Orszag on Saez
I see that on Monday, Peter Orszag did a blog post about Bates Medal winner Emmanuel Saez’s work and its policy implications:
Emmanuel’s work on income inequality has helped to point the way for the Administration in its pledge to rebalance the tax code, with a tax cut going to 95 percent of working Americans while asking those at the very top to contribute more. The inequality that has arisen over the past three decades is not going to go away overnight, and it has been driven by many factors—including a decline in the growth rate of college-educated workers. But where the prior administration used changes in the tax code to exacerbate these trends, this Administration thinks that the tax code should be used to mitigate them because an economy in which all can enjoy success is one that is strong for us all.
Good stuff. In the long run, I expect Saez’s work on taxes and elasticity to prove even more influential, as I think it lays out the rationale for an approach to tax reform that could raise a ton of revenue in a progressive manner at a low economic cost.
42 Responses to “Orszag on Saez”
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April 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Taxes as a way to fight growing inequality seems like a tailpipe solution.
It’s more important to address the structural causes.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Well, now I’m forced to think that Orszag is an idiot. That’s disappointing.
Maybe he just using shorthand.
There’s nothing about the tax cuts in the Bush years that “exacerbated” the income inequality trends, except perhaps to the extent that they encouraged economic growth, and there’s nothing in the Obama administration’s tax plans that will “mitigate” the income inequality trends, except perhaps to the extent that they discourage economic growth. Tax rates–taxes paid–don’t change the underlying trends at all, and to suggest they do is just the grossest sort of ignorance.
Of course Matt finds this sort of ignorance to be “good stuff”, because Matt is a fucking moron.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Thomas appears to be unaware of the concept of post-tax income. He also appears to be unaware of what the word “exacerbate” means.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Saez won the Clark Medal, or the John Bates Clark Medal if you want to use the full name.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
We already have this. Assuming the use of “can enjoy” instead of “will enjoy” is honest.
LOL. No rationale needed. “Soak those those unworthy rich!” “Treating people unequally is the only true way to equality!” Heh.
So, what is the expected revenue increase anticipated? Anybody got a number, or is this rank rhetoric?
April 29th, 2009 at 9:39 am
with a tax cut going to 95 percent of working Americans while asking those at the very top to contribute more
Maybe that’s how progressives actually see it: “we’re just asking. It’s not like we’re pointing guns at anyone!” Progressives should own the reality: you want to take the money so you take the money. The taxed can’t keep their property because you’re willing to use guns. This isn’t about fairness or consensual financing of your crazy plans; it’s about power.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:48 am
It sounds like we could do with free higher education in this country.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I think the right wing ‘free market’ garbage being posted is the same as it was during the Bush years(see Thomas, shooter242, Healthy Markup), but after the Bush discrediting, it seems stupider. It was always pretty dumb and simplistic, but in the past I thought it to be almost in good faith and a worthwhile point of view, and now it just seems goldbug cranky. Times have changed I think, and the Reagan era is finally coming to an end.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Wow, another idiot libertarian in Healthy Markup. Yes, taxation is generally collected using guns. No, it’s not like there is a great benefit to those in the top 5% in having a stable system of governance. It’s not like there’s any reason at all to think that the current system is run for the benefit of those already in the top 5%. No, no, they are there only because they are good people who worked hard and take nothing from the government. You know Healthy Markup a few more posts and you could rival Thomas as one of the dumbest people posting on this board. And given his complete disconnect from intelligent discussion that takes some doing.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:06 am
DTM, no, it’s Orzsag who seems unaware of those. And maybe you. If you want to say that tax rates are going to effect something, what they’re going to effect is… post tax income. They won’t have any effect on the trend in pre-tax income. They won’t exacerbate the trend, they won’t mitigate it, they won’t affect it at all. The effects of the trends as seen in post-tax income? OK. But not at all the same thing. Whatever is causing the trend in pre-tax income will continue to, without any effect from the change in tax rates (except, as I said before, for possible deleterious changes in growth caused by higher taxes).
April 29th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Then don’t say that you’re asking for someone to “contribute more.” That’s an evil lie which is meant to make taxation sound pretty and non-coercive. Just say, “we’re taking your money and you can’t stop us.”
