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Taxing Growth

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Re: Taxing Growth

#31

Post by actionfromafar »

graemep wrote: post #16

The problem with the UK tax system is not that it is progressive. In fact, once you add NI it is not all that strongly progressive. The problem is that complexity of tax law, the number of loopholes, incentives, refunds.... The really big problem is that people on low incomes do not have an incentive to work because the loss of benefits means they are barely any better off from working. That is a strong argument for…

Read a comment some stories back, that all loss of benefits should be gradual on a curve, never with cliffs. So that you'd pay a few hundred thousand in taxes and get a benefits check for 1 dollar, or pound or whatever.

Re: Taxing Growth

#33

Post by blitzar »

graemep wrote: post #29
mytailorisrich wrote: post #14

GDP per capita has been declining in the UK and this is indeed a big issue (people are getting poorer) hidden behind the marginal growth of the overall GDP created by high immigration. This is linked to a long-standing productivity problem. Some of the ideas bring us back to the Brexit debate. Being outside the EU allows a freedom of action but, depending how far deregulation and law taxes are taken, that also means…

> GDP per capita has been declining in the UK not true: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CN?location... There were declines in 2009 andd 2020, for reasons that out to be fairly obvious, but overall consistent growth > that also means retaliatory barriers from the EU, which is still the largest trading partner (41% of exports, twice the volume to the 2nd export market, which is the US However, trade wi…

> but overall consistent growth

Gunna need to inflation adjust that one bud, its not decline, but it is not great.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KN?location...

Re: Taxing Growth

#34

Post by embedding-shape »

floundy wrote: post #18
embedding-shape wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone shares something it has to be new, otherwise it's not worthy of your attention? Couldn't you at least provide some constructive criticism why the argument falls short in your mind, instead of the sharing the first knee-jerky reaction that popped up in your head that just touches the surface?

The quality of discourse on HN has been nearing the bottom of the barrel (read: mostly indistinguishable from Reddit) since the pandemic. It’s very rare these days to see citations or even arguments that explain personal reasoning. Just like Reddit and Facebook, commenters mostly write what they think or feel as if it were unyielding fact, and the most common denominator (read: boring, derivative, often oversimplifie…

> The quality of discourse on HN has been nearing the bottom of the barrel (read: mostly indistinguishable from Reddit) since the pandemic

That's very much not true, and it's also a tale as old as HN at this point. Since I started commenting on HN in 2010 sometime, the quality had stayed more or less the same, and hasn't drastically dropped in quality like Reddit has done as it grew. Also, the amount of comments that complain that HN is turning into Reddit seems to have stayed at the same level of frequency too, fwiw.

Re: Taxing Growth

#35

Post by smallmancontrov »

actionfromafar wrote: post #3

Can’t tell if satire. Maybe skipping to cars section.

They hit every one of the neoliberal memes:

* Prosperity gospel (as if developed economies have slow growth for want of just one more tax break on the wealthy. Just one more! That'll fix it right up!)

* Laffer curve invoked without any attempt to determine where on it current policy lies

* Saving the whales is killing the economy (they were spiders in this example -- point for satire?)

* Trying to sneak financial deregulation under the skirts of the above

* Opaque economic growth model with self-serving result presented as factual

* The rich will leave (as if the pressure isn't coming from their pumped assets and a firesale wouldn't fix this)

* Tut-tutting about debt to pretend at fiscal conservatism

* 100% attention on upper class concerns, 0% on lower class concerns

* Upper-class conservative-coded hobby talk free of any concern that it might give away the above

I think they were earnest and just wildly out of touch, though, given all the allusions to 15 year old economic discussions. That's when these memes were at their peak. They simply don't understand the credibility hit they have taken since then. I'd love to see a conversation between them and Gary Stevens. These memes are his origin story.

Re: Taxing Growth

#36

Post by nathan_compton »

throw0101d wrote: post #21

> It’s core argument is simple: in a world where talent and capital move easily […] I'm not sure about the talent part: unless you're strictly talking about remote work, going to a new country is not what I would think of as "easy". > Doug explained why a staged path to a 20% flat tax […] It seems to me that flat taxes ignore the marginal utility of every new dollar of income. What exactly is having the top income ea…

I'm pretty sure that wealth accumulated by the very rich at the expense of the poor is bad for total economic development because we drastically under-estimate the value of properly developing human beings.

We see enormous flourishing in society whenever labor is given more power for whatever reason (usually mass deaths) because this increases the amount of resources which flow towards raising children, who then become productive members of society. In times of weak labor power, average people are squeezed tight and less resources flow to children, which fucks shit up.

I think we are seeing that right now in the U.S. - education is nickle and dimed to shit, wages aren't enough to support children, let alone let them flourish, and the general "vibe" is so bad that people don't even want to have kids.

Meanwhile rich people are richer than ever.

Re: Taxing Growth

#37

Post by mytailorisrich »

graemep wrote: post #29
mytailorisrich wrote: post #14

GDP per capita has been declining in the UK and this is indeed a big issue (people are getting poorer) hidden behind the marginal growth of the overall GDP created by high immigration. This is linked to a long-standing productivity problem. Some of the ideas bring us back to the Brexit debate. Being outside the EU allows a freedom of action but, depending how far deregulation and law taxes are taken, that also means…

> GDP per capita has been declining in the UK not true: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CN?location... There were declines in 2009 andd 2020, for reasons that out to be fairly obvious, but overall consistent growth > that also means retaliatory barriers from the EU, which is still the largest trading partner (41% of exports, twice the volume to the 2nd export market, which is the US However, trade wi…

It is true [1][2]. I don't know how the graph you quote is calculated (no inflation?) but clearly the GDP hasn't grown 30% since 2020 (31,516 to 41,184), LOL. 6% growth a year would be a wet dream anywhere in the developped world. The GDP grew only 1.3% over the last 12 months and the population had grown 1.1% over the preceding 12 months... So at best economic growth barely exceeds population growth but overall it's flat to down.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/times...

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita

> However, trade with the EU was declining as a proportion of total trade even before Brexit

Yes, it has slightly declined, probably because of Brexit. The point is that it is one thing to say that we are "free" to do as we please, but the reality is not so simple if that means taking a massive hit on 41% of our exports! This is the whole Brexit story.

Re: Taxing Growth

#38

Post by mytailorisrich »

blitzar wrote: post #33
graemep wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDP per capita has been declining in the UK not true: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CN?location... There were declines in 2009 andd 2020, for reasons that out to be fairly obvious, but overall consistent growth > that also means retaliatory barriers from the EU, which is still the largest trading partner (41% of exports, twice the volume to the 2nd export market, which is the US However, trade wi…

> but overall consistent growth Gunna need to inflation adjust that one bud, its not decline, but it is not great . https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KN?location...

That shows a decline compared to 2019: 35,193 in 2019, 35,108 in 2024. Overall GDP is up over the period because of population growth. All as per my original comment.

Re: Taxing Growth

#39

Post by rtkwe »

__s wrote: post #2

Pushing for flat tax, but no mention of Andorra or Isle of Man. Guess those aren't considered growth centers to support their argument

Well they clearly haven't flat tax deregulated enough! /s

Re: Taxing Growth

#40

Post by blitzar »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #38
blitzar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but overall consistent growth Gunna need to inflation adjust that one bud, its not decline, but it is not great . https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KN?location...

That shows a decline compared to 2019: 35,193 in 2019, 35,108 in 2024. Overall GDP is up over the period because of population growth. All as per my original comment.

I am far more concerned that it is not meaningfully changed since 2007 - the year that iPhones came into existence.
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