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01 Jan 12
Originally posted by spruce112358Yes!!! Let's return to the Darwinian path. No one should be safe without an armed guard watching over them. When the millionaires that run our laughable government cannot safely walk the streets then we will get the government by warlord that we so badly need. That will get these lazy sobs off the couch! Somalia is the model!
Interesting argument:
"Inequality is growing in nearly every developed country. According to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, over the past 30 years, inequality in Sweden, Germany, Israel, Finland and New Zealand has grown as fast or faster than inequality in the United States, even though these countries have ...[text shortened]... government, to reform the outlandish, self-indulgent welfare state that we have built?
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by KunsooIt is a third party payer model, just as unresponsive to consumer (market forces) as is total socialized medicine.
Employer paid insurance is private. And a seriously outdated model by the way.
It remains totally unfair to characterize the US system as private or market driven. It hasn't been for generations.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by no1marauderSo while public education systems across America continue to spend more public money and output more illiteracy and ignorance, what should parents do? Try going to one of those school board meeting, and see how much your inputs mean.
😴😴
More BS. Most public school systems have elected Board of Educations, so the public has input into what policies are followed with their money. Your simplistic "analysis" is nonsense.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by spruce112358So in the end we have nothing to fear from monopolies, except that they become wed to government, a la Wesley Mouch, and James Taggert in Atlas Shrugged.
John might -- except for Shelly and Mark who are waiting in the wings. Shelly has a way to produce widgets for $8.50 while Mark can only be profitable at $12 but his widgets have a lot more features.
There are only a couple of things that will stop both of them starting businesses to compete with John: government regulation and high taxes.
Apart f ...[text shortened]... low prices, and high employment. Socialism/government interference does the reverse.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by spruce112358The big point that collectivists miss is that economics isn't a zero sum activity. People may grow wealth, but nobody can show that the billionaires are rolling skid row bums to create their wealth.
John might -- except for Shelly and Mark who are waiting in the wings. Shelly has a way to produce widgets for $8.50 while Mark can only be profitable at $12 but his widgets have a lot more features.
There are only a couple of things that will stop both of them starting businesses to compete with John: government regulation and high taxes.
Apart f ...[text shortened]... low prices, and high employment. Socialism/government interference does the reverse.
The poor may get poorer at the same time as the rich get richer, but correlation isn't causation.
Bastiate makes the clear argument in "The Political Economy" in the first few chapters when he surgically dissects his contemporary's notions that interest is usury. Instead he demonstrates that interest, and rents from capital benefits those most likely to be complaining about them.
Worse yet, Mark and Shelly may not work for John, but in the face of high taxes and government regulations decide to greatly scale down their ambitions, thus denying employment to those they might have otherwise hired.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by spruce112358The silliness of citing the high marginal rates of the '50s is that nobody paid them. The claims made of today's rich actually applied to the rich of those years, where loopholes and shelters were rampant.
One of your frequent references to the prosperous 1950's when top marginal rates were in the 70-90% range, probably. Even when such rates had nothing to do with producing that prosperity (actually had contributed to destroying it by the 70's).
Do you deny advocating very high (e.g. >50% ) taxes on the rich?
I want to know where all of the great productive societies of the past are that were built on the basis of confiscatory taxation?
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by no1marauderWho decides what "fair market wages" are? Wouldn't that normally be by the mutual agreement of the parties? Is the health insurance part of that wage?
Some actual evidence to support the claim that high marginal tax rates were "destroying prosperity" by the 1970s would be appreciated. I don't think that anyone has claimed high marginal rates on the rich produce prosperity; the claim (based on overwhelming evidence) is that they do not impede it.
sh76 accurately summarized my prese ...[text shortened]... ion that rich folks spend all their money in innovative, job creating ways is silly nonsense.
Nobody advocating free market assumes the rich, or anyone else spends their money in any particular way. It is after all their money, and their choice.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by normbenignCan you supply some evidence for this claim?
The silliness of citing the high marginal rates of the '50s is that nobody paid them. The claims made of today's rich actually applied to the rich of those years, where loopholes and shelters were rampant.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by normbenignSince it would be the government granting a tax exemption, the government would decide what a fair wage was. Businesses wouldn't be required to pay it but they wouldn't get the exemption if they didn't. Can't get fairer than that.
Who decides what "fair market wages" are? Wouldn't that normally be by the mutual agreement of the parties? Is the health insurance part of that wage?
Nobody advocating free market assumes the rich, or anyone else spends their money in any particular way. It is after all their money, and their choice.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by normbenignYour ranting and raving aside, your original claim has been shown to be false. Deal with it.
So while public education systems across America continue to spend more public money and output more illiteracy and ignorance, what should parents do? Try going to one of those school board meeting, and see how much your inputs mean.
02 Jan 12
1 edit
Originally posted by TeinosukeI can. According to this study (http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezJEP07taxprog.pdf) the top .01 percent of income earners paid an effective tax rate of over 70% in 1960. (p. 10). However:
Can you supply some evidence for this claim?
Interestingly, the larger progressivity in 1960 is not mainly due to the individual
income tax. The average individual income tax rate in 1960 reached an average
rate of 31 percent at the very top, only slightly above the 25 percent average rate at
the very top in 2004. Within the 1960 version of the individual income tax, lower
rates on realized capital gains, as well as deductions for interest payments and
charitable contributions, reduced dramatically what otherwise looked like an extremely
progressive tax schedule, with a top marginal tax rate on individual income
of 91 percent.
The greater progressivity of federal taxes in 1960, in contrast to 2004, stems
from the corporate income tax and the estate tax. The corporate tax collected
about 6.5 percent of total personal income in 1960 and only around 2.5 percent of total income today. Because capital income is very concentrated, it generated a
substantial burden on top income groups. The estate tax has also decreased from
0.8 percent of total personal income in 1960 to about 0.35 percent of total income
today. As a result, the burden of the estate tax relative to income has declined very
sharply since 1960 in the top income groups.
So the claim is partially correct; higher marginal tax rates did not produce strikingly higher effective rates. But they still did produce significant revenue for the government.
02 Jan 12
This analysis is interesting.http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7402
It concludes:
Figure 2 shows that there is no correlation between cuts in top tax rates and average annual real GDP-per-capita growth since the 1970s. For example, countries that made large cuts in top tax rates such as the United Kingdom or the United States have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark. Hence, a substantial fraction of the response of pre-tax top incomes to top tax rates documented in Figure 1 may be due to increased rent-seeking at the top rather than increased productive effort.
Naturally, cross-country comparisons are bound to be fragile, and the exact results vary with the specification, years, and countries. But by and large, the bottom line is that rich countries have all grown at roughly the same rate over the past 30 years – in spite of huge variations in tax policies. Using our model and mid-range parameter values where the response of top earners to top tax rate cuts is due in part to increased rent-seeking behaviour and in part to increased productive work, we find that the top tax rate could potentially be set as high as 83% – as opposed to 57% in the pure supply-side model.
02 Jan 12
Originally posted by normbenign"Confiscatory taxation" is not something this country has ever had:
The silliness of citing the high marginal rates of the '50s is that nobody paid them. The claims made of today's rich actually applied to the rich of those years, where loopholes and shelters were rampant.
I want to know where all of the great productive societies of the past are that were built on the basis of confiscatory taxation?
Contrary to concerns about socialism or a government takeover, the richest Americans, those earning an average of $345 million in 2007, paid about 16.5 percent in federal income taxes.
http://www.quickanded.com/2010/02/effective-tax-rates-of-the-richest-400-americans.html