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Private Speech posted:What's the difference between national insurance and income tax again? Beyond separate thresholds. Compared to the US, South Africa's tax regime is the same as France's. I have no earthly idea why that matters.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:47
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Compared to the US, South Africa's tax regime is the same as France's. I have no earthly idea why that matters. Because we are discussing this statement: quote:Just saying that low taxes aren't necessarily the primary cause of high inequality, even if they do contribute. For one Britain and the US both have very high inequality, while somewhere like Denmark is doing much better in that respect, despite not having a tax regime that much different from the UK. But yeah whatever, keep tilting at those windmills. Though I admit that if I went through the data beforehand I could have picked even better examples (like Sweden and Brazil I guess), I went with the countries I was familiar with e: To repost the figures from the previous page: Brazil - effective tax rate 38%, GINI world bank ranking 145th in the world (51.5) Sweden - effective tax rate 34%, GINI world bank ranking 11th in the world (27.3) Private Speech fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 00:52
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VitalSigns posted:Yes you are effectively saying that the rich should have more stuff. If your argument for liberal free trade policies is that it creates more wealth overall on the planet then there is no need for there to be 'winners' and 'losers', that wealth can be used to maintain the health and security of American workers while also raising up workers in developing countries. And your position on globalization and trade is what?
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Jan 19, 2017 01:32
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at you quoting "Workers of the World Unite" and then pitting workers against each other by telling one group they have to suffer and watch their jobless kids die of opiate addiction to help another group of workers. Socialism means defending the right of all workers to a decent living, not defending the right of capitalists to use one group to undercut another's wages and safety.
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Private Speech posted:I hear Donald Trump is going to be great for American workers, just the best, will show all those cheating Mexicans and Germans and Japanese car manufacturers what for. China! China is cheating so much, it's so sad. Clearly what we need is to take back those jobs for working class folks. Yeah if you're going to do this then don't complain other people are strawmanning you. Private Speech posted:Thanks for twisting my words into so many strawmen, really quite something to behold. Things I support - higher taxes on the rich, more mobility for workers, free access to healthcare, education, childcare, unemployment, state provided housing even. But I guess I'm not a true socialist because I say that taxes can be a burden on poor people, huh. I'm not accusing you of being a right-winger on taxes and social programs, I'm pointing out that you're implicitly accepting a right-wing framing of these issues and then arguing that we should be liberal-(leftish sometimes?) anyway because "it's the right thing to do". Not only is your right-wing framing wrong and I explained why, but it also completely cuts the legs out from under those social programs you support. If you agree with conservatives that taxes are a burden on the poor and the middle class, you're accepting their premise and then you have to argue "so you should accept these burdens for the benefit of others." Maybe in the good times you might squeak out some wins, but when people are hurting whose pitch is going to be more successful? Yours? Or the guy who agrees with you that taxes are burdening working Americans and tells them they need to take back "their" money from the elites in Washington who are spending it on stuff we "can't afford". On trade you do sound exactly like a right-winger though because you're talking about how the poor in America need to suffer to help the foreigners, but we can't redistribute the profits to help those Americans because redistribution is nebulously "bad". Maybe I'm misinterpreting that, but when you say it's good and moral to impoverish one American worker to help 100 Vietnamese, but flip to "well concentration of wealth and capital is just more efficient so we can't do that" when I ask why that money can't come from the rich instead, well that's pretty indistinguishable from the National Review's trade policy. Maybe you do want to tax the rich and make investments to offset the harm to American workers but as I said above your implicit acceptance of right-wing premises on taxes means you won't be able to sell that to voters. Which is, in my opinion, one of the big problems in the messaging and arguably ideology of "left"-wing Anglo political parties since the late 70s or so.
