19 ms·

I'm not even joking when I say: I really hope they do. These are the kinds of people who buy into Koch's philosophy (as opposed to Gates' philosophy). Once this

by pm90 9y ago

I'm not even joking when I say: I really hope they do. These are the kinds of people who buy into Koch's philosophy (as opposed to Gates' philosophy). Once this country is rid of Dark money, the political system might finally start serving its citizens, and not just its wealthy citizens.

ChuckMcM 9y ago
Interestingly enough, if there really is a 30% gap in compliance, then I expect that there is enough money in increased tax collections to take a 1% management fee off the top and fund an accounting & legal organization that would be required to "do the taxes" of the .1%.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  It has been known for quite a while now that cutting the budget of the IRS is actually a money loser.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    Has someone actually proposed that it's a net money gain to cut the budget of the entity that's supposed to enforce taxation?! Sounds like an idea only slightly less stupid than reducing the budget of the police so as to reduce crime...
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      ...which has actually been tried successfully. The usual story is that the incorporated municipality dissolves its police department and then contracts with the county sheriff for less money. Then reported crime goes down. This is in large part because there was not a crime problem in the first place, and the local police were simply issuing citations all day, to collect the fines that paid for the police to issue citations. A more minor component is that smaller crimes may go unreported because it is less convenient to report them. It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is currently not the case for the IRS.
      - RobertoG 9y ago
        "It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is currently not the case for the IRS." You are assuming that the only function of enforcing taxes is to get money (1). We can presume that honest taxpayers would feel like fools if taxes were not enforced in a assertive way. That would be a thread to social cohesion. (1)- In fact, I dispute that the function of taxes is to get money, but I will leave that polemic discussion for other day.
        logfromblammo 9y ago
        I would naturally assume that if it cost the IRS more than $1 to collect a marginal $1 in revenue, that the purpose of the agency would be to intimidate and terrorize taxpayers, and would therefore call for the agency to be abolished, rather than just have its budget reduced. Additionally, I question the utility of taxes that cost more to enforce than the revenues they bring in. Those are things that the public should not acquiesce to, anyway. My tinfoil-hat self adamantly asserts that the purpose of the income tax is not to collect revenue, but to control the side-effects to the inflationary monetary policy that is the real source of revenue for the federal government. That self somehow sees a significant difference between spending money after it was collected via taxation and spending debt that is later discharged via taxation. Whenever that self starts ranting about the great Keynesian confidence game, my other selves generally cram it back into the penalty box for a while.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        You think that any attempts to prevent tax evasion are tyrannical? Why even have laws if you're not going to bother enforcing any of them? The idea that the government's primary means of paying for things is printing currency is perhaps true if you just stepped out of a time machine from the early 19th Century, but it has little to do with how the government works today. If that were actually how the government ran inflation would be well into the double digits (if not higher), as you could see by referring to any historical examples of governments trying to do this.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Not only have they argued that but they have repeatedly carried it out. Do they really believe what they're saying? That I'm more skeptical of. http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/trump-budget-continues-multi-year-assault-on-irs-funding-despite-mnuchins http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/trump-budget-con...
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    You'll find quite a bit of support for that viewpoint in Greece.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Money loser for the government, money gain for society. Money spent on bureaucracy is money not spent towards more productive ends.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Taxes evaded mean programs not funded.
    - mfringel 9y ago
      Please explain how society is completely disjoint from government, such that a zero-sum assertion is possible.
      - wyager 9y ago
        If the money were spend by market forces rather than government dictate, the funds that go to hire IRS bureaucrats would instead go towards more productive ends, like the production of food or snowmobiles. In other words, instead of wasting human productive capacity on bureaucracy, the people currently employed by the IRS would instead have to find jobs useful to society. It's not zero-sum at all. The amount of money is zero-sum (obviously), but net social utility isn't zero-sum. That's the point.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Apparently there is at least one company that chases down artworks stolen by the Nazis and returns works with the rightful owners to recover their items for a fee. It's mentioned in "The Panama Papers" book: https://www.amazon.com/Panama-Papers-Breaking-Story-Powerful-ebook/dp/B01H49D650 https://www.amazon.com/Panama-Papers-Breaking-Story-Powerful... It also mentioned that some governments (I think it was Iceland) paid to get hacked data covering offshore company ownership. So there might actually be a business model where you investigate tax evasion and sell the relevant data to tax authorities. I suspect that might be a rather high risk activity though!
  - infogulch 9y ago
    Tax evader bounty hunters sounds like the plot of a movie I'd watch.
laythea 9y ago
Yes but dark money will never be gotten rid off!
- pasquinelli 9y ago
  Right, it needs to be fought perpetually.
