Walter Block, Libertarian Extraordinaire

[AthenaAwakened]

You do know that a big reason we have rich people is that they steal from the rest of us and create the poor, right?

 

[Underseer]

You do know that a big reason we have rich people is that they steal from the rest of us and create the poor, right?

No, no, no. The poor steal from the aristocracy. That's why the poor are poor and why we need to defend the aristocracy from them. Don't you watch FOX News? Or are you getting your information from a source that is not Fair And Balanced(tm)?

 

[ksen]

So you want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs because the goose has more gold than you do? The "struggles" that we have to go through are trivial compared to what most of humanity has suffered through most of history. A medieval king never had it as good as the poorest Americans do today. Before you decide that you are going to play Robin Hood and steal from the rich to give to the poor, you had better ask what the consequences of such a policy are. In fact, the more effective Robin Hood is at stealing from the rich, the fewer rich people there are to steal from. And what happens when all the rich are gone and the poor are still hungry?

Irrelevant appeals to emotion.

I'm not suggesting that the rich are heroes for having provided all the things we have that a medieval king did not have, but it isn't a ridiculous suggestion either. Before undertaking your simplistic, Robin Hood, solution, I suggest that you consider the broader question of unintended consequences. The one percent have an enormous amount of money but once you spread it among the ninety-nine percent, none of them will get very much. But once their money is gone, what happens to the productive side of the economy.

Of course no one is talking about taking everything way from the rich. It's a strawman diversion technique.

You might also consider the question of balance. How much can you take from the rich before it becomes counter productive. Everyone likes to cite the wonderful European welfare states, even though their standard of living is lower than ours.

Cite?

But have you looked at their tax structure? They actually tax the rich much less that we do here, and they tax lower income workers much more heavily.

Cite?

And, while their personal income tax rates are higher, they are less progressive than ours.

Cite?

So before you suggest that we should tax the rich more, you need to ask the question of whether or not we are taxing them too much already?

I don't have to ask myself that question. I already have and I've decided we are not taxing them enough. We've had periods of much higher marginal rates on the rich accompanied by stronger GDP growth. I'm not saying the higher rates caused the stronger GDP growth but I am saying the higher rates didn't hurt GDP growth as it's commonly argued they will.

I'm not proposing definite answers to these questions, I'm just suggesting that you ask them and study the subject more thoroughly.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42111.pdf
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/

We're currently running deficits of our a trillion dollars a year and, given the projected entitlement spending, they are expected to go much higher. Can you balance the budget by taxing the rich?

Taxing the rich would be a part of the equation to balance the budget. No one is arguing to raise the needed revenue solely on increased income taxes on the rich.

What would that rates have to be? I'll give you a hint. The recent budget deal that Obama and Boehner reached which repealed the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $400,000, an increase of about 4% from 35% to 39%, is projected to bring in about $50 billion per year.

Hey, that's $50 billion less the government has to borrow. Now add in defense cuts, aggressive measures to lower healthcare spending, raise capital gains rates to the income tax rate, institute a financial transaction tax, close corporate and personal tax loopholes, lift the social security tax ceiling, raise the inheritance tax rates and pretty soon you have a budget where you're actually paying for what you spend.

Of course if we stop deficit spending then treasury bonds start going away and I'm not sure the rich want that to happen either.

How high can you go before your increases start to bring in less money?

Higher than we're at today.

How many loopholes can you close before the rich simply start leaving the country as they were doing in Britain before Margaret Thatcher came to power?

lol, the rich aren't going to leave america in any significant numbers. That's just a scare tactic.

Indeed, as Thatcher herself was fond of saying, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." So what is your plan to solve that problem?

Well, Thatcher was a dumb demagogue so I'm not surprised she said that.

 

[boneyard bill]

You do know that a big reason we have rich people is that they steal from the rest of us and create the poor, right?

Some people have put forward the theory that the reason Robin Hood stole from rich is because the poor didn't have any money. So how do the rich get rich by stealing from the poor who have not money? And if it's so easy, why don't the poor steal from the rich?

So the argument goes that the poor should steal from the rich by using the government to expropriate their money and give it to the poor. But then, why do we still have poor people since that has been government policy most of the time since FDR?

I'll admit that some people have gotten rich through their connections with the government, and I'll grant that that is illegitimate gain, but the government does not seem inclined to prosecute these people. In fact, the current administration, which has handed more money to the rich than any other administration in our history, now wants to raise the issue of "income inequality." So naturally we can't expect them to prosecute the rich.