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Jan 19, 2017 02:06
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah if you're going to do this then don't complain other people are strawmanning you. Fair enough, and I am certainly not accusing you of being an alt-righter, but how do your opinions on global trade and immigration differ from the protectionist narrative pushed by Donald Trump? I don't mean the Republican establishment here. Or do you agree with him on that count, that moving factories abroad and immigration (like H1Bs, mentioning these explicitly because it's something that nationalist leftists from the US often dislike. For the record, yes H1Bs are exploitative, but you can solve that by abolishing the restrictions on those using them, yet you'd still be left with the whole job-stealing/job competition aspect) is, well, undesirable? VitalSigns posted:I'm not accusing you of being a right-winger on taxes and social programs, I'm pointing out that you're implicitly accepting a right-wing framing of these issues and then arguing that we should be liberal-(leftish sometimes?) anyway because "it's the right thing to do". You seem to be coming from a very America-centric perspective though. United States has more domestic inequality than most countries, but is far from alone in participating in 'globalisation', and many other developed and semi-developed countries do as well and manage to address inequality regardless. I would say that America is very important, has certain cultural attitudes towards self-made-ness and is quite nationalistic (although this is a subjective judgement and certainly there are places with more nationalism, before somebody gets right on saying that) and perhaps for these reasons it's electorally necessary to say that taxes are a necessary burden for everyone, for which you get specific benefits. To expound on my point about taxes a bit more, if we look at your specific example - how about instead we not only raise the tax on the top 45% (and in a progressive manner, up to ~70% for the top rate), but also exempt the bottom 25% of paying any income tax? And raise the minimum wage while we're at it. Are you saying that would not be acceptable to the poor? Is it because they would be millionaires any day now, perhaps so again I am not American. But I do not see this as right-wing framing of the issue. I mean ultimately in a truly socialist economy you would just nationalise/communalise all companies and then distribute their products in some way which you see fit, I don't see how taxes would be necessary then, except as a trick of accounting. There are many variants on the same theme which preserve the current financial structure to a greater or lesser degree (e.g. giving equal value of shares to everyone, but then you'd have to keep taking them away and giving them out again and again. wouldn't really work) And as for concentration of wealth ultimately I don't know enough about that, I feel like this is something that I'd like someone who knows more about Economics than me (Helsing?) to discuss. But intuitively money has a differing value all over the world, and, due to being concentrated in relatively rich/productive places where it's value is low, it doesn't seem like it's necessarily backed by all the physical goods and industrial potential that the sum itself would suggest. This is why I brought up the possible issues with climate if everyone on the world was to be afforded the same quality of life. Either way though this is an extreme form of globalism/internationalism, verging on Maoism/third-worldism, and as such it's the complete opposite of protectionist policies. e: Also I am slightly dyslectic. I did not edit this post except to add this disclaimer and say that I can see the mistakes I've made writing it (United Satates have, lots of commas, etc.) and it bugs me. But I hate that I edit almost every post I make, and usually end up rephrasing things which annoys other people too. It's sortof damned if you do, damned if you don't, so I won't this time except to explain my mistakes and constant editing. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 02:57
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Income inequality is absolutely clear cut and obvious, and so is wealth inequality, and we're talking about both. They're perfectly well studied, the data is available. Capital gains are beside the point and don't clarify your argument at all. I can't tell if you're handwaving because you're out of your depth, or if you're just cloudy about what your argument actually is. Why are you bringing up climate change? What? Have you seen the price of rent in most places?
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Jan 19, 2017 05:18
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$11.5k a year would leave me with $2500 all year to spend after rent on a studio apartment nearby. Though I'd say the problem is that housing is bullshit.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:29
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If you don't anything about concentration of wealth and how it affects markets why do you think you are qualified to give your opinion on economic matters I'm not trying to be a dick but that's a pretty fundamental aspect of macroeconomics
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Jan 19, 2017 05:35
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SHY NUDIST GRRL posted:$11.5k a year would leave me with $2500 all year to spend after rent on a studio apartment nearby. Though I'd say the problem is that housing is bullshit. If you assume that nothing else about the economy would change in a world in which wealth was massively and equitably redistributed on such an enormous scale, than yeah I guess it would suck. But we might as well imagine a post-scarcity Star Trek world at that point.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:50
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There's no way a society where everyone had exactly equal income would still include rent guys come on. Same for mortgages or any other kind of debt. You'd probably be given your home by the community or government or something like that.
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Jan 19, 2017 06:03
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Even trying to quantify economic output in terms of dollars is difficult because monetary value isn't necessarily tied to social utility value. A society that is focused on equality isn't going to value bizjets, luxury yachts, ostentatious oversized cars and real estate. I don't know how things like that would be adapted to fit a post-capitalist world.
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Jan 19, 2017 06:15
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Higsian posted:There's no way a society where everyone had exactly equal income would still include rent guys come on. Same for mortgages or any other kind of debt. You'd probably be given your home by the community or government or something like that. Ehhh, that's not entirely true. If everybody got a certain GMI then you'd have people being more willing to live in places with dismal economic prospects because, gently caress it, don't need a job. Or, if you have one, you don't care much if it only pays $5,000 a year. One of the biggest drivers of rent right now is a massive shortage of housing in the places people actually want to live. As in, where the jobs are. People are flocking to certain parts of America purely by necessity and it's loving up prices. In some areas of America you can buy a big house for less than a year's rent in San Francisco. The reason is because nobody wants to live in those places out of sheer necessity. If everybody gets a GMI then you'll have people living there anyway because gently caress it, who cares, it's cheap and space is plentiful.
