

"Taxes that Work" proposal: eliminate income tax for  - sethg
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/taxation_/2007/09/wrongheaded_tax_policy.php

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aggieben

      The best way to counteract inequality is by raising more
      revenue and then spending it on things that the middle and
      lower classes need, like national health insurance.
    

It ain't the job of the gubmint to "counteract inequality" in the economic
sense (it's an impossible task in a free society, anyway)

    
    
      [The plan] also wrecks much of the political support for 
      tax expenditures...
    

When you think of lowered tax rates, tax credits and deductions as "tax
expenditures", you've got it completely backwards. That money isn't the
gubmint's money. If my salary were to be lowered by my employer, it's not an
expenditure on my part like it is if I reduce my expendable income by
investing in a CD.

    
    
      And perhaps most important, his plan gives the American  
      welfare state a much sturdier base for future expansion 
      (esp. since the VAT is less transparent than other forms 
      of taxation), especially since there's room here to add 
      some form of carbon tax, which is necessary for dealing 
      with global warming and would provide even greater 
      revenue going forward.
    

Oh yes, that's brilliant.

1\. An expansion of the welfare state is a _horrifically_ bad idea. A smaller
welfare state is an _advantage_ , in all kinds of ways: economically,
demographically, and with respect to liberty and (little-r) republicanism.

2\. Making the functions of government _less_ transparent is a goal?

3\. Carbon taxes are not necessary to "deal with global warming". Assuming
that whatever part of global warming we actually have any ability to affect is
significant enough to matter (evidence suggests otherwise, and in any case is
far from settled), capitalist market responses would be _vastly_ better at
"dealing" with it than anything the gubmint could do with carbon tax revenues
(which may not actually increase overall government revenues).

4\. I _hate_ the phrase "going forward".

~~~
TheWama
Agree in general, with one note:

> capitalist market responses would be vastly better at "dealing" with it than
> anything the gubmint could do with carbon tax revenues

Carbon taxes have two sides, the costs and the revenues. The costs _do_ work
with and contribute to the capitalist market responses, by making more
polluting products more expensive, relative to the less polluting.

On the revenues side, I agree again, but why not use that money for general
expenditures? Why not tax the bad things (pollution & other negative
externalities) more, and the good things less (sales, income, investment)?

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jdavid
however for someone that is "rich" or earns more than $250k a year, if you
start taxing them say 50%, they can afford 1 person to think for 1 full year
at $50k to figure out how to avoid $100k in taxes. keep that in mind, when you
tax the people who can afford to protect their money, THEY WILL.

for example, Steve jobs earns $1 a year from apple as CEO, do you think he
cares what income tax costs are?

instead he relies on stock sales, or capitol gains. so steve is wealthy enough
that he can target his sale of stock to +/- a decade, in the mean time he can
borrow money at below inflation rates against his assets, so he does not even
have to sell a stock to reap its benefits. so someone like Steve will decide
when the political climate is right to buy and sell stock(avoiding taxes,
through credit). (high interest rates, make this unlikely, and puts pressure
on stocks to beat interest rates) so in high interest rate periods, paying
taxes might be cheap, compared to loosing gains. saving pulls money out of the
economy and strengthens the currency, as the economy is less leveraged. strong
currencies make it easier to buy forgien goods and resources, as people want
to trade now on your currency, as they expect its value to increase in the
short term.(this is one possible way to bring gas prices down through raising
interest rates)

so, lets say that old Steve sells some stock, regularly, that means that the
rest of us have the chance to buy it at a good price and we might see gains at
20-50% in a year, this is good for everyone. it increases trading volume and
makes the market more fluid (and yes volitile). however volitile markets are
how you make money. it makes much better use of your fiscal efforts, than
labor based activities. So, its good for Steve to sell more often with fewer
capitol gains taxes. adding taxes to capitol gains will probably reduce trader
volume, and depress stock prices, effecting the leveraging power of companies,
and resulting in a lower GDP.

so other devices that wealthy use include dividends which right now are taxed
at 15%. (politicians want to raise this too) low dividends also keep people
seeking investments that share their earnings, so wealthy companies "share"
their wealth with investors inorder to keep the avalible levarage of their
company up. again low taxes are better.

i think the single best way i have seen to generate revenue for the government
was based on a proposal from warren buffet, whe he suggested a transaction tax
of 0.3% on all transactons, or account transfers. he suggested that the tax
could easily be added to all software, and if you buy a stock, you pay 0.3% on
the cost of the purchase, if you sell it, you pay 0.3% on its sale. so as
money moves around the economy, it generates revenue for the government. as a
wealthy person, you can not escape it, you would need to move your money
around to get better than 12% anual returns, so you would always pay the tax,
and 0.3% on 1,000,000, is only $3k which might hardly be worth the effort of
someone else to find a work around. the idea is that a single dollar might be
party to several of these transactions a month.

taxing, or punishing the rich, does not make for a better economy.

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sethg
hmm. HN needs to set the "maxlength" attribute on that "title" input field as
well as the "size" attribute.

