Flat Tax VS Progressive Tax

Is a flat tax better than a progressive tax is a big debate when it comes to talking about taxes and what each person should be required to pay. Some people think that a flat tax for all people would be the most fair way for the government to get its money. Others believe that a progressive tax is the right way to go because then they feel it is more fair because say that the rich people who make lots of money should have to pay more than the lower class people who don’t make as much money.

One example from the article that I read was that if someone who makes $100,000 pays a twenty percent flat tax rate, they would end up paying $20,000, and someone who makes $50,000 would have to pay that same flat rate of twenty percent, they would end up only having to pay $10,000. A lot of people think this is the fairest way to do it. Lots of people feel that everyone should have to pay the exact same rate. I see the point here and I do agree that a flat rate is the fairest way for all people when it comes to paying taxes. But, others still think this is unfair because they feel it affects the poor more than it does the rich. A flat tax rate would also be way easier to calculate because it would take away most of the deductions, exemptions, and loopholes that we have with the current system. With the whole flat tax system it would be a lot easier for people to be able to figure how much they would be paying in taxes because you know that it is just a simple flat rate without most of the deductions and exemptions.

Germans VS Japanese

Both the Germans and the Japanese were extremely cruel in the experiments that they performed on these people. Reading these articles you see how inhumane these people actually were during this war at the time. I knew that bad things were happening during the war but I did not know that such bad things were happening. Like, I knew that there were these “doctors” at the German concentration camps but after reading the article about what they did, it makes you think how cruel can people be?

                I did not realize how cruel these Japanese soldiers were but they almost sound worse than the Germans who had concentration camps to hold their prisoners. When the Japanese soldiers went into Nanking, they did some things that other people would not even think of doing to another human being. Cutting people open and performing surgery on them while they were still alive without anything to numb the pain is not something that is okay to be doing to another human being. Some of the other things that they did in put people in pressure chambers until they were dead, spinning people to death, and pouring gas on them and burning them alive. This is not all they did to torture their victims, they also used them for things like bayonet practice, shooting targets, and they used them to test explosives. There is also much more that they did to their victims.

                The Germans were not a whole lot better either. They did a lot of the same stuff as the Japanese did. They also performed surgeries and experiments on their victims while they were still alive. They were also killing people by mass numbers and tried to wipe out an entire group of people. They were brutal to their victims just like the Japanese were. The Germans had things like concentration camps that they would use to kill large amounts of people.

                After it was all done, the worst part is, it that most of the Japanese got off the hook and nothing even happened to them for the things they did. They should have been punished like some of the Germans were.

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Nixon went down in history as one of the United States worst presidents. Even though he did a few bad things while he was in office, most people fail to see how many good things that he accomplished. While he was president, Nixon had a lot of success in other countries with his foreign policies. But like all of America’s past presidents, he also had his flaws while he was in office.

Most people living in America at the time were against the Vietnam War. One of Nixon’s biggest successes of his foreign policies was getting the United States out of the Vietnam War. The process in which Nixon withdrew troops was called Vietnamization. This process sought to save American lives and expenses through gradual with drawl of forces from Vietnam. So some people admire Nixon by succeeding to bring all the American troops from Vietnam.

Another big success Nixon had overseas is when he reopened relations with China. Richard Nixon himself actually took a trip to China and this was a very important trip because it was the first Americans inside the borders of the People’s Republic of China. The reason this trip was also so historical was because it marked the time when the United States of America would begin to recognize the People’s Republic of China. It was the Ping Pong Diplomacy that allowed the American Ping Pong team to go to China and compete against ping pong teams from the rest of the world. The reason the United States tried so hard to create a good relationship between China and America was to put pressure on or relieve pressure with other countries.

Nixon also had great success in his effort on arms control with the Soviet Union. Part of this was SALT I. SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitations Talks. This whole thing also lead to the Triangular Diplomacy. The three nations that were part of the Triangular Diplomacy were the United States, China, and Russia. So Nixon had great success with the USSR.

Another event that happened while Nixon was president was when his involvement with Israel eventually went on to cause an oil crisis in America that didn’t just have an effect at the time but remained to play an effect in the future. The oil crisis started when Arab nations said they would not sell oil to the United States anymore. The result of this would cause the price of a barrel of oil to quadruple. This would mark the first time that the Arab nations would use oil as a political and economic weapon.

Obviously Nixon’s biggest fail as president and the one thing that everybody knows him for today is Watergate. Nixon was involved in one of the biggest scandals in American history. It was because of Nixon’s involvement in Watergate that he became the first United States president in history to have to resign from office. It is because of this that Richard Nixon would go down in history as one of the worst presidents the United States has ever elected.