Total government spending in the U.S. is now over 40% of GDP. That has nothing to do with stability, which can be maintained for much less. This is about politicians maintaining their seats by promising to take more and more from some hated “class” of people to give more “free” stuff to voters.
I’M NOT THE ONE WHO THINKS THAT THE BAILOUTS AND STIMULUS ARE A GOOD IDEA. THAT’S YOU GUYS AND OBAMA. If you want people to become wealthy for more honest reasons you have to limit government power so that politicians have less stuff to give to their friends. But you want maximal government coercion and redistribution.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
When I’m talking to a Republican who’s never seen a problem a tax cut for the rich wouldn’t solve, I typically ask just how low taxes should go. At what point are taxes low enough that cutting them ceases to be a solution to the problem?
So by the same token people like Matt need to be asked: just how progressive should tax rates be? Just how steep should the curve be before you feel the difference in taxes paid by the richest and the poorest is “fair”? If you increase the progressivity of the tax code and 5 years later the trend in income inequality is unchanged will the solution be to make it yet more progressive?
The solution to our long-term budget problems is not going to come from raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% of the population. At some point you’re going to have to cut spending, or get some revenue from everyone else. I think Matt knows that, but he never lets things like basic facts get in the way of a good “soak the rich” argument, especially one with pretty charts to get the masses all riled up.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:49 am
It’s actually pretty obvious what should be done, but there’s almost no chance that it will be. If we had a good universal health care system, our society’s spending on health care could be reduced fairly dramatically. If we radically reduced our military spending, it would be much easier to balance the federal budget and, paradoxically, it would probably yield security benefits as well – if we didn’t have the military to launch stupid wars, we probably wouldn’t do so. We don’t need a big military to protect us from invasion by Canada or Mexico, and our biggest security threat is from guys in caves armed with boxcutters.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Capital gains should be taxed exactly the same as other income. Thus reducing the incentive to speculate and inflate assets. It is the treatment of capital gains primarily which lead to the skewing of the income distribution and far more importantly the formation and now institutionalization of the bubble/crisis economy.
The story of Americas decline will sometimes be written, accurately, as a story of mal investment. A story where work was de incentivised in favor of speculation and wasteful consumption, decadence. The obverse of giving tax incentives to investment is to take away the incentive to work.
Concentrating on the income tax and the rates is a grave error.
In addition short term capital gains should carry the highest tax rate of all. For individual and corporations. Lehman Brothers to take an example before the end had over $1 trillion in assets and they were turning it all over once a day. Look where it got them, and us. This trading culture is still alive. The so called profits of the big banks last quarter were primarily due to trading. Goldman Sachs traded one billion shares of stock for its own account last week.
Penalizing short term capital gains will a bullet to the heads of the Pigmen. Pray for that day to arrive.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
If you want to say that tax rates are going to effect something, what they’re going to effect is . . . post tax income.
Right, and since Orszag was writing about the income actually going to individuals, post-tax income is the correct measure. Therefore, it is proper to say that decreasing income tax rates for the top 1% exacerbates the trend of the top 1% capturing an increasing share of total income, since it further increases their share of total post-tax income.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:01 am
“we’re taking your money and you can’t stop us”
Oh, boo hoo, the poor rich people are actually being asked to contribute! What is with the libertarian pathology that talks about paying taxes as if it is stealing? No, people pay taxes because, as members of society, it is their duty to contribute to that society; particularly those who most benefit. Tax collection is only coercive in that the police preventing you from killing other people is coercive.
But no, what is important to you people is that the government doesn’t do its job, so that the masses can stay put in their proper place and you can rule over them from the manor, self-satisfied in unjustified belief that your wealth is due to “hard work” instead of luck.
And why do you have think the stimulus is bad? Do you really want a replay of 1929?
April 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Healthy Markup if the perfect distillation of the mindset that got us the brilliant governance of the Bush years.
If your ideology refuses to acknowledge that there is a difference between the corrupt looting of the treasury for personal and political gain, and the use of public funds in a responsible manner to promote the public good, you’re not going to put very much effort into making sure the government is being run in a responsible manner to advance the public good, instead of being looted.