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Jan 19, 2017 06:48
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Private Speech posted:Fair enough, and I am certainly not accusing you of being an alt-righter, but how do your opinions on global trade and immigration differ from the protectionist narrative pushed by Donald Trump? I don't mean the Republican establishment here. Or do you agree with him on that count, that moving factories abroad and immigration (like H1Bs, mentioning these explicitly because it's something that nationalist leftists from the US often dislike. For the record, yes H1Bs are exploitative, but you can solve that by abolishing the restrictions on those using them, yet you'd still be left with the whole job-stealing/job competition aspect) is, well, undesirable? My opinions on immigration are the complete opposite of Donald Trump's. I want amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because their illegal status is how businesses are able to exploit them to undercut wage and workplace safety laws without fear that their employees will report them to the authorities. I agree with you that H1-B visas should be fixed to end exploitation (for example, H1-B visas should not be tied to a job for a single employer) and not abolished. Unionizing and collective bargaining in those industries would make it impossible to undercut wages by importing foreigners while still serving the original purpose of H1-B visas (to make it possible to bring in skilled workers to solve shortages of qualified personnel). When programmers complain about Indian visa-holders undercutting their pay, we should tell them "here's what a union would do for you." We should not tell them "gently caress you, I'm glad you're unemployed because it's good for the third-world poor" because they will notice their employers making bank on the deal, will rightly conclude you're fine with that and hate you, and vote for the guy who comes along and says "we'll kick out anyone browner than this bag and make %country% great again". Trade: I'm not against "globalism" in the vague and general way this thread is using it, because that kind of anti-globalism makes a technologically advanced economy impossible, if you want devices using rare earth magnets in New Jersey you're going to need global trade. But you can't boil down all trade to vague definitions and hat-sized slogans, so as briefly as I can (ie, not briefly at all): Absolute advantage: This is the kind of trade you're talking about that makes the world wealthier overall. We could build greenhouses to grow coffee and bananas in the USA and "create jobs" but this is less efficient and makes the world poorer overall. We should absolutely trade for these commodities provided that we require the producing countries to pay a living wage and protect workers. Then the money those workers get from us can be spent to buy goods Americans produce, and this is more efficient than creating American coffee-growing jobs in greenhouses. Coffee companies should not be allowed to exploit their workers and pocket the extra savings, that money should be coming back to America in trade for American goods that in turn benefit Columbian farmworkers instead of that money being hoarded by the ultra-rich and used to speculate in our housing markets or whatever Comparative advantage: Again, the kind of trade you're talking about. There may be no absolute advantage to buying Mexican-made clothes rather than producing our own but if, say, we could be using our advanced education and industrial base to employ those workers doing something else like alternative energy generation, producing electric cars, etc then again this makes the world overall wealthier. And again we should do this provided we actually make those investments and create those jobs and provided those Mexican workers make a living wage so they can buy our electric cars and Hollywood movies. If you start shipping Wisconsin's factories overseas you better make drat sure there is free education and a living stipend for those laid-off workers and you are building (or encouraging companies to build) the new factories in their place, if not for moral reasons, then for practical reasons because they will vote fash if they think it will bring their lost jobs back. Cost-cutting with cheaper foreign labor: this does not make the world richer. It is environmentally damaging to ship goods around, and it is simply a transfer of wealth from American workers to (a) poor people in other countries and (b) the ultra-rich. (a) is a good goal but this is an inefficient way of achieving it. What we should do is tax the rich and use that money to help that country build up its own domestic industry and education (incidentally, this is what the United States did for global strategic reasons whenever it wanted to build an actual economically powerful and prosperous ally rather than an exploitable colony. The Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of Japan, our massive foreign aid program to South Korea, etc). Free trade, exploitation of labor and resources, and dumping of manufactured goods on their economy were reserved for countries we wanted to keep poor and powerless for as long as possible. Private Speech posted:To expound on my point about taxes a bit more, if we look at your specific example - how about instead we not only raise the tax on the top 45% (and in a progressive manner, up to ~70% for the top rate), but also exempt the bottom 25% of paying any income tax? And raise the minimum wage while we're at it. Are you saying that would not be acceptable to the poor? Is it because they would be millionaires any day now, perhaps so again I am not American. But I do not see this as right-wing framing of the issue. This is correct and this is what we should do. A properly designed progressive tax system benefits everyone except the top richest minority for whom the loss is a minor inconvenience. Earlier you were arguing something different, namely Private Speech posted:That is a completely different issue, but taxes do economically "hurt" individuals, even if they benefit in turn. Don't look at it like "taxes should be slashed for everyone", instead look at it as "no poor person should pay any taxes whatsoever, they should be only paid by the middle class and up". If you accept that premise you can easily see that abolishing taxes for any given individual would benefit that individual, as long as somebody else picks up the tab. But of course we come back to practical feasibility, including the uncomfortable truth that the level of income (as opposed to wealth) of the rich is not enough alone to sustain public services, even if it were to be all paid in taxes (which would in fact cause a number of ancillary issues e.g. lack of funds for investment etc.). You can dismiss that as right-wing ideology, but it's not, that's simply how the basics of developed economies work. This is right-wing ideology. First of all, it's wrong: the top 10% of earners in America bring in half of the country's income. They alone could pay all our bills. 84% of income tax receipts come from the top 20% of earners: if their tax bills just increased by a less than a quarter, income taxes could be zero on everyone else. "The rich don't have enough money, the Democrats really want to tax you out of house and home" is a right-wing lie, the rich have more than enough money. Taxing the rich would not hurt the ability to invest for lots of reasons. Money doesn't disappear when it's taxed, it is spent on schools and roads and food stamps and whatever, and that money goes somewhere, and when non-rich people have money to spend there are investment opportunities. The ultra-rich don't invest their monthly paychecks, they invest the vast amounts of wealth they control (and except for property taxes, wealth is not taxed) in order to get returns and those investments will continue to be made as long as there are profitable investments (because only gains are taxed). We had a 90% top tax rate in the 1950s and there were plenty of funds available for private investment. And anyway our problem isn't too little money to be invested, our problem is too few places to invest because consumer demand is slack. To deal with this the ultra-rich tried to chase returns by funneling money into huge bubble-inflating casinos like the housing market that hosed up prices for a generation of people trying to buy homes and ultimately crashed the economy when no one could afford their mortgage payments anymore. After 2008 happened no one should be seriously suggesting the ultra-rich are in danger of "running out" of money to invest: the opposite is true, they have so much money they can't find enough places to invest it, it is such a problem that US Treasuries have occasionally dipped to negative interest rates, they have literally paid the government to take their money.