The simple fact is that if you've found a way to make a little money, you can make a lot of money by doing a lot more of it. And the way to do that is to hire other people to do the same thing for you. The problem is that you owe your employees whether you make money or not. So if things go bad, you lose. And that is what happens to most people. Eight out of ten new businesses fail. So should they not be allowed to hire other people? Should they not be allowed to try because of the two out of ten that succeed? How would "the poor" benefit from putting an end to this policy? More importantly, how are the poor helped by punishing the two out of ten who do succeed?

The evidence is overwhelming. The poor are hurt more by redistribution policies than they are helped. That doesn't mean that every redistribution policy is bad, but you need to be very selective with them. Developing countries in Latin America and Africa have had a terrible record when they have followed redistributionist policies. In Asia, however, most countries have not followed heavily redistributionist policies and have been very successful.

 

[boneyard bill]

Irrelevant appeals to emotion.

False. I raised very definite and very relevant issues even if they weren't quite literal. I don't see how saying the rich should be allowed to keep their money is an emotional appeal anyway.

I'm not suggesting that the rich are heroes for having provided all the things we have that a medieval king did not have, but it isn't a ridiculous suggestion either. Before undertaking your simplistic, Robin Hood, solution, I suggest that you consider the broader question of unintended consequences. The one percent have an enormous amount of money but once you spread it among the ninety-nine percent, none of them will get very much. But once their money is gone, what happens to the productive side of the economy.

Of course no one is talking about taking everything way from the rich. It's a strawman diversion technique.

You have proposed any limits on such a policy so it is perfectly relevant. The whole point is to force you to express limits. So now you have in principle, at least, but you haven't said how much.

You might also consider the question of balance. How much can you take from the rich before it becomes counter productive. Everyone likes to cite the wonderful European welfare states, even though their standard of living is lower than ours.

Cite?

But have you looked at their tax structure? They actually tax the rich much less that we do here, and they tax lower income workers much more heavily.

Cite?

And, while their personal income tax rates are higher, they are less progressive than ours.

Cite?

If you're actually interested in producing a serious proposal, you will check these things out for yourself. If you do, you will find that they are correct. If you don't, you're just bullshitting.

So before you suggest that we should tax the rich more, you need to ask the question of whether or not we are taxing them too much already?

I don't have to ask myself that question. I already have and I've decided we are not taxing them enough. We've had periods of much higher marginal rates on the rich accompanied by stronger GDP growth. I'm not saying the higher rates caused the stronger GDP growth but I am saying the higher rates didn't hurt GDP growth as it's commonly argued they will.

We've had higher marginal tax rates but who pays them? Romney paid 13%. Warren Buffet admitted that he paid only 15%. Some super-rich pay nothing at all. When the Kennedy tax cuts went through his economists were shocked to discover that revenue went UP! It was very disturbing to them because they were trying to get increased deficits and here we were heading for a balanced budget. (Of course, the Vietnam War solved that little problem for them). When Reagan cut taxes, the government collected MORE revenue from the upper income brackets. It was only the cuts in the middle and lower incomes that led to an increased deficit.

Why is this? Because tax loopholes are expensive. They're not free so lower marginal rates make the use of loopholes less profitable. So the assumptions you've made above are very questionable to say the least.

I'm not proposing definite answers to these questions, I'm just suggesting that you ask them and study the subject more thoroughly.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42111.pdf
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/

Your first source says higher marginal rates don't correlate with slower economic growth. Of course they don't as long as no one pays them as I've already pointed out.

Your second source says that high corporate tax rates do not reduce economic growth.

Where do you get the idea that corporate taxes are taxes on the rich? Guess what? A corporation cannot pay tax. It's a legal fiction. It would be nice if we could just create legal fictions and tax them. Then nobody would have to pay taxes. But, in fact, only people can pay taxes. So who actually pays the corporate income tax? There are three possibilities:

1. The customers, who pay more for their products because of it.
2. The employees who get lower pay and fringe benefits because of it.
3. The stockholders who get lower dividends because of it. Stockholders certainly include some rich people but also include pension funds and charitable trusts as well as some elderly people who've saved for their retirement. They all pay the same corporate tax, however, because it all come out off the top.

Of course, its possible that a combination of these three pay the tax. But the mostly likely is no. 1. Since all corporations have to pay the tax, they can pass it on without losing competiveness with their rivals.

Of course, these studies were all based on correlations and, as well know, correlation does not prove causation so these studies aren't necessarily conclusive in any case.