E.g., cutting Social Security checks is indistinguishable from giving no-bid contracts to your cronies.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am
joe, you’ve got to be kidding. I mean, look at the auto bailout. Rattner is the paradigmatic crony capitalist (well, he and Rahm). He pays to play. And he’s in charge of “reorganizing” GM and Chrysler, by which is meant he’s in charge of giving a disproportionate share of those companies to the UAW, while forcing the banks holding most of the bonds to take a loss because they have to–they owe the government too much too. The taxpayer eats the losses at GM and Chrysler and the banks, all so the UAW can continue to have gold-plated retirement health care. If that’s your definition of “public good” you’re fucking deluded. Your definition of “public good” essentially reduces it to “looting which benefits my political party.” High fucking principle.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
including a decline in the growth rate of college-educated workers.
Isn’t some of this diminishing returns? There’s the obvious one-off dramatic increase from the WW2 era GI bill, and the less obvious but still plausible increases from the Korea and Vietnam eras. (He’s talking about adults who came of age after 1970, most of which are after ‘universal’ military service had ended).
I wonder how much of it the decline in high school graduation rates contributes to this stat. (Like I’ve said, you got to address the high school problem among the ‘underclass’ before you touch any college issues). In any event, I would be alarmed by a decline in the percentage of college educated workers but not necessarily the decline in the growth rate of that percentage.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
DTM, if it’s the right measure, he shouldn’t be pointing to the wrong measure, or writing about the wrong measure. The “wrong measure” is pre-tax income statistics, and that’s precisely what he uses in the graphs. And, no, it simply isn’t the case that changing tax rates affects the trend. The “trend” is increasing pre-tax income for top earners. Changing the tax rate doesn’t change the trend. (Think of it this way. If I say we have a trend of increasing costs for medical care, and say I’m going to address that by giving money for medical care to those with low income, I haven’t addressed the trend, I’ve addressed the effects. Income trends are the same. The trend is the trend, and it remains unless whatever causes the trend is changed.)
April 29th, 2009 at 11:47 am
This is obviously a foolish quote since the rich already pay for most of what is provided in America. The real issue is how much more should the rich provide, or rather, how many more free riders (full or partial) should we allow.
And I’m still looking to hear from someone that knows how much more is to be squeezed out of high earners.
Responsible manner? You’ll buy anything Obama disses out won’t you. The current cronies are the entire financial sector, insurance companies, the automobile industry, the UAW, and the state governments.
Have we had any word on the effect of a trillion in stimulus? Heh.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:59 am
So, let me get this straight: taxes steal money (via theft! using force! ohnoes!) from people, leaving them poorer. This is an incredibly important dynamic, that should be the center of any debate involving economic policy.
However, when discussing income inequality, the amount of money different people have to spend, it is a dishonest and misleading to talk about the impact of taxes on it.
Hokay.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
“This is obviously a foolish quote since the rich already pay for most of what is provided in America.”
Not really. The tax code greatly favors the rich – as pointed out, capital gains (which form the bulk of income for most rich people) get preferential treatment; so do inheritances. Meanwhile, the cap on payroll taxes makes them highly regressive. And the high-income people should be paying more of their income – for one, it’s the most fair system, since they can most afford an extra share and least need the extra money; for another, the rich get the most benefit from society.
“The real issue is how much more should the rich provide”
A hell of a lot more than the way-too-low amount they’re providing now, that’s for sure.
“how many more free riders (full or partial) should we allow.”
And now you show that we can’t take you seriously. Really, “free riders”? What the hell is that even supposed to mean, except a gratuitous insult against the less fortunate?
No one is “squeezing” money out of the rich. They don’t pay their fair share; we want that to change. Also, calling them “high earners” is misleading, because that implies they have earned their money, which most rich people don’t.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I know it doesn’t fit your self-image as a progressive and you want to believe that you’re peace-loving and all, but you’re not “asking,” you’re demanding and you’ll happily throw in prison with violent offenders people who don’t want to pay the rates you demand. It’s the only reason I pay these crazy taxes to fund your destructive ideas.
I don’t believe in violence and threats to achieve my ends. That’s why I’m a libertarian. You do and that’s why you’re a progressive.
