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> the lie that the rich benefit disproportionately from our society Why do you consider that a lie? There's a reason why kidnappers try to target rich people's

by tomp 11y ago

> the lie that the rich benefit disproportionately from our society Why do you consider that a lie? There's a reason why kidnappers try to target rich people's kids... because rich people are willing to pay much more to gave their kid back - they literally value the kid's life more (in money terms). Another perspective is, a geting injured/killed will deprive a rich person of a lot of consumption, but a poor person of just a little consumption. Therefore, by protecting rich people, governments provide more value than by protecting poor people. > Now personally, I'm in favor of eliminating all taxes on capital income (and capital, e.g. property taxes). Economically, the best tax is a consumption tax; you live in a home, you pay taxes on the value of living in it. No property tax, no income tax, etc. What about income tax? What about corporate tax (personally, I think it makes sense, because it's a choice - you don't need to pay corporate tax, but they you don't get the privileges of the corporation being a separate entity)?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
For the most part, rich people produce far more than they consume. Poor people consume far more than they produce. Consumption inequality is vastly lower than income inequality. I'm opposed to income tax as well. A consumption tax is the best tax, since it's both a) hard to dodge, b) transparent and c) doesn't penalize investment. In principle an income tax is equivalent to a consumption tax, but in practice taxing labor income but not capital income induces all sorts of tax avoidance schemes that treat labor income as if it were capital income.
- tomp 11y ago
  Do you value "equality" at all? E.g. do you find huge inheritance unfair (because it's something you didn't produce) or not? How about "proportionate representation" (one person, one vote, as opposed to the current situation where rich have vastly more political power)?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I don't particularly value equality - rather, I value utility. If I can make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process, I will. How much poverty are you willing to create to reduce inequality? That's the fundamental question. For me the answer is zero. I also don't assign much value to proportionate representation. I think I'd prefer the rich to have more political power, they seem to be the least insane. Unfortunately, in our system we do have proportionate representation. The only way a rich person can influence electoral outcomes is by persuading poor and middle class people to vote for his candidate. Sadly, as Trump demonstrates, this can be done just as easily with nonsensical emotional appeals as with intellectual ones.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > I don't particularly value equality - rather, I value utility. If I can make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process, I will. Unfortunately, inequality is, empirically, one of the strongest sources of disutility. So, as much as you might think you can "make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process" when you use poor proxies for utility, you probably can't. > I also don't assign much value to proportionate representation. Comparative studies (at least among nominal democracies), show that proportionality is fairly strongly correlated with experienced utility of government. So, this may be incompatible with your claimed preference for utility. (see, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.) > I think I'd prefer the rich to have more political power, they seem to be the least insane. Maybe they just have more power to shape perceptions through media, image management, etc.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        What evidence do you have that inequality is a source of disutility? Note that if you pull out one of the ever popular left wing scatterplots putting cross-country inequality on the x-axis, I'm going to pull out one with a higher r^2 putting something politically incorrect like single mothers or black people on the x-axis. As for proportional repersentation, if it indeed is instrumentally useful in creating utility that's fine. But I only care about it insofar as it actually gets us other good outcomes - it's not something I intrinsically value.

by tomp 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago

For the most part, rich people produce far more than they consume. Poor people consume far more than they produce. Consumption inequality is vastly lower than income inequality. I'm opposed to income tax as well. A consumption tax is the best tax, since it's both a) hard to dodge, b) transparent and c) doesn't penalize investment. In principle an income tax is equivalent to a consumption tax, but in practice taxing labor income but not capital income induces all sorts of tax avoidance schemes that treat labor income as if it were capital income.

tomp 11y ago
Do you value "equality" at all? E.g. do you find huge inheritance unfair (because it's something you didn't produce) or not? How about "proportionate representation" (one person, one vote, as opposed to the current situation where rich have vastly more political power)?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I don't particularly value equality - rather, I value utility. If I can make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process, I will. How much poverty are you willing to create to reduce inequality? That's the fundamental question. For me the answer is zero. I also don't assign much value to proportionate representation. I think I'd prefer the rich to have more political power, they seem to be the least insane. Unfortunately, in our system we do have proportionate representation. The only way a rich person can influence electoral outcomes is by persuading poor and middle class people to vote for his candidate. Sadly, as Trump demonstrates, this can be done just as easily with nonsensical emotional appeals as with intellectual ones.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I don't particularly value equality - rather, I value utility. If I can make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process, I will. Unfortunately, inequality is, empirically, one of the strongest sources of disutility. So, as much as you might think you can "make everyone better off, but increase inequality in the process" when you use poor proxies for utility, you probably can't. > I also don't assign much value to proportionate representation. Comparative studies (at least among nominal democracies), show that proportionality is fairly strongly correlated with experienced utility of government. So, this may be incompatible with your claimed preference for utility. (see, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.) > I think I'd prefer the rich to have more political power, they seem to be the least insane. Maybe they just have more power to shape perceptions through media, image management, etc.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      What evidence do you have that inequality is a source of disutility? Note that if you pull out one of the ever popular left wing scatterplots putting cross-country inequality on the x-axis, I'm going to pull out one with a higher r^2 putting something politically incorrect like single mothers or black people on the x-axis. As for proportional repersentation, if it indeed is instrumentally useful in creating utility that's fine. But I only care about it insofar as it actually gets us other good outcomes - it's not something I intrinsically value.