The problem with wealth taxes

[dismal]

Then, all citizens have the right to have sex with supermodels.

Finally, something we can all back. Well, I'm assuming we don't have many supermodels here.

 

[Trausti]

All citizens already have a right to earn. Unless by "right" you mean using the coercive force of government to take from others and give to you. Then, all citizens have the right to have sex with supermodels.

Govt does have that right. But that's not what I'm talking about. Giving a citizen a public sector job isn't taking anything from anybody.

Keep your sex fantasies to yourself, please.

But you want the government to take from others to pay for these superfluous public sector jobs, right? Which is okay. I'll be a F.B.I. (tee hee).

 

[Horatio Parker]

Govt does have that right. But that's not what I'm talking about. Giving a citizen a public sector job isn't taking anything from anybody.

Keep your sex fantasies to yourself, please.

But you want the government to take from others to pay for these public sector jobs, right? Which is okay. I'll be a F.B.I. (tee hee).

Govt doesn't fund itself from taxation. So, no.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Then, all citizens have the right to have sex with supermodels.

Finally, something we can all back. Well, I'm assuming we don't have many supermodels here.

Also, there's a difference between a right to have sex with supermodels and an ability to have sex with supermodels.

We also have the right to buy a Ferrari whenever we want to but are limited in our ability to exercise that right by the oppressive fascist dictators at the auto dealership who insist that we pay for it first like they make people do in Russia.

 

[Trausti]

But you want the government to take from others to pay for these public sector jobs, right? Which is okay. I'll be a F.B.I. (tee hee).

Govt doesn't fund itself from taxation. So, no.

Cool. Then let's cut taxes to zero.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Govt doesn't fund itself from taxation. So, no.

Cool. Then let's cut taxes to zero.

WIthout taxes, there's no demand for the currency. So, no.

 

[Elixir]

Why not tax stocks? Virtually every other form of property is taxed, and the act of buying, holding, and selling stocks does nothing whatsoever for GDP. "Investors" are basically parasites. It might even put some cash back into circulation.

Huh? Every other form of property is taxed?

"Virtually"

Land is taxed--because land requires services.

Bullshit. Vacant land that requires zero services is still taxed. It's taxed because it has value. That's why the tax amount is a function of its appraised value, rather an of the amount of services it requires.

buying/selling stocks does help the GDP because it directs the money to the endeavors that are more productive

More bullshit. People who can bail out of their investments at any moment without penalty are not truly vested in those businesses. They're just leeches looking for a chance to suck some blood out of the products of other people's efforts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you are going to advocate for markets you should at least understand how they work.

When you buy a stock the vast majority of the time, and I mean >99.99% of the time, you buy the stock from a stockholder who wants to sell. None of the money that you paid for the stock goes to the company. If the stockholder made a profit on the sale then that profit came 100% from you. Likewise, if the previous owner of the stock realized a loss in the sale that was to the benefit of the stockholder that he bought the stock from. None of the loss went to the corporation.

Agreed. However, if the secondary market didn't exist the primary market would also be nearly nonexistent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sovereign currency govts don't "get" their money. They create it out of thin air.

Wealth that is nonproductive, e.g. rent-seeking, should be taxed. Productive activity should have the lighter tax burden.

Remembering that the very rich never produce anything - only steal what we produce.

I suggest looking over the Forbes list.

You'll find a large number of people there who started with an idea and turned it into a big company.

 

[Trausti]

People who can bail out of their investments at any moment without penalty are not truly vested in those businesses. They're just leeches looking for a chance to suck some blood out of the products of other people's efforts.

How is one able to bail out of an investment without penalty? Surely, you lose what you invested. And sometimes, that's alot.

 

[Elixir]

Ahhh, I get it now. You are past retirement age and maybe have forgotten that some of us would also like to retire someday!

I'm in my early 30's and expect to keep working until the day I physically can't anymore, and with the expectation that I put money aside through social security taxes to the future in which I cannot contribute, with the expectation that I use that time to find a new way to contribute, to the extent that my contribution is necessary. And yes, I disdain the notion of retirement with every part of my being. I disdain the natural evil of a world that makes us too tired or broken to continue being useful to each other, and I disdain the capitulation to that natural evil. Perhaps I may even end up disdaining it of myself that I fall to that, but I'd probably kill myself instead, and good riddance to me in that case.

Of course, while I judge everyone who has fallen to that state, I don't expect them to understand it, as they have lived their whole lives absent the cultural and social education that wealth ought require work. An action is right or wrong when it is taken, and when this decision to give up on society is made, most people lack the means or opportunity to know that giving up is wrong; for them, their ignorance has spared them, and it's not like I can go back in time to convince then to keep going, assuming that our culture hasn't already polluted them to the point where they wouldn't be capable of hearing it.

