Fixing Inequality through Taxes

Fairness is strictly subjective. A wealthy man can easily justify accumulating massive wealth while paying no one out of a sense of fairness.

You are dodging the fact that your whole argument is based on envy with no demonstration of evidence of harm caused by inequality of wealth.

 

Equal Opportunity is Good

Equal Results is Evil.

 

It's as obvious as gravity if one knows historic economic policies. The problem is you have a majority of willfully ignorant people as this thread will confirm. Most republicans adore Reagan and are totally ignorant of his economic polices. It's incredibly hard to have a discussion on a topic when the person as no idea what they're talking about.

 

Why on earth would you want to make our economy less efficient?

 

There is no monopoly in those industries and markets but we are talking people at the top and the government "allowing them" to make what they make.

It is none of the government's business what the most successful make nor what the difference is between them and those who are not successful and don't even strive to be.

 

It is sort or like the argument that the evil rich want everyone else to be poor so they can be richer when the fact is if everyone else is poor they will be not be as rich and might end up poor.

 

No, a good idea and work applied create wealth. Out of thin air, yes, as long as I'm upright and breathing that thin air I'll convert it, and along with my labor, into wealth.

Over the years I've started three businesses, zero start up money other than initially using my home as an office / work space. The only perennial encumbrance I consistently ran into was regulations, licenses and taxes. I'll grant that with a little more capital available new ideas were easier to implement or test but the lack of it wasn't the impediment you suggest. Also, easy capital isn't the panacea either, keeping start up assets limited can focus the human energy on necessary goals and force creative solutions that payoff down the road. Focus, work hard, work efficiently, work smart and apply earnings back into the company or endeavor only where it improves productivity.

In bold above: Here's the fundamental flaw IMO in government economic thought. Restrict to gain equanimity is the default of most all governmental thought on improving the lot of the lower economic classes or improving the small business environment. It should be glaringly obvious that a thought that places restrict and improve in the same sentence is flawed.

If government wants to improve the middle class it must stop impeding small business. Look to removing restrictions by streamlining regulations, simplifying the tax code and providing / mandating customer service representatives within any agency that regulates an industry to aid small business and soul proprietorships in navigating through the byzantine morass of rule.

In another thread a poster lamented the budget woes of the IRS, suggesting that reducing the number of auditors and the number of tax audits would have a negative effect on tax revenue. I wonder - if the IRS converted 50% of its audit staff to taxpayer advocates mandated to help taxpayers meet the rules and regulations of the tax code, finding small flaws in their operation / filing / accounting practice / better use of legitimate deductions etc. and correcting same in lieu of fines and penalty - would it produce more revenue? I absolutely think it would. Carry the same concept to the EPA, Departments of Professional Regulation etc with the a change in policy toward helping business improve first, then the hammer and compliance will follow.

I would prefer to eliminate 50% of regulations, and mandate that they be written in clear and simple English. I would also like to see all regulatory bodies state or federal be required to have all regulations in toto voted on by the empowering legislative bodies involved, force the issue by sun-setting all regulations every 2 years. We've let the rule making powers get too far away from the legislature our representatives constitutionally empowered to write law. They've abdicated their responsibility by allowing agencies to promulgate rule without adequate and immediate oversight. We need more representation in the rule making bodies, NO REGULATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, or at least meaningful oversight.

Do the above and the economy will grow, enforcement will become easier and accepted. Hell you really don't need "advocates" in these regulating agencies just reduce the onerous, duplicate and outdated ones.

I'm rambling again.

Cheers
Labour

 

1. Leftist distortion of the Reagan IRC reform on this forum is so boneheadedly ignorant (or purposefully dishonest), and I have corrected it so many times, that I won't go into detail again. Just suffice to say that any characterization of the Reform that doesn't include the necessary context of the closure of 99% of passive loss shelters, the reduction of personal deductions and beefing up the AMT is a lie being peddled by a purposeful liar or a moron. Pick one, doesn't really matter.

2. FACT: We are in the midst of the greatest, most compressed tech revolution in human history. MSDOS was invented in 81 when Reagan took office, but to the addled left, any resulting wealth inequality simply must be due to Reagan tax policy and not to computers, Email, word processing, miracle drugs, the internet, etc etc etc. the many MIRACLES that we LINE UP TO BUY from innovators in a healthy, entirely voluntary market.

I'll ask leftists a simple question and will not get an honest answer here guaranteed: How much money would I need to pay you for you to give up your Email, smartphone and all internet use for the rest of your life? I wouldn't take $500k in cash for these personally, and have paid a PITTANCE for those things in relation to the benefit captured. Any wealth inequality that results from this is GOOD inequality. The guy who made my cellphone cost $40 a month and connect to the net can have a mountain high stack of gold plated toilets and 150 yachts as far as I'm concerned.

