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You're never gonna implement an income based tax system which would be fair to both corporations and employees. Corporations are currently taxed on profit, whil

You're never gonna implement an income based tax system which would be fair to both corporations and employees. Corporations are currently taxed on profit, while employees on 'revenues'. So to make it fair you would: 1. tax corporations on revenue too. Which this thread is about 2. tax employees on profit. Food, gas, utilities, ... - these are basically cost of operation of a human being, aren't they? Income taxes will never work. Monopoly taxes are a solution though. Monopolies behave as money sinks in economy. Their prices are not competed down, so you can't talk about monopolized system as capitalistic. The more monopolies and wealth concentration you get the more you approach something like feudalism. Which is where we are heading as a civilization right now. Monopolies are usually created and maintained by heavy regulation, because you don't allow small projects to challenge them. Also monopolies influence regulation in such a way to make it so. So why not embrace monopolies, but tax them for the service of letting them be monopolies? You can then even not call it tax, but a pay-per-use license granting certain social privileges. Perfectly progressive tax. The more you use, the more you pay.

CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
If generalize that a bit you’ve basically got geoism. An ideology that unfortunately lost steam a century ago. Would be nice with a come back though.
zhengyi13 8y ago
If any given org is a monopoly, I'd fully expect that org to pass any new costs on directly to their captive consumers. Monopolies ought to be actively broken, not worked around.
- snidane 8y ago
  Good point, but it is wrong. That applies to sales taxes. Not to monopoly taxes. In well functioning market with many competitors, the price of good would be determined as costs + margin. Over time given enough competition the price should converge to that sustainable minimum basically. If you introduce sales taxes into the equation, then obviously you hike up the cost, therefore you shift this minimum. Monopoly goods prices are not determined by cost, because there is no competition which would make it go lower over time. Monopoly prices on the other hand have opposite tendency - ie. to maximize to the point where almost all disposable income of its customers gets eaten up. That's why you get the phenomenon of rents being ever so higher. They just catch up to increases in wages and eat it all away. There is no sufficient competition to compete the price away, simply because there is not enough land to house the people, especially in cities. House rents are the biggest of the monopolies, because everyone has to pay it and often it is significant portion of a paycheck. Back to the point. Introducing monopoly taxes has the exact opposite effect - it lowers the prices for consumers. Explained further here http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be-shifted-onto.html http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be-shifted...

CuriousSkeptic 8y ago

If generalize that a bit you’ve basically got geoism. An ideology that unfortunately lost steam a century ago. Would be nice with a come back though.

zhengyi13 8y ago

If any given org is a monopoly, I'd fully expect that org to pass any new costs on directly to their captive consumers. Monopolies ought to be actively broken, not worked around.

snidane 8y ago
Good point, but it is wrong. That applies to sales taxes. Not to monopoly taxes. In well functioning market with many competitors, the price of good would be determined as costs + margin. Over time given enough competition the price should converge to that sustainable minimum basically. If you introduce sales taxes into the equation, then obviously you hike up the cost, therefore you shift this minimum. Monopoly goods prices are not determined by cost, because there is no competition which would make it go lower over time. Monopoly prices on the other hand have opposite tendency - ie. to maximize to the point where almost all disposable income of its customers gets eaten up. That's why you get the phenomenon of rents being ever so higher. They just catch up to increases in wages and eat it all away. There is no sufficient competition to compete the price away, simply because there is not enough land to house the people, especially in cities. House rents are the biggest of the monopolies, because everyone has to pay it and often it is significant portion of a paycheck. Back to the point. Introducing monopoly taxes has the exact opposite effect - it lowers the prices for consumers. Explained further here http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be-shifted-onto.html http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be-shifted...