What is known is that the cost of compliance with income taxes is very high. So we could save the economy a good deal of money by eliminating these taxes and replacing them with other forms of taxation or at least simplifying them with a flat rate.

We're currently running deficits of our a trillion dollars a year and, given the projected entitlement spending, they are expected to go much higher. Can you balance the budget by taxing the rich?

Taxing the rich would be a part of the equation to balance the budget. No one is arguing to raise the needed revenue solely on increased income taxes on the rich.

That was not part of your original proposal, but then, how much could taxes on the rich contribute before your plan became counter-productive? Hint: Remember that the rich pretty much pay what they want to now anyway. So how much would you expect to gain?

What would that rates have to be? I'll give you a hint. The recent budget deal that Obama and Boehner reached which repealed the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $400,000, an increase of about 4% from 35% to 39%, is projected to bring in about $50 billion per year.

Hey, that's $50 billion less the government has to borrow. Now add in defense cuts, aggressive measures to lower healthcare spending, raise capital gains rates to the income tax rate, institute a financial transaction tax, close corporate and personal tax loopholes, lift the social security tax ceiling, raise the inheritance tax rates and pretty soon you have a budget where you're actually paying for what you spend.

How do you know that? How much will those proposals actually raise? What effect will all your proposals have on human behavior? You can't just assume that doubling a rate will bring in double the money. And how easy would they be to implement? We already know that Obamacare is going to cost more than predicted and increase health care costs instead of cutting them. And I would point out that not all of your suggestions tax only the rich.

Of course if we stop deficit spending then treasury bonds start going away and I'm not sure the rich want that to happen either.

It would be great if Treasury bonds would just go away, but it's not that easy. We have $17 trillion dollars of outstanding debt, and balancing the budget wouldn't reduce that by a dime. It would only keep it from getting larger. The Treasury currently has to issue $1 trillion a year in new treasury securities to cover the deficit, but it also has to raise $3 trillion in treasuries just to cover the old bonds that come due on the existing debt.

How high can you go before your increases start to bring in less money?

Higher than we're at today.

What evidence do you have for that? Higher rates would probably bring in more revenue from lower and middle income taxpayers and maybe from upper-middle taxpayers as well. But above that is a big question mark. The $50 billion that I mentioned from the Obama-Boehner deal is only an estimate by the CBO. We may not get anything at all.

How many loopholes can you close before the rich simply start leaving the country as they were doing in Britain before Margaret Thatcher came to power?

lol, the rich aren't going to leave america in any significant numbers. That's just a scare tactic.

Are you kidding? They already are leaving the country. Multi-billionaires are settling elsewhere in the world. Is the tax problem the major reason? I don't suppose so. It's more a matter of the growing police state and the lousy economy. It's not the 39% that they're worried about so much as the prospect of outright confiscation because of our budgetary problems.

Indeed, as Thatcher herself was fond of saying, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." So what is your plan to solve that problem?

Well, Thatcher was a dumb demagogue so I'm not surprised she said that.

She was neither dumb, nor a demagogue. The top rate in Britain was 98%. The Labour government made a major effort to close all loopholes because, for some reason, (unexplainable only to morons) most people weren't paying it. So when they closed the loopholes, the rich simply quit earning it. They put their money into jewelry, art objects, antiques, and other items that didn't earn any income but would hold their value or increase. So then the government imposed a personal property tax that would subject these items to taxation as well. So the rich now had little choice but to give up their wealth or leave the country, and they started to leave. Then Thatcher was elected and they quit emigrating.

These confiscatory tax rates were not only not raising the revenue the government was demanding, but they were ruining the economy as well.

 

[Canard DuJour]

I think we agree that self-ownership and the non-aggression principle are simply inadequate bases for the organization of society. Rothbard and Block want to ground their argument in the inviolability of the autonomous, individual will. The problem is that such a principle, even if were true and according to their own standards, omits probably half the human race since it doesn't include children or the physically or mentally impaired. But, in reality, it doesn't include anyone. We are born into dependency and remain in states of mutual dependency for our entire lives.

Yeah, I can certainly agree with that. Nicely put.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Block's position at least is not contradictory and not even necessarily as outrageous as people on these boards are suggesting.

Uh yeah, it is.

