Thursday, June 21, 2012

Ron Paul Exposed as a Hypocrite

I see from one comment already that I must make clear that Dr. Block is arguing reductio ad absurdum and does not believe at all that Ron Paul is a hypocrite. He is making the point that because of the terrible intrusiveness of government that it is impossible to eat, buy a house or save without the government somehow being involved in the transaction. Thus, Ron Paul is not a hypocrite by being against government and at the same time trying to get some of the money back that was taken from him in the Social Security scam.

As Walter Block points out, Ron Paul can't seem to do anything without the help of government:
 The latest unwarranted attack on Ron Paul is that he is a hypocrite: he opposes social security, and yet accepts checks from that organization for his own personal use. 
Ron responds, plaintively, that he opposes fiat currency, and yet has some of it in his wallet. He favors the privatization of the post office, and yet mails letters through that system, and accepts mail others have sent him through the US Post Office. He also uses government highways, even though he would like to see this service privately provided. (See my book on that subject, for free, here) 
But the story goes deeper than that; far deeper. This is only the beginning of Dr. Paul’s hypocrisy. This evil hypocrite also eats food, despite the fact that the government subsidizes agricultural products. He also wears clothing, ditto. And, sinner that he is, he also lives in a house. But the statists are also busily subsidizing housing, not least by lowering interest rates to unwarranted levels. Does this man’s hypocrisy never end? No. This is only the tip of the iceberg for this scalawag. Why, the man gives lectures to tens of thousands of students at public universities, and private ones, too, that accept government funding. 
I could go on and on in this vein, but I think that a mainstream journalist, even of the meanest intelligence as virtually all of them are, can now see where I am going with this. It is impossible to live in the present day U.S. without being involved, in numerous ways, with the state apparatus. Does this mean that we are all precluded from advocating the free enterprise system, private property rights and the marketplace? Evidently it does, at least for some folk. For shame.
It should be further pointed out that Ron Paul has been cheated dramatically by the social security savings program forced on him. A quick review of Dr. Paul's private investments show that he has done spectacularly by investing in gold stocks. Dr. Paul's payout from social security will never come close to the return he would have received if the SS contributions weren't forcibly taken from him and he was allowed to invest it on his own in gold stocks.

But bottom line, if a gang takes your money for 50 years and tells you to come back for it when you retire and the gang passes it back out to you in dribs and drabs, you have every right to take that money back from the beast.

51 comments:

  1. That's just simply not true. Everyone lives within the limit of law. If you oppose fiat currency, you will not start to use gold coin to get your sandwich. You will have to get the law changed. The argument like that is below the intellectual level of high schoolers.

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  2. Yes, Ron Paul is a hypocrite. Read what Robert LeFevre had to say about "withdrawal of sanction: and you decide:

    http://wp.me/pHQmz-Sv

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  3. It is absolutely vital to point out the obvious mechanical reason that taking the checks is totally morally correct: He has had the payroll tax taken from every check he's ever earned: the fact that he advocates its replacement by a more functional model *in no way* means that he should forfeit -for him or his family- the pay he was forced to live without because of the SS tax. It is his money being slowly returned to him.

    If you fault him for that, you're misunderstanding reality.

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  4. I will not be collecting social secruity on moral grounds. Just because somewhere enters your house and steals your property does give you the right to enter anothers' house and steal from him/her as well. Nobody, including Ron Paul, should collect social secruity money. Theft is theft no matter how hard you choose to spin your hamster to rationalize your wrong actions.

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    1. you have the moral right to take back as much of your property that was stolen from you as you can, that includes your money.

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    2. The government has to steal the money from someone else to pay the beneficiaries. If a thief no longer has in his possession that which he stole, the moral thing to do doesn't include demanding that he rob someone else in order to pay back that which he stole.

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    3. Paul, being employed, STILL pays Social Security. In fact, he currently pays more into the Social Security system than he receives from it.

      As a result, he's not stealing anyone else's property - he's limiting the amount that is currently being stolen from him.

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    4. his employer is the government so technically he doesnt pay anything into social security for the same reason public employees dont pay any taxes, their entire income comes from taxation.

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    5. "he currently pays more into the Social Security system than he receives from it."

      Do you have a link you could post? Knowing that OASDI withholding is a fraction of what is earned (6.2 % or 4.2% or whatever percentage they are using now), it seems improbable that RP is currently paying more into Social Security each month than he is getting back in benefits concurrently.

