Posted on 11/21/2006 12:14:53 PM PST by presidio9
Stop trading?
Nothing in there about stopping trading, sir.
No indeed.
My proposal on eliminating the corporate tax deduction is no different at all than President Bush's stance on fetal stem cell research. Companies are still free to do that research (or, under my plan, to build factories in China), they just aren't going to get federal tax subsidies for doing it. As is so often said, if there were real profit in it, companies could do it anyway.
As to tarriffs always being disastrous, I would suggest you review the economic history of the development of the United States throughout the 19th Century, and note the role of the tarriff in protecting American industry while it grew to world-dominant status.
Anyway, while you step aside and go chuckle, I'll be posting, later today, the more careful and detailed set of analyses and proposals I promised the others, which you may feel free to skip or to read at your pleasure.
Free trade was started by Bill Clinton? That's funny!
I missed by at least two days posting what I promised several people to post. Family duties at Thanksgiving time obviously take precedence. But I will get it posted sometime this weekend. Promise.
What the vast majority of people reading this article seem to miss is that the purpose of this article is to provide a rationale for the Democrats to claim a "mandate" on economic issues. The article itself is thinly-disguised fiction. But if the last vote was only about Iraq, then Pelosi and the nuts can't start raising taxes. So the MSM needs a bunch of articles about how this is about more than just the war, so she can raise taxes, claiming that's what people voted for.
Jim Webb didn't win because of his economic policy. Not one bit. But the MSM will be happy to lie about it to create a mandate...
I believe its more complex than that though.
In short I see massive inefficiencies in how the 'rich' work over and over again.
The people that know how to create jobs often don't. The reasons might be 100 fold for not doing so.
It does and doesn't have things to do with taxes.
Most are just comfortable and simply risk averse.
We need a system of rewards for those that create the most and best jobs. Just blanketly cutting taxes doesn't really do much. Of course taxes should never be that high. I am a proponent of that... but there is more to the story.
Example I have a client who earns more than $1m a month in personal income. Smart guy by all means but he doesn't do much. $300 million in the bank and he's just goofing off. Its all inherited money too.
At a certain point there is a dimishing return on what these rich guys do.
Guys like that, we should say something like, 'if you start a new company and hire X numbers of people we will cut your income tax...'
There are many different types of 'rich'. There is rich and there is wealthy. There are the working rich and the working wealthy. Those who are actively engaged in owning and operating and starting businesses should be rewarded. Even if they don't start the business themselves, they should be rewarded to fund the starting of businesses.
In the end when they, or someone else creates institutions, people go to work.
A lot of the money at the top is in defensive positions and isn't nessesarily geared towards the creation of new institutions of whatever type.
If we could somehow figure out a way to take that defensive money and convince those people to take on that risk by putting it into an offensive position, then we would be doing something.
What if we just took taxes out of the equation entirely? What if the kind of people you work with could make business decisions without having to consider tax implications at all?
If we could somehow figure out a way to take that defensive money and convince those people to take on that risk by putting it into an offensive position, then we would be doing something.
Do you think a tax system that eliminated the need for ANY consideration of tax consequences would be a step in getting there?
None the less people, even rich ones, are inherently lazy. In fact in many cases the rich ones are the laziest ones depending on how they got their money.
People who know what they are doing and are talented have all the respect in the world from me. Grandpa started a company and built a fortune. His son's helped.
Yet when he sells that company, the next generation in line tends to be full of village idiots.
Not every good idea gets a fair hearing or an equal opportunity.
Just being wealthy means little. Look at Paris Hilton.
The ones we need to identify are the people with brains, like 'grandpa' mentioned above and figure out a way to get them going.
There is a big difference between being an entreprenuer and being wealthy.
We cannot live in a world without taxes, because armies and cops and jails and sewers and roads and schools and hospitals all cost a fortune.
In a monarchy it is possible to have a class that is exempt from taxes. They are called "nobility", and they are very wealthy, and the source of all jobs in the country, etc.