People have sacrificed their lives and/or liberty for far less than what Block is suggesting. How long did Nelson Mandela serve in prison? Why did not Socrates drink the hemlock? They sacrificed for principles, not even to save the lives of their children. Should they not be allowed to?

non sequitor

Allowing rentiers to arrange the economy so someone is put into the position where he needs to sell himself into slavery in order to get medicine for his child is stupendously outrageous and I find it hard to believe that someone who wants to be taken seriously would actually put that out there as a desirable situation.

I mean, jesus christ, it's the 21st century now.

Your point is irrelevant. Block didn't put it out there as a desirable situation.

I'm afraid he did. Not for the hapless individual but for society, which he says should enforce the contract. Through consistent application of Libertarian first principles, he ends up defending slavery in the name of freedom. Which tells us there is something very wrong with those principles.

He offered it as a hypothetical situation. Let me offer another hypothetical situation. The king, an absolute monarch, is holding your son ransom and demands a payoff of one million dollars. You don't have one million dollars so you offer to be the king's slave in return. The king accepts and your son is freed. Does that mean that Block is advocating a government by absolute monarchy?

No, that would violate the NAP. Block's scenario wouldn't. He effectively advocates "allowing rentiers to arrange the economy so someone is put into the position where he needs to sell himself into slavery in order to get medicine for his child," just as ksen says.

 

[Canard DuJour]

I'm not suggesting that the rich are heroes for having provided all the things we have that a medieval king did not have, but it isn't a ridiculous suggestion either. Before undertaking your simplistic, Robin Hood, solution, I suggest that you consider the broader question of unintended consequences. The one percent have an enormous amount of money but once you spread it among the ninety-nine percent, none of them will get very much.

Perhaps not, but the problem the 99% face is lack of bargaining power which has come about through the concerted efforts of 1% to acquire a conspicuous share of money.

Money - remember - isn't actual material wealth, or we could just print unlimited wealth. As it is, we ration surplus material wealth with an artificial scarcity of money because the winners like it like that.

But once their money is gone, what happens to the productive side of the economy.

It wouldn't be gone. A flatter distribution would allow for the virtuous circle of supply and demand on which production of actual wealth depends. I know you disgree and I'm not interested in rehashing the arguments; I point this out because I think your questions assume your conclusions.

 

[ksen]

False. I raised very definite and very relevant issues even if they weren't quite literal. I don't see how saying the rich should be allowed to keep their money is an emotional appeal anyway.

Nah, bringing analogies of Robin Hood into the discussion is just appealing to emotion and is ridiculous.

Of course no one is talking about taking everything way from the rich. It's a strawman diversion technique.

You have proposed any limits on such a policy so it is perfectly relevant. The whole point is to force you to express limits. So now you have in principle, at least, but you haven't said how much.

No, it's not relevant. It's a strawman.

You might also consider the question of balance. How much can you take from the rich before it becomes counter productive. Everyone likes to cite the wonderful European welfare states, even though their standard of living is lower than ours.

Cite?

But have you looked at their tax structure? They actually tax the rich much less that we do here, and they tax lower income workers much more heavily.

Cite?

And, while their personal income tax rates are higher, they are less progressive than ours.

Cite?

If you're actually interested in producing a serious proposal, you will check these things out for yourself. If you do, you will find that they are correct. If you don't, you're just bullshitting.

Protip: The one not doing the other one's homework isn't the one doing the bullshitting. If you don't care to do your own work and backup your own claims then I'm just going to treat them no differently than if you just pulled them out of your ass.

So before you suggest that we should tax the rich more, you need to ask the question of whether or not we are taxing them too much already?

I don't have to ask myself that question. I already have and I've decided we are not taxing them enough. We've had periods of much higher marginal rates on the rich accompanied by stronger GDP growth. I'm not saying the higher rates caused the stronger GDP growth but I am saying the higher rates didn't hurt GDP growth as it's commonly argued they will.

We've had higher marginal tax rates but who pays them? Romney paid 13%. Warren Buffet admitted that he paid only 15%. Some super-rich pay nothing at all. When the Kennedy tax cuts went through his economists were shocked to discover that revenue went UP! It was very disturbing to them because they were trying to get increased deficits and here we were heading for a balanced budget. (Of course, the Vietnam War solved that little problem for them). When Reagan cut taxes, the government collected MORE revenue from the upper income brackets. It was only the cuts in the middle and lower incomes that led to an increased deficit.

No, revenue went up after the 1968 10% surcharge tax was put into place. Revenue decreased after the 1964 tax act.

Revenue also decreased substantially after the 1981 tax cuts.

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-analysis/Documents/ota81.pdf
http://www.econdataus.com/taxcuts.html

I don't know how the myth started that reducing rates increases revenues, but that's all it is . . . a myth.

