Hi Tuukka, We just have different views. Not uncommon. Personally I do not like using a leaky pipeline through the State for money to get from one person to another. In this country much of the money is lost in the bureaucracy, the government is way too large and wasteful, and it is a self sustaining nightmare (IMO). Many of us believe that the government should be directly responsible to the citizen in the same way an employee is responsible to his/her boss, rather than government officials being responsible to themselves. There is a growing elitism within our government, and many people make a carreer out of it. The notion of civil servant seems to be lost. There is lots of money to be made through the government, and temptation is difficult to control by politicians who mostly think of themselves and power. For that is the nature of someone who wants to rise within the control structure. I think that power corrupts this particular breed of human.
I prefer direct transactions where I get paid directly for the work I do. It just seems more efficient to me, that routing it through a governement. For some in the government their only job is to get money and give it back. I still have high regard for the human spirit and it doesn't need to be controlled by a certain group of people. But, that is my opinion, and it does not make me right. I respect your opinion as equally right. Cheers, Mark On 1/22/12, Tuukka Virtaperko <[email protected]> wrote: > Mark, > to clarify my point regarding the welfare trap. If approximately 50% of > my income went to the state, it doesn't mean I'm paying roughly as much > tax and such as any other Finn, although tax revenue is 44 % of GDP. VAT > is usually 23 % here, so if I used all my income to buy something, state > would get approximately 73 % of my money. > > -Tuukka > > > >> Mark, >> this is not an unfriendly conversation, and not something that would >> stand out as inconvenient for me. I agree the USA has lots of charity. >> But I'd like to point out that in the US, total tax revenue is 27% of >> GDP. In Finland, it's 44 %. Although giving 5 % of money to charity is >> good, it doesn't necessarily even a 17 % difference in tax revenue as >> percentage of GDP. I do not expect to ever be hard up for money to >> survive, but I'll remember what you said in case I will be. >> >> -Tuukka >> > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
