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A world of free movement would be $78T richer

economist.com

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Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#391

Post by gremlinsinc »

candiodari wrote: post #388
gremlinsinc wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about that a lot (I'm pro open-borders). I think we should get rid of income taxes, instead move to consumption taxes (money out is taxed) examples: Paying for anything: Rent, Food, Wages, Shareholders/Dividends, Estate transfer, Boats, Trains, Planes, etc... If you exchange money for ANYTHING it's taxed on the payers' side of the transaction. -- Then create a fair-id system so every citizen has an id, i…

So go back to 99% of just taxing the poor (progressive taxes make taxes very low for very low incomes) ? And in the process create an almost absurdly large incentive for the black market to go back to the levels it last existed at centuries ago. Without deductions, owning a house is back to utterly impossible for anyone who doesn't currently own one. At those levels all other laws become ineffective too, as at that p…

There is a deduction of sorts.. It's guaranteed basic income. Give everyone 3000 a month per household + 500 per dependent.

Those who own homes/land/property will pay more because they're expenditures are more.

Example: You earn 70k per year, you get 30k for gbi. That's 100k. Of that, you spend 80% on housing, school, food, clothes, toys, w/e, and invest 20% for retirement.

Of that 80% you spend 5% on taxes via sales tax. So roughly $4,000 a year in taxes.

If you earned 30k, and didn't work at all i.e. 30k from gbi alone, and spent all of it, you'd have spent 1500 on taxes, but still be able to feed/clothe/house a family in at least some comfort.

I don't see how that makes life unbearable for everyone? If you're an immigrant who isn't a citizen yet, you'd pay a bit more, but that's the price of coming to America, deal w/ it. At least you'll never be deported, or have your family ripped away from you, etc...

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#392

Post by gspetr »

trextrex wrote: post #69
repolfx wrote: post #45

This article seems symptomatic of a general decline in the quality of The Economist. I used to be a subscriber but there was a noticeable sharp drop some time ago, I think when Micklethwaite stepped down as editor, and things seem to have got worse since. Shoddy thinking, bizarre arguments and extremist conclusions seem more common than they used to be. Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by movin…

Have you ever considered that what you consider "western values" are in fact values that emerge in a society that lives in conditions where there is political stability and economic opportunity? That people's "culture" is affected by the environment around them as a general pattern?

The Soviet Union.

For half a century it was more stable than the west and it's economic advances dwarfed that of it's predecessor, the Russian Empire.

Scientific advances too, it was the first nation to send a man into outer space.

Yet western values were nowhere to be seen. And it's immigration policy was to prevent people from getting out.

You know where else you'd want to prevent people from getting out? A prison.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#393

Post by gspetr »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #377
incompatible wrote: post #279

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of cramming the vast majority of the world's population into the subset of countries that are relatively wealthy and well-run. In practice, the cramming continues within those countries into the most favoured cities. If we are thinking of pie-in-the-sky ideas like open borders, then why also try to think of a way to spread good government and wealth across all parts of the world? I.e…

I like the idea of open borders, guaranteed basic income (only for citizens), getting rid of income taxes, making all citizens pay a national sales tax instead (gbi would offset some of this), having a national id (with id you save 10-15% on sales tax without you pay a lot more, say 4-5% for citizens, 15-20% for migrants/travelers from abroad). -- This would make immigrants legal or not pay 3x the taxes, and I think…

> guaranteed basic income (only for citizens)

Unsustainable because their children are automatically citizens. You are merely postponing the problem for some 20 years at most.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#394

Post by gremlinsinc »

gspetr wrote: post #393
gremlinsinc wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of open borders, guaranteed basic income (only for citizens), getting rid of income taxes, making all citizens pay a national sales tax instead (gbi would offset some of this), having a national id (with id you save 10-15% on sales tax without you pay a lot more, say 4-5% for citizens, 15-20% for migrants/travelers from abroad). -- This would make immigrants legal or not pay 3x the taxes, and I think…

> guaranteed basic income (only for citizens) Unsustainable because their children are automatically citizens. You are merely postponing the problem for some 20 years at most.

When they get their own household, they can start collecting gbi, by then hopefully they go to school, and start contributing to society. They will still be paying taxes though regardless, and their parents will still be paying immigrant level taxes, so they would've paid their fair share so their kids could have a better life, that extra income to taxes makes up for a lot.

Either way, doctors, lawyers, delivery drivers, truck drivers, and 40% of other jobs will go away, replaced by AI. So, something has to fill the void to make it so people don't riot. GBI is the only thing that could possibly do that, unless you have a better solution. Instead of saying 'that won't work' I'd like to see you say, that's not sustainable, how about we do 'this' instead and offer up a suggestion that will work.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#395

Post by nradov »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #376
smsm42 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not charge them more for visas, Because illegal immigrants do not use visas. So you would be hurting law-abiding people and encouraging circumventing the law - if you can't afford the visa anyway, the question of "should I just through the hoops to get legal visa or try illegal immigration" becomes moot. > make them pay extra taxes Why would they pay those taxes? They'd just work on black market and report zero…

Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. Make consumption tax + national id system. With id you pay 4%, without you pay 15-20%. Make the consumption tax be on everything : Wages, Rent, Mortgage, Food, etc... if you spend money on something it's taxed at the point of payment. - By wages - I mean the company pays the tax. If a person or company pays money or exchanges money it's taxed. Shareholder dividends, CEO bo…

