The Internet was vital in exposing his naive and harmful behavior. His hypocritical pronouncements and racist background would never have come to the public without it.
Don't let Washington hit your ass on the way out.
Don't let Washington hit your ass on the way out.
Oh, and he believes that the Left is waging a war on religion and Christmas (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html), he's against gay marriage (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul197.html), is against the popular vote (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul214.html), opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html), wants the estate tax repealed (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul328.html), is STILL making racist remarks (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/02/ron_paul/), believes that the Panama Canal should be the property of the United States (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:h.con.res.231:), and believes in New World Order conspiracy theories (http://www.infowars.com/articles/nwo/ron_paul_first_bush_was...), not to mention his belief that the International Baccalaureate program is UN mind control. (http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r109:E14AP5-0007:)
Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish?
And what's so great about NATO? The US should bear the brunt of the cost of defending Europe against whom now, exactly?
The Federal Reserve came into being the same year as the income tax, and the US dollar has lost 99% of its value since then. Coincidence? There are a lot of great arguments against the Fed. Have you seriously investigated, or just assumed that the Fed is great because it exists? Read some Austrian economics, which argue persuasively that centralized money control will always result in endless bust/boom cycles.
And the Left isn't waging a war on religion? C'mon.
What's so great about estate taxes? To decide that death is an event where someone needs to have a large chunk of his wealth taken by the state is a fairly controversial assumption.
Etc, etc.
By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer, or worse, has a fertilized egg that fails to implant. Are you sure you want to stick with that definition?
> What's so great about estate taxes?
It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. It was a reaction to the situation in Europe where the finances of a country were, and had always been, completely locked up and social mobility was nearly impossible.
The rate at which these inheritances should be taxed is debatable, as the current rate might be a bit too high or, as Warren Buffet and many of his associates would have you believe, too low. He intends to push 99% of his wealth into charities before he dies so that his children will inherit only a few hundred million, minus estate taxes. Those poor kids. How will they ever survive?
With all respect, this is not "extension", but rather "gross distortion".
> It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals.
What if such accumulation was just? Would it still be wrong? If yes, then why? If no, then what's the problem? Shouldn't we worry about making game rules fair, rather than making sure outcomes are "equalized"?
This is how un-checked wealth accumulates. Remember, it is very easy to make money if you have lots of money to start with and can weather almost any risk no matter how severe. When the smaller players bust out, the wreckage of their companies and lives is bought for pennies on the dollar.
Would you want to live in a world where the Paris Hiltons could coast into billions of wealth without having to do a single hard day's work in their life? Where they'd have enough money to fund a hundred generations of that?
Society advances when there's an incentive to working hard. Making money is one such incentive. When you can make money without working hard, it starts to break down. The inheritance tax is a way of keeping an element of hard work in the equation.
As for it being easy to make money if you start with a lot - why, this totally depends on the rules of the game in question! And if the game is fair and open, then it will be equally easy for the rich starter to squander all their wealth - since they don't actually produce wealth, but only consume what was inherited.
Libertarians are, first and foremost, about a free and honest game.
The problem is, owning a company worth $5,000,000 doesn't mean you necessarily have $2.5 mil in spare cash laying around.
For this reason, estate taxes encourage businesses to go public so that they can convert the value of their business into liquid assets enabling their estate to easily pay taxes. Or, if going public isn't an option, often the estate needs to sell the business to a larger corporation.
End result is, these smaller $5 - $20 million dollar corporations disappear when the founder dies and they morph into bigger, lifeless enterprises. That's not to say all small businesses are great places to work, but if you ever talk to people that work for founder ran enterprises vs. shareholder ran enterprises there is often a significant difference in quality of life and in how the owners treat their workers.
Estate taxes kill small businesses and also raise very little revenue.
Murder requires intention. Don't be silly.
Like Bill Gates, the richest American? Oh wait, he didn't inherit that money. Ooops.
Have a look through the Forbes 400 (http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/) and see where their money came from.
The Koch Brothers inherited from their father, and the five Waltons on the list inherited from theirs. That means over half of the wealthiest individuals in America inherited a considerable fortune.
In forty years this list will no doubt the heirs of other fortunes.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, supposedly no partisan outfit, says the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html .
So Paul's claim isn't far off.
Actually, I'd be happy to trade places with someone living in 1913.
Time travelers tip: avoid Europe for a couple years, and boil your water.
I'll come back for my claim chowder when the US economy collapses Greek-style, thanks to a fiat currency controlled by a private entity like the Fed, crony corporate welfarism (I'm repeating myself), and the fact that people have now figured out that they can vote themselves goodies. The Republic is over, as the founders warned us when the latter would happen.
Take that for what it's worth--I personally suspect it's somewhere between "Ron Paul wrote all the virulently racist stuff in his newsletter" and "Ron Paul had no idea of anything going on in his newsletter."
People f'up sometimes. A lot, even. If I'm willing to give Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton a break for Jew-bashing in the 80s and GWB a break for driving drunk and Romney a break for high school bullying, I can't see a reason not to give Ron Paul one too.
If, of course, he were willing to own up to making a mistake...