When all else fails, go for the personal insult. How charming and persuasive you are!

Again, you weren't reading. I am tax-exempt. I was living in a no-income tax state. Making $12 an hour. And not able to make it, even in substandard housing.

Since I wasn't paying taxes, explain how I send my kids to better than public schools at HALF the cost? I'm not paying anything now...how do you half the cost of that?


Again, you didn't read. I DON'T pay anything now.

How many people in the United States are making $24,000 or less per year? Do you have a percentage? Even if that is tax-free, that is very little to survive on, let alone pay for school, day care, healthcare, retirement and charitable donations. $12/hour is a little over $23k per year, so I was being generous with my number.

But think about that. $24,000 a year. That certainly is meager. Then consider that people who make minimum wage get around $10,500 per YEAR. Talk about meager!! So you're saying that if you make less than $24k a year you shouldn't have children??

What was that percentage of the population again? I don't think your platform is going to be popular with us "po-folk".

We had the potential to be free, but through our militarism we've lost that opportunity.

Radar gives the Constitution too much credit. Hell, by 1913 we'd already democratized Cuba.

Let's run some numbers, shall we?

Let's assume for this post that person is making $24,000 per year. Tax free. Single parent, 2 children.

Under HUD guidelines, a person or family should pay no more than 30 percent of their income for housing in order for that housing to be considered affordable.

That's $7200 a year, or $600 per month for rent.

Food (at $75 per week) is $300 per month, or $3600 per year.

We'll assume our mother has a vehicle that she pays $200 a month on +$75 a month for car insurance. (A stretch by any standard.) Add $10 a week in gas, and a jiffy lube at $20 four times a year, that's $3860 a year.

You have to clothe the children, and if you go to the thrift store and catch the sales at walmart, you can clothe your kids for $200 every school year. But lets assume you have to pay to send them to school. Radar says 1/2 price, so we'll take the going rate at a private school in Vegas (where I lived taxfree) = $500 a month x 12 months. We'll half that, to $3000 a year and assume they don't require uniforms, so we can use the "thrift store" price given. So 2 kids x 1 year half price schooling ($3000) + thrift store clothes ($200)= $6400 per year for both kids.

Let's talk about healthcare. When I was on my HMO, I was paying $210 a MONTH for myself and 2 children to be covered, and that didn't pay for co-pays on office visits or pharmacy. We'll half that, and add $1260 to our running total. This does NOT count costs for glasses, dentists, or accidents like broken limbs or stitches.

I won't even get started on daycare, and assume the older child looks after the younger child until mommy gets home.

Utilities: In a desert community or colder climate, it's around $90 a month average, assuming electric heating and cooling. Let's say heating and cooling all types (oil, kerosene, electricity, propane) average $50 a month, or $600 a year.

Telephone, if you don't have cellular, and don't make any long distance calls, will run $15 a month, or $180 a year.

We're at $23,100. I haven't included most of the other "incidentals" and expenses that we all know exist in the real world. And I was being conservative in my figures. MY costs were a hell of alot more than that in some areas, and less in others.

The average cost of living for single parent families with two children is $29,604 a year, taking income taxes out of the equation.

So, according to your standard, Radar, since 20% are below poverty, ($15,020/year) and the average cost of living ($29, 604/year) is ABOVE the average single parent income ($28,590/year), the average American should NOT have children.

Even on paper your world sucks.


I looked it up.

**Average female householder (single income female) makes $28,590 per year.

**20.3% of households in the United States are considered below the poverty line, (for a household of 3 is $15, 020 per year.) That's over 56 MILLION Americans.

Again, YOUR needs don't entitle you to reach into anyone else's pocket to pay for your children's education or anything else you think you need. What's happening right now is theft, and you support it since you're one of the theives. You are not entitled to healthcare, an education, or anything else that you didn't pay for. Maybe someone will feel generous and send your children to school, or maybe you'll do the responsible thing and adopt them to someone who is capable of taking care of them. In either case, if you can't afford children, you shouldn't have them. It's an irresponsible decision that you want to force other people to pay for.

You wanted to know how you'd be better off paying half of what it costs to send your kids to a public school than you are now? You wouldn't be stealing, your kids would have a superior education and might be a lot more financially secure than you seem to be, and maybe you'd deserve some respect. If you were educated, you'd probably be making more than $12/hr.

No, I'm saying if you make less than $50k/year you shouldn't even think about having children. You shouldn't have children unless you can afford to feed them, clothe them, pay for their healthcare, education, and other needs without the need for charity from government or anyone else. I'm saying if you do have children under these circumstances, you're irresponsible and if you expect other people to pay to educate, feed, clothe, etc. you or your children at the point of a gun (welfare) you are a common theif. If you are pregnant and have kids while knowing you can't afford to have them, you are doing them a disservice. Poor people should not have children, plain and simple and if they do have kids and really love them, they should to the right thing and adopt them out so they can have a decent life.