Why is this? Because tax loopholes are expensive. They're not free so lower marginal rates make the use of loopholes less profitable. So the assumptions you've made above are very questionable to say the least.

The assumptions I made are not questionable. You raise taxes and receipts to the federal governmet go up. You lower taxes and receipts to the federal government go down. It's not rocket science.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42111.pdf
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/

Your first source says higher marginal rates don't correlate with slower economic growth. Of course they don't as long as no one pays them as I've already pointed out.

Because of loopholes they may not have paid the whole increase but they did pay more, which is the point.

Your second source says that high corporate tax rates do not reduce economic growth.

Where do you get the idea that corporate taxes are taxes on the rich? Guess what? A corporation cannot pay tax. It's a legal fiction.

Not according to Romney, I mean "corporations are people too, my friend."

It would be nice if we could just create legal fictions and tax them. Then nobody would have to pay taxes. But, in fact, only people can pay taxes. So who actually pays the corporate income tax? There are three possibilities:

1. The customers, who pay more for their products because of it.
2. The employees who get lower pay and fringe benefits because of it.
3. The stockholders who get lower dividends because of it. Stockholders certainly include some rich people but also include pension funds and charitable trusts as well as some elderly people who've saved for their retirement. They all pay the same corporate tax, however, because it all come out off the top.

Of course, its possible that a combination of these three pay the tax. But the mostly likely is no. 1. Since all corporations have to pay the tax, they can pass it on without losing competiveness with their rivals.

No, it is not number 1. Unless in order to win your point you want to argue that the forces of supply and demand no longer apply to how prices are set. Corporate taxes are borne mostly by workers and shareholders.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2...porate-income-tax/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Of course, these studies were all based on correlations and, as well know, correlation does not prove causation so these studies aren't necessarily conclusive in any case.

Yeah, which is I why I took the time to explicitly say no causation was being implied. The point of the articles, again, was just to show with real world data that higher marginal rates do not hinder economic growth.

What is known is that the cost of compliance with income taxes is very high. So we could save the economy a good deal of money by eliminating these taxes and replacing them with other forms of taxation or at least simplifying them with a flat rate.

Yes, I'm sure the upper classes would love to make the US tax regime even more regressive.

We're currently running deficits of our a trillion dollars a year and, given the projected entitlement spending, they are expected to go much higher. Can you balance the budget by taxing the rich?

Taxing the rich would be a part of the equation to balance the budget. No one is arguing to raise the needed revenue solely on increased income taxes on the rich.

That was not part of your original proposal, but then, how much could taxes on the rich contribute before your plan became counter-productive? Hint: Remember that the rich pretty much pay what they want to now anyway. So how much would you expect to gain?

Well, I'd say the top rates could at least go gradually back to 71% since that top rate didn't seem to harm the economy at all.

What would that rates have to be? I'll give you a hint. The recent budget deal that Obama and Boehner reached which repealed the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $400,000, an increase of about 4% from 35% to 39%, is projected to bring in about $50 billion per year.

Hey, that's $50 billion less the government has to borrow. Now add in defense cuts, aggressive measures to lower healthcare spending, raise capital gains rates to the income tax rate, institute a financial transaction tax, close corporate and personal tax loopholes, lift the social security tax ceiling, raise the inheritance tax rates and pretty soon you have a budget where you're actually paying for what you spend.

How do you know that?

Because historical data tells us that when you raise rates you raise revenue.

How much will those proposals actually raise?

More than we do now.

What effect will all your proposals have on human behavior?

Who cares as long as there is at least the behavior of paying your taxes. Why do you think higher rates than we have today will produce negative behavior that harms growth given that much higher rates in the past didn't?

You can't just assume that doubling a rate will bring in double the money.

Good, because I haven't said there'd be a 1:1 ratio.

And how easy would they be to implement?

Probably just as easy as passing any other law. It's not like we're trying to build a taxing system from scratch. Again, this isn't rocket science.

We already know that Obamacare is going to cost more than predicted and increase health care costs instead of cutting them. And I would point out that not all of your suggestions tax only the rich.

Anymore irrelevant crap you want to try and throw in here to try and distract from the point? Anymore unsubstantiated claims you want to make?

Btw, the CBO has concluded that the ACA will produce lower deficits than initially expected.

How high can you go before your increases start to bring in less money?

Higher than we're at today.

