Politics Thread: 13 Ghosts

[Blarghagh]

Argue about flat tax vs progressive tax and Trump's latest blunders here. Enjoy. Please keep personal attacks to a minimum.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

A flat tax ends up being regressive based upon how spending and wealth accumulation actually works.

Trump's latest blunders here.

So much for the tolerant mods. Fake news, Trump is playing 3d chess betacucks can't comprehend.

[Blarghagh]

As my name suggests, I'm unbiased. Blunder is an objective observation.

 

-this was sarcasm-

[Darkpriest]

Flat taxes are good, you can give the base tax free income amount (say 6k USD a year) and anything above that you pay the tax on. No exemptions, no special rules. you earn = you pay.

 

simple taxes would make however a lot of administration useless... you could literally take a simple AI do the job of thousands of people in administration, when it comes to calculating tax paid vs the amount on the filled form, vs the amount of assets registered and services purchased (you could easily put that in the systems, however for now there is this issue with how to protect effectively your tax ID number, so it it's not being discussed much) - this way the machine could track your net worth, earnings and paid taxes. Much harder to do tax evasions, right?

 

A person earning 100k paying 15% is already paying more nominally than a person earning 30k and if that person is earning that much money, that means that the person knows how to use money and time more efficiently, thus is more productive with each extra dollar spent that they get extra.

 

Any tax on inheritance of 1st level family bond, should be removed. Tax on inheritance to far family (i.e. other then parent-parent, parent-kids, siblings) should be applicable as a part of extra income, HOWEVER, it needs to be taken into account, not only the assets you get, but also how much these assets cost in upkeep, and how liquid they are.

 

If a guy working in McD suddenly gets 2mil USD. he will have no means to pay huge tax on inheritance if he will get a bunch of fixed assets that cost 100k in upkeep and some stocks. If you will force him to pay some huge tax, he will effectively have to get rid of the assets and I do not believe that's a point of inheritance. It should be able to help you move forward, not punish you and create headache...

 

As for the need, etc.

If you are not a god, you have no right to tell someone who needs how much. Otherwise I can tell you that to live you only need to breathe and find your own food and water from publicly available places, like a nearest forest/jungle. Everything else was invented by someone - even medicine is not your right. it's a privilege for which you have to pay the amount set up by the inventor and producer.

 

We are living in a reality, where competition is embedded in its functioning. There are limited number of resources, so various entities compete for them.

It might be a shocker for you, but you live because you won a race to your mommys inside from among millions of losers...

 

You can start thinking about socializm, once you will have perpetum mobile in terms of energy management and you will be able to synthesize any matter from pure energy. Tip. It ain't gonna happen anytime soon...

[Malcador]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/rip-net-neutrality-fcc-chair-releases-plan-to-deregulate-isps/

 

FCC helping innovation, or something.

[Katphood]

Tillerson Accused of Violating Federal Law on Child Soldiers (nytimes)

 

The world is getting crazier by the minute! 

[Ben No.3]

“It might be a shocker for you, but you live because you won a race to your mommys inside from among millions of losers...”

 

Actually, it usually takes the effort of several sperms to break the ovums outer wall, which means that the first sperm is very unlikely to actually be the one to fertilise. You live because you’re a lazy, credit stealing bastard living off other people’s efforts.

[Guard Dog]

“It might be a shocker for you, but you live because you won a race to your mommys inside from among millions of losers...”

 

Actually, it usually takes the effort of several sperms to break the ovums outer wall, which means that the first sperm is very unlikely to actually be the one to fertilise. You live because you’re a lazy, credit stealing bastard living off other people’s efforts.

I am so stealing this one!

[ShadySands]

Eh, flat tax doesn't work well on the low end. Especially if you set the threshold so low that 500 bucks a month is taxed. 75 bucks a month is going to hurt that person much more than 1250 is going to hurt me. It's the difference between fair and equitable.

 

PS our estate tax law is not what everyone keeps arguing. Ben's proposal is nowhere near the actuality as it starts at near 11 million not 1 and the rate is 40% not 85. I get that it's easier to argue against the lower number so I'll stop adding the actual law that they are trying to get rid of.

