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From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 05:49 On May 14, 7:16 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > On May 13, 5:02 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > > > On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those > > with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load. > > Right. That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other > animals' bread, greedy thing that she was. She had broad shoulders. I think you are mixing your metaphors. If you want to refer to Orwell's "Animal Farm" you had better read it first. > > This falls a > > long way short of Marx - > > Marx was kind of an idiot. The same kind of idiot as Darwin, who laid out the obvious facts that nobody had noticed before. > "The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., > that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely > requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer." > --The Communist Manifesto > > See what I mean? That pretty much describes the state of industrial workers in Victorian England before the trade union movement got under way. Marx was describing the way the world worked at the time when he wrote that, based - in part - on the data that he got from Friedrich Engels, who not only supported Marx financially, but also provided a lot of the social statistics on which Marx based his work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels Marx's economic writings were much more evidence-based than those of his contemporaries. If Marx is a kind of idiot, it is the kind of idiot that we should see more often. Your comment demonstrates that you don't understand why industrial workes are no longer paid a bare subsistence wage, and the contribution that Marx made to the process that changed their condition. > Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep, > a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn > coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping > Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists > today. There was nothing pseudo-academic about Marx. He revolutionised academic economics, in part by exploiting statistical data about the actual economies of the time, quite a bit of which was collected by Engels. > "To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear > Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo > P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM" Perhaps. Marx didn't have an appealing personality. But he was doing important - ground-breaking - work, and Engels saw its value and provided the financial and intellectual support that allowed Marx to get on with it. That you don't see its value reflects your - negligible - intellectual status as a right-wing nitwit. > Marx's moronic precepts ruined scores of countries, and killed tens > of millions, maybe hundreds. The Bolshevik version of Marxism, with its emphasis on the "leading role of the party" has damaged a lot of countries, and killed a lot of people. The problem isn't with Marxism, but the concentration of power into the hands of an unrepresentative and irresponsible elite - the Communist party in Stalin's Russian, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia killed a lot of people, but the Nazi Party in Hitler's Germany, the Fascist parties in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain weren't far behind, despite their violently anti-Marxist ideologies. > "Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean > the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form > of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no > need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a > great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying > it daily." --The Communist Manifesto > > But, dim-witted Marx had it exactly bass-ackwards--industry was the > very salvation for the proletariat, pulling them up out of poverty. Only after the trade union movement forced industrial employers to pay their workers at above subsistence levels. Sometimes they achieved this by direct strike action, but more often far-sighted employers anticipated trade union activism by improving conditions of work to make the jobs of trade union recruiters more difficult, in much the same way as Bismark invented modern universal health care as a way of stealing votes from his socialist political rivals. > "Industry?" you ask? Productivity-amplifying machines, powered by > fossil fuels. Let's get rid of those, shall we? Why? You do like introducing silly straw-man arguments. It would be a much better idea to improve industry so that the machines didn't have to be powered by burning fossil fuels, but understanding how one might do this requires a better grasp of technological possiblities than you have ever demonstrated. > > from each according to the abilities, to each > > according to their needs - and is compatible with a society where some > > people can afford fancier cars, bigger houses and finer wines than > > their neighbours, though the rich no longer have access to the > > services of a truly deprived under-class who will do almost anything > > to save their kids from starvation. > > Socialist countries are the ones who crush their peoples in poverty, > and whose people flee to the USA, not the reverse. And your statistical evidence for this unlikely story is? Forty years ago, the USA did offer a higher standard of living than any other country in the world, but that hasn't been true for quite some time now. It still offers respectable material prosperity, but education and health care are both now so expensive that immigrants from the more prosperous parts of Europe have to be confident of getting very well paying jobs before they could contemplate making a permanent move. > > > This guy makes your case for you:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wwK7fggOs&NR=1 > > > The link doesn't work for me, and if it had worked I imagine that its > > content would be just as half-baked as your argument. > > Pity. A conspiracy idiot. He makes your case well. And what is the "conspiracy" to which you think I might be referring? You right-wing nut cases do seem to share a number of delusions, but that can be explained without resorting to any conspiracy - sinmple- minded nitwits like simple solutions, and lack the historical insight to realise that these solutions haven't worked in the past and are even less likely to work now. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 06:01 On May 14, 12:39 am, John Larkin <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman > > > > <bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > >On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin > ><jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com > >> wrote: > > >> >On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > >> >> On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >> >> > On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote: > >> >> > > On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > >> >> > > >Maybe. A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's > >> >> > > >permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that > >> >> > > >dough he spent--I can't remember. > > >> >> > > *Maybe*. The deficit for just April was $83B. Note that April is also the > >> >> > > month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing > >> >> > > date. In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month. > > >> >> > > <snip> > > >> >> > A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.. > >> >> > (Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.) > > >> >> > Of course that assumes people continue to buy stuff at the same rate, > >> >> > which they won't. They won't work at the same rate either. Better > >> >> > make it 18%, like Europe. And, naturally, that won't be enough > >> >> > either. He'll spend more. > > >> >> > That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.. > >> >> > Deficit