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    6. Here is his statement

      http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/20/health/la-pn-ron-paul-social-security-opponent-acknowledges-he-receives-benefits-20120620

      “Just as I use the post office, I use government highways, I use the banks, I use the federal reserve system, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work to remove this in the same way on Social Security,” the Texas congressman said. “In the same way with Social Security, I am trying to make a transition.

      “I want young people to opt out of Social Security, but my goal isn’t to cut,” Paul said moments before.

      Paul later clarified his remarks, saying: “I would preserve Social Security as best I can, but we want to get off.” He said he pays more into the system than he receives.

      ---
      Here is his congressional income disclosure

      http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N00005906_2010_pres.pdf

      ---

      At 6.2%, he pays $10,700 annually on that into Social Security. The average recipient receives about $1250 per month, which is $15,000 per year. It's a little less than 1/3 more as a percentage, but in absolute dollars, pretty close. 4 cents is 1/3 more than 3 cents, but it's also only a penny more.

      If his income were ONLY from his congressional salary, you would be right. If you look at the disclosure, it says that he receives substantial income from a limited partnership, "Carona, LTD."

      As anyone who has ever started a LLC knows, partnership income is passthrough income. You're responsible for paying taxes on it, including Social Security.

      Even at the lowest possible salary from the range Paul provided, he'd be paying an additional $15,500 in Social Security taxes for a total of $26,000, $11,000 more than the average person receives in Social Security. Given the range provided, he could be paying even more than that.

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    7. The current income cap on Social Security "contributions" is $110,100, so he is not personally paying more than $6,8262.20 per year, given a rate of 6.2%, although I think we may be working with a 4.2% rate due to a rate cut by the OA, so if that is the case, he is not paying in more than $4,624.20.

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    8. I think you misplaced a decimal, in the $68262.20 number, but you're right about the limits - I'm not an accountant and I try to only pay attention to this crap once per year. Since I have a job and a LLC, this caught my interest and I looked it up. Here's what I'm seeing:

      Paul has more than one income, the second being from the LLC. The other sources of income look like passive investment income such as dividends.

      If you have more than one employer, they all pay the "employer" share.

      I'm not an accountant, but looking at the IRS regs online, they say that the second "employer," which is Paul himself, does not get a refund of the overage. He can deduct the "employer" portion of the Social Security and Medicare tax from his overall taxable income, but all that means is he has to pay the money into the Social Security black hole, but not pay income tax on the income used to pay the Social Security tax.

      It looks like the maximum social security payments you could receive are $28,152, but that's taxable income, so you don't get to keep it all. I don't know if he's in the 33% or 35% bracket, so let's say 33%, so he could keep a maximum of about $18500.

      He would would be about $6820 or so for his LLC's self-employment tax, $4624 for his maximum personal contribution, $11,444 total. Unless you are going to suggest that it's unethical for him to be a congressman (a fair but entirely different argument, one that you implicitly but not explicitly presented) it would also be fair to add this employer's contribution to the total paid into social security on his behalf. In total, that would be $18264 vs the maximum that could be received from Social Security, $18500. Given that we're working with estimates and have no way to know if he's receiving the maximum and that we're working with estimates, I'd say that our estimate that he might collect $236 more than he pays in is within the margin of error, and at the very least, and that it's entirely possible that he pays more than he receives. In every prior year to 2010 when the personal "contribution" was 6.2%, using these numbers he would have very likely paid more than he received. If he had 3 employers in any previous year, he definitely would have. I'm not looking at all his previous congressional financial reports because I don't care that much, either way, but I provided the link above if you're so interested.

      If you are willing to accept that it would be ethical to pay more in to Social Security than receive it, then it being a wash must also be ethical. If it's within a few dollars, it frankly becomes a silly waste of time to do the accounting each year and decide to send the Treasury a check if it's a penny over number x, but keep it if it's a penny under.

      http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98846,00.html

      The 2010 Tax Relief Act reduced the self-employment tax by 2% for self-employment income earned in calendar year 2011. The self-employment tax rate for self-employment income earned in calendar year 2011 is 13.3% (10.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare). The Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011 extended the self-employment tax reduction of 2% for calendar year 2012 so the rates for 2011 remain in effect for 2012. For self-employment income earned in 2010, the self-employment tax rate is 15.3%. The rate consists of two parts: 12.4% for social security (old-age, survivors, and disability insurance) and 2.9% for Medicare (hospital insurance).

