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You get Venezuela with bad government. And they bought theirs with state-owned (nationalized in 1976) petroleum money, not with progressive income taxes. Prog

You get Venezuela with bad government. And they bought theirs with state-owned (nationalized in 1976) petroleum money, not with progressive income taxes. Progressive taxation is how you get Europe. Occasionally, someone like Gerard Depardieu flees the top tax rate in France, the world's top taxer, but it still manages to be a G7 economy, somehow. And, contrariwise, when a nation coddles its billionaires, and lets them do whatever they want, that's how you get the current US government. Nobody's starving, though. Not yet. We still might check that off with another government shutdown and another trade war escalation and another diplomatic insult or provocation.

m0zg 8y ago
You get Venezuela by committing to give people somebody else's money rather than create the environment in which they can make their own.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Venezuela has complex cause. You aren't doing anyone any favors by simplistically reducing it to your favorite contributing factor, nor are you arguing honestly when you conflate progressive income taxation with socialism, or in this specific instance, Chavismo--which is rooted in socialism, with a lot of extra features, including populism. Committing to give people someone else's money is every government expenditure that is paid for by taxation. It's the welfare state. It's the military-industrial complex. It's infrastructure projects. It's corruption. It's operating funds for regulatory agencies. It's foreign adventurism. Everything. Most governments have budgets that are funded entirely by "somebody else's money". You have made several unspoken assumptions in this discussion, and I think it may be best for you to make them explicit before continuing. People aren't leaving Venezuela because taxes are high. And Venezuela's problems aren't a result of rich folks fleeing to Miami and Madrid. They are all leaving--the non-government rich, the middle-class, and the poor--because price-fixing creates shortages, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. If one pays for the party with oil money, one also has to turn off the music when the international commodity price for Venezuelan crude oil goes down. But they didn't turn it off; they turned it up. Can you provide any details on Venezuela's progressive income tax? All I could find was a flat 34% tax on income for nonresidents, and that the lowest rate for residents might be 6%. Which Venezuelans left specifically because they didn't want to pay 34%?

m0zg 8y ago

You get Venezuela by committing to give people somebody else's money rather than create the environment in which they can make their own.

logfromblammo 8y ago
Venezuela has complex cause. You aren't doing anyone any favors by simplistically reducing it to your favorite contributing factor, nor are you arguing honestly when you conflate progressive income taxation with socialism, or in this specific instance, Chavismo--which is rooted in socialism, with a lot of extra features, including populism. Committing to give people someone else's money is every government expenditure that is paid for by taxation. It's the welfare state. It's the military-industrial complex. It's infrastructure projects. It's corruption. It's operating funds for regulatory agencies. It's foreign adventurism. Everything. Most governments have budgets that are funded entirely by "somebody else's money". You have made several unspoken assumptions in this discussion, and I think it may be best for you to make them explicit before continuing. People aren't leaving Venezuela because taxes are high. And Venezuela's problems aren't a result of rich folks fleeing to Miami and Madrid. They are all leaving--the non-government rich, the middle-class, and the poor--because price-fixing creates shortages, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. If one pays for the party with oil money, one also has to turn off the music when the international commodity price for Venezuelan crude oil goes down. But they didn't turn it off; they turned it up. Can you provide any details on Venezuela's progressive income tax? All I could find was a flat 34% tax on income for nonresidents, and that the lowest rate for residents might be 6%. Which Venezuelans left specifically because they didn't want to pay 34%?