Income, Taxes, and Work

[PLAYER57832]

Taxation as is now is horrible. Far too much waste. Just because taxes are necessary does not mean we should continue to pay them to an entity that is unable to properly manage our tax dollars.

You are attacking the wrong entity.. and therein lies the whole problem.

Are taxes wasteful? Sure. Some of that is basically inherent in any large system. Any large system is plain going to have some waste because controlling it all well is just so difficult.

BUT.. we NEED taxes. Without taxes, we have a system of privately run roads that are a mishmash of quality and high cost, far MORE inefficient than our current system (history shows us this). Similarly, without a good, universal, public school system, you have population that is unequally educated to such an extreme democracy becomes impossible. (note, we are close to that now due to the denuding of the public system and rise of home-schooling movements.. that is, when we see disputes over actual facts far more than disputes over opinion, it is harmful from the outset).

BUT, and here is the kicker. Those things are not being paid the way they should. Its interesting, isn't it? Talk of "cut GOVERNMENT" winds up with reduced police and fire services, reductions in school payments, welfare and food stamps, not to mention medical payments. YET... none of those, not even the medical aspect, really makes a serious dent in the budget. Who gets the largess? The big guys? They get "reductions" in their taxes... even as the impacts of their operations are known to be worse and worse. We just saw extreme and serious harm to the Gulf that will take centuries to repair (I do NOT exaggerate at all, this is my field of study, but it would take a long time to detail how I know this to be true). BUT, here is the kicker. I can almost gaurantee that your first response to my statement will be to dismiss it as "radical nonsense". And that, itself highlights the real problem, one to which I alluded above and have alluded to before. This IS my area of expertise, I do know of what I speak ( am published, do research on this and you will find some of my stuff out there).. but neither you, nor anyone else who dislikes my ideas will even bother to take the time to see if I speak truth or not. Even if you wanted to, finding all the data and information would take a long time. This last, the time involved, is why fundamental trust in science and the scientific establishment is important. Not trust that science is absolutely perfect, but trust that the system of science is self-correcting, fundamentally of value and data that has been run through the scientific process is valid.

It is absolutely no cooncidence that this resurgeance of trickle down economics, fundamental attacks on the ideas of taxes and of having much government control at all comes alongside the surge of home-schooling and religious fundamentalism with disdain for science at its very roots.

Individual corporations have no real vested interest in protecting our world around, in protecting our children's future. Only an educated voting public can oppose such oppression. When the companies, however, are allowed to control the sources of information, which they do in many private school systems, in advertising and when they exert their will through heavy support of particular political entities through donations (often anonymous donations now), then the voting public fails because they lack the information. Only those with both the will AND the time to challenge the prevailing prominantly disbursed opinions get any sense of real truth. That has always been true, the public has always been subject to manipulation. However, never have the stakes been do high and never has the fundaments of science and the very definition of what represents fact been so at risk.

[BigBallinStalin]

Wrong. He creates nothing. You're committing the (very common) error of ignoring Say's Law.

Production equals consumption -- that is not negotiable. Since there are no practical limits to consumption, but there are practical limits to production, the latter is the only defining variable.

How can he create nothing if his money was exchanged for bonds, stocks, or investments in capital and equipment?

One of the key lessons that teachers of investment fundamentals struggle to teach is that "the stock doesn't care who owns it."

If Mr. Rich owns 100 shares of Microsoft and decides to give them to you, is there any net gain or loss for Microsoft? Absolutely none. It's a common saying that the stock market is an essential venue for companies to raise investment financing, but while being true that saying is somewhat misleading. The only thing that provides investment capital to the businesses is the Initial sale of the stock. Once the stock has left that stage and entered the churning maelstrom of the stock market, there is no further gain to the company.