There’s a strong but imperfect correlation between hard work and wealth. But that’s not the main reason I think wealth should remain with one who gains it legally. The main reason is because I think (cue the Mr. Mackey voice) threatening people is bad, so is taking stuff from them. You shouldn’t do it…
First, FDR actually lambasted Hoover for some of his big-spending programs. You can read it in his campaign transcripts. The idea that Hoover was not an interventionist is probably one of these things that just got made up by partisan democrats to sell people on the dichotomy and ram ever newer deals down our throats.
In 1920 we had the biggest fall off in spending ever. If our GDP dropped that much today, Krugman would shit himself on CNBC. Woodrow Wilson (the hideous interventionist) had had a stroke and conducted no stimulus (I think he just sat in the Oval Office and drooled). When replaced by Warren Harding, Harding did nothing but lower taxes some and government spending more. By 1921’s end we were out of the recession. For some reason, this incredible turnaround (if you don’t believe in free people and free markets) is never talked about today.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Once again, no one is taking anything from you with taxes. Yes, you can be sent to jail – just like you can be sent to jail if you walk into a store, grab a bunch of merchandise and walk out without paying. Not paying taxes is theft from society; but you think the lords of the manor should be allowed to just steal from everyone else whenever you want.
You believe in the maxim “I got mine; fuck the rest of you.” That’s why you are a libertarian; in fact, the the guiding principle behind all libertarians.
“threatening people is bad, so is taking stuff from them”
You say this, but you don’t seem to believe it; you think the wealthy should be able to leech off society without paying their fare share.
“There’s a strong but imperfect correlation between hard work and wealth.”
Yeah, that’s why all the hard-working teachers, firefighters and garbage collectors, for example, all make so much, while people in useless fields like investment banking and the stock market don’t. Oh, wait a second…
That statement is complete bullshit. There is a very strong correlation between having wealthy parents and wealth. Stop mistaking luck for merit.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
JMP says:
LOL. So in terms of income taxes nearly half the country are thieves. You guys are getting positively Orwellian here.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
RE: HealthyMarkup #24
I’m not sure how much of this statement is rhetorical bombast (quite a
bit, I suspect).
Any political philosophy that ignore the role of force in politics is
intellectually bankrupt. Likewise, Any political philosophy that casts
political force in an entirely negative light has to do a lot of
philosophical footwork.
Here’s a though experiment.
Your house is bordered by a vacant lot. The owner is absentee, and has
never visited the property (say, it’s part of some large CDO). You
decide to plant a vegetable garden on the property.
First question: Is this wrong? If so, why?
A little later a representative of the absentee landlord comes and
plows the vegetable garden under. There is no other attempt to do
anything with the property.
Second Question: Is that wrong?
Third Question: How do you propose this be resolved without force?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
So when the Lords on their manors of yore demanded a tax from their peasants on threat of the lash, they weren’t taking anything?
That’s a funny typo in light of last night’s Daily Show. How do you decide when a wealthy person is a leech?
Strong, not perfect correlation. Wealthy parents tend to instill (through genes or teaching) in their children a lot of habits: low time-preference, obsession with education, care with finances. It would be really weird if the children of wealthy parents didn’t do better than the children of poor ones, considering nature and nurture. Of course, quite a few children of poor parents do become wealthy. They just have the same habits as wealthy people, but come from poor countries.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
First, thank you for actually trying to make a point, instead of whatever it is that most of these comments are here for.
I think force has a tiny place in society and a large place in government (because that’s almost all it should provide). But it should provide only that amount needed to protect people and property. It shouldn’t do the only thing it can to produce revenue (point guns) to buy stuff for people who are looking for handouts (no matter the size or shape of the handout). Plus, even those things the government should do once in a while should be relegated to others where possible: arbitration over courts, etc.
It’s a little wrong since I’m trespassing on someone’s property, even if I’m not damaging it.
The owner didn’t like the garden. Maybe he didn’t want it attracting vermin. I don’t know. The thing is, I don’t need to know because I was using someone’s property without permission and respect for other peoples’ stuff is what allows us to get through the day without killing each other.
