Democrat proposes 1.00% Tax on ATM and bank withdrawals.
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Taxes are too high and government spends way too much on things it has no business spending it on. There are also too many limits on small business.
However, I am not entirely sure that allowing anarchy to flourish would be a good thing - not because of possible chaos, but because wealth would pool to smaller number of people.
It may just be my imagination, but in a real anarchy certain skills would be more highly prized that others. I'm talking in broad terms - not necessarily survival-type skills, but organization and charismatic skills.
Corporations or families would rule openly, along with wealthy individuals. When a corporation, family or individual reaches a critical mass of wealth, in the absence of a greater power (like government), you're going to have a lot of trampling of less able people.
Look at the Saudis or any other real kingdom. It's basically a family-based oligarchy. The guys at the top pay good salaries to the guys lower down. The power is kept in the family.
In an anarchy, that kind of thing could happen in, say, Colorado. One wealthy family or group of families gets together and manipulates the power vacuum to their benefit.
However, I am not entirely sure that allowing anarchy to flourish would be a good thing - not because of possible chaos, but because wealth would pool to smaller number of people.
It may just be my imagination, but in a real anarchy certain skills would be more highly prized that others. I'm talking in broad terms - not necessarily survival-type skills, but organization and charismatic skills.
Corporations or families would rule openly, along with wealthy individuals. When a corporation, family or individual reaches a critical mass of wealth, in the absence of a greater power (like government), you're going to have a lot of trampling of less able people.
Look at the Saudis or any other real kingdom. It's basically a family-based oligarchy. The guys at the top pay good salaries to the guys lower down. The power is kept in the family.
In an anarchy, that kind of thing could happen in, say, Colorado. One wealthy family or group of families gets together and manipulates the power vacuum to their benefit.
I think that it's an ok consumption tax if some of the other ones go away. We could always just cut military spending in half too. It'd also help if the government didn't hire lazy people. They're just concerned about keeping their jobs - no efficiency.
That's already happened.
Corporations could not rule, because there would be no corporate charters without a monopoly government awarding them.
Wealthy people should rule themselves. If you want to imagine what a world will look like where the rich are ruled by the poor, there are plenty of examples in Africa.
That's not anarchy. That is monarchy or oligarchy.
I can't find the sources right now, as they were in one of my Economics classes a couple semesters ago, but they broke down exactly how much we spent and how much the tax cuts have cost us. Surprisingly, we had little deficit if any in that situation. Just because we are spending more elsewhere doesn't mean that we would not have been balanced without war. You have to take into account other factors more then just increased spending.
And did you seriously quote Wikipedia??
Both parties are out to rape and pillage the American public, so none of the shit that they try to do surprises me anymore.
Maybe your professor was comparing tax cuts with increases in the GDP or something because the national debt and spending increase numbers are out there in black and white from a variety of sources.
A $5 trillion dollar increase in the debt would be $625 billion a year. There's nothing out there that says the defense budget was increased by anywhere near that much.
It was actually a couple of articles dealing directly with the deficit but like I said, I can't find them anymore so it is useless for me to even use it as a source because I don't have the facts from that. It actually had nothing to do with the GDP. But like I said, I can't really use it for any type of argument if I don't have it in front of me anymore.
With that said, as much as I hate to say it, a flat tax is not the answer. If we impose today a 10% flat tax on all earnings across the board, who is it hurting? The middle and lower class. It helps the higher earners actually. While it may be fair, expect crime, fraud, and other illegal activity to go up almost immediately.
A person who makes $20,000 a year now trying to make it paying no taxes whatsoever is never going to be able to take a $2,000 a year hit. A person making $100K a year paying 28% now gets to pay 10%. They get an increase of $18,000 a year. Do they need it? No, they can do fine without that extra money in most cases.