cookiecaper 9y ago
Say "wealth tax" near Buffet and Gates and watch them have quite a different reaction. Income tax rates have little effect on the already-wealthy because most of their money is not distributed in the form of a wage or salary; rather, it is stored in various types of financial vehicles that are already tax privileged. To the extent that this wealth is not held in stock, accountants set up other types of tax-privileged holdings. Whenever a prominent wealthy person is talking, be aware of the PR necessity to not appear as if they are hoarding their wealth, or as if they are uninterested in sharing. Buffet and Gates are no doubt keenly aware of this necessity. From the perspective of a Buffet or Gates, it is wise to publicly advocate for a tax increase that has little or no effect on your personal wealth, potentially targets up-and-comers who are currently making good money through their small-to-medium business ventures and may some day pose a threat to your interests (weakening them by confiscating more money from them), and keeps the public on your good side because they can point at you and say "There is $FAMOUS_RICH_GUY, and he knows that being greedy is bad."
- edanm 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity, is there anything Gates/Buffet could do that you wouldn't approach cynically, i.e. that you would assume they're really doing it for other peoples' benefits rather than their own?
  - roenxi 9y ago
    Cynicism comes into its own when that sort of money is involved. Practically it isn't possible to become build that sort of wealth without being super-aware of the financial outcomes of your decisions. It isn't safe to take someone at face value once they can buy a PR firm without blinking.
    - edanm 9y ago
      "It isn't safe to take someone at face value once they can buy a PR firm without blinking." Well I agree with that. But it seems like you're saying that there's literally no evidence in the world that can convince you that your cynical view of them is wrong, which is a pretty hard position to hold IMO.
tomcam 9y ago
What Koch's philosophy (as opposed to Gates' philosophy)? Which party's money is "Dark" and why?
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Warlord feudalism vs. Liberal democracy.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    "I want my fair share - and that's all of it."
  - tomcam 9y ago
    Citations?
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Mark Ames, or Philip Mirowski, on the Libertarian / MPS cabal are pretty good: http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-... http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-plerin-the-making-of-the-neoliberal-thought-collective-with-a-new-preface/oclc/984687851&referer=brief_results http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-plerin-the-maki... Gates is quieter on his political views, but a general outline of his philosophy, in his own words, is in this piece: https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/ https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/ My assessment is also very strongly based on the actions and financial support both elements have provided. The Kochs, and most other major Libertarian supporters, ultimately back projects which favour a return to feudalism, though they rarely state it this baldly. Gates has tended to support instutions aligned with general liberal democratic principles.
cmurf 9y ago
That is inconsistent with the country's founding: the political system, as founded, is supposed to serve wealthy citizens first. It's a country founded on class, founded on making profit. You are white, you have land, you're a man, then you have a political voice. If you lack one of those, you cannot participate. And it was that way for a longer period of time, than it has been since womens' suffrage and the civil rights act of 1965. Despite being more democratic today than its founding, there's still present a substantial minority who appear to believe in the proper existence of aristocracy. Family name, bloodline, class, are real things, they define who is better and who is inferior. Better people have more money, and they can buy things inferior people can't, or they can buy better versions: privacy, education, health care, justice, political representation, police protection, tax avoidance. Those things are products. What most people are trying to do is find a civil way of playing reasonably fair. But aristocrats think money buys everything, so when catastrophe comes along to equalize things, they never see it coming. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...
- guest 9y ago
  Grassroots - socialdemocracy that sprung froms scandinavia but has major partial similarities to alot of European countries pre EU when the public sector was larger (around 10%). Through grassroots people achieved greater impact for the state (as represented by the people for the people) through law, regulation and public ownership ("the greater good"). That change was not brought on catastrophically but incrimentally by the poor working class also even partially by what today would be called entrepreneurs (the liberals of those days) that realised that local companies could gain more by increasing the wealth for the local populace who could then produce more efficiently (win/win). Anyway, when people impact through the national state they have power, when wealth is shifted from nation to private hands is when the public should start to move. I'm still surprised the reality that could be had by the big short (2015) where moody's et al with rubberstamping actively helps in making that shift happen. It seems like hidden plutocrats have greenlit to jump ship more or less... What people need to do is to organise, activate and put real pressure on those working for as few as possible instead of as many as possible. Once real democratic rule has been established through law and oversight (transparency - means disabling some shadow groups in the gov and right outside it) a more egalitarian and utilitarian (efficient) society will spring forth.
wyager 9y ago
> Once this country is rid of Dark money, the political system might finally start serving its citizens Oh boy, is this idiotic red herring from Indian politics going to get ported almost verbatim to US politics? Yes, I'm sure a max ~4% revenue boost will make the government start behaving properly.