What evidence do you have for that? Higher rates would probably bring in more revenue from lower and middle income taxpayers and maybe from upper-middle taxpayers as well. But above that is a big question mark. The $50 billion that I mentioned from the Obama-Boehner deal is only an estimate by the CBO. We may not get anything at all.

I've posted data above that shows when tax rates are raised revenue to the federal government increases. So I guess the only evidence I have is about the entire wealth of data from past tax actions by Congress.

How many loopholes can you close before the rich simply start leaving the country as they were doing in Britain before Margaret Thatcher came to power?

lol, the rich aren't going to leave america in any significant numbers. That's just a scare tactic.

Are you kidding? They already are leaving the country. Multi-billionaires are settling elsewhere in the world. Is the tax problem the major reason? I don't suppose so. It's more a matter of the growing police state and the lousy economy. It's not the 39% that they're worried about so much as the prospect of outright confiscation because of our budgetary problems.

Oh, so if you don't think the tax problem is the major reason then why bring it up in a discussion about taxes?

Indeed, as Thatcher herself was fond of saying, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." So what is your plan to solve that problem?

Well, Thatcher was a dumb demagogue so I'm not surprised she said that.

She was neither dumb, nor a demagogue. The top rate in Britain was 98%. The Labour government made a major effort to close all loopholes because, for some reason, (unexplainable only to morons) most people weren't paying it. So when they closed the loopholes, the rich simply quit earning it. They put their money into jewelry, art objects, antiques, and other items that didn't earn any income but would hold their value or increase. So then the government imposed a personal property tax that would subject these items to taxation as well. So the rich now had little choice but to give up their wealth or leave the country, and they started to leave. Then Thatcher was elected and they quit emigrating.

These confiscatory tax rates were not only not raising the revenue the government was demanding, but they were ruining the economy as well.

Well, no one's talking about putting top rates to 98% so I guess we can dispense with over the top statements about how things are confiscatory and forcing people to leave the country.

 

[boneyard bill]

Nah, bringing analogies of Robin Hood into the discussion is just appealing to emotion and is ridiculous.

Of course no one is talking about taking everything way from the rich. It's a strawman diversion technique.

You have proposed any limits on such a policy so it is perfectly relevant. The whole point is to force you to express limits. So now you have in principle, at least, but you haven't said how much.

No, it's not relevant. It's a strawman.

You might also consider the question of balance. How much can you take from the rich before it becomes counter productive. Everyone likes to cite the wonderful European welfare states, even though their standard of living is lower than ours.

Cite?

But have you looked at their tax structure? They actually tax the rich much less that we do here, and they tax lower income workers much more heavily.

Cite?

And, while their personal income tax rates are higher, they are less progressive than ours.

Cite?

If you're actually interested in producing a serious proposal, you will check these things out for yourself. If you do, you will find that they are correct. If you don't, you're just bullshitting.

Protip: The one not doing the other one's homework isn't the one doing the bullshitting. If you don't care to do your own work and backup your own claims then I'm just going to treat them no differently than if you just pulled them out of your ass.

So before you suggest that we should tax the rich more, you need to ask the question of whether or not we are taxing them too much already?

I don't have to ask myself that question. I already have and I've decided we are not taxing them enough. We've had periods of much higher marginal rates on the rich accompanied by stronger GDP growth. I'm not saying the higher rates caused the stronger GDP growth but I am saying the higher rates didn't hurt GDP growth as it's commonly argued they will.

We've had higher marginal tax rates but who pays them? Romney paid 13%. Warren Buffet admitted that he paid only 15%. Some super-rich pay nothing at all. When the Kennedy tax cuts went through his economists were shocked to discover that revenue went UP! It was very disturbing to them because they were trying to get increased deficits and here we were heading for a balanced budget. (Of course, the Vietnam War solved that little problem for them). When Reagan cut taxes, the government collected MORE revenue from the upper income brackets. It was only the cuts in the middle and lower incomes that led to an increased deficit.

No, revenue went up after the 1968 10% surcharge tax was put into place. Revenue decreased after the 1964 tax act.

Revenue also decreased substantially after the 1981 tax cuts.

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-analysis/Documents/ota81.pdf
http://www.econdataus.com/taxcuts.html

I don't know how the myth started that reducing rates increases revenues, but that's all it is . . . a myth.

Why is this? Because tax loopholes are expensive. They're not free so lower marginal rates make the use of loopholes less profitable. So the assumptions you've made above are very questionable to say the least.