 

PPS I agree with not telling people what they need but I extend that courtesy to the low end as well. Talking heads here love telling poor people what they should or shouldn't have

[Gfted1]

Holy crap, you make $8,350.00 / month! I need a new gig.

[213374U]

As for the need, etc.

If you are not a god, you have no right to tell someone who needs how much. Otherwise I can tell you that to live you only need to breathe and find your own food and water from publicly available places, like a nearest forest/jungle. Everything else was invented by someone - even medicine is not your right. it's a privilege for which you have to pay the amount set up by the inventor and producer.

 

I love it because this argument works for everyone. If you need it, everyone else needs it too, which leads to an obviously absurd conclusion. Per your logic, I guess I am a god. QED

 

And you are absolutely right, you only need air to breathe, food and water, and a modicum of sunlight. Medicine and shelter circumstantially, without which you may die. Which is what I was getting at before. A need does not automatically engender a right, and a right does not always represent a need. I'm not exactly sure how you think this reinforces your point, however.

 

Speaking of privilege, property is just one such. There is no natural law that says that you can deprive anyone else of anything on this Earth -- which is ultimately what the concept of property is about. Depriving everyone else but the proprietor. This deprivation is necessarily accepted in the context of the social contract, to which it is subject, and without which you own exactly as much as you can kill other people over.

[Blarghagh]

“It might be a shocker for you, but you live because you won a race to your mommys inside from among millions of losers...”

 

Actually, it usually takes the effort of several sperms to break the ovums outer wall, which means that the first sperm is very unlikely to actually be the one to fertilise. You live because you’re a lazy, credit stealing bastard living off other people’s efforts.

 

Well, there goes my go-to example for what I've accomplished.

[Ben No.3]

“We are living in a reality, where competition is embedded in its functioning. There are limited number of resources, so various entities compete for them.”

 

See, here’s the thing. What you just did is called a normative fallacy, also known as Humes law or the is-ought problem. You observed something - that resources are limited - and derived a rule from it - that we should compete for these recourses. You didn’t have any reason to draw this conclusion from your observation though. The IS, so what is (limited recourse), says nothing about the OUGHT, what should be done (which is, you say, without giving any actual evidence for this, competing).

 

This exact fallacy in this exact context has often been used by Social Darwinists to justify imperial conquest as an evolutionary necessity and therefore justified. However, as I pointed out, this is a false line of reasoning.

 

And if you actually look at nature, you will find that “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean “survival of the strongest individual”, but rather “survival of the system which has best adapted to its surroundings”. Take honey bees or certain types of ants, which have constructed systems, or societies, if you will, which work almost perfectly, yet devoid of any significant competition amongst each other. Mind you, that is within one respective system/society/tribe. And even most human tribes have not developed the concept of property, let alone wage labour.

 

In conclusio: Your line of reasoning is false and your thesis not only unproven, but also contradictory to observable fact.

 

You’re wrong.

Edited November 21, 2017 by Ben No.3

[Gfted1]

While were on the subject of being wrong:

 

Do ants ever go to war?

 

The Social Lives of Bees.

[Ben No.3]

While were on the subject of being wrong:

 

Do ants ever go to war?

 

The Social Lives of Bees.

The fight between competing tribes of ants I was aware of, however, that’s two tribes of ants, i.e. two competing systems; so a bit of a different story.

 

Didn’t know about the ant civil wars. If I’m getting it correctly, it has nothing to do with recourse allocation, but with reproduction. Same with the bees. It is very interesting, and I will admit that i was wrong, but it does seem besides the point?

Edited November 21, 2017 by Ben No.3

[Gfted1]

I just dont like people spreading misinformation about ants and bees.

[Ben No.3]

I just dont like people spreading misinformation about ants and bees.