by pm90 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Interestingly enough, if there really is a 30% gap in compliance, then I expect that there is enough money in increased tax collections to take a 1% management fee off the top and fund an accounting & legal organization that would be required to "do the taxes" of the .1%.

emodendroket 9y ago
It has been known for quite a while now that cutting the budget of the IRS is actually a money loser.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  Has someone actually proposed that it's a net money gain to cut the budget of the entity that's supposed to enforce taxation?! Sounds like an idea only slightly less stupid than reducing the budget of the police so as to reduce crime...
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    ...which has actually been tried successfully. The usual story is that the incorporated municipality dissolves its police department and then contracts with the county sheriff for less money. Then reported crime goes down. This is in large part because there was not a crime problem in the first place, and the local police were simply issuing citations all day, to collect the fines that paid for the police to issue citations. A more minor component is that smaller crimes may go unreported because it is less convenient to report them. It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is currently not the case for the IRS.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      "It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is currently not the case for the IRS." You are assuming that the only function of enforcing taxes is to get money (1). We can presume that honest taxpayers would feel like fools if taxes were not enforced in a assertive way. That would be a thread to social cohesion. (1)- In fact, I dispute that the function of taxes is to get money, but I will leave that polemic discussion for other day.
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        I would naturally assume that if it cost the IRS more than $1 to collect a marginal $1 in revenue, that the purpose of the agency would be to intimidate and terrorize taxpayers, and would therefore call for the agency to be abolished, rather than just have its budget reduced. Additionally, I question the utility of taxes that cost more to enforce than the revenues they bring in. Those are things that the public should not acquiesce to, anyway. My tinfoil-hat self adamantly asserts that the purpose of the income tax is not to collect revenue, but to control the side-effects to the inflationary monetary policy that is the real source of revenue for the federal government. That self somehow sees a significant difference between spending money after it was collected via taxation and spending debt that is later discharged via taxation. Whenever that self starts ranting about the great Keynesian confidence game, my other selves generally cram it back into the penalty box for a while.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        You think that any attempts to prevent tax evasion are tyrannical? Why even have laws if you're not going to bother enforcing any of them? The idea that the government's primary means of paying for things is printing currency is perhaps true if you just stepped out of a time machine from the early 19th Century, but it has little to do with how the government works today. If that were actually how the government ran inflation would be well into the double digits (if not higher), as you could see by referring to any historical examples of governments trying to do this.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Not only have they argued that but they have repeatedly carried it out. Do they really believe what they're saying? That I'm more skeptical of. http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/trump-budget-continues-multi-year-assault-on-irs-funding-despite-mnuchins http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/trump-budget-con...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You'll find quite a bit of support for that viewpoint in Greece.
- wyager 9y ago
  Money loser for the government, money gain for society. Money spent on bureaucracy is money not spent towards more productive ends.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Taxes evaded mean programs not funded.
  - mfringel 9y ago
    Please explain how society is completely disjoint from government, such that a zero-sum assertion is possible.
    - wyager 9y ago
      If the money were spend by market forces rather than government dictate, the funds that go to hire IRS bureaucrats would instead go towards more productive ends, like the production of food or snowmobiles. In other words, instead of wasting human productive capacity on bureaucracy, the people currently employed by the IRS would instead have to find jobs useful to society. It's not zero-sum at all. The amount of money is zero-sum (obviously), but net social utility isn't zero-sum. That's the point.
arethuza 9y ago
Apparently there is at least one company that chases down artworks stolen by the Nazis and returns works with the rightful owners to recover their items for a fee. It's mentioned in "The Panama Papers" book: https://www.amazon.com/Panama-Papers-Breaking-Story-Powerful-ebook/dp/B01H49D650 https://www.amazon.com/Panama-Papers-Breaking-Story-Powerful... It also mentioned that some governments (I think it was Iceland) paid to get hacked data covering offshore company ownership. So there might actually be a business model where you investigate tax evasion and sell the relevant data to tax authorities. I suspect that might be a rather high risk activity though!
- infogulch 9y ago
  Tax evader bounty hunters sounds like the plot of a movie I'd watch.

laythea 9y ago

Yes but dark money will never be gotten rid off!

pasquinelli 9y ago
Right, it needs to be fought perpetually.

