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The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do

• pavel_lishin 15y ago
  It seems that paying taxes is the most patriotic thing you can do; being rich just allows you to pay more of them, as well as benefiting the economy in other ways.
• Hisoka 15y ago
  He's making a few assumptions: 1) Government knows how to spend our money wisely on things that improve the quality of our lives 2) Getting rich equates to improving the quality of lives of society, as a whole. I know several industries where this isn't the case.. (gambling, cigarettes, fast food)
  • redfiche 15y ago
    He says no such thing. He says we live in an imperfect world where the government has a role to play in getting us out of this recession. As to your second point, that's based on your opinion of what constitutes making society better.
    • Hisoka 15y ago
      I didnt say he said those things explicitly. But by saying it's patriotic, he's assuming those things. Yes, it's based on my opinion. Yes, I'm generalizing, and I bet the majority of human beings on this earth would agree there are industries that make people rich and are harmful to the general public. In fact, I'd argue there's a TON of them. Humans love to self destruct (ie. get fat, kill themselves, get addicted, overspend, etc)
      • SigmundA 15y ago
        Probably why we need government eh? Have you ever set your clock ahead 10 minutes to help keep you from being late? Why, you could just be responsible instead? This is the premise of a democratic government, when you realize that you will not always do the best thing for yourself or your neighbors, but you still know what the best thing is and have a government that enforces it, knowing it could come for you if you break the contract. Obviously it is not a perfect system and we must be vigilant to improve it constantly, but anarchy is not a viable option. In many cases government does spend more wisely than any single individual, but that may not be the cheapest approach, there is a difference. Look up the "Price of anarchy".
        • jwallaceparker 15y ago
          Can you give some examples of the "many cases" in which a government spends more wisely than an individual?
          • jessedhillon 15y ago
            Rather than me hiring security for my house at a rate of maybe one hour a day -- the only amount of private security I could afford -- the government pools the money of my entire community, hires many security guards, equips them, and lets them drive around my neighborhood. Then, instead of my spending an hour or two educating all the kids in the neighborhood, in the hope that the next generation of people aren't morons, they take some money from all property owners and use it to build schools. Those schools to ensure that a very wide swath of the population, even the poor and stupid, meet minimum education standards. That way, at the very least they can go and do the service jobs that I don't want to do, and so many of them meet that minimum education level that they can be hired for a low wage, thus keeping the price I pay low.
            • SigmundA 15y ago
              Thanks, this would have been my response for the most part. National Defense, Police, Fire, Education, Roads, Water Systems, Sewer Systems, and Healthcare(just a form of nation defense IMO). These are all very expensive endeavors that simply don't work that well if the individuals "shops around".
            • jwallaceparker 15y ago
              The government spends wastefully in defense, education and every other service it seeks to provide. I agree in principle that it's generally beneficial for individuals to pool resources in order to address common needs. But this happens on its own in a marketplace. It's called the division of labor.
              • jessedhillon 15y ago
                Wastefully compared to what? Do you know of any other organization that provides essential social services to hundreds of millions of people? Do you have actual facts to supply here? Can you provide an a legitimate comparison for us, or are we supposed to simply accept your free market mantra? The existence of waste and inefficient behaviors does not mean that the system is wasteful.
  • arethuza 15y ago
    I don't gamble, smoke or eat fast food - but I'd hate to live anywhere that didn't give people the freedom to do these things if they wanted (and in the case of smoking, outside or in their own properties).
  • rgarcia 15y ago
    I think there's an argument to be made that even the industries you mention improve the lives of people in society. Assuming (1) all gambling/cigarette/fast food transactions are voluntary on both sides, and (2) people act rationally, then any money that you spend is done because you perceive the good you receive to be worth more than the money you spend on it. One counterargument in the case of addictive drugs or "vices" is that transactions aren't completely voluntary, since you are acting under the influence. In gambling you might also not act rationally. Nevertheless these are still a subset of all transactions, and taking your argument to the extreme of outlawing these industries would prevent a decent number of society-bettering transactions from taking place.
    • Hisoka 15y ago
      I never suggested outlawing any industries. Just pointing out the flaws in his post. Our modern society is set up so that it takes our primal urges to the extreme, making it BAD for the individual, but probably good for the overall economy. Our choices are hardly rational because we don't understand how our genes and primal urges work subconsciously. That's why men cheat, do drugs, and self sabotage ourselves.
• Apocryphon 15y ago
  "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • anamax 15y ago
    That doesn't imply that every possible taxation system is an acceptable price. More to the point, a large fraction of the taxes that we pay go to things that have nothing to do with a civilized society. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" - Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Buck vs Bell.
• gentle 15y ago
  If you're rich and you can't recognize your debt to the society that enabled you to become rich, then you're a greedy, horrible person. Pay your taxes, for gosh sakes.
