Dammit, I KNOW better than to waste my time with armchair rightists, and I still get roped into this [View all]

[DFW]

There's a guy on FB that thinks he is a righteous (because he has a lot of money) libertarian (because he is apprehensive about "them," whoever "they" are, from the government coming to take his money and his rights away (he obviously never saw the opening scene to "The Newsroom&quot .

He knows I now live much of the time in Germany, and so put up this post on FB to provoke me. He always quotes the Cato Institute, which he justifies by saying the Kochs no longer run the place (that's apparently a justification). He ALWAYS quotes the Cato Institute to justify everything. Beats thinking for yourself, I guess.

Here's his jab:
"Germany isn’t exactly a fiscal role model.

Tax rates are too onerous and government spending consumes about 44 percent of economic output.

That’s even higher than it is in the United States, where politicians at the federal, state, and local levels divert about 39 percent of GDP into the public sector.

Germany also has too much red tape and government intervention, which helps to explain why it lags other European nations such as Denmark and Estonia in the Economic Freedom of the World rankings."

Right, Denmark and Estonia, with a combined population of something like the Berlin and Munich metropolitain areas.....DUH.

So, I stooped to his level. I shouldn't have. I have better things to do, even with a day off (I get one every three weeks or so). But I answered him this time. I know I'll regret it, but he'll just post some more ignorable stuff from Cato, and this time, I WILL ignore it (I hope)- I THINK I can, I THINK I can, I THINK I can. Anyway, here's what I sent back. May the Great Spirit forgive me.

"Yeah, I think living here for a few years and speaking the language will give me a better impression that an extremist right wing 'think' tank from a foreign country. True, the tax burden is heavy here, maybe too heavy after the 'paradise' of 39.6% back home. On the other hand, there is very little poverty, the very few people that are without health insurance or with guns in the house are already considered too many, the streets and the infrastructure are constantly repaired, and their unemployment is below what the last Republican regime left us in the States. Nazi-like hate speech is prohibited (Fox "News" doesn't broadcast here) as is the Nazi Party (my daughters went to the public Anne Frank Elementary School, of which there are none in Texas). There's a yin and yang to everywhere, and those who think they live in some kind of paradise that makes their country 'the best in the world' doth usually protest too much--just ask the Germans what the Nazis used to say about their Teutonic paradise. Sure, Germany has its 'very rich,' just like we do, but it hardly at all has any very poor (some, but very few). I don't see our having a few dozen million poverty cases, crumbling streets and crumbling bridges as badges of honor to wear alongside our lower tax rate. Obviously, today's America is cool with that where Germany is not. That makes one different from the other, not better. Chacun à son goût, after all."