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Comment by SandB0x | Hacker News Reader

> "If everyone was required to pay taxes like they pay their utilities, attitudes would probably change."

I wonder how people would react to a $500/year Antiterrorism bill.

[Ballpark for 08-10? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#...)

The Iraq war was not about anti-terrorism, although that's partially how it was sold by politicians. The Iraqi government has never launched a single terrorist attack against the United States (please correct me if I'm wrong as I've never heard of one instance).

Iraq trained them and offered rewards to families whom had a son or father carry out jihad against the United States.

Cite please

I recalled it from having lived through the last couple of decades but since you insist, I googled for "Iraq Trained Terrorists" and found 2.2million links.

Heres one. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00...

Heres another. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/25/1017004766310.html

One more. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/14...

I don't know how partisan these articles or newspapers/publishers are, but you asked for citing.

Oh, here's another one, PBS this time. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interv...

Feel free to upvote my prior post, thanks.

We've all (most?) lived the last couple of decades, but it seems that not all of us took our blinkers off.

After Iraq, we should probably go ahead and invade Google, because your methodology shows that they trained about 1,080,000 terrorists.

It's interesting to read the Editor's Note in the right sidebar of that PBS piece which basically says that the interviewee is a liar.

> One more. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/14....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Coughlin#Habbush_letter

> Heres one. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_F._Hayes#Writings_and_p...

> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/25/1017004766310.html

This is well known. Saddam provided/ claimed to provide compensation for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. There is no connection with the Al-Qaeda here.

> Oh, here's another one, PBS this time. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interv....

You did not read he editor's note

[Editor's Note, November 2005: More than two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there has been no verification of Khodada's account of the activities at Salman Pak. In fact, U.S. officials have now concluded that Salman Pak was most likely used to train Iraqi counter-terrorism units in anti-hijacking techniques. It should also be noted that he and other defectors interviewed for this report were brought to FRONTLINE's attention by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a dissident organization that was working to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Since the original broadcast, Khodada has not publicly addressed questions that have been raised about his account of activities at Salman Pak.]

If you want an overview of the planning/preparation of Sep 11 attacks it is easily available here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_at...

Most of the income taxes in America are paid by a small minority. Most people probably wouldn't have a problem with a $500/year Antiterrorism bill, as long as someone else has to pay it.

True, though most of the wealth in America is held by a small minority too, which kind of creates the weird taxing/spending incentives. (http://www.good.is/post/americans-are-horribly-misinformed-a...)

That chart needs to be distributed way more widely.

Spoiler alert: the difference between what Republicans and Democrats think the median wealth should be is less than a quarter of the difference between the lower of those numbers and what it actually is.

We're arguing over a fiction.

I wonder how they calculate wealth and if they've ever tried to track which direction most people move on the wealth scale.

why is it divided equally?

It's a thought experiment, cut me some slack...

I know there aren't 300m taxpayers, and it shouldn't be divided equally, and countless other things. If anyone has a more accurate figure I'd be interested to see it.

Fair enough, but just remember that ~35%-40% of people will not pay a dime...

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...

Conversely, the top 74 earners in 2009 made as much as the bottom 19 million.

Updating to include citation: http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?...

aside: how does the above comment receive so many downvotes? it's fact, backed up with data, with no spin, and on-topic.

I didn't (in fact, have an upvote), but although many are not liable for income tax most people pay some kind of tax - sales tax, or payroll tax, or state tax.

You are right to point out that a good chunk of the population will make a net gain, but many of them will only do so because they're very poor. Some poor people are lazy, but it doesn't follow that all poor people are freeloaders. Unfortunately, less honest people than you have made a lot of spin out of those statistics, for a variety of political ends.

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