
India is buying 200 “tonnes” of gold from the IMF. In spite of the price of gold being at an all time record high – and India being engaged in two wars, one against the Islamists and the other against the Maoists.
It seems the Indian government not making the same “bet on America” that the “Financial Times” newspaper cheers Warren Buffet for making.
Mr Buffet has just blown the company cash reserve (the part of it that was not already too connected to some of the wilder speculation of B.H.) on buying a railroad.
It seems that dear Warren is betting that “Cap and Tax” will go through and trucks will be forced off the road. After all he made money by being connected to the hidden General Electric bailout.
Of course Comrade Barack (whilst laughing and joking with the German Chancellor – thankyou “Independent” newspaper scumbags) has stabbed the Germans in the back by demanding that G.M. keep Opel. So that they can develop “small green cars” – like the ones supposedly to be built in the reopened factory in Willmington Deleware, the plant opened by Joe Biden before he went to have lunch in Katies Dinner, which closed over twenty years ago.
Methinks that Warren Buffet will be proved wrong and India will be proved right.
But either way – Warren’s father would still have beaten the tar out of him.
“Warren loved his father” writes the hack who wrote his biography.
Of course – that is why Warren repeatedly spits on everything his father stood for.
Paul:
I have never really understood Warren Buffet. He is not obviously evil, like George Soros. He has made over $40 billion, yet he does not seem to enjoy his wealth. With that money, I’d buy my own navy, but he seems happy to live in the suburbs. His wealth doesn not seem to have changed his life, and he does not plan to leave it to his children, but to the Bill Gates Foundation, of all futile causes. He is 79, but keeps on working, to make money he neither needs nor enjoys. What is the point of that?
John K. – you make a series of good points.
I do not understand Warren Buffet either.
However, I do know he is not welcome in Germany. As soon as the Constitutional Court struck at family owned business enterprises (by changing the terms of inheritance tax) Mr Buffet appeared like a vampire, representing his corporation – and seeking to tempt owners into destroying the family owned manufacturing enterprises that are the heart of the German economy.
“Just take the money – your children can have a comfortable life without all the burdens of running a business”.
Trying to turn family tradition into “trust fund kids” (as with the United States).
It’s not so much that Clinton thinks al Qaeda thinks it is undertaxed, it is that by taxing everything that moves and does not move, they are able to practice Big Brother government via tax receipt, documenting where each person, thing, object or erg exists in various points in time, so that if anything happens to be used to enact actual terrorism (i.e. attacking civillian targets) or military strikes characterised by the state defenders as terrorism (its not terrorism if the attacks are against military or state facilities, its merely asymmetrical conflict), then the state will be able to determine in the ensuing investigation exactly who the perpetrators and their accomplices were by dint of the weight of the tax receipts paid on various items used in the attacks.