5 ms·

Another brilliant idea that makes you cry with the impossibility of anyone ever doing it.

by Eliezer 17y ago

runevault 17y ago
Amen. While I don't always agree with what he says, Cuban is good at making points. Especially from the perspective of making things easier on entrepreneurs, since he started out and just happened to make that big deal to turn him into a billionaire.
maukdaddy 17y ago
The real impossibility is getting this idea passed through congress. Unfortunately, you don't get votes by simplifying things. Instead, you have to make "progress" by adding on pork projects, subsidies, tariffs, quotas, etc. that benefit your constituents.
- cwan 17y ago
  That I think was the conventional thinking but it's gotten to a tipping point with massive new proposals for complexity / government spending/programs. I think a large part of the popularity of the tea party/'throw the bums out' movement and perceptions of corruption in Washington is the result of push back. Irrespective of political leanings, the loss of the seat Ted Kennedy for decades in Massachusetts to a Republican has to be a shocker (even to the republican leadership that didn't spend much time or energy backing their candidate until the last few days). Simplification means less corruption and fewer costs not only for small business but for everyone. A useful reference point is to consider the positive relationship between economic growth and reduced regulation and you can see that through the World Bank's Doing Business guide comparing various states (http://www.doingbusiness.org http://www.doingbusiness.org)
mattmcknight 17y ago
Another aspect of it that gets to me is the competitiveness drain that all of these add to a company. If a competitor in another county, state, or country has less bureaucracy to deal with, or has to pay lower fees (not in dollars, for example), they can win.
timr 17y ago
Except, it's not brilliant, and we've been doing it for years. This post is a hollow re-tread of the "lower my taxes and I'll trickle it down" argument, which has been the primary platform of the Republican party (and wealthy people) since I've been alive. Our tax rates are dramatically lower than they were even 20 years ago, and I have to say...it doesn't seem to be working that well. Two observations that came immediately to mind while reading this post: 1) Accountants and lawyers are people with jobs. Fire them and replace them with non-accountant, non-lawyer jobs, and all you've done is shuffle the jobs around. Yes, you can argue that every dollar spent on non-administrative expenses can be invested into productivity, but that leads me to my second observation: 2) Small businesses just don't spend that much on administrative overhead. I've worked at far more small businesses (<20 employees) than large ones, and all of them -- every single one -- has out-sourced the accounting expenses to such a degree that I doubt there's a single full-time equivalent lost in the shuffle. Legal expenses can be more variable, but typically not because of government overhead. When I hear this argument coming from extremely rich people, my natural instinct is to assume that they're using the populist vision of the "struggling small business owner" to promote policies that would benefit their personal bottom line. Quite honestly, this looks like more of the same. Mark Cuban has a lot more to gain from cuts in the corporate tax rate than does your average small business owner -- yet he'll never employ enough people to make up the difference.
- cwan 17y ago
  It's not just administrative overhead, it's friction in getting things done. There is such a thing as objective value creation. The complexity of the tax code in the US has been increasing with ever larger loopholes to satisfy lobbyists and curry favor with various special interests. This isn't even about taxes - it's about simplifying something that shouldn't even be complex. Further, the irony is the people who lobby for the complexity are often the "extremely rich people". I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your argument that moving jobs from tax accounting/legal which attempt to manage friction in transactions to professions that create goods and services people actually want to pay for is just "shuffling the jobs around". As an extension of your argument, shouldn't the government employ everyone by fiat and simply abolish unemployment? This is especially made particularly absurd that the US Treasury Secretary couldn't even figure out how to pay his own taxes but now runs the IRS. There is something very very wrong with this picture.

Another brilliant idea that makes you cry with the impossibility of anyone ever doing it.

by Eliezer 17y ago

Another brilliant idea that makes you cry with the impossibility of anyone ever doing it.

Amen. While I don't always agree with what he says, Cuban is good at making points. Especially from the perspective of making things easier on entrepreneurs, since he started out and just happened to make that big deal to turn him into a billionaire.

maukdaddy 17y ago

The real impossibility is getting this idea passed through congress. Unfortunately, you don't get votes by simplifying things. Instead, you have to make "progress" by adding on pork projects, subsidies, tariffs, quotas, etc. that benefit your constituents.

cwan 17y ago
That I think was the conventional thinking but it's gotten to a tipping point with massive new proposals for complexity / government spending/programs. I think a large part of the popularity of the tea party/'throw the bums out' movement and perceptions of corruption in Washington is the result of push back. Irrespective of political leanings, the loss of the seat Ted Kennedy for decades in Massachusetts to a Republican has to be a shocker (even to the republican leadership that didn't spend much time or energy backing their candidate until the last few days). Simplification means less corruption and fewer costs not only for small business but for everyone. A useful reference point is to consider the positive relationship between economic growth and reduced regulation and you can see that through the World Bank's Doing Business guide comparing various states (http://www.doingbusiness.org http://www.doingbusiness.org)

mattmcknight 17y ago

Another aspect of it that gets to me is the competitiveness drain that all of these add to a company. If a competitor in another county, state, or country has less bureaucracy to deal with, or has to pay lower fees (not in dollars, for example), they can win.

timr 17y ago

Except, it's not brilliant, and we've been doing it for years. This post is a hollow re-tread of the "lower my taxes and I'll trickle it down" argument, which has been the primary platform of the Republican party (and wealthy people) since I've been alive. Our tax rates are dramatically lower than they were even 20 years ago, and I have to say...it doesn't seem to be working that well. Two observations that came immediately to mind while reading this post: 1) Accountants and lawyers are people with jobs. Fire them and replace them with non-accountant, non-lawyer jobs, and all you've done is shuffle the jobs around. Yes, you can argue that every dollar spent on non-administrative expenses can be invested into productivity, but that leads me to my second observation: 2) Small businesses just don't spend that much on administrative overhead. I've worked at far more small businesses (<20 employees) than large ones, and all of them -- every single one -- has out-sourced the accounting expenses to such a degree that I doubt there's a single full-time equivalent lost in the shuffle. Legal expenses can be more variable, but typically not because of government overhead. When I hear this argument coming from extremely rich people, my natural instinct is to assume that they're using the populist vision of the "struggling small business owner" to promote policies that would benefit their personal bottom line. Quite honestly, this looks like more of the same. Mark Cuban has a lot more to gain from cuts in the corporate tax rate than does your average small business owner -- yet he'll never employ enough people to make up the difference.

cwan 17y ago
It's not just administrative overhead, it's friction in getting things done. There is such a thing as objective value creation. The complexity of the tax code in the US has been increasing with ever larger loopholes to satisfy lobbyists and curry favor with various special interests. This isn't even about taxes - it's about simplifying something that shouldn't even be complex. Further, the irony is the people who lobby for the complexity are often the "extremely rich people". I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your argument that moving jobs from tax accounting/legal which attempt to manage friction in transactions to professions that create goods and services people actually want to pay for is just "shuffling the jobs around". As an extension of your argument, shouldn't the government employ everyone by fiat and simply abolish unemployment? This is especially made particularly absurd that the US Treasury Secretary couldn't even figure out how to pay his own taxes but now runs the IRS. There is something very very wrong with this picture.