Then, I was also talking about wealth of form that implies abundance, not the form that implies having anything at all.

So, while your glib non-sequitur may attack elixir, you still have to answer to me.

I applaud your disdain for retirement as a concept, esp at your age. I have no desire to "retire" per se, but rather to shed some of the responsibility that has accrued to me as a corporate officer; this is my third (or so) go-round with startup entrepreneurship, and I've become a victim of my own success. Finally got good enough at it to quickly build a multi-million dollar enterprise from virtually nothing. An enterprise that develops and makes available life-saving materials - a real-good sorta thing. Problem is, until it's a multi-BILLION dollar enterprise, I won't have the wherewithal to offshore profits, legally suppress competition, hide assets etc., which is how CEOs of multi-billion dollar concerns generally "earn" their 8-9 digit salaries. So I could be making MUCH more as a used car salesman or any number of other pointless jobs.
Maybe if people with major wealth were taxed on THEIR holdings the way I'm taxed on mine, I could get enough relief to realize some reward for my efforts (ACTUAL efforts - life-consuming efforts, not the daunting job of pressing buy/sell buttons for which day - and other - traders pat themselves on the back and rationalize as "productive") and not feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of an edifice of my own creation.

 

[Jarhyn]

The idea is simple: the currency is a simple public monopoly. All citizens should have the right to earn.

All citizens already have a right to earn. Unless by "right" you mean using the coercive force of government to take from others and give to you. Then, all citizens have the right to have sex with supermodels.

There is a fundamental assumption on your part that we accept the same concept of property as you, and for at least some of us, that assumption is dead wrong.

'Property' was invented when someone (some animal, really, long before humans were on the stage) used coercive force to control a resource that everyone needed, or at least they thought they needed. It was probably access to females, as we see in modern great apes outside the Homo genus. Others made a deal with this asshole that they wouldnt just kill him and take it if he would exchange access to this resource for things he needed or wanted. Then we kept doing it that way because it worked out well for whoever managed to extort in such a way, and everyone sought from then on to be the ones doing the extortion. Make no mistake, the act of the extortion itself was and never has been justified, not now, not at the beginning of time. It has always been wrong to extort people in such a way, but there were times when it wasn't possible to do anything but giving in.

Instead, it's better to think of property as 'leaky'. It's yours as long as you keep working for it. The food pile is only yours if you are the one adding the food. The well is yours if you are the one who pumps the water out. And even then only to the extent that you are particularly necessary to the tending of the resource. If discovery and investment are your job, you ought be rewarded for plying the skill, but not to the extent that your investment was particularly lucky. For many of us, a lucky outcome is the property of the group, not the sole property of the one chosen by the group to do the gambling, because they are still gambling with resources donated by the group.

 

[Trausti]

Remembering that the very rich never produce anything - only steal what we produce.

I suggest looking over the Forbes list.

You'll find a large number of people there who started with an idea and turned it into a big company.

Maybe the solution is for investors to quit investing in businesses. That way, iolo needed worry about anyone "stealing" what he produces.

 

[Trausti]

All citizens already have a right to earn. Unless by "right" you mean using the coercive force of government to take from others and give to you. Then, all citizens have the right to have sex with supermodels.

There is a fundamental assumption on your part that we accept the same concept of property as you, and for at least some of us, that assumption is dead wrong.

'Property' was invented when someone (some animal, really, long before humans were on the stage) used coercive force to control a resource that everyone needed, or at least they thought they needed. It was probably access to females, as we see in modern great apes outside the Homo genus. Others made a deal with this asshole that they wouldnt just kill him and take it if he would exchange access to this resource for things he needed or wanted. Then we kept doing it that way because it worked out well for whoever managed to extort in such a way, and everyone sought from then on to be the ones doing the extortion. Make no mistake, the act of the extortion itself was and never has been justified, not now, not at the beginning of time. It has always been wrong to extort people in such a way, but there were times when it wasn't possible to do anything but giving in.

Instead, it's better to think of property as 'leaky'. It's yours as long as you keep working for it. The food pile is only yours if you are the one adding the food. The well is yours if you are the one who pumps the water out. And even then only to the extent that you are particularly necessary to the tending of the resource. If discovery and investment are your job, you ought be rewarded for plying the skill, but not to the extent that your investment was particularly lucky. For many of us, a lucky outcome is the property of the group, not the sole property of the one chosen by the group to do the gambling.

