3 ms·

Imagine a society of four people, one grows rice for four, one grows chickens for four one grows vegetables for four, one builds and maintains houses for four t

Imagine a society of four people, one grows rice for four, one grows chickens for four one grows vegetables for four, one builds and maintains houses for four there is no profit and there is equality. If one person is profiting... or in our world a person is profiting more than the others it is inequality in action. Progressive tax rates are the simplest solution. The thinking that one persons work is more important than another's is a dangerous and slippery slope.

hueving 11y ago
That's ridiculous because it eliminates all incentives to invest time in training. Why would anyone risk harm and spend years training to be an expert welder when he/she will get the same results as some person that throws some seeds in the ground to grow food for 4 people? The fact is that some people's work is more important than others. That's why society in general is willing to pay more. The kid that rips my ticket stubs at the theater doesn't deserve the same thing as a neurological surgeon that spent the first 30 years of life in training.
- zanny 11y ago
  Markets do not care how "important" your work is when it values how much you are worth. All it cares about is supply and demand. If people want food, and nobody is growing it, but you have a surplus of welders and nobody wanting steelwork done, of course the farmer is going to make more money. Farming is more valuable than welding, regardless of training. The training itself is not a cost center. It is a barrier to entry to providing goods and services in the exact same way possession of seeds and land to plant them in is a barrier to farming. If there is not enough market demand for welders to make people train to be welders over farmers that is not a tragedy, it is an optimization of the economy. The economy is the will of all the money in the system. Albeit its not the will of the people, but thats because people are not equal in wealth. But its a strong reflection of what is worth being done, because money would not trend towards something that is not beneficial. And sane progressive taxes wouldn't be disicentivizing welding over farming - if people stopped training to weld because of reduced profit potential because of taxation, the demand for welders will go up to compensate. Not all of it, but your losses are counterbalanced by any sticky demand. Additionally, almost anyone arguing for taxation today better be doing it as an equalizer of people. If you are being taxed as a welder it means you have a baseline to fall back on in case of a dramatic oversupply of your skills, so rather than being destitute and homeless you just have to downsize your standard of living. And anyone proposing progressive income taxes better not start advocating taxation until at least the happiness threshold of income, or I'd laugh them out of the discussion. A conversation about taxation should be about excess, not what constitutes a successful life.
  - hueving 11y ago
    A market's value of work is how important it is to people at the time. It's that simple. You are over-complicating it by pretending there is something different to determine importance. Also, your suggestion of sane progressive taxation is a massive backpedal from the statement that I replied to, which implied that everyone should receive equal compensation. We already have progressive taxation in the US, so advocating for 'sane progressive taxation' is just a nebulous cop-out that doesn't provide anything concrete enough to be discussed or analyzed.
    - zanny 11y ago
      > so advocating for 'sane progressive taxation' is just a nebulous cop-out that doesn't provide anything concrete enough to be discussed or analyzed. Capital gains is merged into one income tax bracket. All money earned in a year is one single income. Income from 0 to your providential happiness threshold according to heuristic analysis based off the methodology used in this study: https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_high_income_improves_evaluation_August2010.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_... From that point to 100x the happiness threshold you curve progressive taxation from 0% to 90% quadratically, approximating the median around 25% at 50x. Your total tax burden is simply the area under the curve, so rather than having tax brackets you use actual math to make sense and tax progressively all income earned. That means any money made over, if happiness is 75k, 7.5 million is 90% taxed forever. I'd even wager to make it 100% as a short term measure to help dramatically curb income inequality. Note this rate is actually 2% lower than the highest its ever been, but in practice capping capital gains would have a dramatically larger effect on economic planning. Additionally, you need tariffs on exported wealth, on corporate holdings accounts, and on physical goods hoarded, on property all at progressive rates to avoid off-shore tax evasion, hiding your money in a business account, buying material goods to hide your wealth, and stop the current and tangential issue of land hoarding that would be an even bigger problem under a legitimate tax scheme. Finally, you institute a 10 year wealth tax to try to reclaim some of the amassed ownership of the means of production the ultra-elite have racked up over the last decade and stop some of the rent seeking. It is not just about stopping them from acquiring even more of a share of ownership, its about getting some of it back. The rates here are not something I have researched much, but something of the sort may be required since so much of total wealth has moved to the top. You would keep sales tax as a means to fund local and state government, because while regressive if you try to push progressive taxes locally you will just have regional wealth flight. I strongly disagree with the argument that if you tried realistically taxing the rich to pay for society that they would all flee internationally - because the tax burden is pretty close to this in almost all European countries. Where else are they going? Politically unstable and unsafe third world nations? China? Russia? You would absolutely want some global effort here to prevent there from being such an easy escape route, but its a problem of global scale after all, the asset controllers in the US also dominate international commerce and are as much a problem in their influence on every other nation as they are here.
- smileysteve 11y ago
  > Why would anyone risk harm and spend years training to be an expert welder when he/she will get the same results as some person that throws some seeds in the ground to grow food for 4 people? Because it's not the same results, it's progressive results. The inefficient farmer gets 1 result * X tax rate The efficient welder gets (1 result * X tax rate) + (Y result * X+Z tax rate) As long as the tax rate < 100%, the higher efficiency is not only part of the return, it's also encouraged to have a better ROI.