What? Me trespassing?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I think you’ve then essentially ceded the right to tax. Even in the
minarchist examples you site, there needs to be some funding. Without
some pretty fancy and detailed philosophical footwork, all you are left
with is when it’s appropriate to tax.
You’ve ducked the third question. Unless I’m missing something, force is
inherent in any resolution. “What, me trespassing” is not an answer.
To extend the answer, the resident neighbor (”you”) replants the garden,
and physically prevents the absentee owner’s representative from
plowing. Is the representative justified in using force to replow? Is,
as is more realistic, the state representative entitled to use force to
enforce the absentee landlords property rights.
The example is not idle. Absentee ownership would be an anathema to
classical liberals. Denying someone productive use of that land would be
considered a worse crime then the abstract ownership principal of
“ownership”. In fact, the only absentee owners in common experience
would be kings. This principal is recognized in common law.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
“Wealthy parents tend to instill (through genes or teaching) in their children a lot of habits: low time-preference, obsession with education, care with finances.”
I like how you are trying to present our society’s failures as if it was a virtue. The children of the wealthy have every advantage, given to them by their parents, and thanks to the unequal education system in our country, along with the connections their parents can present them, have a much greater opportunity to succeed. THIS IS A BAD THING; aristocracy, not democracy; yet you present it like it is perfectly OK. Because libertarian basically equals aristocrat (along with selfish, condescending douchebag with a bad superiority complex).
“But it should provide only that amount needed to protect people and property.”
And see, this shows the moral bankruptcy of the libertarian philosophy – you are presenting people and property as if they are equal. People are much more important than mere property. And the government needs revenue to, you know, do its job, which is to protect and provide for its citizens. Government needs to provide basic necessities for all its people, such as food, shelter, education, and health care. But no, you describe government doing its job as ‘handouts’, as if it should let the less fortunate starve. In other words: I’ve got mine; fuck everyone else. It is a completely amoral, feudalistic view of the government.
“For some reason, this incredible turnaround (if you don’t believe in free people and free markets) is never talked about today”
Look at the chart at the top of the page. The 1920s boom, like that of the 2000s, was useless. The new revenue only lead to higher incomes for the wealthy, and did not do anything to improve the economic standing of the poor, or in the 2000s the middle class (which barely existed in the 1920s). If a ‘good’ economy doesn’t help the majority of people, it might as well not happen at all. And, of course, the same laissez-faire economic policies that lead to the boom resulted in the crash of 1929, just as the Bush economy created the current recession. Although it is no surprise that a lord-of-the-manor libertarian you would admire the Coolidge-Hoover economy.
Pure ‘free markets’ don’t work, as history tells us the results are Greatly Depressing. It is also incompatible with free people, as it allows those who run major corporations way too much power over the rest of us. But libertarians, showing their aristocratic roots, don’t care about the excesses of corporate power, only government power; but government power is one of the few ways the people can protect themselves from corporate power.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Taxation should be extant but tiny and approaching an asymptote of zero.
I answered it earlier when I said, “But it should provide only that amount needed to protect people and property.”
Of course. This is standard. People and property are protected with force. I specifically said the government is there almost exclusively to provide force, but to minimize that by minimizing its scope.
You’d be hard-pressed to find many of us today who think that non-owners have the right to property that’s lying fallow. Assuming the right of something without permission is theft.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I’d like for the education system to be better for poor kids, but you guys are ideologically opposed to vouchers, etc. Aristocrats have seats bestowed on them by the government, which gets its wealth through taxes…
So you say. You don’t seem to believe that a bunch of progressives could form groups to help the homeless for free the way churches do. Maybe churchgoers are just better people than progressives, who seem to only be able to “help” by taking money from others.
Do you just skim read my comments?
April 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“I’d like for the education system to be better for poor kids, but you guys are ideologically opposed to vouchers, etc”
Vouchers have nothing to do with it. To improve education, the public education system needs to be improved – vouchers go to private schools, and so just duck the question of fixing the system.
“You don’t seem to believe that a bunch of progressives could form groups to help the homeless for free the way churches do”
Uh, what, do you really think progressives don’t donate to charities? We do. But once again, that is ducking the problem – it’s the government’s job to help the homeless, and private charities can do some good but are no substitute for proper services. But instead, no, you want government to avoid doing its job and dump everyone on charities because wah wah wah, you have to pay taxes.