  • civilian 15y ago
    Strongly disagree. My classmates picked on me, my teachers didn't challenge me. The state didn't pay for my education. I'm successful because I've applied myself while my peers were screwing off. Just because you need consumers to become wealthy doesn't mean that you're exploiting them... wealth creation is NOT a zero-sum game. Becoming wealthy is the reward you get for making consumer's lives better. Edit// For clarification, I'm fine with paying taxes. But I don't owe a debt to society just because of my success. I'm an equal citizen with everyone else, and we all benefit from the stability that government provides. I would also say that if the concept of "societal debt" is legitimate, then the poor have accrued much more debt anyway. (I'm fine with the downvotes. My highest net-point posts usually start with some downvotes.)
    • BrandonM 15y ago
      That may be true, but it doesn't mean the government hasn't enabled you. Most people fail to recognize that a big function of civilized society is to shift the power from the physically-strongest to economically- (or politically-) strongest. Enforcing property rights, keeping the horrible realities of war out of your life, building and maintaining the infrastructure that allows you mobility and access to goods and services, keeping the poor happy enough to avoid revolting against the (evolutionarily unnatural) rich, and maintaining a mostly fair capitalist market are major functions of government that the majority of us take for granted. The rich benefit from these functions significantly more than the poor, so it makes a lot of sense for the rich to pay more taxes.
    • knowtheory 15y ago
      And here you are, posting on the successor to a government funded project, developed by brilliant minds who were likely the recipients of scholarships or state funded educations. Just because some of humanity are dicks, doesn't mean that you didn't benefit from the people who aren't dicks. And i'll reiterate what was said above. Just because you're making bank doesn't mean you're making people's lives better. You can make money making the lives of others awesome. But making bank doesn't necessitate that you're making the lives of others better. That's the same logic that was used to over-inflate the sub-prime mortgage bubble. If you want to make the lives of others better, make sure you're doing that, rather than walmarting your customers.
• smokeyj 15y ago
  Cuban: Pay your taxes, be a patriot! In a country founded by patriots protesting taxes, I find his rhetoric tiring. Patriotism doesn't create jobs, capitalism does. Taxes, legal fees and regulation can all kill a start up. The government has a money printing machine, it's not like a fledgling startups is the only source of revenue to finance endless war. If we want to create jobs, it should be free to start a company, sell shares, and start doing business.
  • leviathant 15y ago
    The way I remember it, the founding fathers weren't protesting the taxes, so much as the lack of representation. Ben Franklin famously wrote that "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." This country wasn't founded on the notion that we should be tax free. The Boston Tea Party basically came about because The East India Tea company made bad business decisions, and wanted a tax break in England to alleviate warehousing issues. Actually, it's all quite complicated, but to say that this was a country founded by patriots protesting taxes and then to complain of tiresome rhetoric is to illustrate how little you understand both American history and rhetoric.
    • astine 15y ago
      The way I remember it, the founding fathers weren't protesting the taxes, so much as the lack of representation. That's arguably wrong as well. A large number of American colonists (particularly in Boston; esp John Hancock) made a living as smugglers bypassing English tax laws and circumventing the EITC's trade monopoly on tea. The administrative changes that parliament made in that time included not only new taxes but better enforcement of laws which were already on the books and this nearly drove many prominent Americans out of business.
• r00fus 15y ago
  2nd most patriotic thing you can do - fight corruption by supporting increase of oversight and transparency in government. Corruption (both Dems and Reps are guilty of this) is the disease will kill capitalism as it clogs the arteries of the economy. I also love Cuban's logic - be happy you have a large tax bill to pay for that is a good problem to have.
• gerggerg 15y ago
  It seems rather foolish to think that there can be a most patriotic thing you can do. Plus the grey area and loop holes in the tax code generally tend to favor the rich. Does the author mean that the most patriotic thing you can do is pay taxes without trying to minimize the amount of tax you pay? And if so whats the threshold of manipulative tax paying. It's also very naive to think that your own bottom line and tax bill are in any way a measure of your patriotism. Is shipping jobs overseas to increase profit more patriotic than maintaining a more modest business while providing jobs in your country? Associating patriotism with profit is just a psychological tool for justifying your own desire to have more things than everyone else. The most patriotic thing you can do is love your country.
  • viraptor 15y ago
    > The most patriotic thing you can do is love your country. What does that actually achieve or change for anyone in a broader sense? Patriotism is by definition a kind of love for your country. Now what you do as a result is what actually matters. Alternatively, can you love your country without striving to make it better in some way? Is an own love for the country without any action a valid concept?
    • gerggerg 15y ago
      That's exactly what I'm trying to convey. The concept of patriotism is just as abstract as the concept of love. People who talk about it otherwise just have something to sell.
• littlegiantcap 15y ago
  I share his general sentiment. In a broader sense that's why I love the capitalistic system, or at least the way it's evolved within the US. People don't exist in a vacuum. Bettering your own situation with goals ranging from altruism to full on greed still pulls people up with you, and improves the lives of everyone else in society. Granted it's not a perfect system, and there's things we could do to make it better, but still at it's core I believe there is the best their is.