Put it this way. No tax is a good tax but we need taxes in order to provide vital services. You can't trust private companies to take care of roads and other infrastructure that we need, as they will only look after the bottom line. It is a shitty situation no matter how you look at it. There is no perfect tax really and there probably never will be, as someone will always get screwed. So, which way do we go really?
This statement doesn't make any sense.
If services are needed, people can pay for them. They don't need to be taxed.
Taxes take money from people to spend on things they will not pay for. Like Obama getting food flown in to the whitehouse from exotic locations, or foreign aid to Egypt, or studies on global warming.
But isn't that the entire point? Governments are bankrupt because they cannot do things in an economical manner.
Private firms have to provide value to consumers or they will lose business. They have to compete. Governments can do a poor job and they will get your money (taxes) regardless of their performance or efficiency. When businesses do a bad job, they go bankrupt. When government does a bad job, it gets a budget increase. The incentives are backwards.
Btw, you're unintentionally making the argument for socialism when you say that markets do not work.
Cutting taxes doesn't matter. Increased spending is a tax because deficits are funded with money creation which debases the currency. You could have zero taxes and still have runaway government.
It's the power to spend paper money the government creates that is the real issue.
Taxes are about control of economic action (power over people), not financing government. The state runs the same with or without taxes. Big spending, endless debt.
What has to change is the mentality that there are "vital services" which only the state can provide. As long as the state is seen as the provider of services at any cost, then there will never ever be enough money in taxes or real production to pay for the spending of politicians and bureaucrats.
Corporations have *no* moral compass, more legal rights than an individual, and a responsibility to shareholders to produce profit even at the expense of safety. Being safe and clean and green is a CONFLICT OF INTEREST with profit.
Big Business (capitalization intentional) runs the government behind the scenes as much as it can. Not 100%, but enough to fuck everything up. Tobacco lobbies, pharm lobbies, energy (oil) lobbies, ad infinitum. They muddy things up so much that nobody can get any good legislation done.
If people weren't assholes, it wouldn't be a problem.
You throw a few bucks to the arts and some asshole pisses in a jar with a crucifix and calls it art. I'm agnostic and don't give a damn about sacrilege, but that's retarded.
You throw a few bucks to farmers who are going to default on their mortgages, and you get assholes sitting on fallow, unfarmable land collecting fat paychecks for decades.
You throw a few bucks to starving children and out of work single parents, and some assholes with multiple fake IDs go around to six states every month and collect fat paychecks.
You try to prevent wars and genocide, and you end up funding asshole mercenaries who kill civilians indiscriminantly, incumbant military assholes who have a hard on for anyone who's not American, drug dealer confidential informant assholes, ad nauseam.
You try to keep your citizens safe, and they keep attacking each other over stupid shit, giving each other poisoned drugs, raping their children, and preaching hate.
Some politicians care, but a lot don't and are just in it for the money and the power and because daddy was a mayor or a senator or a congressman and it's just a natural progression.
It's really an "almost lose" situation. A lot of that tax money is wasted, but I think overall we're better off. Things would quickly spiral into anarchy, or at least third-world status, without some kind of infrastructure.
If all you anti-government folks want to start your own country and stamp up some Rands for currency, go ahead. Let's see how well you do.
I see your points guerilla and I understand where you are coming from and I honestly shared pretty much the same viewpoints as you until I became an Economics major.
Any government that provides ANY type of service to its' people has some parts of socialistic tendencies. You take money from people and redistribute it for food, roads, hookers, whatever. The problem with no government is who is the leader and who determines what is needed and what isn't?
Take roads. Is a private company really going to invest in roads and road repair to some small, tiny country road that isn't traveled that often? No, they are going to keep up with their money makers and shun the other ones unfortunately. It is pure capitalism and it doesn't really work in the real world.
Governments are just hybrids of capitalism, socialism, dictatorships, etc when you think about it. It is just up to the people on how far we let them take it.
