Quote Originally Posted by gypski
If I made a million bucks a years, I'd have no problem giving up 50%. but that's just me.
exercising the personal choice to donate your earnings to worthwhile endeavors is one thing. being forced to hand over those earnings to the political animals of government, so that they can curry favor with their constituents after taking a sizeable chunk as a "handling fee", is another matter entirely. being forced to invest in a pyramid scheme retirement plan that is regularly raided by those same political animals for their pet projects and sorry attempts at social engineering runs contrary to the concept of individual liberty. being forced by government agency to part with what you have earned because of the envy of those who have less than you, for whatever reasons, is antithetical to the notion of a free society. the confiscation of the personal property of the few in order to prop up the failings of the welfare state is theft, plain and simple.

the problem with your version of parity is that it denies individual choice and places the state in the position of deciding how much is enough. you may be willing to part with half of your earnings to aid your neighbors, someone else may decide that a quarter of their worth is donation enough, and another may feel that giving everything but what is needed for their own survival is the least they can do for their fellow man. that is the individual's prerogative and the nature of charity. what the liberal establishment proposes is the replacement of individual charity and personal responsibility with the government mandated redistribution of wealth. placing the onus of supporting society on the successful few interferes with their rights to personal property and enables government and the mob it controls to interfere with the rights of all men. perhaps you don't feel that the rights of the wealthy are worth protecting. perhaps you feel that their success makes them less worthy of liberty than those of us who scrabble for our existence. perhaps you are perfectly happy with the thought of the successful being made slaves to the mob.