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Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

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Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#221

Post by brightball »

ghostly_s wrote: post #217
brightball wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people get confused when talking about debt just because types of debt are different. Using debt to generate income = good. Using debt to buy stuff you can't afford = bad. The first pays itself back while the latter does not. When somebody like Dave Ramsey is talking about debt, he's talking about paying off credit card bills, car loans, student loans, mortgages - payments that you're making that leave you p…

I think your being a bit generous. I listened to the entirety of Dave Ramsey's 'Financial Peace University' series and I don't remember him once mentioning the concept of "good debt". In fact, here it is, on his site: >Myth: Debt is a tool and should be used to help create prosperity. >Truth: Debt isn’t used by wealthy people nearly as much as we are led to believe. http://www.daveramsey.com/blog/the-truth-about-debt

True. In the context of Kioski he talks about some debt almost entirely around real estate.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#222

Post by orthecreedence »

patrickaljord wrote: post #99
ianai wrote: post #47

There was a point where financing the government was a patriotic act. People would give other people War Bonds as presents. But now the patriotic thing is to trash talk which ever party is in the administration and wax poetic about governmental corruption. You can't have it both ways. You can't say no to financing your government and scorn corruption. Either you're okay paying for your government, you're okay with so…

There's that last option where you would be ok with having no government at all. Although, governments usually do not offer it except maybe in Liechtenstein.

The only people who should be ok with no government are practiced warlords. The rest are naive anarchists who believe in the ability for people to peacefully self-govern or selfish libertarians who think they deserve to keep 100% of what they make regardless of how far society carried them to get their wealth.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#223

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thatcat wrote: post #138
shadowfiend wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct---in your system, someone can be surrounded by a society that is fundamentally positive because no one is wanting for basic needs, and leverage that fact to be wealthy because they don't have to worry about a certain class of problems, yet not contribute back into the system that has allowed their wealth to accumulate. This is as much a choice as a welfare recipient who could work, but is choosing not…

>Government is where we come together as a people and say "yes, this is the cost that we have decided is worth paying in order to have the society that we want". In this way, it is the largest form of organized labor. When something is decried for 'inefficiency' we should examine what we are trying to do efficiently. For example, reducing costs of health care by negotiating drug price ceilings as a group in UK/Canada…

> This perception is ideological, in the mind of many Americans market equillibrium is always the most efficient pricing, this measure of efficiency is not related to the amount of healthcare delivered per dollar spent.

The "market is efficient" assumption is voided by the bastardized healthcare system in the US.

In theory the reason we have drug patents is that if you create an important drug, you get a temporary monopoly that you can use to make a lot of money, so people will have the incentive to create important drugs.

The benefit is supposed to be that the market sets the price. Until the patent expires, you pay exactly as much as the drug is worth, no less and no more.

But if the government (or even a large enough insurance company) is paying then there is no market, the buyer has pricing power. The only way the patent system produces the efficiency it's supposed to is if the patient pays for the drugs. Without that you might as well get rid of drug patents and just use tax money to fund drug research directly.

But if you talk about either getting rid of prescription drug coverage or getting rid of drug patents, politics enters and we get the inefficient catastrophe we have.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#224

Post by brightball »

alanfalcon wrote: post #211
vlunkr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a regular Ramsey listener, I can tell you he is against ALL debt (except for a reasonable home loan). Basically if you are making some kind of investment, you should save up the cash for it.

You're 100% correct—but also 90% of the people in his audience are squarely in the bad debt category and to them the simplified message of "debt is bad, get out of debt and stay out of debt" is winning andvice, especially with his straightforward plan.

Agreed

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#225

Post by comice »

ianai wrote: post #47

There was a point where financing the government was a patriotic act. People would give other people War Bonds as presents. But now the patriotic thing is to trash talk which ever party is in the administration and wax poetic about governmental corruption. You can't have it both ways. You can't say no to financing your government and scorn corruption. Either you're okay paying for your government, you're okay with so…

Taxes do not finance the US government. The US government creates money to finance itself.

Taxes destroy money (and create demand for dollars, which is important :)

Hyperinflation doesn't happen when there is too much money, it happens when there isn't enough stuff to buy with it.

Lots of ignorance of monetary theory on HN!

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#226

Post by the_gastropod »

rsync wrote: post #194
vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

"Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind." I think there's an important distinction to be made between two different sorts of "high taxes". One is a high absolute amount of taxes - you made millions of dollars in a year and therefore your absolute tax payment is relatively quite high. The other is a high percentage tax rate. I don't mind paying a high absolute rate of taxes - I think that is the scenario in…

> my effective tax rate is 50%

For this to be true, your income must be in the realm of $10 Million / year. If that's the case, congratulations—that is phenomenal. But pardon me for not crying you a river ;-)

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#227

Post by costcopizza »

rsync wrote: post #194
vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

"Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind." I think there's an important distinction to be made between two different sorts of "high taxes". One is a high absolute amount of taxes - you made millions of dollars in a year and therefore your absolute tax payment is relatively quite high. The other is a high percentage tax rate. I don't mind paying a high absolute rate of taxes - I think that is the scenario in…

I guess you could rationalize that with:

During my 60 minutes of work I was able to: breath clean air, have potable water, be surrounded by an orderly society, and in the event of danger have access to emergency services.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#228

Post by Bartweiss »

patrickaljord wrote: post #103
coderjames wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.

Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners.

But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#229

Post by acjohnson55 »

dmichulke wrote: post #129
vacri wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).

You do realize that government actually doesn't earn the money but takes it away from others that earn it. It's not as if with government we have more money. So all that matters is efficiency and if a charity is more efficient than a government, why is there no state where you can choose whom to give (at least part of) your taxes?

Government is an inextricable component of the marketplace in which these earnings occur. Money is an emergent effect of economic activity, not an a priori fixed quantity. So, yes, we do have more money because of government.

Furthermore, the idea that private charity is inherently more efficient than government is far from self-evident. A basic income policy, for example, could be a far more comprehensive and efficient way of directly addressing poverty than a patchwork of charities targeted specific symptoms of poverty. This is one reason that many pragmatic libertarians are actually favorable toward basic income.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#230

Post by AnthonyMouse »

vacri wrote: post #119
mi_noi_noi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you don't like any cities or states? With charities you can always make your own. Don't have that option in your system. I'm not American, but aren't some taxes that go to education/welfare/healthcare on a federal level? If so, are you going to tell people to leave the country? It's very expensive and for many practically impossible. Besides, is the goal not here to spend the money as efficiently as possible?…

The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).

> Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have

Neither does the government, if you measure it that way.

The amount of government money that goes to the homeless or the bottom 5% is fairly modest, because they aren't a large percentage of the population.

Most actual government "welfare" spending is the government taking $5000 from you in taxes and then offering you the $5000 back but only if you submit to their conditions on how to spend it.

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