7 ms·

If the income tax were abolished, there would be no taxes to dodge & the stimulus effect would far surpass any rebate from the government. It would also be equi

If the income tax were abolished, there would be no taxes to dodge & the stimulus effect would far surpass any rebate from the government. It would also be equitable since the wealthy can hire the accountants, lawyers, lobbyists, as well as make laws themselves to game the current system to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. If we remove this bloat, then it's one less thing for the 99% to worry about.

spurgu 6y ago
Governments needs income to provide services like electricity, healthcare, military, roads, infrastructure in general etc etc... and that simply requires taxation. How would you go about gather all that dough? Or are you saying everything should be privatized? Or corporate taxation only? That sounds like a ludicrously idea to me given how easy it is to avoid corporate taxes altogether.
- briantakita 6y ago
  Organized crime syndicates needs income as well. They even printed services such as feeding the poor, building roads, & martial defense from time to time. Better yet, they also believe in Democracy. Point being, the government can earn its money just like the rest of us; by providing services in the open market which we have the option to purchase or not purchase. If the government provides useful services, people will voluntarily purchase those services. If not, the government will need to provide more valuable services, reduce costs, or go bankrupt. Either way, the citizenry should not be liable for the irresponsible mismanagement, grifting, & mass violence that is made possible by compulsory income tax.
  - bumby 6y ago
    I think this assessment falls prey to the usual issues libertarianism has as it tries to move from the theoretical to the practical. It relies on a couple assumptions to ensure that good decisions can be made by the citizenry: 1) that information is symmetric and acquiring this information is relatively frictionless and 2) that humans make rational decisions, particularly as it pertains to risk uncertainty. There's quite a bit of research that undermines each assumption, especially in behavior economics.
    - briantakita 6y ago
      Your assessment falls prey to classic self-serving statist blunders in logic, such as the state has the ultimate monopoly on ethics & it's enforcement. Even if information is asymmetric & humans don't always make rational decisions, you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries, irrational decisions, & bouts of dishonesty. With government having the ultimate monopoly of power & acting "for the greater good", it's not surprising that government officials will always act in their own interests at the expense of the citizenry. Every system is ultimately gamed over time. Even if the government official is 100% benevolent, maintains 100% benevolence over the entire career, & gains sufficient power to make decisions (probably impossible), that official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices.
      - bumby 6y ago
        >you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries I may need you to elaborate a bit on this for me to really understand your point. Am I claiming that politicians are magically immune from cognitive biases? Absolutely not; I'm actually claiming the opposite: nobody is immune from them. That is exactly why laws and regulations exist to provide the guardrails for better decisions. There's certainly a point where overreach happens, but I don't think you've yet made a very concrete argument about how the extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government. Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. >official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices. Except it's not a case of a lone official. It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases, but with a diverse group there's a lesser chance that a single bias will overrule the decision (unlike at the individual level). With modern society as complicated as it is, do you think an individual has the bandwidth to properly gauge risk in terms of items like public health, transportation, engineering, etc.? The mechanism chosen by citizenry in most Western countries is to choose the constituent politicians and policies via a voting mechanism rather than shoulder the burden of making all those decisions individually. The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. I understand the seductive allure of libertarianism; it feels like a straightforward and simple way to maximize freedom. Unfortunately, most people in society want to optimize across more domains than just freedom. They want security as well as other objectives that may be in conflict with absolute freedom. You can see this play out in countries that are borderline failed states. Unfortunately, I think the framework you advocate to maximize freedom almost naively over-simplifies the model of the human condition.
bumby 6y ago
>stimulus effect would far surpass any rebate from the government. This may need some qualifiers. There are definitely people who are net beneficiaries under the current tax code that i doubt would get nearly as much from the stated stimulus effect
- briantakita 6y ago
  If there were no income taxes, there would be no net drain on the citizenry, thus more stimulus. The whole concept of stimulus is a bait & switch as the government takes away more money to presumably give a partial refund back to the public by printing more fiat, thereby devaluing the existing holdings. If you are anti-war, how will the government pay for its Neverending wars without taxes?
  - bumby 6y ago
    Do you agree that not everyone receives a net negative amount from the government? E.g., for those ~47% who pay an effective 0% federal income tax rate but get services (stimulus, roads, Medicare, SNAP benefits, Social Security etc.), I don't think they will be better off. If the stance is that the free market will magically make things better for them, that's a little too hand-wavy for me and I'm not sure history backs this up. I know the bogeyman for fiat currency is inflation, but we heard people screaming about that over the bailouts of the financial crisis and yet we arguably suffered from a lack of inflation in the ensuing decade. Only now are we starting to see some inflation in commodities; it's yet to be seen if this is short-lived (as commodity inflation can be) or if we see real inflation hit metrics like wages. The problem with your assertion that the way to be "anti-war" is to shut the door on taxes is that it also shuts the door on everything else. I do believe there are some things the government does well, and potentially better than the private sector.
    - briantakita 6y ago
      History does back it up. When America had a 0% income tax & did not have the FED, America had unprecedented growth in population, quality of life innovation, & prosperity. Note that America has risen to prominence due to a number of factors, included a history of relatively limited government, despite recent increases in government size, scope, & power. America is riding the wave of prosperity created by it's citizens over 200+ years, not the expansion government, in fact, despite the expansion of government. You fail to mention that those ~47% are still trapped in poverty & w/ disparities in health despite the government services. If the government services were so good, why are they suffering? Why do families that enter welfare & assisted housing have an abysmal rate of improving their livelihood? Why are there many stories of people escaping poverty before any form of government assistance due to their own ability to create prosperity, free from regulations which only inhibit their growth? You may mention the 1930's stock market crash, caused by insiders gaming the market combined with financialization created by centralization (enforced by the government). Note that the some of same people responsible for the crash later oversaw the market by creating the SEC & other related entities. You may have an argument that courts are useful, especially in enforcing contract law, though. Though the increase in the amount of laws has created a top-heavy system where everybody is out of compliance in some way & the choice of what to enforce when is a way to tip the scales of justice, allowing the government officials to have a large influence on who & what activities succeed and who & what does not.