• sportsTAKES 15y ago
  Paying taxes is patriotic in one sense. But not feeding the monster is also patriotic. Fundamentally, if I knew tax dollars were were being spent efficiently, I wouldn't have a problem paying 'higher' taxes. Corruption, inefficiency make it impossible to support tax increases.
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  • Tsagadai 15y ago
    So Greece should become the world's first anarchist state? Paying taxes there is only supporting corruption, bureaucracy (including their debt holders) and inefficiency. Part of their problem is that no one was paying taxes to start with. Not paying taxes is a form of corruption. What you are talking about is a problem of government accountability. What you are suggesting is fighting fire with fire.
• coenhyde 15y ago
  There are a few assumptions in blog post but one in particular that I really do not like. And that is that 'making money' automatically equates to improvement of society. For most businesses this is the case. If you manufacture something or provide a service then you are adding to the overall wealth of the nation. Making a lot of money from something that does not provide a valuable service to society actually detracts from the wealth of the nation because you are extracting resources (people, natural resources, time, etc) that could be assigned to more productive uses. Remember is money is not wealth.
  • lootabooga 15y ago
    "For most businesses this is the case. If you manufacture something or provide a service then you are adding to the overall wealth of the nation. " Actually not always. As companies get big enough they could care less about patriotism, they send jobs away, the pay politicians to have special treatment, they take advantage of huge tax cutbacks, etc...
• Vadoff 15y ago
  I believe Captain America does an excellent job on explaining what it means to be a true patriot: http://imgur.com/a/TEvWk http://imgur.com/a/TEvWk
• slowpoke 15y ago
  Maybe we could stop asserting that patriotism is in any way, shape or form a positive attribute. It's not.
  • vijayr 15y ago
    Totally agree. It seems that patriotism applies only to "normal" people, not to those huge businesses that operate internationally, across borders. Also, in an age when no country could exist in isolation, what sense does it make to think of just "my country, my society"?
• 0003 15y ago
  The most patriotic thing a person can do is to continuously know the value of them self and of others and to use that knowledge to do good.
• gavanwoolery 15y ago
  IMHO: "Patriotism" != handing money to your government. "Patriotism" == doing what is best for your country (i.e. the people). Believe it or not, the government does not alway's have the country's best interests in mind. The example I always use is the Wall Street bailouts. Tax-payer dollars were used (mostly against tax-payer will) to bail out reckless banks and provide golden parachutes for undeserving CEOs. Sometimes the government will even hurt the country when it is trying to do the right thing - it was one of the major catalysts in the current recession, because it backed entities like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and their "toxic" mortgages. If you want to do something good with your excess money, the government probably is not the best charity to donate to. A simple rule of thumb: the more hands that money passes through, the less money comes out the other end. If you want to be patriotic, give your excess money DIRECTLY to those who need it most.
  • rockarage 15y ago
    And I would argue the best way to give your excess money directly to those it the most without waste is to pay your workers well. All of them, think of workers who can't command a high salary. If the industry allow you to pay a worker $7.70(about minimum wage) can you afford to pay them $15.00 hr ? Many companies don't want to pay their employees a living wages so they can keep more of the revenue, but instead of giving the excess to government in the form of taxes, or donating to an vetted charity, why not give it to the people you know, your workers. It will be an investment in your company. Workers who are content, are typically more productive and you'll have higher retention.
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    • gavanwoolery 15y ago
      I agree with you completely :)
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  • muzz 15y ago
• jack_alexander 15y ago
  Patriotism is a sham put in place by a social experiment of the introduction of organized sports. It created team-spirit and it was translated to other levels to equate patriotism. In the original days wars were small enough and there were enough real patriots to fight it. But since the country was based on violence and theft I have no faith in it anymore. War is lie and Capitalism is parasitism.
• jroseattle 15y ago
  I'm sure Mark believes this to be true, but I find his comments to be self-serving. He's basically saying that what he's accomplished in his life is patriotic, and that should be your goal too! If we all follow his advice, by nature he will be "patriotic". I don't necessarily disagree with the advice, but his sentiment toward it feeds his own feelings more than anything else.
• jlarocco 15y ago
  I don't see the connection between patriotism and taxes. I could see an angle where explicitly dodging taxes could be unpatriotic. But patriotism isn't something you buy. It just doesn't work like that.
• chopsueyar 15y ago
  Buy a failing basketball team.
• zackattack 15y ago
  nothing cuban writes in public is going to be honest, it's fundamentally self serving and it's good PR.
• rubashov 15y ago
  Alternate patriotic strategy: learn to live comfortably on an untaxably low income, or an unreported cash income. Draw the maximum benefits you can. Keep yourself healthy and don't buy health insurance. Help to accelerate the inevitable collapse of a corrupt, immoral, and unsustainable system.