The assumptions I made are not questionable. You raise taxes and receipts to the federal governmet go up. You lower taxes and receipts to the federal government go down. It's not rocket science.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42111.pdf
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/

Your first source says higher marginal rates don't correlate with slower economic growth. Of course they don't as long as no one pays them as I've already pointed out.

Because of loopholes they may not have paid the whole increase but they did pay more, which is the point.

Your second source says that high corporate tax rates do not reduce economic growth.

Where do you get the idea that corporate taxes are taxes on the rich? Guess what? A corporation cannot pay tax. It's a legal fiction.

Not according to Romney, I mean "corporations are people too, my friend."

It would be nice if we could just create legal fictions and tax them. Then nobody would have to pay taxes. But, in fact, only people can pay taxes. So who actually pays the corporate income tax? There are three possibilities:

1. The customers, who pay more for their products because of it.
2. The employees who get lower pay and fringe benefits because of it.
3. The stockholders who get lower dividends because of it. Stockholders certainly include some rich people but also include pension funds and charitable trusts as well as some elderly people who've saved for their retirement. They all pay the same corporate tax, however, because it all come out off the top.

Of course, its possible that a combination of these three pay the tax. But the mostly likely is no. 1. Since all corporations have to pay the tax, they can pass it on without losing competiveness with their rivals.

No, it is not number 1. Unless in order to win your point you want to argue that the forces of supply and demand no longer apply to how prices are set. Corporate taxes are borne mostly by workers and shareholders.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2...porate-income-tax/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Of course, these studies were all based on correlations and, as well know, correlation does not prove causation so these studies aren't necessarily conclusive in any case.

Yeah, which is I why I took the time to explicitly say no causation was being implied. The point of the articles, again, was just to show with real world data that higher marginal rates do not hinder economic growth.

What is known is that the cost of compliance with income taxes is very high. So we could save the economy a good deal of money by eliminating these taxes and replacing them with other forms of taxation or at least simplifying them with a flat rate.

Yes, I'm sure the upper classes would love to make the US tax regime even more regressive.

We're currently running deficits of our a trillion dollars a year and, given the projected entitlement spending, they are expected to go much higher. Can you balance the budget by taxing the rich?

Taxing the rich would be a part of the equation to balance the budget. No one is arguing to raise the needed revenue solely on increased income taxes on the rich.

That was not part of your original proposal, but then, how much could taxes on the rich contribute before your plan became counter-productive? Hint: Remember that the rich pretty much pay what they want to now anyway. So how much would you expect to gain?

Well, I'd say the top rates could at least go gradually back to 71% since that top rate didn't seem to harm the economy at all.

What would that rates have to be? I'll give you a hint. The recent budget deal that Obama and Boehner reached which repealed the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $400,000, an increase of about 4% from 35% to 39%, is projected to bring in about $50 billion per year.

Hey, that's $50 billion less the government has to borrow. Now add in defense cuts, aggressive measures to lower healthcare spending, raise capital gains rates to the income tax rate, institute a financial transaction tax, close corporate and personal tax loopholes, lift the social security tax ceiling, raise the inheritance tax rates and pretty soon you have a budget where you're actually paying for what you spend.

How do you know that?

Because historical data tells us that when you raise rates you raise revenue.

How much will those proposals actually raise?

More than we do now.

What effect will all your proposals have on human behavior?

Who cares as long as there is at least the behavior of paying your taxes. Why do you think higher rates than we have today will produce negative behavior that harms growth given that much higher rates in the past didn't?

You can't just assume that doubling a rate will bring in double the money.

Good, because I haven't said there'd be a 1:1 ratio.

And how easy would they be to implement?

Probably just as easy as passing any other law. It's not like we're trying to build a taxing system from scratch. Again, this isn't rocket science.

We already know that Obamacare is going to cost more than predicted and increase health care costs instead of cutting them. And I would point out that not all of your suggestions tax only the rich.

Anymore irrelevant crap you want to try and throw in here to try and distract from the point? Anymore unsubstantiated claims you want to make?

Btw, the CBO has concluded that the ACA will produce lower deficits than initially expected.

How high can you go before your increases start to bring in less money?

Higher than we're at today.

What evidence do you have for that? Higher rates would probably bring in more revenue from lower and middle income taxpayers and maybe from upper-middle taxpayers as well. But above that is a big question mark. The $50 billion that I mentioned from the Obama-Boehner deal is only an estimate by the CBO. We may not get anything at all.

I've posted data above that shows when tax rates are raised revenue to the federal government increases. So I guess the only evidence I have is about the entire wealth of data from past tax actions by Congress.

