Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#331

Post by vannevar » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 11:35 PM UTC

rick888 wrote: post #329

vannevar wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"distribute more of the wealth" sounds so clean and nice . Indeed. Much like 'cut government spending'. My point is that slogan-based solutions are unhelpful. You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income, and further that wealth tends to create wealth quite apart from the physical or m…

"Much like 'cut government spending'." So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe. "You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income" Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You…

A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth.

And I don't doubt that there are wealthy people who started poor, and who worked hard. But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer. And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have a million dollars. So I don't have a Randian moral problem with taxing the rich at a higher rate. (Full disclosure here: I'm pretty loaded.)

I'm sorry I accused you of being a moral absolutist and opposing all income taxes. But you did say

What you are really doing is taking this money away by force...

So you don't mind if they take 35% by force, but 39% is looting?

As for your anecdotal long lines in Canada, I'm guessing that option would look pretty good from your cardboard box, dying slowly of liver failure.

But you've indicated you're immune to bad luck, that you could always find a place willing to hire a good developer even in the middle of major layoffs and even if you need to take time off every day for chemo. Good for you. But what do we do with all the people who don't have your skills, training or work ethic? What do we do with the losers? Let them die in the streets?

What do we do with them?

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#332

Post by rick888 » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 11:51 PM UTC

rick888 wrote: post #329

vannevar wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"distribute more of the wealth" sounds so clean and nice . Indeed. Much like 'cut government spending'. My point is that slogan-based solutions are unhelpful. You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income, and further that wealth tends to create wealth quite apart from the physical or m…

"Much like 'cut government spending'." So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe. "You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income" Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You…

"A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth."

We are already redistributing wealth through taxes and social programs.

"But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer."

Citation?

"And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have a million dollars."

It's also easier when you have the mindset of someone that is successful. Poor parents pass on poor decision making to their kids.

"So you don't mind if they take 35% by force, but 39% is looting?"

When did we ever talk about percentages? I seriously doubt that all of the social programs you are talking about would only be a matter of 3%.

"As for your anecdotal long lines in Canada, I'm guessing that option would look pretty good from your cardboard box, dying slowly of liver failure."

I guess it gives them hope. If the waiting lines are so long that you die before you get care, it doesn't really matter.

"But you've indicated you're immune to bad luck, that you could always find a place willing to hire a good developer even in the middle of major layoffs and even if you need to take time off every day for chemo. Good for you. But what do we do with all the people who don't have your skills, training or work ethic? What do we do with the losers? Let them die in the streets? What do we do with them?"

How do we stop our hospitals from being flooded with people that don't really need care? There needs to be some system in place to force people to only go to the hospitals when they absolutely need it, or the system will eventually collapse. Nobody seems to want to think in the long-term, which is dangerous.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#333

Post by vannevar » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 12:26 AM UTC

rick888 wrote: post #332

rick888 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Much like 'cut government spending'." So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe. "You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income" Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You…

"A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth." We are already redistributing wealth through taxes and social programs. "But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer." Citation? "And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have…

I'm well aware that we're already redistributing wealth, I'm simply advocating we do more of it by raising taxes on the wealthy.

If you Google 'economic mobility' you'll come up with a lot of citations supporting the idea that most rich people come from families in the upper reaches of the economic spectrum. Here's a particularly good study that got a lot of press a couple of years ago: http://www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/other?i... . Keep in mind that I'm not saying no one goes from being poor to rich, only that it's a minority of the wealthy. One reason that it may seem like there are more is that those stories are more compelling and so get more media attention (who wants to hear about the upper middle class doctor's kid who became a millionaire?), and because Republicans focus on those stories in their campaign rhetoric to deflect taxation on the wealthy.

It would be terrible to die waiting for treatment; fortunately that doesn't happen any more often in Canada than it does in the free-market US (where, until the recent health care reform, insurance companies could arbitrarily drop sick patients altogether).

And contrary to whatever ideas you may have about hospital life, they're really not all that pleasant. Most people stay away from them unless absolutely necessary, to the point that a lot of people (heart patients in particular) don't go when in fact they should. No doubt there are some hypochondriacs who waste doctors' time, but they are hardly justification for throwing up our hands at helping the truly sick who greatly outnumber them.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#334

Post by vannevar » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 12:33 AM UTC

rick888 wrote: post #332

rick888 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Much like 'cut government spending'." So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe. "You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income" Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You…

"A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth." We are already redistributing wealth through taxes and social programs. "But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer." Citation? "And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have…

"So you don't mind if they take 35% by force, but 39% is looting?"

When did we ever talk about percentages? I seriously doubt that all of the social programs you are talking about would only be a matter of 3%.

You're missing the point. You made an argument based on a moral absolute, that when the government takes your money in the form of taxes that it is taking it by force. I picked 35% and 39% because that's basically the difference between the current rate and the rate if the tax cuts had been allowed to expire. If you really believe the government is looting your bank account when you're taxed, I'm not sure why it's morally OK to loot any of it for any reason.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#335

Post by alsomike » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 12:50 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #304

alsomike wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think status markers created by the government would be far, far more appealing to the wealthy. It's like Hegel's master-slave dialectic - a master doesn't feel like a real master because he knows all the struggles and difficulties of maintaining his position. If he really is a master, not just an ordinary man who finds himself with power, why does he have to work so hard to maintain it? The only time he…

That's why in all Ayn Rand novels, the protagonist's problem isn't just the fact that the masses interfere with his projects and thwart his greatness - the problem is that they do this because they don't recognize him as superior. I have no idea why so many people feel the need to comment on Ayn Rand without reading it. If you read the Fountainhead to the end, you'd realize that Roark was completely happy toiling in…

A farmer who has difficulty plowing straight lines because his oxen are recalcitrant doesn't get his feelings hurt and write lengthy books in oxen language for the oxen to read whining about how he is a superior type of animal and why can't they just realize that! Then the farmers says "I'm tired of being unappreciated!" and leaves the farm in a huff just to show the oxen that if without him, there'd be no-one to feed them or clean out the stables. The reason this doesn't happen is that the farmer really is superior to the oxen, so he doesn't need to prove anything - for him, recalcitrant oxen are just one of many obstacles involved in farming.