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Jan 19, 2017 08:56
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Great post overall, just want to tease this out because it gives the example of what we should be using for comparison to current globalism as a means to enrich the world:VitalSigns posted:What we should do is tax the rich and use that money to help that country build up its own domestic industry and education (incidentally, this is what the United States did for global strategic reasons whenever it wanted to build an actual economically powerful and prosperous ally rather than an exploitable colony. The Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of Japan, our massive foreign aid program to South Korea, etc). China (and the BRICS in general to differing extents) is having difficulty transitioning into a properly developed nation precisely because its economy was built to serve as a factory for the rest of the world, rather than building up its own domestic industries and market.
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Jan 19, 2017 09:19
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Isn't that exactly what people said about Japan in the 70-80s? Yet somehow they aren't a factory of cheap goods and labour now. Bit odd really. E: the capital gains tax in 1950-60s was 25% and effective tax rate on the top 1% was only around 40% by the way. I'm not saying you shouldn't tax the rich higher anyhow, but capital gains tax was never 90%, and that's the part that matters for people with high income. And if you imposed a 90% capital gains tax then you'd almost certainly hit the economy hard, although admittedly in that case not allowing overseas investment would be very helpful. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 13:32
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Japan industrialized in the 1880s though, they had the type of high tech capabilities to move beyond being a bulk exporter of cheap goods, much like Germany, which iirc they took a lot of inspiration from even before the Alliance with the Nazis
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Jan 19, 2017 13:39
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Private Speech posted:Isn't that exactly what people said about Japan in the 70-80s? Yet somehow they aren't a factory of cheap goods and labour now. Bit odd really. Considering the position Japan is in (a dead economy for over a decade, huge generational issues, etc) I'm not sure they are a great counter-example to bring up. I see China ending up in roughly the same place, just with much less wealth per capita and much worse conditions left in the aftermath.
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Jan 19, 2017 13:40
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VitalSigns posted:My opinions on immigration are the complete opposite of Donald Trump's. I want amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because their illegal status is how businesses are able to exploit them to undercut wage and workplace safety laws without fear that their employees will report them to the authorities. I agree with you that H1-B visas should be fixed to end exploitation (for example, H1-B visas should not be tied to a job for a single employer) and not abolished. Unionizing and collective bargaining in those industries would make it impossible to undercut wages by importing foreigners while still serving the original purpose of H1-B visas (to make it possible to bring in skilled workers to solve shortages of qualified personnel). When programmers complain about Indian visa-holders undercutting their pay, we should tell them "here's what a union would do for you." We should not tell them "gently caress you, I'm glad you're unemployed because it's good for the third-world poor" because they will notice their employers making bank on the deal, will rightly conclude you're fine with that and hate you, and vote for the guy who comes along and says "we'll kick out anyone browner than this bag and make %country% great again". There is no distinction made between your "cost cutting" example and "comparative advantage". The cost cutting example (giving jobs to poorer people) is comparative advantage and can make everyone goods-richer as well.
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Jan 19, 2017 14:20
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Yeah any direct comparison is going to be difficult and complicated by various factors since we're dealing with the real world. I'll be happy if we just see debate revolve around different ideas for uplifting countries rather than comparing the current plan to "let em rot" as though they are the totality of options. Even if I'm ultimately wrong, it's just not compelling to see the current approach be put up against nothing so it's not a great argument for me, and I imagine anybody else that currently disagrees with what we're doing now.
