Anabaptism and the 1st Amendment

[Ken]

I have yet to receive any money for my water system.

That $250M comes out of taxes myself and other people pay. Your argument that my water and septic system is paid off with public funds continues to be absurd. I pay property taxes on my property - including paying taxes for the value of the improvements of the well and septic.

No one said that you weren't paying taxes.

What I said was non-profit schools churches, hospitals, and other charities DON'T pay taxes because they are tax-exempt. And therefore, are being subsidized by all the other individual and business taxpayers in the state.

For a small rural Menno school that subsidy might be pretty small. But they do still get some public services paid for by others such as police and fire protection, road maintenance, snow plowing of the highways in winter, etc. etc. As well as other possible taxpayer subsidies such as I just pointed out for rural water systems.

For a large institution like Notre Dame or the Catholic Church or a major hospital chain those subsidies are in the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Again, this is entirely uncontroversial. It is how our system works. Nothing is for free. What you don't pay for someone else has to.

[Josh]

Your fundamental promise that not being taxed is a “subsidy” is what I find ridiculous, and then we went through what you claim nonprofit schools get “subsidies” for, where I also proved you are wrong.

Not having your money confiscated by the mob doesn’t mean the mob is “subsidising” you. In your worldview, you seem to believe all my property and money belongs to the government, and then the government is generously giving some of it back.

[Ken]

Your fundamental promise that not being taxed is a “subsidy” is what I find ridiculous, and then we went through what you claim nonprofit schools get “subsidies” for, where I also proved you are wrong.

Not having your money confiscated by the mob doesn’t mean the mob is “subsidising” you. In your worldview, you seem to believe all my property and money belongs to the government, and then the government is generously giving some of it back.

You can believe whatever you want Josh. But the fact is that we live in a society in which a large number of non-profit organizations receive a wide range of government services that they do not pay for because they are tax-exempt. Any economist will tell you that this constitutes a subsidy. It is an indirect subsidy, but it is a subsidy nonetheless.

Again, none of this is remotely controversial. Either the concept or the implementation. In the US we choose to subsidize private non-profits in this manner because it is viewed as a public good. And we do it this way rather than nationalizing most of the services that private non-profits provide and turning them into government institutions as is the case in more socialist countries.

[Josh]

Not taxing people is not a “subsidy”, no matter how much you keep repeating that it is.

[Ken]

Not taxing people is not a “subsidy”, no matter how much you keep repeating that it is.

Again Josh. The subsidy is in receiving government services for free that everyone else is paying for through taxes.

It might be a tiny subsidy for a small rural Menno school. It represents a huge subsidy for large non-profits like universities, hospitals, and big churches.

You live in Ohio which is home to large non-profits like, for example, the Cleveland Clinic which is a private non-profit hospital chain with annual revenues in the $10 billion range. So it pays no property taxes on its many hospitals and clinic locations and no income tax on its revenues. Yet benefits from all manner of public services that everyone else pays for such as fire and police services, highway and street maintenance, and lots of other public infrastructure investment. We do this because we believe that private institutions like the Cleveland Clinic serve a public good and in our society we have chosen to subsidize them in this manner rather than nationalizing them and running them as government institutions as is the case in countries like the UK where the health system is nationalized and public.

All other taxpayers in Cleveland and in Ohio are paying more in taxes to subsidize public services for the Cleveland clinic and the thousands of other non-profit organizations in Ohio. That is how our largely private society works and what makes us different from socialist countries.

[Josh]

A nonprofit isn’t “subsidised”. It doesn’t make a profit. Employers pay taxes on their incomes.

You seem to think that is a subsidy. I think your reasoning is absurd. The history of income taxes is that wages and for-profit business revenues are taxed - in other words, individual income. Businesses ultimately aren’t taxed; people are.

With a nonprofit no income existed to be taxed in the first place.

[temporal1]

Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4713&p=156289#p156289

The Daily Bonnet
“Elon Musk Offers Free Cybertruck to Any Left-wingers Willing to Stay on Twitter”
https://dailybonnet.com/elon-musk-offer ... g-twitter/

[Robert]

This is interesting. He is not free to express his faith because it is a private property, but public is allowed. Not sure where I fall on this. He is just wearing clothing. Could the ban the Hajab too then? Will they?

[Ken]

This is interesting. He is not free to express his faith because it is a private property, but public is allowed. Not sure where I fall on this. He is just wearing clothing. Could the ban the Hajab too then? Will they?

How stupid. Those mall cops should have just let him shop. The video text says it is Minneapolis Police but they are clearly just low wage suburban mall cops responding to some complaint.

Every mall prohibits solicitation which means you can't proselytize inside the mall, hand out religious tracts and so forth. Otherwise malls would be full of proselytizers of every denomination from Mormons to Jehovah's Witness to Nation of Islam and a trip to the mall would mean running a gauntlet of people preaching and sticking religious tracts in your face. But it doesn't look like he was doing proselytizing.

On the other hand, I doubt he would have been allowed to carry religious signs like the Westboro Baptist Church does up and down the mall concourse. So where you draw the line between the two, I don't know. It is private property so I guess they have to decide whatever policy is going to maximize mall profits and keep the greatest number of their customers happy. I doubt this mall actually has a written policy that they were following, but maybe it does.

. . . .

Edit: From the video caption it is identified as Mall of America and they actually they do have a dress policy: https://www.mallofamerica.com/security This is the relevant language below. I guess if you squint hard you can maybe see how some might think it violates the policy against religious slurs since the back of his shirt has a black line through the famous COEXIST logo that is made out of the symbols of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and others. The back of his shirt literally has the Star of David, Islamic crescent, and Hindu Om symbol crossed out. But it requires some squinting to be offended I think. On the other hand their language of "may include but is not limited to" gives them plenty of wiggle room.

In my opinion, we are raising a nation of "Karens" who find offense at the drop of a hat, both on the left and the right. And I find it all increasingly tiresome. The recent Hamline University Mohammad picture scandal is an example of this that probably merits discussion here in this thread.

[Robert]

From the video caption it is identified as Mall of America and they actually they do have a dress policy: https://www.mallofamerica.com/security This is the relevant language below. I guess if you squint hard you can maybe see how some might think it violates the policy against religious slurs since the back of his shirt has a black line through the famous COEXIST logo that is made out of the symbols of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and others. The back of his shirt literally has the Star of David, Islamic crescent, and Hindu Om symbol crossed out. But it requires some squinting to be offended I think. On the other hand their language of "may include but is not limited to" gives them plenty of wiggle room.

In my opinion, we are raising a nation of "Karens" who find offense at the drop of a hat, both on the left and the right. And I find it all increasingly tiresome. The recent Hamline University Mohammad picture scandal is an example of this that probably merits discussion here in this thread.

His freedom of speech(expression) and religion is being restricted to someone else's eyes. The question is does this really do harm to someone else. I think it does not. It may not feel comfortable to some, but it is not really causing harm like second hand smoke. He could press it if he chooses. This means I can restrict Muslim Hajabs in my place of business. They are offensive to me. I think if this went to court, it might have to go way up, it would be overturned, but the Mall knows it is not worth anyone's trouble so they use the policy as they see fit.