351–358 of 358 posts
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It isn't? Social security is solvent assuming no funding changes until 2037.
"Solvent until..." is a contradiction. If you're solvent until you have to pay your bills, you're broke.
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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.
That's not quite what I meant. I was referring to the value your employment adds to the company, not the sales value of the final product. And yes, that's extremely difficult to evaluate, but it seems to me that on average everyone has to be paid less than their contribution, otherwise there would be no profit or funds to pay salaries for people not directly contributing to production. Nor was I passing judgement, by…
"Taxation" is not the best way to put it. It is a market exchange. In exchange for a fixed portion of your value output (which will be variable), the company guarantees a certain payment upon a fixed input (usually hours-per-week).
Thus the company is essentially taking on the risk that you will produce enough value to cover the cost and leave some space for profit.
If you or the company disagree about the values involved, the employment relationship ends.
The concept that a capitalist's profits come from the risk he or she takes to earn them is the other half of what is missing from the Marxist theory of economics -- following almost inevitably from the adoption of the labour theory of value.
The best way of taxing the rich is producing luxury goods. The fact that you can buy food, transport, housing, clothing at a magnitude or two (or more) higher cost is a sort of volontary tax. When you buy a $1000 bottle of champagne instead of drinking water, a large part of that money takes a pretty short path to pay the wages of people that never would buy the same bottle themselves. And would maybe be out of a job…
Yes, luxury goods amount to a tax on the status-conscious who can afford them--but the problem is that they send a price signal that more luxury goods are needed, when what we really need is investment in infrastructure, basic and applied research, etc.
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I'm glad you bring up that idea out at the end (by now, few will read it, but that's okay). It pains me to learn that some people in this great country (for cultural reasons?) don't do this. It's a "crazy" idea, but one that works very well in other countries. Latin Americans, Indians, and others will attest to that. I wouldn't call for forcing families to take care of their elderly, but I'd find ways to motivate tha…
The problem with that system is that it incentivizes overpopulation. If your retirement plan is your children, you have a lot of children.
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The US certainly pays out fewer of the sort of benefits we would call "welfare" (unemployment, food stamps, EITCs, etc.) than most nations in the Western world. Our pension systems are as generous as anyone's though, particularly Medicare. That is the real source of the trouble.
Medicare is for health coverage, and most countries give this to everyone, all the time, for nominal cost. Unless I'm missing something here. Although, US public per capita health expenditure is about equal to other countries. It just happens that they get far far less for what they pay. [1] [1] http://www.oecd.org/document/39/0,3746,en_2649_34111_3615779... - see health chart
The health chart is titled "Public and private health spending as percentage of GDP in selected countries, 2002." This relates the spending to GDP, not as a per capita rate. The reference does not support your statement about others ("they get far far less for what they pay").
See: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php, "The Cost of a Long Life." Quote from that: "In 2000, the United States spent more on health care than any other country in the world: an average of $ 4,500 per person. Switzerland was second highest, at $3,300 or 71% of the US. Nevertheless, average US life expectancy ranks 27th in the world, at 77 years. Many countries achieve higher life expectancy rates with significantly lower spending."
See also: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/2/38980580.pdf. Be sure to read section "Health status and risk factors" - it is an eye opener. Quote from that: "The United States spent 7,538 USD on health per capita in 2008, two-and-a-half times greater than the OECD average of 3,060 USD (adjusted for purchasing power parity). Norway spent 5,000 USD per capita, and Switzerland 4,627 USD per capita. Americans spent more than twice as much as relatively rich European countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. "
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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…
"But in my system, everyone makes a good living," you say. What about inherently scarce resources? There is limited beachside property. Who will get it? Currently, busting your tail through medical school gives you a better chance than dropping out of high school. How would you decide when everyone makes the same?
And the income equality would be an illusion, anyway: some skills are inherently more valuable than others. Transactions would just go off the grid. You need a roofing job done? The roofer is all booked up. Oh, you can barter with your web design skills? Well, that's more valuable than the guy who offered yard service, so you win. But darn if bartering isn't awkward - if only we had some system to store this inherent value...
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If the plan provides for everyone to earn 90k regardless of what they actually do, there is no incentive to be productive at all, (much less to be productive enough to account for those who produce very little). Having my name on a list as the X most productive person is not incentive. Being able to spend the money I earn, is.
What do you need to spend money on that you can't afford with $90K? And why do you want to buy it over something that you could afford? In my experience, virtually everything that falls into that category is some sort of status symbol. The grandparent poster is suggesting replacing these implicit status symbols with an explicit one. The part about his proposal that I'd miss is the ability to save up your high income…
Salary caps are, in my opinion, a backwards view. When someone says "basketball players shouldn't be able to make $10 million a year," what they're really saying is "people shouldn't be willing to spend $50 on game tickets," or "more of the income the team makes should go to the coach," or something like that. The money is flowing in already, based on the market's decisions. Shouldn't the players get a big chunk of it? They're making it all possible, after all.
Similarly, trying to cap the salary of a doctor or a CEO or whatever is really saying "nobody should value your services enough to give you that much money." But... they do. How can you keep people from paying what they're willing to pay? And if they can't pay more, how can they compete for the best doctor or CEO or programmer or whatever? They will find other ways to compensate.
So no hope for America! At least not from hackers. Thanks God!
Solving the tax problem by hackers has a probability like RIAA solving the ilegal file sharing problem.
Instead, as engineers and people thinking is systems and infrastructures hackers should reverse-engineer the problem. That would be a success!
Hint: Ask yourself: "How Rich Are Looking At Taxpayers?"