      (snip)

      You can deduct the employer-equivalent portion of your self-employment tax in figuring your adjusted gross income. This deduction only affects your income tax. It does not affect either your net earnings from self-employment or your self-employment tax.

      --

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  5. Yes, Ron Paul is a hypocrite:

    "Make this distinction in your mind. When you have no choice and are forced, you are the victim and you are not sanctioning. When you have a choice and are not forced, but you accept a government “benefit” of any kind, then you are not a victim but you are sanctioning.

    "If you stop sanctioning governmental procedures, it will not be able to use you as a statistic to justify either future growth or present programs."

    Robert LeFevre
    http://wp.me/pHQmz-Sv

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    1. B.S. If Forced by strength and/or deceit= Fraud or robbery the money was never the Govts. in the first Place and should be clawed back by the rightful owner!

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    2. Robert LeFevre: When you accept any kind of a handout, benefit, pension, social security, subsidy, or even police protection, government literature, advice, or whatever from the state, you are, in essence, justifying the government’s future incursions against others.

      When you have no choice and are forced, you are the victim and you are not sanctioning. When you have a choice and are not forced, but you accept a government “benefit” of any kind, then you are not a victim but you are sanctioning.

      ----end quote----

      Perhaps you can expand on how Mr. LeFevre handles the following, from the list above provided by Paul / Block:

      Government supplied fiat currency: Mr. LeFevre has a choice. He can barter. The only reason one is “forced” to use fiat currency is to pay taxes.

      Government provided post office: Mr. LeFevre has a choice. He can use only UPS and FedEx for all letters and parcels

      Government subsidized food: Mr. LeFevre can grow his own, and for water can use only captured rainwater to avoid using municipal water.

      If it is demonstrated that Mr. LeFevre is pure on these, I will congratulate him and take his comments more seriously. Until then, at some point the level of purity on this subject is…subjective, and individual.

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    3. Apologies, I thought the blog was his. My questions remain for all the purists commenting in this thread.

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    4. That is not true. Before 65, your social security gets taken out from your paycheck regardless what your feeling is. When you reach the age, you get a social security check, and it magically become a " benefit". You start to have a choice. This simply doesn't follow any logic. Its really a sad state of affair that this kind of people start writing articles and others will follow.

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    5. p, there's another consideration.

      First, where we agree: the state is coercive in all it does. It is, by definition, a coercive agent.

      If one does not accept the money or sends it back to the Treasury, it will be spent on further coercive activity. In other words, by *not* accepting the money, you're just enabling it to use the money to harm another.

      Also, much of this "money" is created out of thin air by the central bank's monetization of debt. Last year, 61% of Treasury bonds were "bought," aka monetized by the Fed. I can't be certain, but I suspect we both agree that by this monetization and debasement of the currency, the state sows the seeds of it's own destruction. The very fact of holding Federal Reserve Notes, which are debt, not money, enables these crooks. If one's goal is prevent the state from coercing others, one would wish to hasten it's inevitable demise. One way that could be done would be to use the money received from the state to purchase tangible assets which the fact of simply owning does not trigger a taxable event, such as buying precious metal. After all, the sooner the state collapses under it's own weight, the sooner all would be freed from it's depredations.

      If your goal is to feel moral or ethical superiority via martyrdom, then by all means, pay into the evil system and accept nothing from it. Or, use the funds to buy books by LeFevre, or Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, or anything you like, and leave them in public places with a note that they are free to be taken. From an ethical perspective, any voluntary transaction you use the funds for will be superior to letting the state keep those funds.

      I posted this suggestion on the Freedomschool.com linked above. It looked like displayed at first, but now appears to have been deleted. Perhaps this is just a temporary technical error, so I'm not making an accusation.

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    6. It isn't about feeling moral or ethical superiority. It is about having a standard of right and wrong, and acknowledging when something comes down on the side of wrong, even when it is a guy that is otherwise really likable. It is about being consistent to that standard of right and wrong.

      A position where all is fair in bringing down the state, is the flip side of the statist premise that all is fair in maintaining power.

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    7. No one argued that ALL is fair in bringing down the state, least of all me. You're moving the goalpost. If one wants to discuss right and wrong, you also have an obligation to argue honestly. Otherwise, you come to the discussion with unclean hands.

