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Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

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Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#51

Post by nebulousthree »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #49
dontlaugh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, the owners of capital further increase their capital by employing workers. The labour of those workers creates value, a part of which the owner of capital keeps despite having not laboured for it. Violence is used to keep workers from the entirety of the value their labour creates. Is that voluntary association? Seems to me like the owners of capital exploit the labour of workers, because they have the abi…

What violence is used to keep workers laboring in their factories? Your position seems to hang on that point. I don't think refusing to intervene and letting someone starve to death is a violent act. To claim otherwise redefines violence as any actor action which does not meet your personal wants.

Try to imagine yourself as a worker with little to no asset ownership. One day you decide voluntarily to cut yourself off from your job. You no longer are able to pay rent/mortgage, and you are on the streets. You're hungry but have no money. You think of the best place to get some money for food.. Maybe that rich neighborhood would be generous to you. You start panhandling, but 5 minutes into it, some local rent-a-cop starts harassing you to get off the sidewalk that's "reserved for the business in front of it". You refuse, stating that the sidewalk is public property. A few minutes later, the police come over and force you to relocate. Where to? You pick another spot, and the cycle repeats until you pick a spot far enough away from everyone. Still no food though.

Now you want to sleep.. need I continue?

In short, the violence is not in "letting someone starve". Most people aren't out there trying to starve themselves. The violence is in preventing someone from saving themselves. Being homeless/penniless is an eyesore for those that aren't. The actions taken to fix the eyesore are the source of violence. What happens to a panhandler if they refuse to comply with police's arbitrarily justified order to "relocate"?

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#52

Post by unmole »

w______roy wrote: post #44
unmole wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sound like a monstrous bunch of people. /s

An important skill is reading between the lines, and recognizing libertarian dog whistles. Freedom to them = freedom from government regulating business. Freedom to me = freedom from worrying about businesses poisoning me and my family.

Equating "Wealth taxes are counterproductive" to "Let's posison people" is a quite a leap. It's less reading between the lines and more deranged hallucination.

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#53

Post by unmole »

az226 wrote: post #40
stefanpl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway already had a wealth tax and raising it resulted in less overall revenue not more. That is what the article is saying.

Norway should have at the same time made a tax for expatriating wealth, to make capital flight very expensive.

Which would require leaving the EEA. Yeah, that would have worked out brilliantly!

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#54

Post by prottog »

zozskuh wrote: post #47
prottog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not make that assumption, with the idea that in countries with free (or freer, at any rate) market-based economies with little to no capital controls, the rising tide lifts all boats, including those of the proletariat without capital, to a standard of living higher than countries with unfree economies and significant capital controls. In fact, in two of the countries that presently have significant capital con…

[dead]

According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but does not lead to job destruction either. That is to say, cutting the top tax rate has no correlation with any of those four items.

So if taking more or less taxes from the rich results in no meaningful difference in ordinary American lives, shouldn't the government then default to taking less? The other way would be just wasteful. And if your argument is that no, in fact the additional tax revenue from the rich is helpful because it funds various redistributive social programs, then my counterargument is that what those programs seem to be most effective at is incentivizing creating an unemployable underclass at the taxpayer's expense[0] while enriching politically connected players.

[0]: See Thomas Sowell's extensive body of research on the general welfare of black Americans before and after the Great Society programs of the 60s.

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#56

Post by zozskuh »

prottog wrote: post #54
zozskuh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but…

So clearly you don't see the usefulness of government being able to spend money on programs that do make a difference, even going as far as to label it wasteful. I'd argue that letting people keep money that makes no significant difference in their life, other than sitting as a number on a bank account, is wasteful. If people can use money to better society, so can government, difference being government can spend money selflessly.

Government spending, in certain cases, can and is wasteful. To claim that all is, is clearly false.

I'd be wary of quoting Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault.

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#57

Post by prottog »

hotpotamus wrote: post #38
prottog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll own the snark (and point out that height is only non-transferable if you aren't trying hard enough, a la Harrison Bergeron), but my point stands. Life is full of situations where someone has it better off than someone else in whatever dimension you care to look at. I believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome, which is what GP seemed to suggest in coveting the personal freedoms of a billionai…

Do you think the child of a poor single mother and the child of a billionaire have equality of opportunity?