How many loopholes can you close before the rich simply start leaving the country as they were doing in Britain before Margaret Thatcher came to power?

lol, the rich aren't going to leave america in any significant numbers. That's just a scare tactic.

Are you kidding? They already are leaving the country. Multi-billionaires are settling elsewhere in the world. Is the tax problem the major reason? I don't suppose so. It's more a matter of the growing police state and the lousy economy. It's not the 39% that they're worried about so much as the prospect of outright confiscation because of our budgetary problems.

Oh, so if you don't think the tax problem is the major reason then why bring it up in a discussion about taxes?

Indeed, as Thatcher herself was fond of saying, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." So what is your plan to solve that problem?

Well, Thatcher was a dumb demagogue so I'm not surprised she said that.

She was neither dumb, nor a demagogue. The top rate in Britain was 98%. The Labour government made a major effort to close all loopholes because, for some reason, (unexplainable only to morons) most people weren't paying it. So when they closed the loopholes, the rich simply quit earning it. They put their money into jewelry, art objects, antiques, and other items that didn't earn any income but would hold their value or increase. So then the government imposed a personal property tax that would subject these items to taxation as well. So the rich now had little choice but to give up their wealth or leave the country, and they started to leave. Then Thatcher was elected and they quit emigrating.

These confiscatory tax rates were not only not raising the revenue the government was demanding, but they were ruining the economy as well.

Well, no one's talking about putting top rates to 98% so I guess we can dispense with over the top statements about how things are confiscatory and forcing people to leave the country.

You've simply evaded all my points. Yes, tax increases tend to increase revenue, but do they increase revenue from the highest tax brackets? Do you really get more from the rich?

And yes, Obamacare is expected to cost less than originally calculated, but health care costs are expected to rise rather than fall which is what your "budget plan" needed.

But fundamentally, you simply haven't shown what I have asked which is how you would propose to solve the country's problems by taxing the rich. The taxes you could expect to raise from the rich would be a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed unless you raised them to 98% and closed all the loopholes and even you have now conceded that that won't work. Even the plan you suggested, such as eliminating the cap on the SS tax, would tax the non-rich, and defense spending cuts have nothing to do with taxing the rich.

So my point is to ask what you expect to gain by taxing the rich? Can it play a small role in dealing the problems we face now? Perhaps. But it can't be expected to be very significant, and you have consistently failed to show that it could. When I ask you how much? You consistently fail to come up with any numbers or even percentages.

So, what your argument comes down to is that we should tax the rich more because you want to tax the rich more. Why should I go along with that if it won't accomplish anything?

 

[ksen]

Well, until you actually start providing some cites for your claims then you are providing nothing to argue with except your own proclamations that I guess I'm just supposed to accept as Truth.

 

[boneyard bill]

Well, until you actually start providing some cites for your claims then you are providing nothing to argue with except your own proclamations that I guess I'm just supposed to accept as Truth.

Why do I need to come up with anything? You're the one who proposed taxing the rich. I asked if you actually had thought out your plan. And when you finally proposed something, there were no facts and figures to evaluate whether your plan would work or not. And even if it would work, it involved a lot of things that didn't involve taxing the rich. So it doesn't appear that your plan to tax the rich amounts to anything serious.

It's just a prejudice on your part that derives, I assume, from the fact that you are not rich. It's like someone saying we should balance the budget by ending foreign aid. You can't come close that way. So foreign aid should stand or fall its own merits not because it will balance the budget because it won't.

So I'm asking what you attempt to accomplish by raising taxes on the rich that, in all probability, will not even result in the rich paying higher taxes?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I just listened to the

Majority Report with Sam Seder episode from yesterday. Sam Seder debated Walter Block.

Walter Block is a hoot and a half.

Pray tell me, is he a libertarian? Are his theories representative of libertarian thought?

Click here to listen

http://majority.fm/2014/05/01/51-professor-walter-block-defends-libertarianism/

Professor Walter Block proposed that laissez faire free market exchanges are the best way to organize society, how Block thinks the United States limits freedom, debating the minimum wage, full time workers who live in poverty, debating minimum wages and job losses, what is the value of wages if they don’t provide a living? Professor Block explains his far, far, right views on slavery, Block’s stunning opposition to the Civil Rights movement, Block’s sort “amazing” point about bisexuality and the right to discriminate and debating car safety.

He appears to be a plain old fashioned kookatarian. Does he believe in UFOs?