      To argue that not acting to bring down the state is always an ethical position, you're arguing for the premise that the state should stay in power.

      Also, harm is not a universal absolute, it's based to an extent on whether someone perceives themselves to be aggrieved. In a purely voluntary system, the aggrieved would follow the legal process which evolved in a free market to seek justice and compensation.

      Unfortunately in the current system, most people do not feel aggrieved by being forced to pay Social Security taxes. Even if Paul received more than he concurrently pays, which is not the case, those people could not be said to be aggrieved. It may be your and my opinion that they are, but they don't feel that way.

      In my opinion, Paul is doing the most ethical thing: limiting the amount of theft perpetrated against him, because if he didn't do so, those funds would be available for use to do addition harm to himself and others.

      By limiting the amount of Social Security theft he suffers, he lets the system further destroy itself through currency devaluation via debt monetization. If he turned his check back in by sending it to Treasury, the currency devaluation has already occured, and the money would be spent to do even more harm. You, me, and Paul think such monetization is wrong, and all try to educate others to this effect. There is no way to opt out of receiving checks in a way which would prevent further debt issuance, one would have to send their check back to Treasury. Therefore, I believe he is doing the most ethical thing possible given the circumstances.

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    8. Your stance seems to hinge on the idea that RP is paying more into SS than he is getting out concurrently. If he is in fact only paying in $6800 a year or less, while getting close to 15,000, does that change what you think? Is it still better to get the check when the difference is coming from theft of other taxpayers?

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  6. This was a great article by Walter Block. I especially liked the points about eating food despite government subsidizing it, or living in a house when government does the same. Ha, ha! Wenzel, give us some background on that little weasel from MSNBC who asked that retarded question!

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  7. But not below the intellectual level of those who would go after Ron Paul. This is a pretty classic Alinsky-style tactic, ridicule your opponent. Of course, the attack is handled pretty well and I think it just ends up backfiring, as it exposes how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that bilks its largest contributors.

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  8. How can you legally opt out of paying into social security? If you have figured that out, then yes, Ron Paul would be a hypocrite.

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    1. You may not be able to legally opt out of paying in but you can certainly opt out of collecting it.

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    2. So what? What does that have to do with anything? As long as he's not advocating taxes he's not at fault. I'd rather him get the money than the state spending it on something else. Starve the beast.

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  9. Excellent article by Walter Block.

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  10. I don't think Ron Paul is a hypocrite. I don't blame people who use the system to their advantage. Just like I don't blame the farmers who take subsidies. There shouldn't be subsidies for them to take in the first place, but it's difficult to blame someone who takes advantage of a system.

    That said, I don't agree with Ron Paul's "contract" argument. When your only way to fulfill a contract is by taking the payout by force from other people, that contract is immoral. If your TV is stolen, you don't have the moral right to break into your neighbor's house to take their TV.

    Social Security "investments" of the previous generations was pissed away a long time ago. The only way the government has to meet its "obligations" is to take the current payouts by force from people who had nothing to do with that money being pissed away.

    I'm a decade and a half from being eligible for SS payments, and my wife and I are already "arguing" about this since I assert that, if at all possible, I don't want to accept SS payments. I suspect when push comes to shove, I will accept them just for a modicum of peace and tranquility that I would otherwise not receive. ;)

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    1. He's not advocating the force, only taking from what was already taken, much better than leaving it to the fools running the state for some other crap they'd spend it on. If it was up to him that would not be there. When are you going to get this? If the system could be gone tomorrow I have zero doubt that Paul would be among those happy to see it gone and would not be calling for it's return.

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    2. He's not "breaking into his neighbors house", he's accepting money from the very entity which stole his property in the first place. Those who accept money from the government aren't the perpetrators of the theft. Indeed, all of us are victims of it.

      Now, I understand that this could be seen as tacit approval of the theft, but refusing to accept money from the thief really does nothing to prevent him from stealing. Ron Paul - of all people - has done more to encourage people to recognize this fact than probably anyone in the past half century; I think that's a far greater contribution than the token gesture of refusing money from the entity which has stolen from you your entire life.

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    3. So it's ok to break into your neighbor's house as long as you proxy the crime through a thief and don't do the dirty work yourself?

      If you go to a Mafia Don to collect a debt, and you know the only way he'll be able to pay you is by extorting money from the local businesses, that makes you ok you're getting the money from the entity that took your money?