America isn't going to go in that direction. Of course the wealthy, and everybody else, are going to have to pay substantial taxes. We can't do without infrastructure and administration. Of course the wealthiest cannot be exempted from taxation; absolutely nobody else in the population will tolerate a situation like that for long, at least if they still have the right to vote.
I never said we could.
Of course the wealthiest cannot be exempted from taxation...
I don't recall anybody having said anything about that either but we CAN have a tax system that is fair to all and frees business folks from having to consider the tax implications prior to making business decisions. It's before congress right now in fact with lot's of congressmen and senators behind it and you can read all about it right here.
BS There are plenty of other things to tax. Increasing Import and export tax is one, sales tax, tire and gas tax, etc.
When will you be posting your thoughts on why the Fair Tax proposal is a bad idea, and on what the best course of political action would be?
It is taking me some time. Family and work duties have intervened. I have written most of it, offline, but the problem is that it is far too long and doesn't hang together properly.
In writing it, I realize that the main issue really is demographics, because it is demographic concerns that drive social costs, be they public schools in youth or Medicare at death. A victory of the pro-life anti-abortion platform of the GOP would add about 36 million poor children to the welfare (and public education) rolls in an 18 year period, and would add 20-30 thousand severely handicapped children (who are currently aborted in utero) to the medical rolls, many of whose costs of care would ultimately be borne by government.
Of course, too, if you get rid of abortion, you will have the problem of excess workers. The Mexican influx has filled the hole left by the missing 15 million or so American children who were nipped in the bud by abortion and never grew up to enter the workforce. Illegal immigration is an economic issue as well as a public services and demographic issue.
These issues are interrelated and very complicated. Because I am well aware that whatever I write will be examined by the most savagely critical eyes for any weakness, and torn to pieces if I leave any, I am taking care to tie every demographic cite back to a Census Department source, and each other fact to an identified source. The value of the guaranteed insurability, disability insurance, annuity benefit and life insurance benefits of Social Security have had to be calculated, and I had to find a good, reliable calculator to do it with. New York Life Insurance Company's calculators proved the most versatile, but I need to cite specifically to that, rather than just stating that the cost of replacing the various benefits pfovided by social security with commercial products would be nearly DOUBLE the cost of social security itself, with an emphasis on the guaranteed insurability aspect and the disability and life insurance aspects of the social security program. Social Security is the cheapest insurance around. No commercial product can compare.
Proving the NECESSITY of social welfare forces an analysis of criminal justice. The alternative to welfare is not Malthus, it's Latin American squalor and rampant crime. People do not quitely starve. They take what they need to live.
Etc.
These things are tied together inextricably, and abolishing abortion will enormously expand all social costs in every vector, not to mention lead to a rise in crime starting about 15 years out.
Now, I know that the monsters and the critics are standing by to have at me, so it will not do to be impressionistic. My accusation of the standard economic claptrap of the GOP is that it is not REALISTIC, it is anchored in slogans and emotion, without being tied back to reality and factual basis.
Another example: for the country to not enter the demograhic death spiral, the average fertility rate needs to be about 2.2 per couple. Because children only come in whole units, and many are childless, it means that most American couples need to have 3 children, not two. If every couple has two children, the population slowly declines over time. The median income of a family of 5 in the United States is $50,000. Back the relatively small percentage of social security and other taxes out of that, and the number that is left forces the median family of five well UNDER the income level necessary to buy the median home in ANY American region. So, what we end up with is huge Hispanic families on welfare, and American natives well below the replacement rate.
These facts have to be faced and addressed. You will tear me apart if my facts aren't perfect. I am taking the time to make them perfect, and unanswerable with slogans and emotion.
I'm a friendlier critic than you may realize. I would like a well-thought challenge to my own reasoning, so please take your time- but ping me when you post.
I generally eschew labels, preferring to discuss issues on a case-by-case basis. But-and I bring this up not as a critique so much as an observation- your mode of reasoning seems more akin to that of the European right than the American right. In the early 90s I frequented a counterrevolutionary discussion forum where quite a few followers of the Italian School of Elitists, monarchists, integrists, distributists, and TFP-adherents took part (as well as the usual American libertarians and traditionalists). I look back fondly on those discussions, and sometimes wonder what happened to the people who posted there.