I don't agree that taxes are a control over people. They can be, yes, when done in a usurious manner. Taxes, when used correctly though, are like a savings account for an entire group of people. Then, they determine how to spend that money collectively to help better the group as a whole.
Also, when you think of vital services, what does that mean to you? I am sure your definition of vital services is different then mine. So, with that in mind, we almost need a sort of mediator to determine what is needed the most and what is a lesser priority. Of course there are times when that mediator doesn't listen to the overall majority, such as health care or whatever. That is when I don't agree with the government and how it is being used.
In the end though, it is almost impossible to truly get a fair system and make it efficient. Government run services suck for the most part, such as USPS, Social Security, etc., so it is hard to say they know what they are doing. But that is more of a system flaw then a theory flaw. Private companies suck at many areas too, such as banking, autos, etc.
With that being said, no one ever will be happy with the system and it will never be fair. An honor system will never work and government-run everything will never happen. It is just a matter of finding a decent middle ground and living with that. Damn, I hope I didn't ramble on too much.
Any government that provides ANY type of service to its' people has some parts of socialistic tendencies. You take money from people and redistribute it for food, roads, hookers, whatever. The problem with no government is who is the leader and who determines what is needed and what isn't?
Take roads. Is a private company really going to invest in roads and road repair to some small, tiny country road that isn't traveled that often? No, they are going to keep up with their money makers and shun the other ones unfortunately. It is pure capitalism and it doesn't really work in the real world.
Governments are just hybrids of capitalism, socialism, dictatorships, etc when you think about it. It is just up to the people on how far we let them take it.
I don't agree that taxes are a control over people. They can be, yes, when done in a usurious manner. Taxes, when used correctly though, are like a savings account for an entire group of people. Then, they determine how to spend that money collectively to help better the group as a whole.
Also, when you think of vital services, what does that mean to you? I am sure your definition of vital services is different then mine. So, with that in mind, we almost need a sort of mediator to determine what is needed the most and what is a lesser priority. Of course there are times when that mediator doesn't listen to the overall majority, such as health care or whatever. That is when I don't agree with the government and how it is being used.
In the end though, it is almost impossible to truly get a fair system and make it efficient. Government run services suck for the most part, such as USPS, Social Security, etc., so it is hard to say they know what they are doing. But that is more of a system flaw then a theory flaw. Private companies suck at many areas too, such as banking, autos, etc.
With that being said, no one ever will be happy with the system and it will never be fair. An honor system will never work and government-run everything will never happen. It is just a matter of finding a decent middle ground and living with that. Damn, I hope I didn't ramble on too much.
Whew. Where to start.
Politicians don't have a moral compass either. Governments are not run by angels any more than companies are.
Companies have more legal rights, because the government gives them more legal rights.
Companies who have to pay for their mistakes, do not have an incentive to profit at the expense of safety. When they can offload disability cases to the state, when they can offload pensions to the state, when they can offload medical costs to the state, then they act irresponsibly. Just like anyone else. Companies again, are run by people. The same people who work for government, the same people who vote, the same people who get hurt or profit from companies.
Also, being green, if it means being energy efficient, is not a conflict of interest. Likewise, safety is not a conflict of interest. Companies have little to gain by causing damage from pollution (if they have to pay to clean it up) and they have little incentive to hurt their employees, if they have to replace them and pay the cost of those injuries.
Of course. Because government has a legal monopoly, the ultimate power in the land. That is going to attract people who want to cheat the market, by buying power instead of earning it. The problem isn't that people bribe government, the problem is that government has so much power available for bribing, that it makes good economic sense to lobby rather than make a better product. Government skews market incentives.
I would almost buy this, but the system is spiraling into chaos, and all western governments are technically insolvent now. It's just a countdown to the waves of bankruptcy. The game is over. Us anti-government folks have won the debate we wished we were wrong about. One can't have their cake and eat it too. Any government big enough to give you what you want is going to collapse on itself.
