971–980 of 1001 posts
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Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.
I think it's a great idea. Every asset not being put to use, is similar to hoarding cash under the mattress - a waste of capital.
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Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.
Why is that bad? Asking purely out of ignorance.
- It causes wealth to consume it's own base, depreciating all assets faster even in lieu of inflation
- It disproportionately punishes seniors, who are asset rich and income poor.
- It encourages the wealthy to move and hide assets offshore just like they do with income.
- Double taxation: Wealth is already taxed when it is created
- Punishes asset rich, low income businesses like grocery stores, farms, etc.
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Can you provide a supporting line of reasoning? I think corruption is like a weed. It grows when you become acclimatized to your environment and start to exploit it. Term limits get us closer to a part-sortition. From the wiki: Author James Wycliffe Headlam explains that the Athenian Council (500 administrators randomly selected), would commit occasional mistakes such as levying taxes that were too high. Additionally…
There are three key groups at work in the legislation: legislators, the professional staff on whom legislators rely, and lobbyists. Reducing the average level of experience in the particular legislative institution, and in legislative affairs generally, of the first group increase the relative advantage in systematic knowledge and effectiveness of the latter two groups compared to the first. Term limits aren't sortit…
That's a good point. How would you solve for X here?
> Term limits aren't sortition (it's not random, and political parties and the donor class are actively involved in choosing who stands for seats and how much support they have, so, the effects you point to in sortition of breaking up factionsome and reducing corruption simply aren't present.)
I was thinking broadly of the system being more or less organized and how in some way incompetence may be less truly dangerous than a bad actor abusing the system.
How about we simply put restrictions on politicians and their interaction with mass media? This many minutes on television, paid for by the State so you don't have to scrounge around for cash? That is just a half-baked example, I take it you understand what I mean by it.
Corruption is a problem in every country but I don't think lobbying and donors exert such an influence in my country Ireland (could be naive here!).
> in any case, the level of complexity of a modern nation of 300+ million people different considerably from that of ancient Athens.
Ha! True. We need a new OS, that is for sure. That is why Patri Friedman (seasteading) has so many of my sympathies.
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>Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal >regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is >that considered feasible by any rational person? It might >sound great if you don't think too hard about it. I think that's the reason Trump becomes president of the US. It may sound ridiculous to you but he is 100% correct with that point. Everybody knows that there are too many government regulation…
Nobody agrees on thet, except in the very narrow definition of everyone knowing at least one regulation they'd personally abolish (the lefty choosing marijuana, the right "all of them") I've investigated the same complaint for EU law and all you can find is bizarre propaganda making ridiculous claims in bad faith – they make the regs sound absurd, but you can find out the real purpose within half a minute of googling…
The thing is this: most laws were invented with good intentions and reasoning behind. But that doesn't mean they thought well enough about them.
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>Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal >regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is >that considered feasible by any rational person? It might >sound great if you don't think too hard about it. I think that's the reason Trump becomes president of the US. It may sound ridiculous to you but he is 100% correct with that point. Everybody knows that there are too many government regulation…
>Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that But they don't agree on which ones should be removed. It's why "everybody knows" Congress is terrible but they keep getting re-elected. It's because everyone likes their representatives but hate all the others.
So they might want to start a program for that. Or they could start with one type of laws.
>It's why "everybody knows" Congress is terrible but they
>keep getting re-elected.
What would be the alternative? No Congress? ;) I mean it's there and it should certainly be improved.
> It's because everyone likes their representatives but hate all the others.
It seems so in the US, but in Europe there is also a trend towards this highly polarized direction. I hope people would take things easier and maybe try to understand the other politicians as well. For instance one could watch both CNN and Fownews. ;)
> FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. I've debated this approach with friends in the past. From a game-theory perspective, does this promote or hinder political corruption? I'm inclined to believe that term limits would actually encourage corruption. 1) If senators have to find a job after 8 years, surely that encourages the revolving door between industry and g…
You also get people like Feinstein[1] because of the lack of term limits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein#Mass_surveill...
The natural counterargument is that there are probably other ways of dealing with the Feinstein problem without the nuclear option of term limits.
Specifically, the party doesn't field a credible contender to her, as she's right up in the core of the party elite. "Top 2" was supposed to encourage challenges from contenders similar to the party incumbents, but I think we'd be better served by a proportional representation system (STV or similar).
And if the core problem is that the party parachutes in stooges and backs them with the full weight of the party's campaign funding and infrastructure, then I don't see how term limits solve the problem; out with Feinstein, in with another party-blessed elitist who only cares about surveillance when it is used on fellow members of the elite [1]. I'm sure they can find someone who has not served a day in public service to carry on her agenda.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/nsa-surveillan...
> FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. I've debated this approach with friends in the past. From a game-theory perspective, does this promote or hinder political corruption? I'm inclined to believe that term limits would actually encourage corruption. 1) If senators have to find a job after 8 years, surely that encourages the revolving door between industry and g…
Ok but what if the term limit was, say, 16 years for the House and 18 for the Senate?
Or even if we assume an asymptote of quality improvement over time, surely we want to have more politician-years spent during the peak of their quality, rather than in their first 4/8/16 when their output is less?
The idea of term limits implies that politician's utility becomes negative at some point in time, and that just doesn't fit with my understanding of how negotiating and learning how to build consensus works.
I'd love to see some hard data either way on this one.
> FOURTH, a five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. > FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. > SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections. Can't see a reason to complain about any of these (though I've posted objections in other threads about other measures,…
Any time you enact a ban on potential employment of a person, your run into a bunch of hairy issues. Not to mention the required governmental oversight to ensure this is enforced
This will (necessarily) require more oversight. But I think we should be prepared to accept some regulation/oversight of the political process itself, given how critical it is to the functioning of society.
> FOURTH, a five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. > FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. > SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections. Can't see a reason to complain about any of these (though I've posted objections in other threads about other measures,…
Even though Republicans have House and Senate majority, I still don't see any of this getting through. Those politicians won't self-destruct their careers.
I predict that no turkeys will be voting for Christmas, and no Congressmen will be voting for limits on lobbyist dollars.
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The more important aspect is preventing local police from having to act as immigration agents. That has a very real effect on crime: illegal immigrants don't have to be afraid of talking to police. I think we're safer when everyone feels free to report crimes and act as witnesses.
I agree with your message about safety, but it is important to keep in mind that illegal immigrants are inherently breaking the law. We should not encourage keeping them safe from deportation.
We all unwittingly break many laws day. Living in the US is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen. My point is that there isn't some binary division between people that break the law and those that don't.
If businesses need to be immigration police, they'll just hire illegal immigrants under the table (moreso), and be more exploitive about it.
If people are afraid to talk to the police, they won't. This breeds gangs & protection rackets, which presumably you don't want, because they increase crime.
As these problems will become worse and worse, the more we will try to crack down on illegal immigration, intensifying said problems. The tragic irony is that the solution is the cause of the problem and it is part of a nasty feedback loop.