Socialistic VS Capitalistic

After reading a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. he talks about how he is much more socialistic than capitalistic, but he is not opposed to capitalistic. He also thinks though that capitalism has out-lived its purpose. So that brings up the question, has capitalism actually out-lived its purpose? The definition of capitalism is a system in which private or corporate wealth is used in the production and distribution of goods resulting in the dominance of private owners of capital and production for profit. On the other hand, the definition of socialism is a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.

One of the differences between capitalism and socialism is that in capitalism the means of production is owned and traded for private owners and shareholders to generate profit. This means it is more focused on individual profit rather than society to profit as a whole. Socialism focuses more on profit being distributed evenly to society. The social structures of the two cultures are also different. In capitalism, classes exist based on their means of production. With socialism, classes are diminished. Although, there is no form of discrimination by the government in either capitalism or in socialism.

One of the biggest differences between socialism and capitalism is how the people control the government. In a capitalistic government, the upper class people are more against the government. The reason they are against it is because they want to privately own their big business so they can make as much money as possible. After these people make all their money and get rich they want to keep their money and do not want the government to have any say in it. In a socialistic government they don’t have that. When you have a socialistic government all factories and other means of production are owned by the government, even though the workers still control it. That is one of the biggest differences between a country that has a capitalistic economy and one that has a socialistic economy.

Some modern day examples of a capitalistic economy is the United Kingdom and the United States, while some an example of a socialistic economy would be the USSR. So even though capitalism worked out before, it may have out-lived its usefulness now.

 

The Fall of Democracy

Democracy was first found in Greece when Athens established the first democratic government. I have now recently read a quote by John Adams who was the second president of the United States. He basically says that even though democracy will last for a while in a country, it never lasts long and in the end will eventually kill itself off. This quote has a lot of truth behind it. It really makes you think about the government we have here in the United States and how it might not always be a democracy here in America and one day it is almost bond to fall. I totally agree with what John Adams says here 100%. I agree with the fact that countries that rule with democracy will eventually fall. Sometimes it lasts for a very long time while others only last for a short time, but eventually they all will begin to crumble until they fail in the end. I like how he compares it to a monarchy and an aristocracy. Democracy is very different than these other types of government and John Adams says that with this quote. Just in case somebody doesn’t know what a monarchy or an aristocracy are, a monarchy is when one person rules, like a king or a queen, in an aristocracy the power is held by the nobility, or the rich and powerful people. John Adams says that a democracy is more bloody than either an aristocracy or a monarchy. He is also right in saying this. In a democracy, the people have a great amount of freedom and if the government tries to take away any of that freedom the people will rebel against the government and that is just one way that the entire democratic system can break down. If the government does anything that makes the people living in the country unhappy it will eventually lead to an outrage when the people turn on the government. Eventually the people will try and take over the government and that will lead to the fall of the democracy. The people can rebel against the government like this because the government has given them the freedom to do so. This is one way a democracy can kill itself. When a democracy is poorly run it eventually becomes exhausted and is easily overthrown, which is another way a government can kill itself. I think in America it is just a matter of time before our government becomes exhausted.

Bicameral Government

There are three main reasons why we have the bicameral system today. One reason is the historical part. The British had a bicameral legislature and most of the American colonists knew how the system worked quite well. Most of the states had already consisted of bicameral legislatures at the time anyway. Another reason is that the system was practical. Big states wanted states with larger populations wanted more say in government and small states wanted equal say. By forming two houses all states are equally represented in the Senate like the small states wanted and states are represented based on population in the House like the big states wanted. The third reason for the bicameral house is the theoretical part. Nobody wanted one house to rule the government. So the idea of having two houses was so one could keep the other in check. I think that the bicameral system is very effective in today’s government.  That’s why I think it is a good thing to have.

                                                                  Torture Tactics
Did you know that a large amount of American money is spent each year on torturing terrorists from other countries? Two military psychologists got paid $80 million by the American government to create torture tactics that they could use on suspected terrorists to try and gain knowledge from them. These two doctors were receiving quite the pay day even though neither one of them had any experience as professional interrogators. They actually didn’t even have and specialized knowledge on the terrorist group al Qaeda. Another thing that wasn’t very great about these two is that they didn’t really seem to invent anything, yet they still got the paid outrageous amounts with the taxpayer’s money.

I also never knew about the Salt Pit prison until now. The Salt Pit is a dungeon like prison where many terrorists have been tortured. The government began to use the building in 2002, one year after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One of the supervisors said that the Salt Pit was good for interrogation because it was “the closest thing to a dungeon.” There was many different methods of torture that was used here ranging from water torture, to deprivation of sleep. No good records were kept on what actually happened here which makes it hard for people to figure out what actually happened here.

During the Bush administration, hundreds of said to be terrorists had been tortured by the CIA. The main spots where this had all been taking place were in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and Iraq, but it also happened in other countries as well. Shortly after President Obama took office in 2009, he began taking important steps towards ending the torture program in the United States.

Even though the people now know what is going on, there has still been little accountability for these deeds.

Accountability For Torture