Rationalize all you want. But the best descriptor of your view of property is, perhaps, covetous.

 

[Elixir]

I suggest looking over the Forbes list.

You'll find a large number of people there who started with an idea and turned it into a big company.

Maybe the solution is for investors to quit investing in businesses. That way, iolo needed worry about anyone "stealing" what he produces.

Yup. Maybe they should simply return some of that wealth to the economy proper, i.e. BUY SOMETHING USEFUL instead trying to pointlessly amass dollar figures in their own name so they can compete with their peers in an ego-driven fiscal dick-measuring contest.

 

[Trausti]

Maybe the solution is for investors to quit investing in businesses. That way, iolo needed worry about anyone "stealing" what he produces.

Yup. Maybe they should simply return some of that wealth to the economy proper, i.e. BUY SOMETHING USEFUL instead trying to pointlessly amass dollar figures in their own name so they can compete with their peers in an ego-driven fiscal dick-measuring contest.

Yes. They should BUY SOMETHING USEFUL. Hopefully they can still do that after investors have pulled their investments from businesses. It's not like investment is necessary to produce these products, after all.

 

[dismal]

Finally, something we can all back. Well, I'm assuming we don't have many supermodels here.

Also, there's a difference between a right to have sex with supermodels and an ability to have sex with supermodels.

We also have the right to buy a Ferrari whenever we want to but are limited in our ability to exercise that right by the oppressive fascist dictators at the auto dealership who insist that we pay for it first like they make people do in Russia.

I can see we need to ditch this whole ambiguous "right to " language immediately. What need is the freedom from not having sex with supermodels.

In case I don't have the correct number of negatives in there, I intend that the government guarantees us sex with supermodels.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is a fundamental assumption on your part that we accept the same concept of property as you, and for at least some of us, that assumption is dead wrong.

'Property' was invented when someone (some animal, really, long before humans were on the stage) used coercive force to control a resource that everyone needed, or at least they thought they needed. It was probably access to females, as we see in modern great apes outside the Homo genus. Others made a deal with this asshole that they wouldnt just kill him and take it if he would exchange access to this resource for things he needed or wanted. Then we kept doing it that way because it worked out well for whoever managed to extort in such a way, and everyone sought from then on to be the ones doing the extortion. Make no mistake, the act of the extortion itself was and never has been justified, not now, not at the beginning of time. It has always been wrong to extort people in such a way, but there were times when it wasn't possible to do anything but giving in.

Instead, it's better to think of property as 'leaky'. It's yours as long as you keep working for it. The food pile is only yours if you are the one adding the food. The well is yours if you are the one who pumps the water out. And even then only to the extent that you are particularly necessary to the tending of the resource. If discovery and investment are your job, you ought be rewarded for plying the skill, but not to the extent that your investment was particularly lucky. For many of us, a lucky outcome is the property of the group, not the sole property of the one chosen by the group to do the gambling.

Rationalize all you want. But the best descriptor of your view of property is, perhaps, covetous.

You have a duty here, in your implicit claim that property OUGHT be in perpetuity, to justify such a view. You have used a non-sequitur, specifically an ad-hom in calling me 'covetous' without actually addressing my claim or argument: that property is best when it leaks to those who tend the resource, and that your model is natively and inextricably extortion. Further there is a begged question that wanting what someone else 'has' is actually in reality unethical, as you have used the word covet, which assumes sin.

Either show that it is not continued extortion, or concede the point and accept that you ought continue to work in order to continue being afforded wealth.

Or if you claim that extortion is ethically justifiable, provide the philosophical backbone and shared axioms which support such a view. Note that I don't base my claims on philosophical Darwinism such as I suspect your philosophy is built on, so the 'whatever I can get away with, is justified' excuse that so many people on the right of the aisle work with does not work with me.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Also, there's a difference between a right to have sex with supermodels and an ability to have sex with supermodels.

We also have the right to buy a Ferrari whenever we want to but are limited in our ability to exercise that right by the oppressive fascist dictators at the auto dealership who insist that we pay for it first like they make people do in Russia.

I can see we need to ditch this whole ambiguous "right to " language immediately. What need is the freedom from not having sex with supermodels.

In case I don't have the correct number of negatives in there, I intend that the government guarantees us sex with supermodels.

Wouldn't that be an easy profession for the government to pay people to do?

 

[Horatio Parker]

I can see we need to ditch this whole ambiguous "right to " language immediately. What need is the freedom from not having sex with supermodels.

In case I don't have the correct number of negatives in there, I intend that the government guarantees us sex with supermodels.

Wouldn't that be an easy profession for the government to pay people to do?

Easy for who?