In any case, I look forward to the discussion.
Well, I am French. And American. I say that "I live a transAtlantic existence", because it's literally true. My wife is French, and American, too. As is our child. So, yes, there certianly is a cross-cultural view coming through my analysis of things.
Morally, I am a Catholic, and this carries a considerable burden in a democracy. A devout, obedient Catholic does not have the option, morally or theologically, of calling for cutting the safety net and pulling up the drawbridge: we ARE our brother's keeper, because God made it so, and we cannot renegotiate the terms of the moral law. Similiarly, my views of private property, while respectful of it, are in no sense absolutist. We do not truly own ANYTHING, including our bodies or our souls. We are stewards of everything that is in our dominion. We may be good stewards or bad stewards, but we are answerable to God, and to The King (Biblically speaking) for our abuses of stewardship. Now, in a Democracy, we each ARE a fragmentary portion of the King, so we are not SIMPLY responsible to God in our private personam, as a peasant in the Bible was. We are ALSO responsible to God in our public personam. It was enough that a peasant be a good man and obey the Lord and the righteous commands of his lord. But it was by no means enough for King David or King Solomon to simply be a good practitioner of the religion and give somewhat privately "to charity". As King, they had power, they were STEWARDS of God's power, and God's representative in things secular, and as such, the King had an independent duty, a divine duty laid particularly upon him, to care for the sick, the orphan, the widow, do justice and protect the weak. All of that cost MONEY, to hire the staff, etc., and the King SINNED if he were a miser and refused to spend the money, because he wanted to hoard it. Hoard up treasure and it rusts and theives will steal it, Jesus said. That applies to everybody. But for the King to hoard treasure and shirk his DUTY, laid upon him by God as God's Steward of that royal treasure and royal power, to care for the weak and needy and orphan of the realm: that was a deadly SIN on the part of the King. The Christian King MUST provide charity and justice, braiocdly, not miserly, and THAT means spending money. Kings obtained money, even in ancient times, through taxes, but the money was NOT simply "theirs" in a Christian sense. No. They were Stewards of it, and they had an absolute, and inescapable, duty to God Himself to use that money not JUST for the protection of the military security of the realm, but ALSO to care for the hungry, the poor, the orphan and the widow. A Christian King commits a deadly sin if he JUST spends his tax-derived treasury on maintaining a big army for war. There is a DUTY, imposed by God, to spend from the royal treasuresy, and devote royal staff, to care for the weak and poor and sick of the kingdom. That's the King's JOB, as Steward of power, standing in God's stead.
In our modern democracies, we have decided that WE are the King. We have removed the crown from his head and placed it upon our own. We EACH bear a fractional portion of the power of the Crown, and we have acquired this by our own hand. We may have rid ourselves of the rule of the man as King, but we CANNOT rid ourselves of the responsibility of the ruler to God. WE have chosen to become King, through our votes, and therefore WE have the unavoidable DUTY, imposed by God, which we cannot negotiate away, overrule, or philosophize into oblivion, to care for the sick, the poor, the orphan, the widow.
In other words, social welfare - BROAD social welfare, - is not simply an economic policy choice, it is a Jewish and Christian DUTY, imposed by God on the King. We have taken the Corwn, a nd therefore the FULL duty imposed on David falls upon each of US, in exercising that power to rule, to fulfill all of the particular broad demands on the royal treasury for the good of the weak that God demands of the King himself. We are the King. Therefore, unless we want to burn in Hell, we cannot dispense with social welfare, PUBLIC welfare. It was not enough in David's time that each peasant and landlord be nice to the poor. There was a separate duty in the lawmaker and ruler, in personam Dei, to provide from the royal power for orphans, the sick, poor widow, etc.
I am a pragmatist, and this makes good sense anyway, but it[s a religious duty regardless of practicalities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.