spurgu 6y ago

Governments needs income to provide services like electricity, healthcare, military, roads, infrastructure in general etc etc... and that simply requires taxation. How would you go about gather all that dough? Or are you saying everything should be privatized? Or corporate taxation only? That sounds like a ludicrously idea to me given how easy it is to avoid corporate taxes altogether.

briantakita 6y ago
Organized crime syndicates needs income as well. They even printed services such as feeding the poor, building roads, & martial defense from time to time. Better yet, they also believe in Democracy. Point being, the government can earn its money just like the rest of us; by providing services in the open market which we have the option to purchase or not purchase. If the government provides useful services, people will voluntarily purchase those services. If not, the government will need to provide more valuable services, reduce costs, or go bankrupt. Either way, the citizenry should not be liable for the irresponsible mismanagement, grifting, & mass violence that is made possible by compulsory income tax.
- bumby 6y ago
  I think this assessment falls prey to the usual issues libertarianism has as it tries to move from the theoretical to the practical. It relies on a couple assumptions to ensure that good decisions can be made by the citizenry: 1) that information is symmetric and acquiring this information is relatively frictionless and 2) that humans make rational decisions, particularly as it pertains to risk uncertainty. There's quite a bit of research that undermines each assumption, especially in behavior economics.
  - briantakita 6y ago
    Your assessment falls prey to classic self-serving statist blunders in logic, such as the state has the ultimate monopoly on ethics & it's enforcement. Even if information is asymmetric & humans don't always make rational decisions, you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries, irrational decisions, & bouts of dishonesty. With government having the ultimate monopoly of power & acting "for the greater good", it's not surprising that government officials will always act in their own interests at the expense of the citizenry. Every system is ultimately gamed over time. Even if the government official is 100% benevolent, maintains 100% benevolence over the entire career, & gains sufficient power to make decisions (probably impossible), that official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices.
    - bumby 6y ago
      >you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries I may need you to elaborate a bit on this for me to really understand your point. Am I claiming that politicians are magically immune from cognitive biases? Absolutely not; I'm actually claiming the opposite: nobody is immune from them. That is exactly why laws and regulations exist to provide the guardrails for better decisions. There's certainly a point where overreach happens, but I don't think you've yet made a very concrete argument about how the extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government. Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. >official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices. Except it's not a case of a lone official. It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases, but with a diverse group there's a lesser chance that a single bias will overrule the decision (unlike at the individual level). With modern society as complicated as it is, do you think an individual has the bandwidth to properly gauge risk in terms of items like public health, transportation, engineering, etc.? The mechanism chosen by citizenry in most Western countries is to choose the constituent politicians and policies via a voting mechanism rather than shoulder the burden of making all those decisions individually. The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. I understand the seductive allure of libertarianism; it feels like a straightforward and simple way to maximize freedom. Unfortunately, most people in society want to optimize across more domains than just freedom. They want security as well as other objectives that may be in conflict with absolute freedom. You can see this play out in countries that are borderline failed states. Unfortunately, I think the framework you advocate to maximize freedom almost naively over-simplifies the model of the human condition.