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Jan 19, 2017 14:20
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VitalSigns posted:My opinions on immigration are the complete opposite of Donald Trump's. I want amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because their illegal status is how businesses are able to exploit them to undercut wage and workplace safety laws without fear that their employees will report them to the authorities. I agree with you that H1-B visas should be fixed to end exploitation (for example, H1-B visas should not be tied to a job for a single employer) and not abolished. Unionizing and collective bargaining in those industries would make it impossible to undercut wages by importing foreigners while still serving the original purpose of H1-B visas (to make it possible to bring in skilled workers to solve shortages of qualified personnel). When programmers complain about Indian visa-holders undercutting their pay, we should tell them "here's what a union would do for you." We should not tell them "gently caress you, I'm glad you're unemployed because it's good for the third-world poor" because they will notice their employers making bank on the deal, will rightly conclude you're fine with that and hate you, and vote for the guy who comes along and says "we'll kick out anyone browner than this bag and make %country% great again". The thing is that most overseas companies already pay a decent wage for the host country, it just happens that because of relative cost of living and levels of development it's far lower than in the US. Do you consider that cost-cutting with cheap foreign labour? I suppose the ultra-protectionist alternative where every country has a separate industry serving only themselves would avoid issues with differing wages and development, but that would almost certainly cause the US economy to take a massive hit (because all the various American world-leading planes, electronics, software, industrial machinery, etc. would suddenly have a much smaller market). And if you keep the free trade in goods you're not going to see e.g. Congo develop it's own microprocessor when they have to compete with Intel. VitalSigns posted:This is right-wing ideology. First of all, it's wrong: the top 10% of earners in America bring in half of the country's income. They alone could pay all our bills. Leaving aside the issue of capital gains, of course it's true that the richest country in the world could make every one of its citizens have a reasonable standard of living. You can look at the costing for basic income to see the kind of tax numbers you'd need for it (extra ~30% universal tax to give everyone a living wage as basic income IIRC, and that's assuming people don't start quitting their jobs bringing tax revenues down), but yes it would be possible. This doesn't really help the rest of the world though. But certainly, America could use a bit more redistribution to take care of its poor better, I think we agree on that. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 14:50
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Don't beat around the bush, the Congo isn't going to design its own microprocessor this century which highlights a basic reality. Rich countries have world's capital and technology. The only way poor countries are going to get it is trade. Related aside: "free trade" isn't a useful term here.
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Jan 19, 2017 15:17
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asdf32 posted:Don't beat around the bush, the Congo isn't going to design its own microprocessor this century which highlights a basic reality. Rich countries have world's capital and technology. The only way poor countries are going to get it is trade. Well there's foreign aid and other such forms of economic transfers, but yeah pretty much. I wrote free competition in goods originally, I used free trade as a shorthand for it when I edited the post. I suppose either way it's not actually very meaningful to call it "free" though. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 15:38
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Private Speech posted:Well there's foreign aid and other such forms of economic transfers, but yeah pretty much. Right. It's trade or it's altruism but altruism isn't realistically going to fill container ships with high technology and heavy capital bound for the third world.
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Jan 19, 2017 16:25
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Private Speech posted:Leaving aside the issue of capital gains, of course it's true that the richest country in the world could make every one of its citizens have a reasonable standard of living. You can look at the costing for basic income to see the kind of tax numbers you'd need for it (extra ~30% universal tax to give everyone a living wage as basic income IIRC, and that's assuming people don't start quitting their jobs bringing tax revenues down), but yes it would be possible. This doesn't really help the rest of the world though. But certainly, America could use a bit more redistribution to take care of its poor better, I think we agree on that. You're still assigning penalty to taxation, and referring to it as "redistribution". You seem to consider it a sort of necessary punishment that the rich "take care of the poor". Have you considered that higher marginal tax rates help the rich as well? It's not just "the right thing to do", taxing the rich is good for the economy in general, which in turn, is good for the rich. The rich certainly don't benefit from the social breakdown and authoritarian chaos that massive wealth inequality generates, either. Put very simply, would you rather have half a billion dollars that you have no hope of spending in your lifetime, but you live in a country with a strong middle class and a growing economy, or would you rather have three billion dollars that you have no hope of spending in your lifetime, but you live in a post-soviet authoritarian satellite state? Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 17:15
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Don't worry, it'll all trickle down eventually. Its not like anybody got rich during the 1950s at the peak of high taxes or anything, right?
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Jan 19, 2017 17:17
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VitalSigns posted:(for example, H1-B visas should not be tied to a job for a single employer) H1-B visas can be transferred between employers. The problem is that they're tied to employment, so the transfer has to be approved before the worker quits their current job. I've done many transfers for people though, it's much easier than getting someone a new H1-B (no lottery, f.e.).
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Jan 19, 2017 17:19
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CommieGIR posted:Don't worry, it'll all trickle down eventually. Its not like anybody got rich during the 1950s at the peak of high taxes or anything, right? Don't even know what you're trying to say, that people got rich was precisely because the real tax rates they were subjected to were nowhere near as high.