Despite all claims to the contrary, the very fact that Rand even bothered to write a book at all betrays her secret, perhaps unconscious need for recognition. Here, the medium is a message - if Rand's audience is the superior people, why did she choose to communicate her ideas in the format most accessible to the "oxen" of society, the novel, instead of a dense philosophical treatise? She even helped to make the movie version of The Fountainhead, an even more accessible format.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#336

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 1:04 AM UTC

benohear wrote: post #287

pistoriusp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, this kind of thinking freaks me out. They want to take property from people who have earned it precisely for having earned it! It's theft, it's looting, and it's slavery! You cannot take one man's property and give it to another based on need.

I have a theory: In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents. This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross…

You've reinvented the core thesis of Marxism: that the difference between what the worker earns and the capitalist sells is a theft of value. The problem is that it assumes that labour is the true source of value -- this has turned out to be a troublesome assumption. In practice value is subjective.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#337

Post by Ntagg » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 1:24 AM UTC

alsomike wrote: post #137

yummyfajitas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's hard to create a high status item. Say you invent the "US Govt. Certified Top 0.1% Badge" - do you really think Peter Thiel, John Paulson or Alex Rodriguez will really give a crap? Taxing existing luxury status symbols could work, and is very likely a good idea. Creating new status symbols is likely to fail horribly. Also, the tax on certain neighborhoods neglects the very large non-status re…

My tax plan is to eliminate income tax up to $90,000. After that, income is taxed at 100%. The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that, so that everyone's salary + tax credits = $90,000. "But wait," you say "How will we incentivize entrepreneurs if they can't earn more money?" For everyone making over $90,000 (approx. 11% of the population), their pretax salary is used to assign them national…

The laffer curve would indicate that people would stop working and contributing once they stop getting incentivized. I would stop every year, once I hit the threshold.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#338

Post by Ntagg » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 1:32 AM UTC

Unseelie wrote: post #300

encoderer wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the chinese system -- with hundreds of millions of people living in squalor -- works ?

It certainly functions.

Lots of functioninal things lower quality of life. That's not a very rigid or useful test.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#339

Post by Ntagg » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 1:47 AM UTC

Let's say there are ten people in a room and they each give five dollars to an "elected" member who gets to redistribute that money, after which all the members re-vote on the next elected member. A savvy elected member would redistribute the money to five members, plus himself, thus perpetually stay in power and continue to receive the majority of votes.

I use this illustration to show that as long as one official or group gets to continue in power, they don't have incentive to do right by everyone; rather, they are incentivized to do well to only a slim majority.

The short-term problem this article presents is that our country's budget crisis demands a surplus contribution from the wealthy. For argument's sake, I'll admit it does.

The understated, long-term problem is that elected officials are personally motivated to spend their political power on getting re-elected, which only requires making a little more than half of their constituents satisfied.

My suggestion would be to stop allowing anyone to be re-elected. Once they know that their decisions don't have to be popular, they're free to make decisions that help long-term, even at short-term discomfort or dissatisfaction. There are obvious problems (how this reflects on their party, for example), but I think that there's a solution embedded in this line of reasoning.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#340

Post by vannevar » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 2:20 AM UTC

javert wrote: post #326

vannevar wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think the first thing we need to do to bring about your utopia is to bring back personal liability and eliminate the corporate entity (which after all is a construction of government). Then if a businessman's activities injured someone, we could be sure that a court could strip them of their personal assets in order to compensate the victims of their negligence.

That's sort of unrelated to my point, but it's an interesting question. A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it. I think this is the premise behind "corporate personhood" and I think it works correctly almost all the time. (I'd be interested to see examples where that's not the case.) For example, a corporation can exercise free speech, because…

A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it.

It doesn't work that way, unfortunately; if it did there would be no reason to have 'corporate personhood' since the owners could simply assert their own right of free speech. A corporation can assert its own right of free speech completely apart from its officers or owners. In theory a corporation with no living officers and only the estate of a deceased person as a shareholder could nonetheless legally assert a right of free speech based on computer generated messages. Not that it's ever been tested. Angry mobs, on the other hand, are not generally viewed as persons, nor are parades, crowded beaches, or book clubs.

I'd think that in the case of personal injury caused by a corporation, if the corporation's full assets are not enough to compensate the victims, then the owners could then be held responsible to cover the difference.

It doesn't work that way, either. In the case of big liability, a corporation's owners frequently try to shuffle as much of the corporation's assets as possible off the books and then declare bankruptcy in the face of the liability. The personal assets of the shareholders are generally untouchable. Turns out that when you tell people their only responsibility is to create shareholder value, they take it pretty seriously (particularly if they're the shareholders in question).