Why American Conservatives Are Suddenly Freaking Out About Guillotines

[DFW]

105. A balance must be struck, though

In France, for example, there is a 20% value added tax on everything, a 55% payroll tax employers pay tax on wages paid to employees, and an income tax that gets to over 55% in no time flat. An employee takes home maybe 20-30% of what he costs his employer. Why there is big unemployment is easy to see--it's too expensive to hire anyone to work for you. So what does the government do with all this money they rake in? Like one-celled animals, they divide and make more of themselves. They award themselves huge perks and lifetime pensions, create new agencies and subdivisions, send out brigades of "auditors" and customs squads to collect fines. If no law justifies one, they make one up on the spot (I've seen this). They collect a commission on fines they rake in, so they have every incentive to terrorize small businesses that can't pay for legal help to defend themselves, and leave the big companies alone because the big boys can pay the necessary bribes to protect themselves.

In other words, the state is not always benevolent, and state corruption is just as easy to achieve as private corruption (remember what happened to Ceaucescu in Romania). A degree of oversight is equally as necessary, and the trouble with the state being all powerful is that they are the ones who oversee themselves (see "Union, Soviet&quot . Stalin was not FDR. A degree of benevolence is necessary at the top, or the masses get oppressed no matter what the system. Bush Lite wasn't wrong when he joked that a dictatorship was fine as long as he was the dictator. There is a reason most of France hates Hollande's guts right now. He thinks Bush was right.