Turning to just a few of these extremely wealthy people, the TEN THOUSAND+ millionaires created by Microsoft ALONE out of HUNDREDS of other tech companies where people got stinking rich, here's what they do with the money. Read it union label leftoids, I DARE you. Note their elitist appearance in the photo at the bottom. Who do you trust to redistribute wealth in a smart way, these smart people who EARNED it? or greedy government that doesn't earn anything, only takes involuntarily, wastes and corrupts? Most of them are LEFTISTS and support LEFTIST CAUSES. So be it, fair enough, they EARNED IT, far be it from me to tell them how to spend it.

http://gizmodo.com/5019527/bill-gat...-crazy-ventures-of-the-microsoft-millionaires

Yeah, sure looks like they are taking all that money out of circulation and burying it in the backyard. Horsesht.

3. The poor and rich, other than a permanent UNREACHABLE underclass of somewhere around 20% by my estimates who will continue f-ing up no matter HOW MUCH income is redistributed, are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE, just at different points in time. The union label left wants to fool you with dehumanized graphs of X% "taking" (never earning) Y% of the wealth and hide this plain fact of human living in a free economy. Today's 25k waitress is tomorrow's 70k top 30%er and a few years later with hard work, in the 10% or 1%. What kind of ABJECT MORON doesn't see this? What kind of snakeoil turd peddles it? A COMPLEX moron/turd who benefits from onerous redistribution, that's who. A union label PR hack, that's who. A government contractor selling us $4 plastic forks, that's who. A hackademic seeking a grant to determine why fat people don't get as many dates, that's who. A pop "musician" or movie star who KNOWS FULL WELL that smart people aren't buying all those songs and tickets, and that redistribution is what made them and the talentless bilge they pump out obscenely rich.

In reality, the rich and poor are mostly the exact same people, just at different points in time. Don't let union label hacks fool you otherwise. Don't believe me? Listen to this smart man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGuNNyOTRnI (from 6 minutes on for those impatient, but the whole thing is worth watching).

Our poor have more than the middle class in EUROPE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebmhTQN-4

Our children have more purchasing power than 3/4 of the world's countries have GDP.

Enough masses in this country have enough money to buy advertised wares such that our GAME SHOW HOSTS make $10 million+ a year. Our talk show hosts make $70 million a year. Our athletes make 25+ million a year. Our pop musicians, 20 mill plus, etc etc. and trickling down, each one of those people at the top supports DOZENS if not more million dollar salaries. Don't let the union label make it all about faceless, perverse hedge fund managers and corrupt white male businessmen, it's YOUR favorite potboiler author, YOUR favorite pop singer, YOUR favorite sports player, YOUR favorite movie director. And NONE of this could go on without a FABULOUSLY WEALTHY MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASS. This couldn't happen in Nigeria... or BELGIUM... or any of the tiny OECD socialist darlings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xL8rE9DT4g

We are stinking filthy rich as a country at all levels, don't let any charts or distortions convince you otherwise. Apply common sense and EDUCATE YOURSELVES, don't fall for transparent union label resentment politics. Don't enrich the Complex, every dollar they get is a dollar WASTED.

 

Why would you want to make it more "efficient"? Economies exist in the context of societies. If society i snot being optimized by the economy then the economy is not serving its purpose to society.

 

To me it is monopoly, when private organizations have a power to control society and the markets it is monopoly, I.e unfair practices.
It is the exactly government business to provide fair playing field and not to allow cartels to take away our economic freedom.

 

What economic freedom of yours has been taken away by a cartel in this country? What private business is controlling society?

 

Cutting overhead and cost, increasing growth and productivity.

What country has done well because it's economy got less efficient?

 

Thanks this is a great point that I think we forget and one I'd like to expand on a bit.

Our leaps in productivity produced through technology you address, have removed the human from the drudgery, soul killing and body wasting work. We are letting machines do the life sucking tasks that we once had humans doing. Simply, robotics have removed man from the danger zone of industry. Yes it has had an effect on employment. Our economy has changed.

One way to look at this change is that technology has idled million and millions of workers, leaving them unemployed and directionless. This isn't the long term reality. What it has done is released the working man from soulless drudgery and freed him to seek other more healthy pursuits. Yes, in the interim, until we come to terms with the displacement and shift in the definition of "meaningful work", things will seem to have changed for the worse. Give it a little time, people will retool and rethink their place and value, people will find useful, productive and positive pursuits. A paradigm shift, the same as we saw at the beginning of the industrial revolution, a shift away from the traditional roles, from rural farming to urban industry. Some were displaced until the market demanded various skills and workers to attend the various needs of factory production and ancillary support services.

The same is happening here today. We haven't come to term with the new economy and its needs. The worse thing we can do is attempt to return to the drudgery. We need to embrace the changes in production and how value is created. While the human element in auto production might be reduced so is the physical pain in factory work and mind numbing repetition in work best done by machines.

