The question of the tax bill is who will be looted the most or at best if the looting can be reduced slightly causing the economy to shift not toward efficiency but how to protect property and still try to earn a profit. The debate is how to divide the spoils rather than to quit using the threat (and use of) violence to achieve an immoral act of theft by government with a promise to be kind. Would I choose a kinder slave master? Only if I thought it might provide a better opportunity for escape, not because it was a move in the right direction toward freedom.

WOW! Very well put. I hope you don't mind, but I shared this on my FaceBook Timeline. I will delete it if you wish, but I think this is well worth sharing.

To ask by what standard are we judging the tax legislation suggests that there are more than one standard to chose from. There are no standards to begin with therefore the question need not be asked.

Of course it is not ideal. The question is it better than what we have. I have not read the proposed law, and I doubt anyone else in the public has either. Rand Paul says it is as good we can reasonably expect, and he supports it. I join Rand.

I would say that "property rights" as a concept is pretty much dead in the USA. If they take less money from me in taxes, I retain slightly more of that right. If they take more from me, I lose more of my rights.

In our political system, the government takes whatever IT CAN from each and every group of people. If you have little political power, you tend to pay more. If you are in a politically powerful group, you pay less. Its pretty simple actually.

Votes are "bought" thru tax breaks and handouts iin a "democracy".

You can always tell the bias of the commentator in the news articles by how they refer to tax cuts -- they rarely comment that the successful or hard-working get to keep more of what they make; they always speak as though a tax cut is taking money out of the pockets of those who earned it and transferring it to those who didn't .

Yeah, a lot of percentages. But the implication, really, of all of them, is that talk about the "lowest income" group getting screwed and the upper income brackets making out like bandits is ridiculous. Half of all Americans who file tax returns are essentially irrelevant to the outcome; they aren't even in the game except for getting tax credits--tax related welfare.

Well, Objectivists, of course, assert that the standard should be individual rights. The tax bill and the debate over it had no real reference to rights, and you are correct, it would be difficult to say if individuals rights came out better or worse after 515 pages of new legislation.

Quite a contribution to the discussion! Thank you!

If the standard is individual rights, then the tax bill should be judged by whether it is more invasive or less invasive of individual rights than the tax laws it replaces. The answer is not necessarily clear-cut, but the standard is.

By what standard?...certainly not by the 'small' government standard.

It's dizzying, all these percentages. I think government, the only entity that should be 'Altruistic" should use all it's so called investments, other than tax revenues listed in it's CAFR, (Comprehensive annual financial report) and pay for the only things it's supposed to be doing; like, protecting our boarders and keeping idiots and their idiotologies out of our country.

Maybe we should add a weekly class on: "How to behave yourself".

The three most prominent milestones on the road to the destruction of Individual Rights began with the ten commandments of Karl Marx...

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

and continued with the words of Theodore Roosevelt

“Personal property . . . is subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.”

and

“I have always believed that it would be necessary to give the National Government complete power over the organization and capitalization of all business concerns engaged in inter-state commerce.”

concluding with the 16th Amendment

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Manifesto of the Communist Party
Theodore and Woodrow Andrew Napolitano
U.S. Constitution

These were all that were necessary to destroy Individual Rights. They are so deeply ingrained in the minds of the majority that no mere words will serve to dislodge them. The current debate over the divvying up the spoils would be laughable if not so tragic.