The solution is always the market. Free people respecting property, dealing with one another voluntarily. We will still have assholes, but we won't give them the power to tax.
It's coming on some scale. It is inevitable. I just hope it happens without riots and chaos. I hope there aren't detention centers (like the G20 thing) or police on streets. I hope there aren't midnight random house searches, or people being locked down under quarantine or being disappeared by the cops.
Because that is the real face of state power when it is threatened with accountability. And that is the thing which people really need to be scared of. Not Walmart running high schools or McDonalds providing drinking water.
You had sound market views until you studied economics?
Entrepreneurs? Consumers?
Why are you for central planning? It has never worked throughout history, and while you may not be exposed to it by mainstream economics, Mises and Hayek helped develop theory on why it is impossible for socialism to calculate economically. That's not a value judgment, they were able to show how socialism cannot fulfill its stated ends.
Why would a road which isn't traveled often need to be maintained? How is it serving society to keep an inefficient road going? Who benefits from maintaining a road that is not used?
It's completely nonsensical.
There are tons of private roads in Europe, they are maintained by the people who USE THEM. That's who would maintain the country road. If they have a reason to drive on it, they have an incentive to maintain it. It is their road.
What does that even mean? Only impure capitalism works in the real world? What makes capitalism pure or impure, and what part of that doesn't work?
So you don't agree, but you do agree. Dude, please.
There are no savings though. Why is that? Is it because taxes fundamentally cannot be "used correctly"?
Why can't people save, and then spend money in groups without government? That's like you paying me to take your money, so you can buy something you want with it later. If your argument is, you don't have the discipline to save it yourself, then why do you think I, a politician who wants to buy votes for re-election, would be any more disciplined with your money than you are?
Almost no government has savings. Many producers in the private sector can and do save. Savings are where we get the capital to make loans, and have a credit system. Government doesn't create credit, deferred consumption by producers creates credit.
Majority rule is mob rule. There will always be more people who want something from the most successful than the other way around. People will always vote themselves welfare and subsidies. The entire notion of republican government (as flawed as it is) is to protect the individual and property rights, not to carry out the whim of the majority.
The market.
What?
I understand people see the situation as fucked up, and can't really conceive of a working system without government, but at the least lets try to be honest about what government is and is not, and what it can and cannot do.
Then maybe we get a little closer to finding solutions in the only place I believe they can be found. In individual freedom.
Then maybe we get a little closer to finding solutions in the only place I believe they can be found. In individual freedom.
Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but check out the Fair Tax site. This is a true consumption tax and has far more benefits than just a flat tax.
Would wipe out the IRS in one awesome swoop.
Would require everyone to pay a tax on shit they buy. NO income tax... no payroll tax... none of that shit.
And this gets everyone involved... legals... non legals... everyone pays a tax, and the burden is much lower for all.
If you have an interest in a Fair Tax, [ame="http://www.amazon.com/FairTax-Book-Neal-Boortz/dp/0060875410"]this book[/ame] by Neil Boortz is the shit.
Would wipe out the IRS in one awesome swoop.
Would require everyone to pay a tax on shit they buy. NO income tax... no payroll tax... none of that shit.
And this gets everyone involved... legals... non legals... everyone pays a tax, and the burden is much lower for all.
If you have an interest in a Fair Tax, [ame="http://www.amazon.com/FairTax-Book-Neal-Boortz/dp/0060875410"]this book[/ame] by Neil Boortz is the shit.
NPressPlatinum
SEOBullys & NPP CO-CEO
Why don't we just put the fair tax in place. The amount of taxes you pay depend on how much you spend. Seems pretty fair and then EVERYBODY is paying taxes. Tourists, drug dealers, illegals and anyone else who gets paid under the table would now be paying taxes.
I don't know why people propose tweaking tax systems to improve the situation. The problem is not taxes, it is spending. Governments deficit spend as much as they can, regardless of tax revenue.
You can't fill a hole until you stop digging.