bumby 6y ago

>stimulus effect would far surpass any rebate from the government. This may need some qualifiers. There are definitely people who are net beneficiaries under the current tax code that i doubt would get nearly as much from the stated stimulus effect

briantakita 6y ago
If there were no income taxes, there would be no net drain on the citizenry, thus more stimulus. The whole concept of stimulus is a bait & switch as the government takes away more money to presumably give a partial refund back to the public by printing more fiat, thereby devaluing the existing holdings. If you are anti-war, how will the government pay for its Neverending wars without taxes?
- bumby 6y ago
  Do you agree that not everyone receives a net negative amount from the government? E.g., for those ~47% who pay an effective 0% federal income tax rate but get services (stimulus, roads, Medicare, SNAP benefits, Social Security etc.), I don't think they will be better off. If the stance is that the free market will magically make things better for them, that's a little too hand-wavy for me and I'm not sure history backs this up. I know the bogeyman for fiat currency is inflation, but we heard people screaming about that over the bailouts of the financial crisis and yet we arguably suffered from a lack of inflation in the ensuing decade. Only now are we starting to see some inflation in commodities; it's yet to be seen if this is short-lived (as commodity inflation can be) or if we see real inflation hit metrics like wages. The problem with your assertion that the way to be "anti-war" is to shut the door on taxes is that it also shuts the door on everything else. I do believe there are some things the government does well, and potentially better than the private sector.
  - briantakita 6y ago
    History does back it up. When America had a 0% income tax & did not have the FED, America had unprecedented growth in population, quality of life innovation, & prosperity. Note that America has risen to prominence due to a number of factors, included a history of relatively limited government, despite recent increases in government size, scope, & power. America is riding the wave of prosperity created by it's citizens over 200+ years, not the expansion government, in fact, despite the expansion of government. You fail to mention that those ~47% are still trapped in poverty & w/ disparities in health despite the government services. If the government services were so good, why are they suffering? Why do families that enter welfare & assisted housing have an abysmal rate of improving their livelihood? Why are there many stories of people escaping poverty before any form of government assistance due to their own ability to create prosperity, free from regulations which only inhibit their growth? You may mention the 1930's stock market crash, caused by insiders gaming the market combined with financialization created by centralization (enforced by the government). Note that the some of same people responsible for the crash later oversaw the market by creating the SEC & other related entities. You may have an argument that courts are useful, especially in enforcing contract law, though. Though the increase in the amount of laws has created a top-heavy system where everybody is out of compliance in some way & the choice of what to enforce when is a way to tip the scales of justice, allowing the government officials to have a large influence on who & what activities succeed and who & what does not.