I fought the [s]law[/s] IRS and...Follow

As I said, I see it as an important part of citizenship. I understand Gbaji doesn't share or understand these values as he demonstrated by comparing it to playing your car radio too loud. There's really no bridging that gap.

You're saying that not violating noise ordinances isn't also a part of citizenship?


Also, I'm curious about the connection you're making there. Do you see paying taxes as an important part of citizenship because it ensures everyone has some vested interest in the costs of the government and the actions it takes with that money? Or is it just the act of filling out a tax form that matters to you? Because I see it as the former, but I suspect that for you it's the latter. At least that seems to be what you're arguing. Because you don't seem to care that I do pay my taxes and have paid more than my fair share over the period of time in question. You care about whether or not I filled out a piece of paper at the right time.

And if past arguments are any judge, you have no problem with people who fill out that piece of paper and the result is that they pay zero taxes, or who gain significantly more in direct government benefits than said tax burden. So it's not really "paying taxes" you think is important for citizenship at all. What is it then? Following orders? Filling out forms on time? Is that really the Jophiel measurement of good citizenship? To me, that seems a bit trivial.

Your attempts to rationalize it away hasn't changed my opinion.

If I didn't have to pay taxes I wouldn't. What I would do however is throw money in with the others on my street to have the road fixed, or toss some cash to the school to pay their teachers so my kids could go there, or toss some cash in a hat for little Jonny's crutches. I'd toss a bit more than my less fortunate neighbour just because it's the right thing to do. Of course, this would all have to be organized so we'd have to all come to an agreement on who manages the money and when the street next to us realized we were all doing the management work twice we'd just join up with them, eventually there'd be too many people to speak to individually so we'd have to hold some sort of manager selection system using public media as a sort of job application selection process. At some point we'd have to draft up some rules about how much money each person should put in and probably enforce them because some people are jerks...

Gbaji's "defense" is this:

Imagine yourself at school. Your obligation is to perform the sum total of the schoolwork given during the day and your homework at night. You do the work during the day under the eyes of the teacher but decide the homework isn't worth your time and blow it off. At the end of the year, the teacher informs you that you'll be held back from graduating. You hurry up and spend Memorial Day weekend making up for all your missing homework.

Later, someone says you're not a very serious student. You protest "But I did MOST of my work! Everything the teacher directly made me do throughout the year when I had no choice, I did! So you can't claim that I didn't take it seriously!" They point out that the missing homework is exactly what made them think that, not the work you never had a chance to avoid. You protest "But when I was caught months and months later and forced to do it, I did it! I even had to give up a holiday weekend to avoid a worse punishment! So actually I'm even BETTER than most students because I suffered more for originally blowing off my work!"

They just shake their head and walk away, leaving you to your denial as you start saying it's no worse than using the bathroom without a hall pass or getting up to sharpen your pencil without raising your hand and, after all, no one did MORE work than they were assigned so how dare they judge you and ...

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 9:28am by Jophiel

Yes, Joph, I understand his defense is...non-existant...which is why I'm not trying to defend his defense. I was just responding to a few posters in this thread who have accused him of not paying taxes when it is much more accurate to say he didn't pay enough taxes.

In defense of the posting (still not defending what he did), Baby Capone did:
a) admit to what he did
b) admit it was really, really stupid
c) warn other people not to do the same thing
d) make things right and pay the penalties for his initial wrongdoing

Again, I'm not saying that makes what he did ok, just that he's no different than a convicted criminal who has served his prison time and been released.

Ha ha, yeah. I've only been doing and filing my taxes for the last eleven years because it's fun.

I'm not sure I see you taking gbaji's advice either way.

See, I always knew since the rape thread that gbaji is, for all intents and purposes a sociopath. That surface Hey-I'm-just-a-regular-guy-ness, sense of entitlement yet complete lack of empathy or remorse, the boasting references to promiscuity... Of course I'm not saying he is a sociopath. I don't have the necessary degrees to be able to make that call.

Pretty sure Joph is speaking to the entirety of gbaji's posting career. Forum search subject "taxes" author "gbaji" if you're in the mood for some reading material.

Oh well in that case take that portion of my previous post with a grain of salt.

And apparently I don't comprehend how not to double post.

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 3:21pm by Bigdaddyjug

Wait, Qualcomm is still in business? I thought they were out of business when I started in the business 8 years ago.

Note: I'm no longer in the wireless business.