spending does. > > >> >> Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards > >> >> the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which > >> >> attracts VAT. > > >> >True. > > >> >> The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which > >> >> doesn't attract VAT. > > >> >Naturally. As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy > >> >figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the > >> >course that minimizes them. > > >> >> Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a > >> >> regressive tax. > > >> >In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23% > >> >national sales tax. It would replace all of our federal tax system > >> >(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc), > >> >and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and > >> >time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes. The latter > >> >costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy > >> >wasted unproductively. > > >> >A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive. > > >> Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic > >> medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax > >> policy to steer behavior. > > >They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt, > >but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT > >on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal. > > That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked > chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot, > ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible, > automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed > whether you eat it there or not. I can't imagine how you could work a > thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain. > > It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the > things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating > around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things > like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen. > > (One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because > hot ones have a higher tax rate.) > > I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts > business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because > it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No > accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no > quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost. Dream on. Why do you think that VAT was invented? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax > Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a > person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be > jealous of his wealth. It does seem inequitable to organise society so that the rich pay out a lower proportion of their - higher - incomes in tax than do the poor. It also means that the administration is extracting more of its income from people who feel the loss more keenly. The rich don't like paying taxes any more than do the poor, but it's less painful to have to economise on luxuries than on necessities. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 06:09 On May 14, 3:15 am, "k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" <k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin > > > > <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > >On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman > ><bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > > >>On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin > >><jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > >>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com > >>> wrote: > > >>> >On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > >>> >> On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >>> >> > On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote: > >>> >> > > On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo..com wrote: > > >>> >> > > >Maybe. A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's > >>> >> > > >permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that > >>> >> > > >dough he spent--I can't remember. > > >>> >> > > *Maybe*. The deficit for just April was $83B. Note that April is also the > >>> >> > > month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing > >>> >> > > date. In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month. > > >>> >> > > <snip> > > >>> >> > A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing. > >>> >> > (Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.) > > >>> >> > Of course that assumes people continue to buy stuff at the same rate, > >>> >> > which they won't. They won't work at the same rate either. Better > >>> >> > make it 18%, like Europe. And, naturally, that won't be enough > >>> >> > either. He'll spend more. > > >>> >> > That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth. > >>> >> > Deficit spending does. > > >>> >> Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards > >>> >> the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which > >>> >> attracts VAT. > > >>> >True. > > >>> >> The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which > >>> >> doesn't attract VAT. > > >>> >Naturally. As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy > >>> >figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the > >>> >course that minimizes them. > > >>> >> Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a > >>> >> regressive tax. > > >>> >In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23% > >>> >national sales tax. It would replace all of our federal tax system > >>> >(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc), > >>> >and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and > >>> >time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes. The latter > >>> >costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy > >>> >wasted unproductively. > > >>> >A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive. > > >>> Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic > >>> medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax > >>> policy to steer behavior. > > >>They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt, > >>but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT > >>on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal. > > >That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked > >chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot, > >ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible, > >automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed > >whether you eat it there or not. > > In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed > as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now > become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed, > Hawaiian Punch and Tang are. > > >I can't imagine how you could work a > >thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain. > > VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality. > > > > >It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the > >things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating > >around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things > >like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen. > > >(One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because > >hot ones have a higher tax rate.) > > >I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts > >business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because > >it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No > >accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no > >quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost. > > >Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a > >person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be > >jealous of his wealth. > > Leftists and those on the receiving end aren't reasonable. They are perfectly reasonable. but they don't have the same preconceptions as right-wing nitwits. Notably, they don't think that being rich is a condition that exempts you from paying your fair share of the costs of running your society. The rich make more use of the advantages of being members of a rich society - their children are over-represented in tertiary education, their cars do more miles per year on the roads, and the contents of their houses are more interesting to burglars, so the police have to work harder to protect them - and leftist have this idea that they should pay out a somewhat higher proportion of their income in taxes to compensate society for these extra costs. