Unemployment to stay high until 2017

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I'd be happy with some kind of value-added tax, especially if it were designed in some way to discourage off-shoring jobs. If paying taxes makes me a "contributor," I'm a veritable contributing fool.

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If that's what "contribution" means parades should be held in my honor :~) Never an itemization to be seen on my tax returns, income considered high so is highly taxed. I even manage to screw up very very obscure parts of the tax code so that there is income I am paying over 50% income taxes on. Read it and weep. Now where is my parade?

It is a pretty narrow definition of "contributor" in reality though. By this logic stay at home moms and stuff are never "contributors", maybe they think stay at home moms should wear a badge of shame, a scarlet "M" maybe.

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Originally Posted by creaker

But that contradicts the content of the quote - conservative was specifically one of the "political tags" mentioned, along with liberal and the others. I've seen a lot conservative rhetoric that involves controlling people.

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Ergo my use of the "more closely aligned" wording. Heinlein did not state that any of the groups listed fell into the controlling or non-controlling group, only that people tend to divide up that way. I personally feel that the conservatives of this day and age desire control less overall than liberals so I lean right. That in no way implies that various political factions do not want to be in positions of control. I think they all do, its just a matter of degree.

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Originally Posted by Gregg

Ergo my use of the "more closely aligned" wording. Heinlein did not state that any of the groups listed fell into the controlling or non-controlling group, only that people tend to divide up that way. I personally feel that the conservatives of this day and age desire control less overall than liberals so I lean right. That in no way implies that various political factions do not want to be in positions of control. I think they all do, its just a matter of degree.

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Funny - that's why I lean left :-) I think it depends a lot on people's priorities and situations - they tend to want more government control in areas they have less control over and prefer something closer to anarchy (not chaos, I mean less government control) in areas they have more of their own control over.

Yeah, I think it has to do more with who and what you want controlled or not. Personally, I lean left, because I'd rather have government controlling things like corporations polluting the environment, and less interest in peoples' sexual lives.

To me, practically the main reason I abandoned the Republican party was the end of the moderates, the rise of religious fundamentalism in it, and the focus on controlling of women's bodies and rights over their own reproduction, bigotry about gays, attempts to legislate sexual behaviors, etc.

Which seemed FAR more intrusive and controlling to me, than regulations forbidding corporations to spew pollution into our air and water.

So.......something or someone is going to be controlled if either side has its way.....so it really comes down to whether or not you agree with the controlling behavior. JMHO