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Jan 19, 2017 18:06
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:You're still assigning penalty to taxation, and referring to it as "redistribution". You seem to consider it a sort of necessary punishment that the rich "take care of the poor". Taxation is a penalty to the individual in the short term. Don't make that silly detail be the point of contention here.
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Jan 19, 2017 18:12
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asdf32 posted:Taxation is a penalty to the individual in the short term. Don't make that silly detail be the point of contention here. And a benefit in the medium to long term that vastly outweighs the short term penalty. It's not a silly detail, it's the core difference in perspective that I'm trying to reconcile. edit: It's not even a short term penalty. The only way that could be true is if tax money disappeared into space after collection. In a progressive system, some benefit more than others in the short term, but everyone is buying something tangible and immediately helpful with their tax money. Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 18:23
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:And a benefit in the medium to long term that vastly outweighs the short term penalty. It's not a silly detail, it's the core difference in perspective that I'm trying to reconcile. You're sort of trying to argue that tragedy of the commons doesn't exist. But it does. If you didn't pay your taxes next year you'd be thousands richer and there wouldn't be a single noticeable consequence to anything that your taxes pay for. And it's true that young heathy professionals are the biggest comparative losers with respect to the average amount of services they receive for each tax dollar. You're going to get farther if you aknowlege that and focus on plying up the medium/longer term benefits. If that's actually a sticking point which I'm not sure it is.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:03
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asdf32 posted:And it's true that young heathy professionals are the biggest comparative losers with respect to the average amount of services they receive for each tax dollar. They *did* just leave public education though.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:06
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asdf32 posted:You're sort of trying to argue that tragedy of the commons doesn't exist. But it does. This doesn't mean what you think it means.
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Jan 19, 2017 20:49
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BarbarianElephant posted:They *did* just leave public education though. gently caress them, got ours.  Also, an unstable authoritarian hellhole is actually more beneficial to the rich in that there's a breakdown of the rule of law generally and you can have things most civil societies would recoil at in your own backyard, from literal sex slaves to human hunting. Having all political power stripped from everyone outside your class is also a nice feeling.
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Jan 19, 2017 22:04
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Also, an unstable authoritarian hellhole is actually more beneficial to the rich in that there's a breakdown of the rule of law generally and you can have things most civil societies would recoil at in your own backyard, from literal sex slaves to human hunting. Having all political power stripped from everyone outside your class is also a nice feeling. If you are rich and not an actual sociopath, the kind of person that enjoys fine dining more than rape slaves, an authoritarian hellhole isn't actually that great. The Opera, fancy restaurants, theater, all these things benefit from a peaceful society. Better to be rich in Paris than North Korea, in general.
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Jan 19, 2017 22:31
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Yeah only peaceful and egalitarian democracies ever have a thriving cultural scene.
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Jan 19, 2017 22:54
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Your point being.... culture and the arts are better under state repression?
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Jan 19, 2017 23:20
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Mozi posted:Your point being.... culture and the arts are better under state repression? My point being that it's a silly argument. "If you like restaurants and the opera then you should support the social democratic redistribution of wealth" is so spurious it's going to take away credibility from any good arguments you're making. Violent and chaotic periods of history and authoritarian cultural norms or repressive governments have coincided with lots of high culture and fancy living.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:11
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asdf32 posted:Part of what needs to be pointed out is that dissatisfaction and actual disfunction can be completely different things. There are many issues where the negative views of voters are essentially factually inaccurate - on crime, healthcare, immigration and all sorts of economic specifics. Absolutely. Water fluoridation, for instance, often gets voted down in cases where it's put to referendum instead of simply being implemented as a technocratic decision by local government. We could list examples of that all day. Or we could reach into the past and find some quintessential examples of democratic bodies reaching horrifically terrible decisions over and above the warnings of the relevant experts. Democracy and popular decision making aren't magical solutions to intractable or age-old political problems. My criticisms of the current establishment or status quo or whatever want to call it are a lot more grounded in the specific situation we find ourselves in. Broadly speaking I think our society is failing by it's own self stated standards I could point to a lot of specific failures, but for the sake of brevity let's point at three major areas where our elites have made promises they couldn't keep, or have visibly displayed their own venality and incompetence: foreign policy (especially in the middle east), the economy the environment. It hardly needs to be said that big chunks of voters are implicated alongside their leaders in all of those problems but I think that something you fail to acknowledge is the way that elite interests shape the way in which our society discusses and even conceptualizes its problems. I think you really underrate the extent to which voting and politics is diverted into particular kinds of choice or dilemmas. There are times when competitive elections or referendums are going to yield real and important real world consequences