As the above poster points out, all these new technologies have freed us from slavery to a machine, or the physical limits of our bodies and mind, but at the same time made us more productive. In reality, even in this transition phase, we are free to peruse more meaningful work. We are richer in our lives for these tools. Let human drive and innovation figure this one out, it will and the explosion in new and more rewarding endeavors will astound.

We are rich in time and free of mind numbing drudgery and back breaking work like never before. As a people, we, all classes, aren't lacking adequate shelter, food or ability to educate ourselves. Yes, there are some that will fall through the cracks if left unattended or helped, but that segment of the population is smaller than at any other time in American or world history. Give us time, we will adapt to the new reality and the common man will utilize this new freedom in positive ways.

We are all richer than we have ever been before. Let no one tell us we aren't or that some contrived imbalance requires us to fundamentally change. Our system and its reliance on the individual and free market got us here, lets not abandon it to the elite who wish to capture our new found freedom and tax it back into the industrial age.

Cheers
Labour

 

Medical cartel is a good example. It affects my life a big time. The private cartel makes the rules on how Health Care is working, how many hospitals are allowed to operate. How many medical schools are allowed to exist. How many doctors allowed to enter the market.
Everything is regulated by numerous private organizations.
Those organizations make decisions that is favorable to the cartel.
E.g. restrict number of doctors allowed to enter marketplace. That creates medical services shortage. Supply is low / Demand is high.
In that environment people have no choice but to buy health insurance (i.e. private rationing system). Here you have another cartel - Insurance industry.
And once those cartels are "Successful" i.e. have unlimited amount of money, they can buy congress.
Lawmakers makes new law that regulate industry in such way that outsiders are not allowed, i.e. no competition no capitalism.

I hope you know the result. Very poor Health Care system (37th in international ranking) and most expensive in the World, at least twice as expensive per capita as in any other country

If paying too much for mediocre service is not violation of my freedom then what is a freedom?

 

Agree with the entire post, and want to expand the above point to the irony that the luxury of time and effort we have is what allows the resentful to sit around and carp about the "failures of capitalism" and wealth inequality... from their cheap computers connected to the cheap internet while they enjoy goods from markets all over the world in a clean, climate-controlled space with a giant television playing one of 300 channels in the background, healthier and more disease free than any other humans in history. It is a stellar example of the old cliché, "biting the hand that feeds you."

 

Inequality is a problem. When I was working I got a few weeks vacation each year but I knew people who got 52 weeks vacation a year. I don't know how the unequal tax system can fix that, though. There is also terrible tax inequality with some people paying no taxes and others paying a lot. Oh, and there is the inequality in longevity. Males are badly discriminated against in longevity. That's partly because the government kills a lot more American men than it does American women.

Expecting the government to fix anything is a mistake.

 

Very clever. I never thought of it that way.

 

Yep, we are rich, and the top 1% are probably the richest they have ever been in the history of humankind. And yet, in their attempt to get even richer, they are destroying the system that has enabled them to get as filthy rich as they are.

Newsflash: It isn't just the CEO of the company that gets all the claim to the productivity. The US has provided an incredible infrastructure for people to become successful, through an educated work-force through some of the best universities on the planet (for which the corporations, btw, have shifted all the financial burden onto the students, instead of actually contributing to workforce education -- no, they expect the system to just provide educated workers to be delivered to their doorstep with no effort on the part of the company). Infrastructure and protection from loss by strong protection of property rights is another big one.

But, no, the rich think that all their success is only based on their own hard work, and they don't want to contribute to the system that has made them insanely wealthy -- by shifting their money overseas to protect it from taxation.

I say: Pay up and contribute to keep the country as the great innovation machine it has been in the past. What is clear, though, is that people on minimum wage who have to spend all their thought on meddling through to the next pay check won't be the great innovators of tomorrow. But maybe that's what the rich want, because now that they have theirs, they don;t want anybody else to have part of it. That's one of the biggest problems of capitalism: The anti-competitive practices of the ones who have made it, trying to keep everyone else down.

 

Inequality in what we provide.




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Yet another thread complaining that the problem is the low top tax rate.

There is NO correlation to top tax rate and tax revenue. The federal tax revenue has been fairly constant (about 19% of GDP) since WW2 no matter what the top tax rate has been. Look up Hausers Law.

And since there is no correlation between the top tax rate and tax revenue, your theory that "taxes encourages employers not to give most of their wage increases to the managers and CEOs" is bunk.

Also, top tax rate outside the context of the entire tax system is meaningless. Maybe if you look at effective tax rate you might be able to make some conclusions (not what you expect) because the effective tax rate is a systemic measure taking into account the entire tax system. Effective tax rate is far, far below the top tax rate.