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Let's tax our way out of a famine.
by andromeduck 4y ago
Let's tax our way out of a famine.
- bumby 4y agoThis constant dichotomy in rhetoric is toxic to finding solutions. Surely, it's not an "either/or" scenario.
- andromeduck 4y agoat the social level capacity matters a lot more than money but everyone wants to subsidise demand rather than facilitating supply
- bumby 4y agoAll you did is restate the same dichotomy. Complex systems in the real-world are almost always too complex for such a simplistic take. For example, just enabling additional supply can create second order effects in terms of perverse incentives to overproduce creating all sorts of knock-on effects. We can stimulate the supply of corn and end up with distorted food markets and high-fructose corn syrup as a near-ubiquitous food additive. All I’m saying is we need to be mindful of these systemic effects and creating a false dichotomy tends to turn a blind eye towards them.
- andromeduck 4y agoDid I say subsidize supply?
- bumby 4y agoDid I use the word subsidy?
- andromeduck 4y agoYou basically did.
- bumby 4y agoIt’s interesting (and telling) that is what you inferred from that. You can replace corn with a non-subsidized commodity/service and the principle still holds. Any mechanism with the explicit intent to increase supply is tantamount to a subsidy. Tax breaks are an informal “subsidy” to spur business, with a cost incurred by other societal goals. Decreasing environmental regulations are an informal subsidy to increase energy production with externalities borne by others. Etc etc. The broader point is that defining the utility function that captures these societal costs/benefits is complex and your false dichotomy misses all that nuance.
- andy_ppp 4y agoYou’re an idiot, we should tax the wealthy, take half the money of people with £1bn+ (including the King) and pay off the national debt or force them to invest it in small businesses. We should not equate rent seeking and genuine innovation as the same things.
- andromeduck 4y agoexcept people with 1b+ these days dpfjy have money - they have assets whose value will plummet when you ido that