Now, remember, one of the initial parameters laid out in the OP is that Mr. Rich does not work. He is a pampered layabout who inherited his wealth. If he was a venture capitalist, doing research on products and ideas and funneling his money into various ventures then yes, he would be providing further gains to the economy. But that would be changing the parameters of this thread. The dissolute nature of Mr. Rich is one of our bounding parameters. Mr. Rich Sr., the grandfather worked his ass off, made a pile of money, and put it into stocks which Mr. Rich III eventually inherited. He lays on the beach while investment advisors churn his account, moving it from one stock to another.

So, by do nothing, you mean "he did something by hiring people to manage his money"?

This is ridiculous.

Did he?

Try this as a thought experiment:

Mr. Rich does not exist. His parents murdered him in infancy, and then covered up the crime by creating an entire fictitious life for him. There are receipts for the private school he did not attend, for the ski vacations in St. Moritz that he did not take, for the house in St. Lucia where he does not live, and so on.

Now the parents have died of natural causes, but Mr. Rich's non-life goes on. Automatic debits pay all the bills for the houses in which he continues to not live, while various property management services maintain them. Investment consultants continue to churn his account (but are careful not to churn it so aggressively as to raise his suspicions; little do they know that there isn't anybody watching) and pay his various taxes, a big impersonal law firm takes care of whatever the investment consultants can't, and the lawyers never question the eccentric recluse who doesn't answer their letters but pays them well through an automatic debit.

I think you can agree that a nonexistent person doesn't create anything of value. And yet, his non-life is indistinguishable from the life that we postulated for him earlier. If there is no quantifiable difference between the existing Mr. Rich and the non-existing Mr. Rich, then how can the existing one be described as productive?

Think about it; don't just give me a knee-jerk reaction.

Up above (It's too late at night for me to get into advanced cutting-and-pasting) you gave passing acknowledgement to Say's Law with a dismissive tone. I don't think you really accepted how important it is in this situation. Once the caviar is produced, it will be consumed. Whether it is eaten by the living Mr. Rich or whether it is eaten by a maid working for the non-living Mr. Rich (having cleaned his house for 30 years without ever seeing him, she's pretty confident that her theft will not be detected.) The limiting factor on the caviar sector is production, not consumption. Once a good is produced, it will be somehow consumed.

The imaginary person doesn't exist, yet the real one does. One already has all his decisions made for him (or by people before him), and the other makes the decisions. Thank you, Dukusaur, but it's irrelevant because we're discussing two different kinds of people.

You're still wrong in saying that Mr. Rich creates nothing, for reasons I've already been through. If you want to turn Mr. Rich into something he isn't, then have fun, but it's irrelevant.

And, where's the normative?

You're a libertarian, and that's a good thing to be. Thirty years ago my thinking was pretty much where your thinking is now. In fact, almost precisely -- it was 29 years ago tomorrow that we held Canada's first Tax Day Protest, and 100 people under my direction marched down Yonge St. carrying signs saying "Taxation is Theft" and "Not a Penny For Parasites" and other such dainties. (And my personal favourite, which I wrote and people have been using on T-shirts and bumper stickers without attribution ever since -- "Pay Your Taxes -- Pigs Need to Eat Too!")

But my thinking has moved forward from that point, and yours will too one day. (It's not that I despise the government any less, but I've learned that the Non-Governmental Parasites (NGPs) are every bit as despicable, and dangerous.)

You make certain normative assumptions, that private wealth is always earned rather than stolen, that taxation is always bad, and so on. And normative assumptions always interfere with clarity of vision, whether they be good assumptions or bad. Anyway, I hope you try my thought experiment, and then tell me, is Mr. RIch mortmain, or not?

I don't recall making any of those assumptions. If you care to quote me in this thread, then please do. You seem pretty intent on taking Mr. Rich's money for very poor reasons which I keep defeating and which you keep ignoring. Maybe you're the one blinded by his own value judgements? I'm not sure.

So Mr. Rich stole his money from other people? Where do you come up with this?

I dunno, Dukusaur. If you don't like private property rights, then have at it.

If you can't admit that taxation is an involuntary exchange which requires coercion, then what is it?

