Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Equality For All (Revised)

This is a revised version of a piece I wrote in November of 2010.
Let’s begin with that the fact that no group is for equality for everyone. If we look deep within ourselves we will find prejudices, or just unknowingly create inequalities. Progressives are always talking about taxing the rich to help pay for those less fortunate. If everyone is truly equal, how can you make one person pay more in taxes than another? The answer is simple—you can’t.
The left will ask, “How do you help the poor if you don’t tax the rich?” You help them by getting out of their life. I was talking with a gentleman in South Africa and he mentioned Shanty Town. This is an area that is government owned land where the poor began to build small shanty homes in which to live.

This made me think about how in America the Federal government is making gigantic land grabs, while at the same time taxing the so-called rich, supposedly in an effort to help the poor. I watched as local governments began to ban or greatly restrict mobile homes because they provided fewer property taxes. These are homes that the less fortunate can easily afford.

Our government decided they didn’t want people living in shantytowns or mobile homes, so they came up with the Community Reinvestment Act and began to throw around terms such as affordable housing. The federal government used its might to force banks to give house mortgages to people who could barely afford them. When the economy declined and interest rates dropped these people began to refinance their homes with the lower variable rate. In time those rates began to rise, so much that these people lost, or will lose, their homes. In some cases monthly payments doubled.

If the same people had lived in a cheaper mobile home, or some cheaper home of their own design, then the collapse of the US economy might have never happened. If people were truly free to live their lives, economy down turns would be more local than national.


Every state and community has building codes for all structures. The government does this, they claim, for our own protection. They use the excuse that you should build a house to certain specifications so that it won’t lose its resale values. They tell us they want to make sure the house is safe in which to live. Those are all lies.

The truth is, they also don’t want to live next to a shack, which would hurt the value of their home. In rural American many homes are hidden deep inside forests where no one can ever see them, yet they are forced to build by the same codes. If one builds a house in which they never plan to sell, and is out of view, why should the government care about the house’s looks?

We don’t need government to make sure the houses in our neighborhoods meet a certain standard. There are home associations which do that quite well. It’s clear the government wants homes to be as expensive as possible so that it can collect as much tax as possible. We must get government out of our private lives. The poor can never truly have affordable housing as long as the government intrudes. There are also the insurance companies that can determine the quality of a home since they have a stake in the structure.

Until the late 1800’s a couple didn’t need a government license to get married. People that wanted to spend the rest of their life together, either just moved in together, or they went to their place of worship where through a ceremony that was sanctioned by the church, became married. The church performed any divorce.

Today we have the gay marriage argument. We are  having this debate only because government became involved in the marriage business. We don’t need government telling us with whom we can spend the rest of our lives.

Someone asked me when I brought up this argument, “Unless a gay lover is married they can’t see their partner in the hospital.” I answered with: “The hospital is a private business and has nothing to do with government. In this case it’s the hospital that should be picketed, and not the local congressperson.”  Get government out of marriage and the gay marriage debate vanishes. The only reason government became involved in marriage to begin with was to prevent blacks and whites from marrying.

Since originally writing the above paragraph I have been reminded of the privacy laws enacted by Clinton. I won’t say that we didn’t need some privacy regulation, but as always government takes things too far. Thanks to these laws a health-care professional can no longer tell the mother of an unconscious 18 year old child any details of the illness or injury. Thanks to this government over protection we must now have consent forms with our children and other family members.  These same consent forms would be needed with any partnership if government removed itself from marriage.

If everyone is taxed individually, and as equals, a lot of problems are solved. Over the years people have been taxed at either higher or lower rates just because they chose to be married. We give tax breaks to people that choose to have children. Many of these different tax breaks came about because politicians used them to gain favor with the voters. Why do we want to give tax incentives  for child birth? Do we not already have a population problem?

Anyone who chooses some religious, or personal ceremony,  the joining would be legally bound and structured with contracts. These contracts can be of your own choosing. If and when the couple decides to terminate their relationship, these contracts would be the basis for any settlements. Government could even set minimum standards for these contracts, which it does already. Churches could set their own standards for divorce, which some do today.

Never let those on the left tell you they are the ones for freedoms, because in a sense they take more than they ever give. The only thing the left knows is to give out special rights to different groups of people. They fight for rights from bullies, hate speech laws, hate crime laws, rights for people with different skin colors, and gay rights. Anytime we bestow special rights on someone, the rights of another are lessened. We already have laws that protects all people equally. What we need is equality for all.

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