RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (Full Version)

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variation30 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/25/2008 3:33:38 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Owner59


Our system of laws and infrastructure,public education and social safety net,police/fireman/EMTs, provide the stable and sustainable environment in  which commerce can operate.

There`s plenty of examples worldwide, of countries with next to no services and next to no tax to pay.It`s called the 3rd world.

If our system is so bad,move there.

And good luck.I hear Somalia is a tax free zone.[8D]




I'm guessing you've never heard of merchant law?



Hippiekinkster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/25/2008 4:37:37 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Right--no police, no fire prevention, no street paving, no law courts, and above all no enforcement.  We don't need any of that superfluous stuff.  Let's deregulate everything!  Only in Neverneverland do people live without government services.

And the point is that the rich benefit more from these services than the poor.

quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

The problem with your flat-tax idea is that the rich benefit more from government services than the poor do.  The great "victory" of conservatism over the past thirty years has been to convince the American electorate otherwise.  But I think times are changing.  People didn't give a shit as long as they could afford gas and camcorders.

I'm in favor of axing most government services as well. There's damn little that government should be doing, and in general anything that government argues it "ought" to be doing, it very likely should not be doing at all.

Exactly why "Libertarianism" (radical anarcho-capitalism might be a better description), when stripped of all the rationalizations and justifications, is nothing more than Feudalism without the Church.



Lordandmaster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 8:05:26 PM)

Oh, and I forgot the most important one of all: no infrastructure!

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Right--no police, no fire prevention, no street paving, no law courts, and above all no enforcement.  We don't need any of that superfluous stuff.  Let's deregulate everything!  Only in Neverneverland do people live without government services.

And the point is that the rich benefit more from these services than the poor.

quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112
I'm in favor of axing most government services as well. There's damn little that government should be doing, and in general anything that government argues it "ought" to be doing, it very likely should not be doing at all.




variation30 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 8:26:12 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster
Exactly why "Libertarianism" (radical anarcho-capitalism might be a better description), when stripped of all the rationalizations and justifications, is nothing more than Feudalism without the Church.


um...how can you strip anarcho-capitalism of its rationalizations? it's a purely axiomatic ideaology.



variation30 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 8:27:51 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Oh, and I forgot the most important one of all: no infrastructure!



are you suggesting that without a government there would be no one to build roads or provide certain services?

...really?



Lordandmaster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 9:41:26 PM)

There's a lot more to infrastructure than building roads.

And yes, I don't believe you can have an effective infrastructure without government coordination.  Show me a successful country where the government isn't involved in building and maintaining infrastructure.  I know lots of places where the government DOESN'T do that, and they tend to be what the State Department calls TFUN's: Totally Fucked Up Nations.

quote:

ORIGINAL: variation30

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Oh, and I forgot the most important one of all: no infrastructure!



are you suggesting that without a government there would be no one to build roads or provide certain services?

...really?



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 9:44:23 PM)

quote:

There's a lot more to infrastructure than building roads.

Such as?

Power lines, telephone lines, cell towers, and other "infrastructure" that is part and parcel of modern life are privately owned, privately built, and privately maintained.



Lordandmaster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 9:47:37 PM)

Yeah?  And how about bridges, tunnels, railroads, coast guard, parks, sidewalks...

Besides, the government is INTENSELY involved in coordinating every single thing you listed.  Try building power lines or cell towers without government approval.

Really, what are you arguing for?  Let's get rid of government entirely?



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:01:17 PM)

quote:

Really, what are you arguing for? Let's get rid of government entirely?

Lack of government can hardly be worse than the clusterfuck of bureaucrats we have right now.

Or do you believe government has done a bang-up job spending your tax dollars?



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:04:04 PM)

quote:

Yeah? And how about bridges, tunnels, railroads, coast guard, parks, sidewalks...

Bridges and tunnels--attached to the aforementioned roads. Not a separate item.

Railroads--privately owned and maintained.

Coast guard--not infrastructure.

Sidewalks--don't know of any interstate roads that have them.



variation30 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:10:27 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Yeah?  And how about bridges, tunnels, railroads, coast guard, parks, sidewalks...



so these couldn't exist without a monopolistic force making them exist?



Owner59 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:21:43 PM)

 
Yup.

I once bought into a development that was supposed to collect dues and maintain our main road and one small bridge.

Worked for a number of years,then fell away when folks stop giving dues or stepping up to do the work of collecting it,hiring the road guys and overseeing the work.

Before we knew it,the road was pretty much gone and only passable with 4wheel drive,7-8 months out of the year.In mid winter,I had to use a snowmobile to get to my house.

No single one of us(about 50 property owners) or two of us would ever be able to maintain that 3 mile road and bridge on our own.And didn`t.The road was on it`s own and so were we.

It was anarchy in action and it sucked.



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:26:35 PM)

quote:

Worked for a number of years,then fell away when folks stop giving dues or stepping up to do the work of collecting it,hiring the road guys.

So, basically, because y'all were lazy and irresponsible, your road fell apart.

Amazing.



Owner59 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:39:51 PM)

 

yup.

It takes a village.

A community.

An infrastructure,proper maintenance of it and taxes collected to pay for it.