      I don't think so.

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  11. If someone breaks into your house and steals your television you dont have a right to break into your neighbors and steal his tv. You DO have the right to break into the thief's house and get your tv back.

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    1. In SS, the people you're taking money from had NOTHING to do with taking the money from you.

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  12. Some users here seem to have a severe case of Irony deficiency!!!

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  13. "If a gang takes your money for 50 years and tells you to come back for it when you retire and the gang passes it back out to you in dribs and drabs, you have every right to take that money back from the beast."

    There is no money to take back. It was dropped over Vietnam, It was used to build B-52s, Claymores, Hueys, roads to nowhere and squirrel sanctuaries.
    The three million dollars of taxloot which Ron Paul has pocketed is not the money that they took from him while he was practicing medicine.
    It was taken from his young cult followers, who firmly believe that government is a gang of thieves writ large – except Ron Paul.

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    1. Correction to the government cult follower RoC: Since Ron Paul actually votes against and advocates ending the theft programs that you are certainly in favor of and reference the government doing, there is a reason he is not considered a thief like an Obama/Bush/Romney type who is always very generous with other people's money.

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    2. Hey genius, Ron Paul pays more into SS than he gets bak to this day.

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    3. RoC, nice try.

      Homework assignment: look up the definitions of two words.

      1. Coerce

      2. Voluntary

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  14. "It was taken from his young cult followers, who firmly believe that government is a gang of thieves writ large – except Ron Paul."

    And they would be right.

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  15. An interesting note:

    My wife just graduated and is now an elementary school teacher. The union she was forced to join to complete student teaching somehow got it into the teacher's contracts that they do not have to pay Social Security tax. It is diverted into their retirement plan, which has a 12% mandatory contribution.

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  16. Yes, but where does it end? You already have some in the liberty movement defending the actions of the drug snitch, Stacey Litz, because "that is just the way the system is set up."

    Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

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  17. I'd be happy to forgo everything I've contributed to SS so far if I could opt out of the system right now and forevermore.

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  18. RP calls for the ability to opt out of the SS ponzi game. Since that has never been an option I see nothing hypocritical about RP's stance. Being hypocritical means that the said hypocrite had some kind of choice to make - One which was in accordance to their stance and one which is not. Not being a voluntary system, SS in its current form offers no practical choice.

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  19. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/354584/20120620/ron-paul-social-security-news-delegate-2012.htm

    The IB Times hilariously attempted to attack Ron paul over this issue!

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  20. http://www.theprojectveritas.org/cjlpartv

    This is interesting. Apparently that James O Keefe character claims to have uncovered evidence that the same person who tried to ambush Ron Paul on the Social Security issue, Sam Stein, also intentionally gets sources drunk to get information out of them.

    "Not only did we expose a "pay-for-play" deal among unions and non-profits where a researcher for a prominent public policy institute was willing to "kill" a study that did not support the goals of a union; but we brought to light a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor who gloated how reporters, particularly Sam Stein, "goes out drinking at night" and when "you get some booze in people and suddenly the stories flow."

    Here is the youtube link to the video of Stein being exposed:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJDCWHxe4-M

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  21. Ok, I accept the "I have contributed to Social Security for 50 years so at least I should get some of my money back" argument.

    But I don't understand Block's argument that because the State is all around us and we use its "services" by default, that therefore it's acceptable to take Social Security checks. As opposed to government roads or the monopoly that is the post office, Social Security checks are easily disposable. Yes, there are elements of the State one cannot detach oneself from...but SS checks are far far down that list. Furthermore, Ron Paul hasn't been arguing for privatization of the roads or ending the post office's monopoly (though he probably believes in both); he has, however, been advocating for the phasing out of Social Security.

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    1. It sounds to me like he implicitly did argue for privatizing roads and the post office in the MSNBC interview.

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  22. Am reminded of the nonsense that popped up a year or so back about Ayn Rand getting Social Security/Medicare (I forget which) and claims that she was a 'hypocrite'.

    Forgotten is that paying into SS/MD is not voluntary...

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  23. We live in a competitive world. The "natural" market we operate in is the one that exists. So we are free to take full advantage to any legal activity. Welfare, bailouts, etc. -- so long as we did not create these policies or encourage these policies. By not taking what is available, we put ourselves at disadvantage and will have difficulty operating from a position of power, which is needed to change the system.

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