“Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else. ”

As usual, PJ is right. Governments cause the opposite of affluence unless you are one of our "leaders".

Exactly!

Government does not cause affluence! ! ! It can destroy it. If government were kept to a minimal size, no larger than to simply define and enforce the Law of Nature and of Nature's God and, develop a harmonious system of justice, prosperity would flourish. Affluence has become a shallow and mythical phantasm to engorge the size of tyrannical government. The foreign despot has and is exchanging debt for money, de-industrializing the economy, numbing the senses to life's nobility, destroying families for the carnal me, now and other immoral vitiating causes, ignoring history (complete with either forgetting, ridiculing or twisting events, documents, people and all else that made this nation great), dumbing down all of society with special focus on eliminating all concepts, philosophy, and understanding of true liberty and freedom (students, as well as the general public, by large part can not read, write, think critically, abstractly, independently, or articulate), religion is ridiculed or otherwise misused to inflame the ignorant (from radical Atheism to Islam / from extra biblical Christianity to irrational fear of Jews, etc.), and expanding compelled compliance, licensing, victimless crimes, and larceny. The government's current anti-affluence activities can only bring about poverty, hunger, anger, pain, ignorance, destruction, and violence.

Absolutely. A welfare state is hardly affluent, and that is what the Obamaphiles are trying to turn us into. Income taxation is a fraud to keep the middle class down. The recent legislation passed by Congress will cut the top off the middle class and bring it back down to a level whereby most people are earning and spending but are constantly in debt.

Tell it to the Swedes and especially to the Chineese who have gained dramatic affluence and control over us less governmentally dominated countries like the US. No one likes a totalitarian situation which means all decisions come from one person, but a cooperative society where folk work together for the common good brings prosperity to all.

Waffler, you listen way to much to government's theocratic propaganda and other media spread mis-information. Most simply, the more individual freedom realized - the greater the prosperity and wealth creation; the greater the despotic control - the greater the poverty and wealth destruction. For an example of such, look at Sweden, China and the U.S.A.

I could argue for hours on this subject but what would it achieve... The greatest affluence in India was once ruled by a dictator....

Good government is about both the creation and redistribution of wealth and resources. A climate for creation and a structure for flow and redistribution. Many of the worlds' problems are caused by a lack of flow or redistribution of money, resources and wealth. I think it's called sharing at it's most basic level. Inequality in terms of ability and reward does not preclude fairness in this respect. The pie is large but those who don't have a slice still need to be offered a bite. Socialists and liberals are not against the creation of wealth but they are about ensuring that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the wealth of a nation and hopefully the bounty of the world are redistributed as fairly as possible. There is massive wealth in the world but it is sitting in the bank accounts of the richest minority doing nothing but creating an ever increasing gap and an ever increasing resentment.

Mick, Manchester - The problem is that those like you who think with Socialist Liberal mentality actually believe that you should have the right and authority to take the wealth from someone's bank account and distribute it to others.
That is known as theft ... whether taken by individuals or by a government.
--- "Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help." - Frédéric Bastiat, The Law.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President - Source: 1792, in disapproval of Congress appropriating $15,000 to assist some French refugees

That's a rather extreme view of a progressive taxation system Mary MI.