Sunday, May 2, 2010

"All-in" politics...

The psycological aspects of the game of Poker are what really makes the difference between pro's and amateurs. It stems from the fact that, when you place or call a bet, you are putting a piece of your life on the line. You will never understand Poker until you play with chips that represent a significant ability to impact your future. This is why Tournament Poker has become so popular: the chips represent everyone's tournament life equally. If I played against a millionaire in a cash game, my $500 bet would mean something different to me than his equal bet: a trifle to him but LIFE AND DEATH to me. I would have to be able to bet $100,000 to get his hands shaking. A tournament where every all-in bet means someone could be eliminated is the only way we could play and have our bets be considered equal.

In the same way, Income Taxes is the only way we now have to ensure that when people vote on economic issues, they have a stake in the outcome... life and death. If everyone is paying taxes, and a tax increase appears on the ballot, every vote will reflect the concern each individual feels for his own economic well-being. If only half of the people are paying taxes, and the monies generated by the increased taxes have been promised to be spent on making the lives of those not paing taxes better, but everyone gets an equal vote, what do you think will happen?

Last month, a study was published that showed that nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. According to Walter Williams, "(t)hese Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability." How do you think these people generally vote? The answer is, for more property and income taxes because they pay little or none of it. For whom do you think these people vote? The answer is, for those that promise them more from the public purse to which they contribute very little. And politicians wishing to remain in office need only cater to this population, feed it, promote it, increase it, and they need not fear elections. And now we have nearly HALF of the people voting this way. What will happen when it becomes more than half?

Put another way, could the Income Tax system be a weapon by which America is being divided into have's and have-nots? And could increasing the number of have-nots (by means of engineered recession, subjugation by bureaucracy, and psycological enslavement by nurturing the victimhood mentality) to more than half be a way of ensuring the demise of Capitalism (and the philosophy that each individual owns him/herself and the products of his/her labor) by the self-imploding nature of Democracy?

Is Democracy itself to blame for the current state of the democratic Republic of the United States of America?

Democracy is like walking up to a $500 buy-in table and demanding that your $20 buy the same chips that everyone else has.

Voting for more taxes when you pay none is like playing poker with someone elses money; your bets are meaningless to you and make it less of a game and more of an excercise in futility. Only when everyone involved has his or her life at stake will voting become meaningful again.

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