cookiecaper 9y ago

Say "wealth tax" near Buffet and Gates and watch them have quite a different reaction. Income tax rates have little effect on the already-wealthy because most of their money is not distributed in the form of a wage or salary; rather, it is stored in various types of financial vehicles that are already tax privileged. To the extent that this wealth is not held in stock, accountants set up other types of tax-privileged holdings. Whenever a prominent wealthy person is talking, be aware of the PR necessity to not appear as if they are hoarding their wealth, or as if they are uninterested in sharing. Buffet and Gates are no doubt keenly aware of this necessity. From the perspective of a Buffet or Gates, it is wise to publicly advocate for a tax increase that has little or no effect on your personal wealth, potentially targets up-and-comers who are currently making good money through their small-to-medium business ventures and may some day pose a threat to your interests (weakening them by confiscating more money from them), and keeps the public on your good side because they can point at you and say "There is $FAMOUS_RICH_GUY, and he knows that being greedy is bad."

edanm 9y ago
Just out of curiosity, is there anything Gates/Buffet could do that you wouldn't approach cynically, i.e. that you would assume they're really doing it for other peoples' benefits rather than their own?
- roenxi 9y ago
  Cynicism comes into its own when that sort of money is involved. Practically it isn't possible to become build that sort of wealth without being super-aware of the financial outcomes of your decisions. It isn't safe to take someone at face value once they can buy a PR firm without blinking.
  - edanm 9y ago
    "It isn't safe to take someone at face value once they can buy a PR firm without blinking." Well I agree with that. But it seems like you're saying that there's literally no evidence in the world that can convince you that your cynical view of them is wrong, which is a pretty hard position to hold IMO.

tomcam 9y ago

What Koch's philosophy (as opposed to Gates' philosophy)? Which party's money is "Dark" and why?

dredmorbius 9y ago
Warlord feudalism vs. Liberal democracy.
- arethuza 9y ago
  "I want my fair share - and that's all of it."
- tomcam 9y ago
  Citations?
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Mark Ames, or Philip Mirowski, on the Libertarian / MPS cabal are pretty good: http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-... http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-plerin-the-making-of-the-neoliberal-thought-collective-with-a-new-preface/oclc/984687851&referer=brief_results http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-plerin-the-maki... Gates is quieter on his political views, but a general outline of his philosophy, in his own words, is in this piece: https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/ https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/ My assessment is also very strongly based on the actions and financial support both elements have provided. The Kochs, and most other major Libertarian supporters, ultimately back projects which favour a return to feudalism, though they rarely state it this baldly. Gates has tended to support instutions aligned with general liberal democratic principles.

cmurf 9y ago

That is inconsistent with the country's founding: the political system, as founded, is supposed to serve wealthy citizens first. It's a country founded on class, founded on making profit. You are white, you have land, you're a man, then you have a political voice. If you lack one of those, you cannot participate. And it was that way for a longer period of time, than it has been since womens' suffrage and the civil rights act of 1965. Despite being more democratic today than its founding, there's still present a substantial minority who appear to believe in the proper existence of aristocracy. Family name, bloodline, class, are real things, they define who is better and who is inferior. Better people have more money, and they can buy things inferior people can't, or they can buy better versions: privacy, education, health care, justice, political representation, police protection, tax avoidance. Those things are products. What most people are trying to do is find a civil way of playing reasonably fair. But aristocrats think money buys everything, so when catastrophe comes along to equalize things, they never see it coming. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...

guest 9y ago
Grassroots - socialdemocracy that sprung froms scandinavia but has major partial similarities to alot of European countries pre EU when the public sector was larger (around 10%). Through grassroots people achieved greater impact for the state (as represented by the people for the people) through law, regulation and public ownership ("the greater good"). That change was not brought on catastrophically but incrimentally by the poor working class also even partially by what today would be called entrepreneurs (the liberals of those days) that realised that local companies could gain more by increasing the wealth for the local populace who could then produce more efficiently (win/win). Anyway, when people impact through the national state they have power, when wealth is shifted from nation to private hands is when the public should start to move. I'm still surprised the reality that could be had by the big short (2015) where moody's et al with rubberstamping actively helps in making that shift happen. It seems like hidden plutocrats have greenlit to jump ship more or less... What people need to do is to organise, activate and put real pressure on those working for as few as possible instead of as many as possible. Once real democratic rule has been established through law and oversight (transparency - means disabling some shadow groups in the gov and right outside it) a more egalitarian and utilitarian (efficient) society will spring forth.

wyager 9y ago

> Once this country is rid of Dark money, the political system might finally start serving its citizens Oh boy, is this idiotic red herring from Indian politics going to get ported almost verbatim to US politics? Yes, I'm sure a max ~4% revenue boost will make the government start behaving properly.