I corrected my original statement accordingly

[Guard Dog]

One last thought on what people "need" and just who is rich and who isn't. In my own estimation I am, by far, the wealthiest man in the world. My house could not be called a mansion by any comparison, but no mansion would ever please me so much. It may not be large but it is more than enough for me. Every night I can sit on my porch and watch the sun set on the fork of the Hatchie River. And after that the stars shine like diamonds on a black velvet blanket. This show takes my breath away and it happens right over my house every night with such regularity that how could all of it not be just for me? I wake up to the sounds of blue jays, whiskeyjacks, and crows and fall asleep to the sounds of owls, crickets and coyotes. A free concert of incomparable music. And it happens every night. The soil around me, the river beside me and the woods beyond produce food for me to eat, privacy and security and views more beautiful than any palace in Europe could hope to match. This was my dream. This was the thing I wanted most. Not just to have things like this but to truly own them so no one could ever take them. So I did what had to be done to achieve it. I saved money instead of spending it. I worked hard, then worked harder. I worked two jobs. I worked full time and went to school at night. I worked weekends when my friends were at the beach. I hear people mocking the notion of someone pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and achieving their goals. But people do that every single day. In 1998 I was dead broke, newly divorced, jobless, and well on the road to drinking myself to death. In 2017 I own my own home and land outright and have a nice investment portfolio. this only happened because I figured out what I wanted and did what had to be done. 

 

Success is extremely subjective. You only achieve it when YOU think you have achieved it. But it is out of no one's reach. Don't go into debt. Don't buy what you don't need. Realize that there will be setbacks and work around them. Work hard, then work harder. Look for opportunities, don't wait for them to come to you. And above all ignore the people who tell you it's impossible. It isn't. If you have to go to school, then do it. Can't afford school? Learn another way. Libraries are free. Adult vocational education is usually free. Just because you don't want a particular job does not mean it won't be worth your while. Most important of all, never be idle. Don't let a day pass when you are not doing something to further your goal whatever it is. 

 

The last thing in Guard Dog's steps to success is this: enjoy and take pleasure in the things you do have. Pet your dog, play with your cat. Talk to your spouse, take your kids to the park. Let yourself really enjoy whatever you are doing right now. Take notice of how good your coffee is, or your lunch. Stop a minute and just listen to the birds or look at the stars. There is so much going on all around us that so few ever stop to take notice of. There are a lot of fabulously wealthy people in this world who are utterly miserable. A lot of that is attitude. The person who takes joy in the things they have will usually be happier than the one who does not no matter how nice those things are.

 

Thomas Paine once wrote "what we achieve too cheaply we esteem too lightly, its dearness only that gives value". Be prepared to work for what you want and don't let anyone tell you it's impossible. And when you do reach whatever goal you've set, don't let the people who didn't work for theirs tell you what you have achieved isn't really yours. 

 

Anyway, that's my $.02. 
 

[Guard Dog]

Eh, flat tax doesn't work well on the low end. Especially if you set the threshold so low that 500 bucks a month is taxed. 75 bucks a month is going to hurt that person much more than 1250 is going to hurt me. It's the difference between fair and equitable.

 

PS our estate tax law is not what everyone keeps arguing. Ben's proposal is nowhere near the actuality as it starts at near 11 million not 1 and the rate is 40% not 85. I get that it's easier to argue against the lower number so I'll stop adding the actual law that they are trying to get rid of.

 

PPS I agree with not telling people what they need but I extend that courtesy to the low end as well. Talking heads here love telling poor people what they should or shouldn't have

For my part at least I think we were not discussing a particular amount or policy but the philosophy of an inheritance tax in a general way. 

 

One advantage of a flat tax that everyone pays is that people might finally start taking an interest in where the money they earn is going. Right now in the US 90% of the taxes are paid by just 10% of the taxpayers. And almost half of working Americans pay no income tax at all. And for all that everyone still thinks the 10% are not paying their "fair share". It's like we are watching the prelude to "Atlas Shrugged" playing out before our eyes. The purpose of tax isn't to help the poor get richer or to make the rich poorer. The purpose is to fund the things the government is doing that we are supposedly all benefiting from. Well, if we are all benefiting perhaps we should all be paying? And if someone who has had no tax liability before sees $75 of money he earned wasted on the stupid s--t our government wastes other people's money on and it makes them take an interest that can't be a bad thing. 