for voters, so it can't be said they have no power over their own fates, but the options they choose between are heavily constrained. In many cases viable alternative options which might be expected to work better than the options permitted by the system are simply excluded, not because of technical difficulties but because they are contrary to some vested interest. The reason that I accused you of being tautological is because you seem to present a vision of democracy where just because voters get to make some limited choices, therefore they are fully in control and thus by definition whatever the government does or does not provide is based on what the voters want. This perspective overlooks the way the system operates in reality. quote:In regards to the study I have a few comments. First, significant chunks of it can be explained. Black voters are such a sure thing for democrats that democrats have zero incentive to pay attention to them. Second, as you pointed out voter sentiment can be conflicting which poses a chalenge for that study which tries to get relatively specific. Third its obviously true to an extent. Part of it will never go away - there will always be inequality in power which will give some groups an advantage. But also it probably captures the real anger we just saw in this election where the white working class openly broke with the elites they had long partnered with (but who had always ignored them). In one paragraph you describe how blacks overwhelmingly vote democratic out of fear, despite receiving very little in return, and then two paragraphs later you say that since the US doesn't have single payer healthcare, therefore it doesn't want single payer healthcare. That's where I see the tautology coming in. You start from the premise that voters in the system get what they want, then reason backwards from the fact that there's no single payer system and conclude that therefore single payer is unwanted. What you're ignoring is the extent to which voters are corralled into a couple false choices. You speak of "what power looks like a Democracy", but this framing is far too abstract to be very useful. The United States has extremely uncompetitive elections. Senate incumbency rates are high and house incumbency rates are approaching North Korean levels. A lot of that is a direct byproduct of gerrymandering or voter suppression. quote:How exactly have you incorporated the trump win into your worldview? Your whole post would seem a lot better if we currently had president elect Bush, coming off a win where he outspent everyone, planning 4 years of elite prescribed neoliberal policy including immigration reform and the TPP instead of trump tweeting about trade wars and the wall while intervening in the market at the level of individual factories to save working class jobs. I never doubted that Trump could win the election and said on many occasions leading up to the vote that there was a very real chance of him winning, and while I did think based on poll projections that Hilary was much more likely to win (apparently even Trump's advisers thought this) I wasn't shocked when those predictions turned out to be wrong. It makes sense to me that Trump won. I guess I need to restate this but I don't think elites or monied interests are omnipotent within the confines of the system. I guess you could make a very rough analogy to a horse and a rider, just because the rider has trained the horse to do what it's expected to do 99% of the time doesn't mean the horse will never bite or kick, especially when it's being severely mistreated. But again I feel like you're swapping in a very abstract argument to cover up a fairly obvious truth about money distorting the political system. You start by correctly pointing out that sometimes even the most powerful or well funded political endeavors can fail. This is true. But from this it doesn't follow that therefore money is not a major force in politics or therefore elites don't exercise a stranglehold over political choices. The fact money doesn't win 100% of the time isn't a particularly compelling argument if it wins 90% of the time. We can quibble over how successful money is at driving political outcomes and to what extent surges of popular discontent can over ride money. Finally, I think you're conceiving my argument about money driving the system in extremely narrow terms. It's not just about election spending. It's also about the way certain ideological solutions are given a lot of support while other options are ignored or denigrated. When Trump runs on his expertise as a businessman and his tough no-nonsense approach to governance he is benefiting from decades of political preparation by the right. Shifting the conscious of the population away from social democracy and toward free market capitalism has been a long-term goal of the right. They haven't been entirely successful but I think it would be foolish to deny that billions of dollars spread over many decades and taking numerous forms of advocacy accross every conceivable medium can't be entirely ignored. Obviously it's not the only or even the main factor in shaping the political consciousness of the electorate but it can't be ignored that private wealth and power gives elite actors the ability to shape the opinions and beliefs of the populace. Now you could argue with some fairness that voters are just plain stupid if they allow themselves to be bamboozled by that. I think you'd be overlooking the subtly of a lot of this propaganda but maybe you'd still have a point. Even if there isn't anything resembling equality in terms of who controls the media or educational institutions, people still have to make up their own minds at the end of the day. But I would say even if we accept this somewhat cynical view of our fellow citizens, we're still better off trying to construct a political system where privately funded think tanks or highly biased financial reporters are presented to the public as experts or voices of reason. I think that without intolerably compromising liberal freedoms we can never eliminate this problem entirely but it could be made much better than the way things currently are. There are such massive conflicts of interest in terms of how public discourse is conducted under the current system. quote:I was personally slow to recognize the general importance of race in the last few decades but this election, as well as Brexit, was a wakeup call. Race explains the marriage between the white working class and the republican elite that we just saw break down. That the marriage roughly coincided with globalization goes a significant way to explaining the decline of labor and the general shift right around that time. Race may single-handedly explain why America is unique in not wanting to hand out wellfare or healthcare, something on display as we watch Europe recoil just at the thought of increased migrants. I feel that you acknowledge this without really considering