hueving 11y ago

That's ridiculous because it eliminates all incentives to invest time in training. Why would anyone risk harm and spend years training to be an expert welder when he/she will get the same results as some person that throws some seeds in the ground to grow food for 4 people? The fact is that some people's work is more important than others. That's why society in general is willing to pay more. The kid that rips my ticket stubs at the theater doesn't deserve the same thing as a neurological surgeon that spent the first 30 years of life in training.

zanny 11y ago
Markets do not care how "important" your work is when it values how much you are worth. All it cares about is supply and demand. If people want food, and nobody is growing it, but you have a surplus of welders and nobody wanting steelwork done, of course the farmer is going to make more money. Farming is more valuable than welding, regardless of training. The training itself is not a cost center. It is a barrier to entry to providing goods and services in the exact same way possession of seeds and land to plant them in is a barrier to farming. If there is not enough market demand for welders to make people train to be welders over farmers that is not a tragedy, it is an optimization of the economy. The economy is the will of all the money in the system. Albeit its not the will of the people, but thats because people are not equal in wealth. But its a strong reflection of what is worth being done, because money would not trend towards something that is not beneficial. And sane progressive taxes wouldn't be disicentivizing welding over farming - if people stopped training to weld because of reduced profit potential because of taxation, the demand for welders will go up to compensate. Not all of it, but your losses are counterbalanced by any sticky demand. Additionally, almost anyone arguing for taxation today better be doing it as an equalizer of people. If you are being taxed as a welder it means you have a baseline to fall back on in case of a dramatic oversupply of your skills, so rather than being destitute and homeless you just have to downsize your standard of living. And anyone proposing progressive income taxes better not start advocating taxation until at least the happiness threshold of income, or I'd laugh them out of the discussion. A conversation about taxation should be about excess, not what constitutes a successful life.
- hueving 11y ago
  A market's value of work is how important it is to people at the time. It's that simple. You are over-complicating it by pretending there is something different to determine importance. Also, your suggestion of sane progressive taxation is a massive backpedal from the statement that I replied to, which implied that everyone should receive equal compensation. We already have progressive taxation in the US, so advocating for 'sane progressive taxation' is just a nebulous cop-out that doesn't provide anything concrete enough to be discussed or analyzed.
  - zanny 11y ago
    > so advocating for 'sane progressive taxation' is just a nebulous cop-out that doesn't provide anything concrete enough to be discussed or analyzed. Capital gains is merged into one income tax bracket. All money earned in a year is one single income. Income from 0 to your providential happiness threshold according to heuristic analysis based off the methodology used in this study: https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_high_income_improves_evaluation_August2010.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_... From that point to 100x the happiness threshold you curve progressive taxation from 0% to 90% quadratically, approximating the median around 25% at 50x. Your total tax burden is simply the area under the curve, so rather than having tax brackets you use actual math to make sense and tax progressively all income earned. That means any money made over, if happiness is 75k, 7.5 million is 90% taxed forever. I'd even wager to make it 100% as a short term measure to help dramatically curb income inequality. Note this rate is actually 2% lower than the highest its ever been, but in practice capping capital gains would have a dramatically larger effect on economic planning. Additionally, you need tariffs on exported wealth, on corporate holdings accounts, and on physical goods hoarded, on property all at progressive rates to avoid off-shore tax evasion, hiding your money in a business account, buying material goods to hide your wealth, and stop the current and tangential issue of land hoarding that would be an even bigger problem under a legitimate tax scheme. Finally, you institute a 10 year wealth tax to try to reclaim some of the amassed ownership of the means of production the ultra-elite have racked up over the last decade and stop some of the rent seeking. It is not just about stopping them from acquiring even more of a share of ownership, its about getting some of it back. The rates here are not something I have researched much, but something of the sort may be required since so much of total wealth has moved to the top. You would keep sales tax as a means to fund local and state government, because while regressive if you try to push progressive taxes locally you will just have regional wealth flight. I strongly disagree with the argument that if you tried realistically taxing the rich to pay for society that they would all flee internationally - because the tax burden is pretty close to this in almost all European countries. Where else are they going? Politically unstable and unsafe third world nations? China? Russia? You would absolutely want some global effort here to prevent there from being such an easy escape route, but its a problem of global scale after all, the asset controllers in the US also dominate international commerce and are as much a problem in their influence on every other nation as they are here.
smileysteve 11y ago
> Why would anyone risk harm and spend years training to be an expert welder when he/she will get the same results as some person that throws some seeds in the ground to grow food for 4 people? Because it's not the same results, it's progressive results. The inefficient farmer gets 1 result * X tax rate The efficient welder gets (1 result * X tax rate) + (Y result * X+Z tax rate) As long as the tax rate < 100%, the higher efficiency is not only part of the return, it's also encouraged to have a better ROI.