“who seem to only be able to “help” by taking money from others.”
No progressives are taking money from others. Or am I stealing money from my employer when I ask to get paid? I’m sorry that you and other aristocratarians have some pathological hatred of actually paying your fair share, and would instead like to just all of the benefits of living in a society for free, but that’s your problem.
Question: would you get, say, a laptop by going into a store and just walking out with it, then when a security guard stops you and tells you you have to pay, throw a temper tantrum and tell him he can’t steal your money?
April 29th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Regarding “the rich contributing”..
The top 1% of income taxpayers ($388,806 Adjusted Gross Income and up) paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006.
The top 10% of income taxpayers ($108,904 AGI) paid 70.8% of all income taxes in 2006.
The top 50% of income taxpayers ($31,987 AGI and up) paid 97% of all income taxes in 2006.
http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6
Regarding the payroll tax, that’s not really a tax right? It is your “investment” for your future retirement or disability benefits. Uh huh…
I should also mention that “income inequality” graphs such as the one above do not generally take into account the difference between taxpayer and person. As Saez’s paper states “Because our data are based on tax returns, they do not provide information on the distribution of individual incomes within a tax unit. As a result, all our series are for tax units and not individuals. A tax unit is defined as a married couple living together (with dependents) or a single adult (with dependents), as in the current tax law.”
For example, if bob makes $75,000, sarah makes $25,000, and sam and fred make $10,000, the top quartile earns $75k and the bottom three quartiles earn $45k. If Bob and sarah marry, the top quartile earns $100k and the bottom quartile earns $20k, an apparent increase in income inequality.
The increase in single-parent households may also skew inequality figures. Single parents may earn less than single non-parents because of the challenges of full-time work while supporting a child. Most people in poverty in the US earn more than the minimum wage, but they work fewer hours, and I suspect this may be linked to child care issues.
Finally, the population of the US has not been static. A large number of immigrants have recently come into the US, as was the case at the beginning of the 1900’s when income inequality was also high. Many immigrants come with low skills, and they are attracted because they can make far more in the US than they can in their country of birth (income mobility generally ignored if you just look at US-only statistics).
April 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
thanks to the unequal education system
How is the public education system “unequal”? Spending levels per pupil seem to have little correlation with student performance. State-level per-student expenditures ranged from $3,969 in Utah to $9,643 in New Jersey. The District of Columbia spends$24,600 per student.
My suspicion is that the true “inequality” in public education is the inability of public schools to maintain discipline and safety and the associated negative peer pressure. Some of this is due to legislative and Constitutional limitations on teachers and schools.
It is a tough question, should the “bad apples” be allowed to bring down the performance of other students in the classroom?
If you put students who are motivated to learn in front of almost any teacher, they will learn. If you put students who are not motivated to learn in front of the best teacher, that teacher might be able to get some motivated to learn.
Personally, I consider eliminating the Drug War to potentially be the best thing we could do for schools (public or private) by eliminating the distraction of easy money and drug gangs from students, plus reducing the ethnic divisions between those policed and non-policed regarding drugs.
If we can increase the safety of our schools, I suspect we would be also able to attract better teachers at lower pay rates.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
As I suggested, you’ve essentially ceded your earlier position, all we
are doing (in a sanitized paraphrase of Churchill) is quibbling about
the price.
For purposes of argumentation, I offer that we are below a minimum
acceptable taxation rate.
Maybe so, but I believe that greatly weakens the moral case for
property. From what I can see, property exists for two reasons
* Allow best use of resources
* Allow greatest freedom to the greatest number
Property under direct stewardship can claim both. Property held in
absentia will often work against both. This is pretty much the Lockean
position.
I’m not against absentee ownership per se. It’s a pragmatic fact of
life. I do believe it has little moral grounds.
It’s a curious side effect of the modern state that it enables great
accumulation of wealth on a scale unimaginable before. It’s even more
curious that those so blessed would imagine that their property is
somehow on the same moral plane as Jefferson’s “Gentleman Farmer”.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
The 1920s boom, like that of the 2000s, was useless.
You must not like airplanes, radios, and cars then! These technologies were all advanced from prototypes to real products during this time.
As the dot-com boom took a research computer network to a global information web, and well you are reading the result right now.
Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve stuck with the Gold Standard during the post-1920’s recession, which created a tremendous deflation and economic destruction from 1929-1933, then FDR took the US off the Gold Standard (which helped some recovery begin), but unfortunately FDR also scared and over-regulated businesses, thus the full recovery could not begin until the regulatory gloves came off after WWII (and FDR was in the grave, and Communism was then the “enemy”).
April 30th, 2009 at 2:00 am
You want to keep poor kids in a public system so that they leave high school illiterate just because you can’t stand the idea that a private system works better. The D.C. voucher system costs 1/3 what the public schools do with giddy parents and similar or better testing results. D.C. public schools already are more expensive than some colleges, so more money is not the answer. The “fix” is something totally different.
Not much. The most generous are red-staters.
This is just an opinion. In this country it was once the job of private charities.
No progressives are taking money from others. Or am I stealing money from my employer when I ask to get paid? I’m sorry that you and other aristocratarians have some pathological hatred of actually paying your fair share, and would instead like to just all of the benefits of living in a society for free, but that’s your problem.
Aristocrats got their goods through state taxation. You already know my thoughts on that. If you were deciding fair shares I’m sure they would be close to no taxes for anyone who makes what you make and close to a 100% top marginal rate.
This would be the calculation for many progressives, I’m sure.
Clarify this analogy.
April 30th, 2009 at 2:15 am
No, I’m pressing for the system that delivers least coercion (asymptote of zero, which means to work toward a goal of 0%) while you’re pressing for the system of maximal coercion. Unless the top marginal rate is above 90%, it’s probably not high enough for you. I want government to be an afterthought and you want it to be the prime mover. Churchill would see the difference, even through the fat folds.
It’s not mine. It’s not my duty to figure out how to take someone’s property. I might offer to buy it.
But what is all this nonsense about absentee ownership? Do you think people should have to live on or directly use all the property they own?
April 30th, 2009 at 10:07 am
“The “fix” is something totally different.”
Really? What then? Oh, that’s right; you admit to being a libertarian, so it’s probably something monstrously moronic like privatizing public schools.
Newsflash: when it comes to providing basic services, free markets don’t work. That’s why our healthcare system is so inferior to the rest of the developed world’s.
“This is just an opinion. In this country it was once the job of private charities.”
Yeah; and everybody was worse off. Private charities don’t have the resources or scale necessary to help people on a systemic level; plus, many of them are religious and proselytize to the aid recipients.
“If you were deciding fair shares I’m sure they would be close to no taxes for anyone who makes what you make and close to a 100% top marginal rate.”
No; close to no taxes for the poor; I make quite a bit and should be paying my fair share. But of course, selfish assholes like you assume that anyone who disagrees with them is one of the lesser serfs. Then yeah, increasingly high marginal rates, probably getting to 80 or 90 at the top.
And yes, you are supporting aristocracy. Whether through taxes or through screwing over consumers and employees, the results – a permanent overclass, that believes they somehow deserve their unearned position – is the same.
“Clarify this analogy.”
Uh, how does it need clarification? It’s exactly the way the crybaby libertarians are, getting all the benefits of society then screaming “No! I don’t wanna pay my taxes! Wah wah wah wah!”
April 30th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Here’s the scoop on DC vouchers, paid for by the state. State-paid, but safe, cheap, and more effective.
You need some reality on this.
What numbers are you basing this on? Why is it that you think progressives don’t have enough money or aren’t kind enough to help?
The point remains; it’s not a matter of Churchillian degree, but of intent. Also, you are wealthier by comparison to the world’s poorest than America’s richest are compared to America’s poorest. Why shouldn’t you be taxed at 80-90% to fund aid for people who make a dollar a day?
No, an aristocracy is a familial “overclass” maintained by taxing poor people to give stuff to the rich. They are, therefore, the absolute enemies of libertarians. This is obvious. Is it possible for someone to make substantially more money than you without their wealth being “unearned?”