As long as some of the folks feel they use our systems without paying for them,things will fall apart.Just ask the folks in the Twin Cities, (how important bridge maintainance is).

I sure hope folks don`t give anarchy a chance.Recession,market crashes,nationalizing the 2nd largest bank,the largest insurance co.,the auto market on the brink,depression era foreclosure rate,and on.

Let`s not give depression a chance.



MzMia -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 10:45:01 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Owner59



yup.

It takes a village.

A community.

An infrastructure,proper maintenance of it and taxes collected to pay for it.

As long as some of the folks feel they use our systems without paying for them,things will fall apart.Just ask the folks in the Twin Cities, (how important bridge maintain is).

I sure hope folks don`t give anarchy a chance.Recession,market crashes,nationalizing the 2nd largest bank,the largest insurance co.,the auto market on the brink,depression era foreclosure rate,and on.

Let`s not give depression a chance.

[sm=applause.gif]
Depression is knocking on our door, wonder what things would look like about now,
if Wall Street had not been semi- and I do mean semi- bailed out?
As just about everything is crumbling around many or most of us!
Bravo, Owner, Bravo!!
Despite the condition our country is in, after 8 years, many still refuse
to admit to how bad things are.
CHANGE is certainly coming.



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/26/2008 11:36:03 PM)

quote:

As long as some of the folks feel they use our systems without paying for them,things will fall apart.

Naturally.  "Tragedy of the Commons."

Of course, if you are too lazy and irresponsible to stand up and take up for yourself, what do you expect to happen?



Lordandmaster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/27/2008 9:17:35 AM)

It's nice to see the free-marketeers zooming towards unabashed anarchism.  That's moving from a not-yet-discredited fantasyland to a completely-discredited fantasyland.  The mantra used to be "As little government as possible!" (which was disingenuous in that EVERYBODY believes in "as little government as possible"); now the mantra seems to be "We don't need government for anything!"

George Soros quote of the day:

quote:

The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil or a particular country or financial institution defaulting. The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact—that the defect was inherent in the system —contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it. To understand what has happened, and what should be done to avoid such a catastrophic crisis in the future, will require a new way of thinking about how markets work.

(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22113)



celticlord2112 -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/27/2008 9:26:57 AM)

quote:

It's nice to see the free-marketeers zooming towards unabashed anarchism.

If we had had unabashed anarchism initially, the financial crisis would never have happened.  The crisis arose because fuckups in Congress wanted to give the fuckups on Wall Street a safety net and a free pass for failing that was never right, proper, or prudent.

The financial crisis proves the sheer monumental stupidity of government involvement in economic matters.  Government gums up the works, and makes mountains out of molehills.

Yeah, give me some anarchy.  It's safer, less costly, and less troublesome, in both the short and the long term.



MrRodgers -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/27/2008 9:39:46 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

Here's a better tax plan:

1. Eliminate corporate income tax entirely. If corporations pay dividends, the stockholders pay regular income tax on those amounts. If corporations don't pay dividends, either through savings or direct investment that money gets plowed back into the economy. Everyone wins.

2. Flat tax for individuals. Pick a percentage--10%, 15%--and everyone pays that amount. Exempt the first X dollars of gross income from taxation. Exempt Health Savings Accounts and retirement savings. Everything else gets taxed at the flat rate.

3. Eliminate payroll taxes for Social Security. It's a government pension, so if we're going to have it, fund it like any other government program. If we don't want to fund it, eliminate it. Payroll taxes are regressive and distort the true cost of workers.

Having had a very good economy BEFORE the federal income tax...it should never have been created but we all know why it was. 

Time to go back in history short of repealing the 16th amendment we should almost completely eliminate the income tax on labor (production) and put it on consumption, i.e....purchases. Exempt drugs and food but only actual food. Every thing under the salary of a senator/congressman say $150,000/yr should be UNTAXED.

Income above that 15%...say $400 to $500K at 25%, to 700K at 35% and everythig above a milliom PER YEAR 50%. These would be temporary to pay down our debt.

A 10 % corporate revenue (not income) tax above all receipts after stock dividends, i.e. untaxed dividends.

A 10% Federal/national sales tax with a similar rebate to the poor via the EITC (earned income tax credit)

Start-ups using private stock for debt free capital (the real job creator) capital gains held for 4 years...TAX FREE. Now money seeks out start-ups.

Short term capital gains (paper-trading) on long term exisitng stock offerings...50% for up to 2 years minium. After 2 yrs...35%, after 5 yrs 25% and after 7 yrs, 15% and after 10 yrs ZERO which is a real reflection of investment for long term capital gains and not short term speculation. This yields a falling CG tax the longer one holds any paper and represents true investment.

And one more thing and I agree...a UNIFIED Federal budget. No more pay-stubs games for this or that federal deduction.



Lordandmaster -> RE: How's this as part of a tax plan ? (11/27/2008 11:29:18 AM)

Unbelievable.  The financial crisis was caused by deregulation.  The government had nothing to do with junky mortgages or the housing bubble.  In fact, it's Exhibit A of what happens when you try to let markets regulate themselves.

We're never going to agree.

quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

The financial crisis proves the sheer monumental stupidity of government involvement in economic matters.



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