If you can't tell the difference between private spending and bureaucratic spending and the difference between their incentives, then there's no point to this discussion.

Anyway, I hope you try my thought experiment, and then tell me, is Mr. RIch mortmain, or not?

It was a lovely bit of fiction, Dukusaur. A nice "what if" tale that describes a different kind of person.

[Maugena]

I think all citizens should be entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right so they can take it and make a living eventually. (Directly from the land.)

How would that work? As in, explain, or give an example please.

I'm not exactly sure how it would work, honestly.
It's a thought on a tangent regarding how it seems like we're indebted to the system right from the start.
I was thinking that what I had said might circumvent it.
In any case, this could all just be from a misconception that I have...

[Dukasaur]

If you can't admit that taxation is an involuntary exchange which requires coercion, then what is it?

What's to admit? It's an obviously true statement. If you want explicit agreement on it, then yes: Taxation is an involuntary exchange which requires coercion.

If you can't tell the difference between private spending and bureaucratic spending and the difference between their incentives, then there's no point to this discussion.

Again, true but irrelevant.

Anyway, I hope you try my thought experiment, and then tell me, is Mr. RIch mortmain, or not?

It was a lovely bit of fiction, Dukusaur. A nice "what if" tale that describes a different kind of person.

Okay, you're not in the mood for expanding your mind. Disappointing, but I won't slash my wrists over it.

Adios.

[saxitoxin]

I think all citizens should be entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right so they can take it and make a living eventually. (Directly from the land.)

How would that work? As in, explain, or give an example please.

I'm not exactly sure how it would work, honestly.
It's a thought on a tangent regarding how it seems like we're indebted to the system right from the start.
I was thinking that what I had said might circumvent it.
In any case, this could all just be from a misconception that I have...

Alaska has a pretty decent system via the state's Permanent Fund and annual dividend payments. Richard Nixon proposed a Guaranteed Income Floor for all U.S. citizens (everyone receives $10,000/year whether they made $0 or $1 billion/year or something like that) that was defeated by 2 or 3 votes in the Senate, IIRC.

I don't have a problem with these proposals as long as they're the distributed revenue from state properties (presumably nationalized natural resources). I would have a serious problem if they were just shifting around the GDP through tax schemes. The former would be an entitlement granted through non-coercive/non-violent means, the latter welfare granted through the state's application of coercion and violence (taxes).

But this won't work in every country. The first two things the Fascist Party in Italy introduced were (1) women's voting rights, and, (2) a Guaranteed Basic Income for all citizens. When it became clear that Italy didn't have enough natural resources to support Basic Income, they had to pillage Ethiopia.

[BigBallinStalin]

I think all citizens should be entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right so they can take it and make a living eventually. (Directly from the land.)

How would that work? As in, explain, or give an example please.

I'm not exactly sure how it would work, honestly.
It's a thought on a tangent regarding how it seems like we're indebted to the system right from the start.
I was thinking that what I had said might circumvent it.
In any case, this could all just be from a misconception that I have...

1) If each citizen is entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right, then which resources do they have a right to take?

Are you saying that if someone is born, then this baby gets some land somewhere?

[Maugena]

I think all citizens should be entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right so they can take it and make a living eventually. (Directly from the land.)

How would that work? As in, explain, or give an example please.

I'm not exactly sure how it would work, honestly.
It's a thought on a tangent regarding how it seems like we're indebted to the system right from the start.
I was thinking that what I had said might circumvent it.
In any case, this could all just be from a misconception that I have...

1) If each citizen is entitled to a portion of the nation's resources as a birth right, then which resources do they have a right to take?

Are you saying that if someone is born, then this baby gets some land somewhere?

I didn't fully think out the proposition. trollface.jpg
I don't think it would matter what resources they are in particular as long as there is a reasonable, uniform ceiling for the value of the resources/land given.
Eh, probably make it available for use when they become a legal adult.