 

Someone once said if elections were held on April 16 this would be a different country.  

Edited November 21, 2017 by Guard Dog

[Darkpriest]

“We are living in a reality, where competition is embedded in its functioning. There are limited number of resources, so various entities compete for them.”

 

See, here’s the thing. What you just did is called a normative fallacy, also known as Humes law or the is-ought problem. You observed something - that resources are limited - and derived a rule from it - that we should compete for these recourses. You didn’t have any reason to draw this conclusion from your observation though. The IS, so what is (limited recourse), says nothing about the OUGHT, what should be done (which is, you say, without giving any actual evidence for this, competing).

 

This exact fallacy in this exact context has often been used by Social Darwinists to justify imperial conquest as an evolutionary necessity and therefore justified. However, as I pointed out, this is a false line of reasoning.

 

And if you actually look at nature, you will find that “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean “survival of the strongest individual”, but rather “survival of the system which has best adapted to its surroundings”. Take honey bees or certain types of ants, which have constructed systems, or societies, if you will, which work almost perfectly, yet devoid of any significant competition amongst each other. Mind you, that is within one respective system/society/tribe. And even most human tribes have not developed the concept of property, let alone wage labour.

 

In conclusio: Your line of reasoning is false and your thesis not only unproven, but also contradictory to observable fact.

 

You’re wrong.

 

I said you won the race, not that you were first to the "egg", also, I did not think that you were supporting caste system, once a drone always a drone, without freedom to chose what you want to do in life.

[Darkpriest]

 

As for the need, etc.

If you are not a god, you have no right to tell someone who needs how much. Otherwise I can tell you that to live you only need to breathe and find your own food and water from publicly available places, like a nearest forest/jungle. Everything else was invented by someone - even medicine is not your right. it's a privilege for which you have to pay the amount set up by the inventor and producer.

 

I love it because this argument works for everyone. If you need it, everyone else needs it too, which leads to an obviously absurd conclusion. Per your logic, I guess I am a god. QED

 

And you are absolutely right, you only need air to breathe, food and water, and a modicum of sunlight. Medicine and shelter circumstantially, without which you may die. Which is what I was getting at before. A need does not automatically engender a right, and a right does not always represent a need. I'm not exactly sure how you think this reinforces your point, however.

 

Speaking of privilege, property is just one such. There is no natural law that says that you can deprive anyone else of anything on this Earth -- which is ultimately what the concept of property is about. Depriving everyone else but the proprietor. This deprivation is necessarily accepted in the context of the social contract, to which it is subject, and without which you own exactly as much as you can kill other people over.

 

 

Sure, ultimately when the societies/laws fail, you get to the point where the man with a biggest stick gets the most. It happens during heavy civil unrest periods - rioting, looting, etc.

 

The property rights and security that what you earn is secured by the social contract to be your privilege to manage as you please, is what boosted the overall development of civilization. Look at various parts in the history, and see which societies under what types of laws were developing the fastest and became the most successful in a given time.

 

The social contract I accept, is that I pay the tax/levy/fee/whatever you name it, for the right to keep what I earn through my hard work, ideas and I bear the consequences of the risks I take with the wealth i collected.

 

You can try tweak some things here and there in that social contract, but ultimately you care the most for things you own and care about - this is proven with results of various systems. Hell, you can even see this example on how people treat something that is public vs how they treat the same stuff if it is their own.

 

I should not be discouraged by laws, which will aim to take more and more the more I work and the better results i get with my capital/wealth management. I already bear the risks of failure if I mismanage my resources - no one will return me my wasted time, energy, and majority of my wealth if i will fail, so why would same people be entitled to more portions of what I earn if I succeed?

 

Flat tax rate is the most "fair" - and you can always help the low end of earnings by making a fixed amount of income being tax-free, so that way if you earn low income, you will have a decent size of that tax free, and if you earn a lot, you will still pay way more in nominal values and that tax-free portion will be less of benefit to you percentage wise. Just make sure to make it an easy tax, best if with 0 deductions, etc.