Substantially equal in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In equality before the law? In being judged not for the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Yes, and we should strive to make that even more so. Perfectly equal in all respects, including access to resources? Obviously not. If you define equality of opportunity as how many horseback riding lessons and unpaid internships a child is put through, then no, there is no such equality found in America or anywhere else in the world. Even the most egalitarian nations of the world in Scandinavia (the subject of this thread to begin with) have rich people and poor people.

A child of a poor single mother, Barack Obama, made his way to the highest office of the land (not to mention significant personal wealth), whereas a child of a billionaire, John du Pont, died in prison as a convicted murderer. Both had equal opportunities to make something of themselves in a cultural, legal, and economic framework that values the individual.

In this land of equality of opportunity, 93% of people born to parents in the bottom quintile of incomes ended up earning more than their parents, with 57% ending up in a higher quintile; and a full 60% of people born to parents in the top quintile of incomes ended up in a lower quintile[0].

Meanwhile, in Norway, famed for its egalitarian attitudes and highly redistributive policies, a higher percentage were able to climb out of the bottom quintile, but a similar percentage held on to their parents' top-quintile ranking[1]. The country has more billionaires per capita than the US, and still has a legally separate and privileged group of people, the monarchy, who by definition are unequal from the rest of the populace; and it's only a few generations removed from having legal privileges for the aristocracy.

[0]: https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a...

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#58

Post by prottog »

zozskuh wrote: post #56
prottog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but…

So clearly you don't see the usefulness of government being able to spend money on programs that do make a difference, even going as far as to label it wasteful. I'd argue that letting people keep money that makes no significant difference in their life, other than sitting as a number on a bank account, is wasteful. If people can use money to better society, so can government, difference being government can spend mo…

> government can spend money selflessly

"Selflessly" insofar as everyone involved has no incentives, internal or external, that direct their behavior one way or another; which is to say, not selflessly at all.

The government isn't a machine that takes action for the good of the citizens with no feeling. It's a messy organization composed of people who are all looking out for their salaries, what makes their boss look good or their rivals look bad, whether they win the next election, and maybe sometimes the stated mission of the organization or the good of the citizens. And moreover, it does all that with the might of the law, the monopoly on violence.

If it's a similar amount of money for a similar level of outcome, I'd much rather the people use the money to better society and not government, for those reasons.

> Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault

What a demeaning way to describe a human being with an incredible personal story and his life's work. And it's wrong, too: if you simplify into a sentence or two what he says about minorities (and his body of work extends far beyond that), it's that well-meaning government policies often incentivize minorities into entering cycles of poverty, and that minorities should depend on themselves first and foremost and not the government to improve their lot.

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#59

Post by hotpotamus »

prottog wrote: post #57
hotpotamus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the child of a poor single mother and the child of a billionaire have equality of opportunity?

Substantially equal in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In equality before the law? In being judged not for the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Yes, and we should strive to make that even more so. Perfectly equal in all respects, including access to resources? Obviously not. If you define equality of opportunity as how many horseback riding lessons and unpaid internships…

Don't you think an unpaid internship is an opportunity to learn and network; an opportunity inaccessible to those of lesser means?

Re: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring

#60

Post by s1artibartfast »

dontlaugh wrote: post #50
s1artibartfast wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What violence is used to keep workers laboring in their factories? Your position seems to hang on that point. I don't think refusing to intervene and letting someone starve to death is a violent act. To claim otherwise redefines violence as any actor action which does not meet your personal wants.

If workers were to seize the full value of their labour, or seize the means of production, capital armies (like the police) would attack them. Even when workers merely strike they commonly get attacked by police. The laws (and even the liberal ideology you adhere to) exist to favour the ruling class. Why would the ruling class do anything else? When the ruling class are the owners of capital, the laws and culture dis…

Nobody is using violence to stop workers from buying, renting, or building means of production. Buy your own example, violence only comes into play when they try to steal.

The only real violence you mentioned is if police attack striking workers, which is exceedingly rare in most developed countries with the rule of law. What percentage of striking workers do you think are physically harmed by police in the us? If you think that is a likely or common outcome, we are probably living in different realities. You say that laws just favor the workers, but I wouldn't want to be a worker in a society without property rights. There is no point in working if any value you create can be stolen with impunity.

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