A free country is one where the government doesn't do anything to define or limit the rights of the citizens, and doesn't make any laws that prevent ANYTHING they want to do as long as their actions don't PHYSICALLY harm a non-consenting other or their property. It's a country in which the government abides by the limits on its authority and where people can go as far as their talent, drive, and wit can bring them. It's a country in which people don't look to the government to be their nanny, but rather take responsibility for their own lives.

In a free country the government wouldn't mess with the free market. In a free country your government does what you want it to do instead of what the UN or other countries want it to do. US military interventionism and foreign policy have ensured that virtually no countries are free because America bribes them, bullies them, threatens them, coerces them, cajoles, them, and otherwise pushes other countries around into adopting ignorant policies that even the people of America don't want like the zero-tolerance drug policy.

Even if you only go to 1861 when Lincoln made major violations of the Constitution that's roughly 80 years of government that mostly stuck to the Constitution.

So places like Canada and Europe would be "free" if only the US would not force them into unproductive policies?

And if their governments wouldn't practice socialism and met the other criteria. Let's look at Australia which in many ways is more free than America and in others not as free. They've got legal prostitution which is the sign of a truly civilized nation and they wanted to adopt a common-sense drug policy that gave addicts medical treatment instead of jail time. The USA threatened Australia (as America often does) to adopt a zero-tolerance drug policy or we'd use our clout at the UN to remove thier ability to grow poppies for pharmaceutical companies (billions of dollars), so they did. America gives "foreign aid" to countries like a drug dealer gives out the first hit of heroin and after they're hooked on it, America threatens to take it away if they don't do what America says to do. Does being bullied, pushed around, threatened, etc. sound free to you?

So, if the US did not practice this kind of interventionism, these other countries would still not be FARD (Free According to Radar Definition), yes?

It's not MY definition. It's the commonly accepted definition of freedom. Doing what you want without being molested by another or having your rights trampled upon.

What does free mean to you? Being robbed at the point of a gun? Having another country tell yours what to do under threat of violence or financial restrictions?

Why don't you start offering up what YOU think freedom is. You obviously seem to think America is free right now. So you must think a government that doesn't abide by limitations on its powers, that attacks civil rights instead of defending them, that starts unprovoked wars against non-threatening nations, that practices imperialistic tyrrany and terrorism under the guise of stopping terrorism, etc. is free. But hey I might be wrong.

Why don't you tell us what you think freedom is.

I'm ignoring everything in your posts that is evasion of my questions. FARD does not exist in any country on this planet, and would not even if the US did not intervene, am I correct?

Fine than I'll ignore all of your posts. If you expect me to answer your questions, and you won't answer mine, you can just fuck off.

OK look, I don't really need you to answer, because I already know your answers AND your evasions. 8-10 years ago I would have been writing them.

What I'm doing is making a point to everyone reading. Every evasion is informative. Every misdirection, every over-dramatic change of subject, every five-paragraph end-around to my simple, one-sentence question, is informative. My careful respect and your strategic disrespect. My caution in definition and your over-generalization. Your early departure of the discussion. Informative, informative, informative.

I haven't evaded a single thing. I"ve answered every question fully. It is YOU who are evading questions. I asked you questions and you evade them and then accuse me of doing exactly what you are doing. I'd say that says a lot more about you than anything I've said does about me.

You make up bullshit terms like FARD and expect me to take it seriously. The freedom I describe is the freedom we once had in America and it was pissed away. You seem to think we've got freedom right now. But you refuse to say what you think freedom is.

Your tactics are weak. You want to keep me on the defensive by always being the one asking the questions, but never answering any yourself.

Now give me the same courtesy I've given you and stop evading my questions.

I don't pay taxes because the government says I don't make enough per year to tax me. I'm not on Food Stamps, although I could have been. I'm not on welfare, although I qualify. I did what I could on my own until I was forced to move to a location that was less expensive to live.

Teachers only make $16 an hour (average), about $31,000 a year. Mid-level Accountants earn an average of $45,000 a year, and Mid-level management earns about $52,000 a year.

You're saying over 68% of Americans should adopt their children out, so that the other 32% can adopt them and give them the education and lifestyle your policies would limit them to? And what if the 32% don't want those kids? Who takes care of them then under your "new Amerika"?


Edit: And by the way, I have a degree in Psychology and I'm earning another in secondary Education with a minor in foreign languages. Your assumptions only highlight the flaws in your reasoning.

Radar, you started this thread by evangelizing for your own personal philosophy. That's the context of this whole discussion.

I don't need to post my philosophy in order to show yours to be in error. My philosophy could be full of holes and yet I might locate the biggest hole in yours.

The only way to know whether your philosphy is strong is to permit any number of tests of it. You must rigorously and HONESTLY test it, personally in your own mind, and you must also accept tests of it from others.

When others see you not permitting any test of your philosophy, they will decide - with good reason - that you yourself do not test your philosophy, and therefore that it is probably not very strong.

When others see that you do not want to endure a simple, open-ended discussion with honest skeptics, but that you do want to endlessly evangelize, what do you think they assume? What would you assume?