A 4% consumption tax wouldn't be nearly enough to maintain current tax revenues. And consumption taxes are highly regressive; the poor have to spend almost all their income on consumption.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#396

Post by gremlinsinc »

nradov wrote: post #395
gremlinsinc wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. Make consumption tax + national id system. With id you pay 4%, without you pay 15-20%. Make the consumption tax be on everything : Wages, Rent, Mortgage, Food, etc... if you spend money on something it's taxed at the point of payment. - By wages - I mean the company pays the tax. If a person or company pays money or exchanges money it's taxed. Shareholder dividends, CEO bo…

A 4% consumption tax wouldn't be nearly enough to maintain current tax revenues. And consumption taxes are highly regressive; the poor have to spend almost all their income on consumption.

Consumption would include all money exchanged. If you invest in the stock market for example $ paid to broker, and money invested would be taxed as it leaves your hand. When you pull it back, broker/investment firm pays the consumption tax because it's leaving them, going back to you.

Anything a company pays money for goes to consumption including: Wages, Power bill, Land, Buildings, Planes, Trains, Transportation of Goods.

Poor would be offset by guaranteed basic income and universal healthcare. GBI would basically be a negative income tax, the 4% is variable and can be raised/lowered yearly whether the country's in the black/red - but only 1-2 points per year w/ congress's approval. Also 4% was just a number I pulled out of ass, could be 7 or 8% instead.

I don't see how poor would suffer under this if they have a guaranteed 30-40k income if they don't work one day the entire year. Sure they might spend all of that back in food, tax, shelter, etc..but they have food, and shelter which they may not have had before.

The only stipulation on GBI would be you must have a residence to collect. (If you want to remain homeless and spend all cash on Meth, that won't work, you need to at least get housing).

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#397

Post by gremlinsinc »

nradov wrote: post #395
gremlinsinc wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. Make consumption tax + national id system. With id you pay 4%, without you pay 15-20%. Make the consumption tax be on everything : Wages, Rent, Mortgage, Food, etc... if you spend money on something it's taxed at the point of payment. - By wages - I mean the company pays the tax. If a person or company pays money or exchanges money it's taxed. Shareholder dividends, CEO bo…

A 4% consumption tax wouldn't be nearly enough to maintain current tax revenues. And consumption taxes are highly regressive; the poor have to spend almost all their income on consumption.

there could be a land/resource tax on top, for property owners. If you own land > $200k in value, you'd pay a specific tax on the land, if you use resources you pay a tax on that on-going including:Water, Coal, Natural Gas, Oil - if it comes from the earth, it'd be taxed.

I've heard of schemes that involve fully paying for GBI using ONLY land/resource taxes, but I think that wouldn't be enough to pay for things. But we don't need a military as big as we have, there's lots of places we can cut corners and spend less money.

WE need to explore our budget and use tech to lower costs across the board as much as possible and streamline things.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#398

Post by ThomPete »

qaq wrote: post #389
ThomPete wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not the argument i made though. Thats like saying a resident of any state in the us. We are talking about coming from outside the EU.

Exactly coming from outside of EU you can become a resident of EU state that has simplest procedure and yet after that you are able to work and live in any EU state which makes immigration to EU trivial compared to US.

Again it's harder to get into the EU than the US. I have dealt with both for several years now.

You can also work in any state the second you are in the US.

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#399

Post by hueving »

tom_mellior wrote: post #387
krferriter wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 10 million poor people with no employable skillsets move into Europe, they would be withdrawing vastly more from the tax pool than they would be putting into it. People who do not contribute to production would just move wherever the local government will give residents the most resources.

> If If , yes. All this is conditioned on your racism that tells you that all foreigners are uneducated (and uneducatable)/lazy/freeloaders. In addition, all of the tax money paid out would immediately be spent by these alleged freeloaders on meeting their needs for food etc., so it would flow back to producers of useful stuff and a lot of it come back as taxes.

That's not a racist 'If'. There's a massive backlog of unskilled rejected immigrants from poor countries that would be way better off living on the US social system than the one in the country they originate from.

Immigrants aren't magic, the ones that want to leave the most to come to the US are the ones from countries with bad education systems and bad social safety nets. Why would someone leave a good social safety net for a worse one?

>In addition, all of the tax money paid out would immediately be spent by these alleged freeloaders on meeting their needs for food etc., so it would flow back to producers of useful stuff and a lot of it come back as taxes

Except for all of the loss incurred by the things they consume. The only thing that comes back in taxes is a fraction of the profit on whatever they consumed.

Unless someone is producing more economic value than they consume, they are a net loss on the whole economy. There is a limit to how many people like this an economy can support before it will collapse.

It's just another insurance market like any other. The premiums coming in (tax rev) have to be more than the payouts (safety nets).

Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer

#400

Post by hueving »

tom_mellior wrote: post #351
hueving wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have open borders or a good social safety net. Pick one.

Explain please? Immigrants pay into safety nets just like anyone else who pays into them.

Anyone making minimum wage isn't actually paying into safety nets. The massive backlog that would be allowed in with open borders are unskilled laborers that would be making minimum wage (or less illegally).
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