 

If I will feel that you want to steal the fruits of my hard labor and the risks and time I've managed, then I will do what I can to meander around that and even change tax residency if needed.

[Malcador]

 

One advantage of a flat tax that everyone pays is that people might finally start taking an interest in where the money they earn is going. Right now in the US 90% of the taxes are paid by just 10% of the taxpayers. And almost half of working Americans pay no income tax at all. And for all that everyone still thinks the 10% are not paying their "fair share". It's like we are watching the prelude to "Atlas Shrugged" playing out before our eyes. The purpose of tax isn't to help the poor get richer or to make the rich poorer. The purpose is to fund the things the government is doing that we are supposedly all benefiting from. Well, if we are all benefiting perhaps we should all be paying? And if someone who has had no tax liability before sees $75 of money he earned wasted on the stupid s--t our government wastes other people's money on and it makes them take an interest that can't be a bad thing. 

 

Someone once said if elections were held on April 16 this would be a different country.  

 

 

 

Aren't the people who aren't paying (I guess this is a problem for you) not earning enough to pay income tax ?

[Guard Dog]

 

 

One advantage of a flat tax that everyone pays is that people might finally start taking an interest in where the money they earn is going. Right now in the US 90% of the taxes are paid by just 10% of the taxpayers. And almost half of working Americans pay no income tax at all. And for all that everyone still thinks the 10% are not paying their "fair share". It's like we are watching the prelude to "Atlas Shrugged" playing out before our eyes. The purpose of tax isn't to help the poor get richer or to make the rich poorer. The purpose is to fund the things the government is doing that we are supposedly all benefiting from. Well, if we are all benefiting perhaps we should all be paying? And if someone who has had no tax liability before sees $75 of money he earned wasted on the stupid s--t our government wastes other people's money on and it makes them take an interest that can't be a bad thing. 

 

Someone once said if elections were held on April 16 this would be a different country.  

 

 

 

Aren't the people who aren't paying (I guess this is a problem for you) not earning enough to pay income tax ?

 

Correct. If your adjusted incomes falls below a certain number you don't pay. In fact it's not uncommon for people to actually receive a refund greater than the total amount that was deducted for tax the previous year. Where do you suppose that comes from? As for it being a problem, well, I guess it is in a way. After all if everyone benefits from a thing shouldn't everyone help pay for that thing? At the very least you'd think the people who pay nothing would not buy into the the notion those greedy 10% rat-bastards are not paying their fair share. Unfortunately politicians love turning us against each other as a means to channel anger into electoral support. 

 

One of the reason the government is getting away with the abuses it is getting away with is the people who actually PAY for those abuses constitute an electoral minority. If everyone is bearing the cost maybe people will look a little harder at where that money is going.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On the other hand when you factor out government subsidies about half the population is under the poverty line, I'll take some liberty and assume that they are generally correlated with those paying a net 0 or less income tax. Perhaps increasing their tax burden through a flat tax without deductions would make them hate those in that 10% (or .1% if we want to be very accurate) and push for polices even more punitive than what we have now. I mean try telling a guy who can barely pay his bills when he and his wife work a combined 80 hours a week they need to suck it up for a well off guy with and big house and decent cars to get a break and I doubt you'll have a warm reception.

[Malcador]

Correct. If your adjusted incomes falls below a certain number you don't pay. In fact it's not uncommon for people to actually receive a refund greater than the total amount that was deducted for tax the previous year. Where do you suppose that comes from? As for it being a problem, well, I guess it is in a way. After all if everyone benefits from a thing shouldn't everyone help pay for that thing? At the very least you'd think the people who pay nothing would not buy into the the notion those greedy 10% rat-bastards are not paying their fair share. Unfortunately politicians love turning us against each other as a means to channel anger into electoral support. 

 

One of the reason the government is getting away with the abuses it is getting away with is the people who actually PAY for those abuses constitute an electoral minority. If everyone is bearing the cost maybe people will look a little harder at where that money is going.

 

Well the people that poor aren't going to contribute all that much as they're on a knife edge. And not as if they are free-loading off the glorious honest 10%, for similar reasons.