how much it harms your argument that American voters basically get the outcomes they want. The way racial strife distorts political outcomes isn't some minor technical glitch, it's a central reality of American political life. Those kinds of stark social divisions are extremely damaging to the proper functioning of a democracy. quote:Your regan paragraph makes sense but then you take things too far. Representative democracy isn't supposed to represent what the people want on an immediate basis but it does present real boundaries for what the people in power can do before they're punished. Of course the Democrats and Republicans routinely trade the various offices but the Tea Party and Trump are also examples of how it still really does work in multiple dimensions. I guess my argument could be summarized as this. The particular form of representative democracy that is operated right now is very clearly working below its potential. I think you consistently stick to a really abstracted view of things where you just sort of chalk up any dysfunction to a "compromise" or fall back on a circular argument about the system delivering the results people want.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:12
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asdf32 posted:There is no distinction made between your "cost cutting" example and "comparative advantage". The cost cutting example (giving jobs to poorer people) is comparative advantage and can make everyone goods-richer as well. No, if the goods are cheaper to make overseas for any reason (including lower cost of living) that's absolute advantage. Comparative advantage is when you and I can both make shirts for $10, but I can make pants for $20 and you can make pants for $30. And therefore everyone is goods-richer if I spend more time making pants and you spend more time making shirts and we trade for what we need. Theoretically Theoretically. Because what do you mean make "everyone" goods-richer? Not everyone, not literally every single person affected, not the Wisconsin family whose breadwinner gets laid off before qualifying for a pension, whose kids now have no jobs after high school. So no, not "everyone". Some of that money turns into higher profits which are extracted by the ultra-rich and used for other rent-seeking unproductive activities like gambling in financial markets instead of being productively invested (because families like that Wisconsin family are no longer buying, the investment opportunities from selling to them dried up). Which is why I qualified that you need to tax away enough of the profits to actually make those investments in American workers and industry to replace the industry that's leaving, and not let the country hollow out into an unemployable underclass rife with opiate addiction and petty crime, ruled over by a small ultra-rich owner class. Private Speech posted:The thing is that most overseas companies already pay a decent wage for the host country, it just happens that because of relative cost of living and levels of development it's far lower than in the US. Do you consider that cost-cutting with cheap foreign labour? Many do not. But yes, a living wage for a host country with lower cost of living is absolute advantage, see above. Private Speech posted:Leaving aside the issue of capital gains, of course it's true that the richest country in the world could make every one of its citizens have a reasonable standard of living. You can look at the costing for basic income to see the kind of tax numbers you'd need for it (extra ~30% universal tax to give everyone a living wage as basic income IIRC, and that's assuming people don't start quitting their jobs bringing tax revenues down), but yes it would be possible. This doesn't really help the rest of the world though. But certainly, America could use a bit more redistribution to take care of its poor better, I think we agree on that. I'm not convinced that liberal free trade is the most effective way to help these countries, maybe address the counterexamples I already mentioned. South Korea, etc. did not industrialize the way you are proposing. Private Speech posted:the capital gains tax in 1950-60s was 25% and effective tax rate on the top 1% was only around 40% by the way Private Speech posted:I'm not saying you shouldn't tax the rich higher anyhow, but capital gains tax was never 90%, and that's the part that matters for people with high income. And if you imposed a 90% capital gains tax then you'd almost certainly hit the economy hard, although admittedly in that case not allowing overseas investment would be very helpful. Would that hit the economy hard? Why would it? I assume the answer is "the rich wouldn't bother investing" but I'm not convinced that's true. Interest is taxed as ordinary income, did the 1950s economy blow up because the rich didn't bother to buy any bonds? Of course not. Taxes are only assessed as a percentage of gains. If an investment has a risk-adjusted expected positive return it is always more beneficial to make that investment than to sit on the money regardless of the tax rate (assuming zero or positive inflation obviously). Since making the investment is always beneficial, I'm not convinced that enough rich people will turn down money out of hurt fee-fees to make a difference to the economy. And why should we depend on the rich to make all the investments at their top marginal rate anyway? Do they have magical rich-people knowledge that you only get from falling out of Kathy Hilton's vagina? A more equitable distribution of wealth would mean more of those dollars in the hands of the middle class, who will want to invest those dollars in stocks and bonds and managed funds for their retirement and won't be paying the marginal rates that make the ultra-rich too sad to make money. As an aside, I'd like to point out this is another right-wing framing that cuts the legs out from under your socialist ideals. There are some interesting interviews with Trump voters who will literally die without Obamacare but voted for Trump because they've bought the line that taxes on the rich are bad for the economy and hope that a better Trump economy will get them jobs and employer healthcare rather than barely affording their ACA-plan premiums. And why shouldn't they buy that line when the supposedly left-wing party agrees that taxing the rich is bad for the economy and their only argument is "well let's just tax the rich anyhow". VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 02:07
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asdf32 posted:Taxation is a penalty to the individual in the short term. Don't make that silly detail be the point of contention here. You know what else is a "short-term" benefit to the individual? Stealing! You get stuff without paying anything, what's not to love?
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Jan 20, 2017 02:18
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