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 06:16 On May 14, 4:08 am, John Larkin <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:15:42 -0500, "k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" > > > > <k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote: > >On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin > ><jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > > >>On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman > >><bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > > >>>On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin > >>><jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > >>>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com > >>>> wrote: > > >>>> >On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > >>>> >> On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >>>> >> > On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote: > >>>> >> > > On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > >>>> >> > > >Maybe. A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's > >>>> >> > > >permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that > >>>> >> > > >dough he spent--I can't remember. > > >>>> >> > > *Maybe*. The deficit for just April was $83B. Note that April is also the > >>>> >> > > month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing > >>>> >> > > date. In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month. > > >>>> >> > > <snip> > > >>>> >> > A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing. > >>>> >> > (Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.) > > >>>> >> > Of course that assumes people continue to buy stuff at the same rate, > >>>> >> > which they won't. They won't work at the same rate either. Better > >>>> >> > make it 18%, like Europe. And, naturally, that won't be enough > >>>> >> > either. He'll spend more. > > >>>> >> > That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth. > >>>> >> > Deficit spending does. > > >>>> >> Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards > >>>> >> the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which > >>>> >> attracts VAT. > > >>>> >True. > > >>>> >> The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which > >>>> >> doesn't attract VAT. > > >>>> >Naturally. As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy > >>>> >figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the > >>>> >course that minimizes them. > > >>>> >> Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a > >>>> >> regressive tax. > > >>>> >In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23% > >>>> >national sales tax. It would replace all of our federal tax system > >>>> >(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc), > >>>> >and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and > >>>> >time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes. The latter > >>>> >costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy > >>>> >wasted unproductively. > > >>>> >A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive. > > >>>> Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic > >>>> medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax > >>>> policy to steer behavior. > > >>>They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt, > >>>but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT > >>>on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal. > > >>That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked > >>chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot, > >>ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible, > >>automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed > >>whether you eat it there or not. > > >In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed > >as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now > >become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed, > >Hawaiian Punch and Tang are. > > It's sometimes silly and arbitrary, but it's still pretty simple to > administer... the cash register reads the UPC and adds tax or > doesn't... and it generally exempts the basics that lower-income > people need. > > A 20% tax on junk food, and zero on broccoli, would encourage people > to eat their broccoli. > > > > >>I can't imagine how you could work a > >>thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain. > > >VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality. > > VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage > that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I > prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to > hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax Do try and find out something about VAT before telling us what is - and is not - possible. And VAT is perfectly visible at the pointo of sale, which is the first point where the buyers can't recover the VAT on the stuff they have bought, because they aren't going to sell it on. > >>It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the > >>things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating > >>around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things > >>like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen. > > >>(One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because > >>hot ones have a higher tax rate.) > > >>I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts > >>business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because > >>it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No > >>accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no > >>quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost. > > >>Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a > >>person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be > >>jealous of his wealth. > > >Leftists and those on the receiving end aren't reasonable. > > Oh. Right. By "reasonable" krw would understand "sharing right-wing nitwit preconceptions" which don't happen to be all that rational, not that you would seem to be equipped to understand this. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 06:22
On May 14, 6:03 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" > > <k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote: > > On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin > > <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > > >>VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality. > > > >VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage > > >that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I > > >prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to > > >hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity. > > > That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of > > the pipe. > > No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing > gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate, > etc. > > Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible. But easily automated, unless you want to cheat. No place where I worked complained about the complexity or got worried about intrusions. European small business software packages claim to include it as a matter of course. People who are sloppy about their paper-work can get in a mess with VAT, as with every other item of accounting, but at least it isn't hard to understand. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen |