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At 2/16/09 12:01 AM, Dawnslayer wrote: There appear to be three prevailing economics viewpoints in the political forums (forgive me for generalizing you):

-Capitalism sucks, and the world should turn communist.
-Communism is inherently flawed, and capitalism is the better choice.
-Both systems are terrible, but there's nothing better out there.

Choice #2 is obviously correct. Communism and centralized planning has never worked on a large scale. It is hard to emphasize this point enough. Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba - all complete wrecks and failures (in fact, the first two were SO incompetent that their poor planning resulted in death tolls vastly exceeding those of the holocaust). This is not a coincidence - it is a testament to the utility of the free market system.

So I figured I'd bring an alternative to the table for us to shred to pieces: syndicalism. For those too lazy to read a Wikipedia article (lol@u), the premise is that organized workers' unions, called syndicates, determine economic practices by democratic principle, rather than an executive hierarchy (capitalism), surrendering control to the government (socialism), or a blanket equilibrium (communism).

Not to be mean or anything, but this is an incredibly retarded idea. The capitalist system already lets workers vote by choosing to work or not work at a company. And it also lets consumers vote by deciding whether or not they want to buy a product.

Also, if the idea is so good, why don't these people start creating syndicates themselves? Surely they could get some loans for starting a business, and let workers vote democratically on company policy. It's not like there's anyone stopping you from doing this. There's no law that says that companies have to have executives.

It seems to be a balance between the extremes of the other systems, at least as a concept. So: what's right with it, what's wrong with it, and would you accept life under such a system? How does it compare to the other, more popular systems?

It's idiotic. If it had any merit the syndicalists would create the system themselves, and would start making bank.

At 2/15/09 07:25 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

Stop.

Stop right there.

Wikipedia =/= valid source.

Dude, seriously. What a minor nitpick. You could go anywhere and get definitions of life pretty similar to his.

And the point of this thread is philosophy, not science.

Philosophy is just formal logic. And deciding that something exists because you cannot prove that it doesn't exist is quite illogical. I cannot prove to you that martians do not exist if you do not define them in a specific way. I cannot prove that there is not an invisible alien right in front of your right now.

It's quite impossible to prove a negative, no matter what that negative is.

At 2/15/09 10:09 AM, Achilles2 wrote:

1) Whether you are liberal, conservative, or libertarian in terms of fiscal policies and the economy (just for my own records)

My views are distributed across the board, but if anything I'd describe myself as a Nixon / Bush Sr. Republican on most economic issues.

2) Tell what you think is wrong with Social Security (if anything)

It's expensive, it can be cheated, people lose benefits as they become more productive (creating a non-linear incentive curve), it's difficult to decide who should get benefits.

3) Tell us any idea (yours or someone else's) on how to fix any problems

I'd expand the benefits and make them accessible to more people. Ideally I'd just give everyone a $10,000 check and then jack up taxes.

4) Do you think it would hurt the US more to enact Social Security Reform?

Yeah, probably. Social Security provides a basic safety net, and a great many people want to have some sort of back up if they fail.

At 2/15/09 12:38 AM, HibiscusKazeneko wrote: OK, I'm one of those people that oppose male circumcision for whatever reason (in my case, I'm a regretful elder sister of a victim) and I got this idea tat would probably fuel a Supreme Court debate: I have a doctor give me a traditional infibulation and when people start to protest, then I mention the hypocrisy in protesting the procedure.

lol. "Victim". I'd imagine that most Christian men in the US are circumsized, and it's really not that bad.

ITT tell me what you think. Will the government care? Or will I just look like an idiot? Or what?

Female circumcision is a lot worse than male circumcision. Really it is quite inappropriate that they happen to share the same name.

At 2/15/09 12:08 AM, Brick-top wrote: When my brothers ex had a kid, she got a free house for 2 years with benifits AND child support. He's now 4 and she has her own house, satalite TV, internet, Wii, Xbox, flat screen TV, a brand new kitchen, a redecorated living room (paid mainly by my brothers ridiculously high child support and her families donations) and she only has a part time job.

Is there any reason why your brother couldn't sue to pay lower child support?

Kids these days are like walking money bags, it appears very few can actually take care of their own children.

It's really a shame that your brother had to go through that sort of economic abuse.

At 2/13/09 05:13 PM, RussianGiant wrote: Well I've been noticing lately that America wants everyone to be like them. they enforce the american dollar in every country

Really? The dollar is used in every country? We "enforce" the dollar?

they enforce their language in every country to be taught

What?

they are trying their best to make english the first language in poorer countries first (then i think they would later move on)

My understanding is that people in these countries try on their own to learn fluent English, because it is a sign of having a high social class (the same way having an Appalachian accent is a sign of low social class in the US).

They are against all non-NATO superpowers with their own language (like Russia or China), and you only need some searching on the internet and you can find fascist stuff American websites say.

This is a reasonable point. The US is somewhat hypocritical in its alliances with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.

sure America is democratic but part of fascism is also trying to make everyone the same. Hitler's Germany did that, and America is doing that right now (only in a more clever way).

Right... So if I copied your clothing style, would you be a fascist?

This post may be too late because Obama was voted in but maybe its not outdated yet.....
if it is then here are my facts that America used to be kinda like fascist.

You have good ideas, but for the future I'd recommend that you do more research and fact checking.

I don't like this idea. A one hour class is more than long enough, and with a teacher who isn't good at giving lectures, it's torture.

If you are going to increase the length of the school day, teachers are going to have to waste time giving their kids breaks and stuff to increase their attention span. It might just be more efficient to teach them five days a week.

At 12/3/07 03:10 PM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: Doesn't this kind of negate the argument that he's a dictator in the making? If he really were trying to consolidate the powers for the purpose of a dictatorship then he wouldn't have lost this referendum surely?

Mugabe lost an election recently, and most people would still consider him a dictator.

Meh, either way, this is good for Venezuela. Whilst I'm a left winger, I don't think vesting total power in a single individual is a very good move and that did seem to be where Chavez was moving to

Democracy without economic freedom is essentially two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner.

At 2/13/09 01:57 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

At 2/11/09 05:32 PM, Al6200 wrote:

But there are specific cases where income inequality has had a relationship with efficiency, like in Zimbabwe (where Mugabe redistributed farmlands and single handedly crushed their economy) or China (where allowing people to accumulate wealth and capital was highly beneficial). Extreme wealth redistribution schemes can sink an economy, and likewise removing them can create a lot of growth.

I am aware of the equality-efficiency scenario, but it is not what I was discussing. The tax cuts were not impregnated with this paradigm. The developed world has long ago (excepting agriculture) stopped interfering in the market mechanism. Could the market be altered in order to achieve a greater equality? Yes, but it is not desirable, because of the complexity doing such things creates, and the efficiency penalty inherent to it.

The tax cuts are typically sold like this: "The only way to create real economic growth is to increase the amount of production, and the best way to do that is to free up capital which will be invested appropriately. The stock market is better at allocating capital then the government".

Just hypothetically, if you increased the marginal tax rate up to pre-Reagen levels, and distributed the wealth evenly, would the US have a significantly higher GNI?

Lower, 0 is perfect equality, since it means that the Lorenz curve of the nation is the same as the perfect equality straight line.
Distributing wealth equally would mean limiting private property, so I would never be in favor of such move. I am targeting income distribution, not wealth, taking a more "equal opportunities", not "equal result" position.
I believe that higher marginal tax rates should be imposed, maybe not 95%, but 60%, and I think that would help significantly.

I don't disagree with that position. My rational is that a person should be taxed in proportion to their wealth, and not their income. A person who makes 100k a year is way more than twice as wealthy as a person who makes 50k a year, because the person with the extra 50k gets to spend money

I suspect that immigration, globalization, and technology have played a bigger role in the GNI change that tax reform.

Not really, since Europe still has a much better income distribution than you do

Well, maybe.

This is true. But one thing you have to consider is that the US is considerably wealthier than the countries of Europe which score higher on the GINI index.

I am aware of this, the US beats in GDP per capita almost every country in Europe, and also has lower unemployment.
The European labor market is far from perfect, it has just chosen to hike labor costs favoring the already employed, and global equality, going against dynamism and the younger participants in the labor market. I believe reforms are to be had, yet they should not let go the pursuit of an egalitarian nation.

I support a system of welfare and aid to the poor, even it means lower productivity. This is an unusual position in the US, especially for a person who identifies as a conservative. But it just seems more reasonable to me.

People in the upper middle class (and upper class) could spare 10-20 thousand dollars a year to support welfare programs.

At 2/11/09 06:09 PM, Al6200 wrote: It's quite possible that the US has a low GINI index because we have so many jobs in the information and high technology sectors where people are paid based on their experience, and earn more money at different stages in their life.

True, but blaming the inequality situation on the high tech industry dynamics, is blaming the referee for a lost match. He might have been against you , but you lost simply because you didn't play well.

No, what I'm saying is that if one earns 100k a year for the later half of their career, and 50k for the first half of their career - that's much more equal than one earning 50k for their entire life and another earning 100k for their entire life.

The high-tech industry is not accountable for a difference of 15 points in the Gini.

Okay, but what about someone who starts as a cashier and then works their way up to mid level management through their career. Surely their income doubles, maybe even triples over the course of their lifetime.

And it's not just high tech industry, but globalization in general. The way I see it, the US economy has transitioned from having a large industrial/commercial class, to having an upper middle class that works with high technology, and a large service class that supports them. But perhaps that is just because I'm from Maryland, where there is an exceptionally large amount of work in civil service.

It would be interesting to see a GINI index of people at just a certain age, to control for factors like that.

Indeed.

Yeah, I also have gotten the strange urge to calculate the GINI index of medieval England. The problem is that the income statistics of that time usually take the form of:

"If ye go to the harbor, ye see more homeless people then thy eye can count"

Which of course makes it very hard to calculate a GINI index : (

At 2/10/09 04:50 PM, Elfer wrote:

At 2/4/09 05:46 PM, Al6200 wrote: But you have to admit that discovering something like calculus is a LOT harder when you don't have Matlab or graphing calculators. Or really strong education for that matter.

Though there's an interesting sub-discussion here: genius is not unique or special. Two people developed calculus at the same time. It would have happened with or without them. People make things that need to be made.

That's an interesting point. I think that people with IQs from 110 to 140 probably have the biggest impact on society, because they are intelligent enough to create new technology and manage society on a large scale, and there are enough of them to make a large impact (consider that only 2% of the population has an IQ above 130).

At 2/12/09 04:17 PM, AKACCMIOF wrote:

At 2/4/09 03:18 PM, poxpower wrote:

I bet you everything I own that there's 50 people alive today who are smarter and more talented than Einstein and you'll NEVER hear about them.

Unfalsifiable hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

I wouldn't go that far. There are crude tests you could do. For example Ramanujan, the Indian math genius, made advances in fields like number theory and abstract algebra even though he only had a very basic formal education in mathematics (!!!). Likewise there are probably some gifted elementary school kids who can figure out the basics of calculus on their own.

You could do a study for this. For example, you could go to a middle school and get some bright kids to take a test where you ask them to "Try to devise a way of measuring the rate of change of graphs" or a way of "Measuring the Volume of Functions" and see if any of them can do it.

At 2/11/09 06:42 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Implying that such a thing exists, in part or in whole, is a confession to the fact that poverty is very likely self imposed, rather than the product of something beyond their own control.

No, I think that poverty is generally not self imposed. But that does not mean that there are not those who would abuse a welfare system.

But I think that is simply a cost that we must accept if we want to provide a decent standard of living for all of our people.

In which case it seems that it's more unjust to rob a productive man of his wealth than just to give a poor man the basic necessities of life.

You might like this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Cen tennial-Ed-HC/dp/0525948929/ref=pd_bbs_s r_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234397357&sr=8-
1

Oh yeah, another point about the GINI index:

If someone starts out making 50k a year and retires making 100k a year, that's treated the same way by the GINI index as one man who makes 50k his entire life and another man who makes 100k his entire life.

It's quite possible that the US has a low GINI index because we have so many jobs in the information and high technology sectors where people are paid based on their experience, and earn more money at different stages in their life.

It would be interesting to see a GINI index of people at just a certain age, to control for factors like that.

At 2/11/09 05:17 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

The reduction of marginal tax rates has no efficiency effects, it only affects income distribution. Don't try to steer it into an equality vs efficiency issue. You can't simply use tax cuts as the miracle solution, especially because it generally (99%) transforms itself into a debt nightmare.

I agree that in the United States today, raising taxes on the upper class would not reduce efficiency. That's probably because the rich people pay too few taxes as it stands. But there are specific cases where income inequality has had a relationship with efficiency, like in Zimbabwe (where Mugabe redistributed farmlands and single handedly crushed their economy) or China (where allowing people to accumulate wealth and capital was highly beneficial). Extreme wealth redistribution schemes can sink an economy, and likewise removing them can create a lot of growth.

Quotas and interventions in the price mechanisms are a complete different issue; there are no success stories in these sort of interventions, and I do not believe in them.

It seems like a quota, like the one you had in Mao's China, is similar to having a very, very progressive tax scheme, in which nearly all of the wealth that someone creates is taxed away.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a large production quota is equivalent to an extremely progressive tax.

Immigration is like an unplanned child. It is a blessing that you have to deal with. Opposing immigration is killing American dynamism.

Sort of. I think that you could reduce immigration levels without killing all the benefits of immigration.

And since the Reagan tax reform, Income distribution in the US has been steering towards a 3rd world one constantly. It's on the verge of having the same income distribution of Mexico.

Just hypothetically, if you increased the marginal tax rate up to pre-Reagen levels, and distributed the wealth evenly, would the US have a significantly higher GNI?

I suspect that immigration, globalization, and technology have played a bigger role in the GNI change that tax reform.

US Gini: 45
Mexican Gini : 47.9

This is true. But one thing you have to consider is that the US is considerably wealthier than the countries of Europe which score higher on the GINI index.

(Note that I do not support the Reagen tax cuts. But I also don't oppose any sort of income inequality in principle. Sometimes allowing people to accumulate extra wealth is a good thing. Sometimes it is not).

At 2/11/09 02:09 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

That both presidents are running deficits does not make them the same, because one did in favor of the US elite

Supply side economics makes sense under certain circumstances. Consider Chinese agrarian policy in the early 1980s. The old system of quotas did not allow farmers to accumulate excess capital. But by reducing the size of the quotas and letting farmers sell their excess productivity on a free market, they really revitalized rural China and laid the groundwork for the explosive growth that has characterized the China of the past 30 years. Yes, it did increase income inequality, and it did lead to accumulation of wealth in fewer hands, but any thinking person acknowledges that it was sound policy.

The problem is that the Republicans have lost any sense of "Let's use the right tools for the situation" and just dogmatically assume that anything Reagen did must be redone in the extreme. This is because Reagen was an enormously successful politician (he won in states like California and Massachusetts, and he was a Republican), and people see copying Reagen as a sound political strategy.

and the other in favor of the little man, one did it under false premises (lowering taxes to the rich creates jobs), and the other under proved economic laws (the multiplier).

I don't agree with this. The Republicans are better leaders for the working class because they oppose illegal immigration, which has completely wiped out huge portions of the middle class in areas like food processing and agriculture. Go to some place like Nebraska and see for your self how all of the working class jobs in the factories have been replaced by immigrants.

At 2/11/09 12:38 AM, n64kid wrote:

That's where DEDUCTIONS come in. Sales of 5 million can really be a net profit of 200,000, but without deductions, most people will pay more in taxes than what they can possibly receive.

Explain why you'd consider his total revenue to be his income, and not just his profits.

At 2/10/09 11:21 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

Whoa, you're eliminating every other tax?
I'd implement a sales tax.

Yeah, I guess I was sort of using a "lower limit" approach to show the feasibility of a NIT. Of course you could add other taxes, but I don't see the point. I don't like sales taxes because they make governments feel an immediate pinch in any sort of economic downturn (see California).

And you most probably won't get a surplus, since you have to bring evasion into the equation.

Do you think that the GNI figure corrected for evasion? If it did, then you're right.

Sell it as a way to steer away from the huge debt you had, stress how Bush lowered taxes for the rich and your debt went up 3 trillion, stress how the burden will fall into the richest americans, and voila!

The thing is that a lot of Americans have a dislike of the whole concept of "class warfare". It seems disturbing that there can be an economic conflict between two different groups. For example, a lot of people in America criticized Obama because he wanted to redistribute wealth. That rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Having the majority in Congress does also help.

I think the people pushing for a Negative Income Tax are mostly Republicans. As much as Democrats love helping the poor, they want to control how they spend it (this is somewhat legitimate, I see no reason why the government should subsidize someone's drug or prostitution habit).

At 2/10/09 09:25 PM, Proteas wrote:

Do you honestly expect people to vote for doubling the taxation rate so the government can give itself

Okay, I graphed the tax rate of the NIT and the current income tax scheme. Note that I graphed the income tax rates, but didn't show any of the deductions that people get. So I suspect that on the left side of the curve, the blue line is actually significantly lower.

So most people are paying higher taxes, but they get a balanced budget on welfare. I personally would pay an extra 5% in taxes if I knew my money was working to create a better society. I don't know about everyone else though. Maybe they wouldn't go for it.

a surplus that they'll most likely misspend anyway?

I'm really surprised that no one has criticized the negative income tax on the grounds that poor people will just spent any extra money on drugs, alcohol, and hookers instead of improving their long term outlook, because that seems like the most obvious criticism of giving poor people money.

At 2/10/09 05:20 PM, Proteas wrote:

You just said the same thing twice with different phrasing, you do realize that, right?

That's because I've shown you the correct numbers over and over again, and you keep making mistakes and not understanding how the system works.

I've gone through and reviewed my numbers, and the way I'm looking at it, you've now got 70% of the working population plus 26% of the general population drawing on this system. That's 179 million people out of a country that only has a 309 million people (give or take a few million), or roughly 57% of the population that will be drawing on this plan, that's a 475% increase in people drawing on the system.

Look at these calculations (and btw your comparison with social security is wrong, this is a tax policy and a form of welfare in one elegant system):

US 2007 Budget: 2.73 trillion
Percent of US Budget taken by Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid: 42%
US 2007 Budget without Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid: 1.58 trillion

US Gross National Income: 9.78 trillion
Total Revenue from 40% Flat Tax: 3.912 trillion

Number of US adults over 19: 220 million
Total Size of Grants: 2.2 trillion

Total Revenue: 3.912 trillion
Total Costs: 3.78 trillion (grant + budget)

So with a 40% flat tax and $10,000 grant we'd actually run a 130 billion dollar surplus. (Note, GNI data from Nationmaster, demographics data from CIA World Factbook, budget data from Wikipedia).

And you're telling me that this system is going to be able to handle that, while the RICH are somehow still going to be paying less in taxes as you do here shortly....?

I don't think you're understanding that this is a tax policy and a welfare system. With a 40% rate and a $10,000 grant, the system is revenue neutral.

Are you just repeating what I said with your own spin on it at this point? How is "pay a lower percentage as you make more money" NOT "getting taxed less?" If I am progressively paying in less and less cash as I am progressively making more and more of it, that would mean I'm being TAXED LESS than the guys making next to nothing.

So is a flat tax progressive? Most people would say that it isn't, yet under a flat tax rich people pay the most taxes. A progressive tax is a tax where the rate at which you're taxed increases as your income increases. For the wealthy social security is regressive because there is a dollar figure cap on how much you can pay.

At 2/10/09 05:07 PM, n64kid wrote:

I earn 500,000 in revenue. I have 400,000 in expenses. You tax me 190,000. I'm beyond broke. Not being able to deduct expenses is batshit retarded.

I think your income would actually be $100,000. I mean, if I go to work and my company makes a big sale, is that considered part of my income?

At 2/10/09 11:40 AM, morefngdbs wrote: Hi, I have a rather large wrench I would like to throw into your works .
You can have a simple system like you have now, but there are some major problems with it. How does it work for the self employed. Unlike a worker who goes to a job ...drives the forklift or pushes the paperwork Or passes out the food & collects the money. They have "EXPENSES" that are TAX DEDUCTABLE because it would be unfair to tax someone on earning $10,000 for making& installing your new kitchen , When they spent $7,000 on supplies. Plus you can't then just tax them for earning $3000 dollars if you remove the supplies ,because they need a truck, a shop & all the expenses that go along with that.

Explain why it would be unfair to just tax their entire income.

So that's the first problem. Second is programs...programs like registered retirement savings, Registered Educational savings, there are lot's more like first time home buyers, adult education/re-education etc.

How would these be affected in one way or another by a negative income tax?

All the flat tax ideas in the world have to take into consideration of small, medium, & large companies & all the advantages in having workers with higher pay, as opposed to low pay & higher taxes.
You need to think about revenue streams as well.

It seems like a self-employed person should pay about the same amount under this tax plan as they would under our current income tax.

No matter how you look at the problem of taxation, there will always be areas, lots of areas, that won't fit in your 'flat tax model'

Like what?

At 2/10/09 04:27 PM, Proteas wrote:

That's because our government is anti-efficiency. Think about it.

Yeah. A negative income tax would be SO much more efficient and streamlined. You wouldn't even need to fill out some crazy tax form. Just report your income and you're done.

The new system would streamline welfare, thus eliminating several government agencies responsible for welfare (or so I would think). The government would have to downsize. People would be out of work. And what would be there to keep them from starving to death?

The very welfare system they got downsized over.

The people who would lose their jobs (bureaucrats and accountants, mostly), would just get jobs in private industry, which would be expanded because the government would be able to lower taxes (fewer people on the government payroll).

What you just said was an example of the broken window fallacy, which is where people think that a kid breaking a window stimulates the economy by making people replace the window. But in reality the man who had to pay to replace the window would have spent his money else where.

But here's the thing; you're tripling the the number of people who are going to receive benefits while DECREASING the revenue coming in from taxes. They say that by 2025 Social Security won't be able to pay out all but 25% of the owed benefits, if we had a system like what you're talking about, the system would be bankrupt in the next few years.

I don't know about that. This system loses money as people retire, and their income hits $0 and they only receive benefits. The social security system loses money as people retire, not just because less people are paying into the system, but because more people are getting benefits.

Under a flat tax, everyone pays the same regardless of income. Under a 20% system, that's a 15% loss of revenue.

Yeah but this is a 40% rate.

Regressive? As in you get taxed less as you make more money?!

No, as in you pay a lower percentage as you make more money. Ever wonder why the flat tax is a flat percentage, and not a flat dollar figure payed in taxes.

At 2/10/09 12:34 PM, Proteas wrote:

All you're doing is putting a number on a fact a lot Americans deal with already; the more you make, the more government takes away from you in taxes.

Any tax scheme that isn't regressive works like that...

But I'd still be paying out 20% of paycheck in taxes (which I already do), and instead of seeing it divided 6 different ways, it would just be one.

I have a feeling that there are a lot of people who could get benefits from the government but don't because the tax system is so complicated. I'm filling out my W-4 right now, and it seems like it was written by some kind of android who had a deep hatred of everything human and understandable.

You realize that by streamlining the welfare system like this that there's going to be a few government agencies downsized, right?

How deliciously ironic.

What's ironic about that. : |

Just the same as it is now. The only difference being that everyone in this topic thinks this is an improvement on the system, when in it's not I'm still going to pay the same amount into the system as I was before, only now I'm going to be paying for all of the wage earners under $50K (70% of the working population) to get a government check instead of paying for the 12% of people over the age of 65 eligible for Social Security and the 14% percent receiving disability.

Which gives them a lot of opportunity. No? The idea is that you give poor people not just enough money to get by, but extra capital to actually let them get ahead.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that now EVERYONE (including the rich) are paying a flat tax across the board, which will decrease the amount of taxes brought down by people making the most money that dems used to use to pay for the system as it stands now. So you've got fewer dollars trying to do more, like the way it is now with social security.

The highest income tax rate that exists right now is 35%, so the rich will actually pay more under this system. Also with social security there is a cap on how much you can pay, so it is actually regressive for the upper middle class and upper class.

So I ask again, WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

Meh. I'm pretty sure Huckabee is the politician that's come the closest to supporting something like this.

At 2/10/09 11:23 AM, Proteas wrote:

So... this system really isn't changing anything from the way it is now?

No. Under current income taxes, if you increase your income from $0 to $10,000 your post tax income goes up by $8,500.

If you increase your income from $10,000 to $20,000 then your post tax income goes up by $8,500.

$20,000 - $30,000 causes a post tax income increase of $8,500

$30,000 - $40,000 will cause post tax income increase of $4,500.

$8,500 is not the same number as $4,500.

At 2/10/09 02:00 AM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

1)Should the U.S. get rid of the wage cap for social security?

Yes. The whole thing is a money redistribution scheme in the first place. The way it is today a lot of money goes from the middle and upper middle classes to the lower middle class, but comparatively less comes from the upper class.

2)Should the U.S. get rid of the flat tax for social security?

Why not just make it 10% of your income, no matter what your income is? Or better yet, why not just make it a negative income tax!

At 2/10/09 12:18 AM, Proteas wrote:

... I'm still waiting for someone to explain this incentive to me. Because the way I see it, the 10k in question is free regardless of the condition the economy is in, and you lose it through taxation at the $25K and $50K marks on 40% and 20% taxes respectively.

You lose it, and you pay more in taxes. But you do this no matter how much money you make. The idea is that as your income increases your post tax income increases at a constant rate.

Either way, something like only favors people who make less than 50K a year, meaning the 30% of the population that earns above 50K annually wind up paying for the 70% that earns less than that.

That's why its a considered a tax policy and a safety net / welfare system.

Unless you get fired, in which case...

Your salary is zero. Not negative.

Which sort of reminds me of a futurama joke. Fry pulls into the fast food drive through, "Can I have a hamburger and a small fry". And then the cashier says "For only 5 cents less, I could downgrade that to a super small". Then Fry is like "Yeah, that's a great deal! Wait, what?!?"

At 2/9/09 10:34 PM, Proteas wrote:

Okay, so your chart uses 40%? Fair enough. Call me stupid, but why does it change percentages so many times? Here's how my calculator breaks it down.

Negative numbers mean that you get a check from the government. Like I said, the amount that you pay in taxes is exactly equal to:

40% of your income - $10,000

If the number you get is negative, then you should receive a check from the government instead of

At 2/9/09 11:30 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

lol.
Or you could just do what we do here; you pay "negative taxes", but you don't get the money right away, you get to pay less when you're making a profit.

I'll admit that I don't like this idea. I think that the negative income tax grant should work to reduce the severity of business cycle by giving people more when the economy is bad, and less when it is worse. Also, I like the negative income tax because it not only gives the poor enough money to survive, it gives them money that they could invest, spend on education, etc. It actually provides a route to escape poverty.

But one idea that I REALLY do like is tying the size of the grant to the GDP, so as it increases people get larger grants.

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But more generally, do you support the negative income tax? I read about it in Samuelson's book on economics, and it seemed like a clever idea. The other drawback I considered is that rich people might pay fewer taxes under the program then they would normally. But because the system is simpler, rich people would have fewer loopholes to exploit (which the democrats create because they think it's funny to make a Republican vote against a tax credit for efficient light bulbs which is totally impossible to enforce).

The other drawback is that some people become moochers. But in reality you really can't create a decent safety net without taking that risk. And I'd like to have a safety net, even if it means people are slightly lazier.

At 2/9/09 07:32 PM, Proteas wrote:

What are you on? With a 20% tax rate, if I make 50k a year, I'm paying $10k in taxes. That's from YOUR CHART.

My chart uses a 40% rate. And to avoid further mishaps in the future, here is the formula I'm using:

Amount Paid in Taxes = 40% of Income - 10,000

So if you make $50,000, then you pay $20,000 minus $10,000 a year, which is $10,000. If you make no money than you get a check for $10,000.

$14K, again, YOUR CHART.

My chart uses a 40% rate.

How can my income be increased after it's been taxed?

If you're income increases by $10,000 - then your post tax income increases by $6,000 if there is a 40% flat tax.

But the payout is just the same, which means we'd still be in the same issue we're in now in terms of more people drawing out than are paying in.

Not everyone gets paid social security.

No, it does not. It sends the message that the government is going to tax you more for making a livable wage than they used to.

Are you opposed to the negative income tax because it is less progressive than normal taxes.

Then what is my motivation or incentive for wanting to make more than 50K?

For every extra $10,000 you make, you get to keep $6,000 (under a 40% rate). There is nothing special about 50k, except that under a 20% rate that's the "break even" point, under which you start to pay more in taxes then you get from the grant.

So the only thing this would be doing is just putting it all on one line of my paycheck instead of six? Whoopee, I'm still paying as much but now I don't get to read HOW my government is

My point was that people who make $60,000 a year already pay significant taxes. In fact if you are filing singly that is a 25% tax rate.

You presented a chart for supporting evidence that showed how little you know about the argument you're putting forth.

Okay, and your point is... Do you oppose the negative income tax because you think it's too progressive? Not progressive enough?

You also have a viewpoint on this matter than is conflict with itself, in that on one hand you say that it's a great thing that will give people more money after they've already been taxed, but on the other hand, you highlight the fact that this is really no different than social security, itself a flawed system.

The idea is that the curve of post-tax income is linear and progressive. That is really the whole advantage of the system.

At 2/9/09 06:13 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

I doubt there is any real significant correlation between gender and illegal activities. I think the statistical correlation is due to two things

I'll admit that I have no direct evidence on this subject, but from my life experience it seems obvious that men are more violent and likely to cheat/steal then women. I mean, even in grade school that seemed like it was the case.

1. When a man gets attacked by a woman he is less likely to report the crime than when a woman gets attacked by a man
2. Women are more likely to win in court than men.

This might be true. I remember reading somewhere that men are more likely to identify with the defendant, and women with the victim.

Studies on left brain activity between genders have been largely inconclusive. There are some studies that do show men are more psychologically predisposed to mathematical genius, but no real consensus has been reached.

I'm pretty sure that every test of any sort of intelligence ever done shows that men have a greater variance in intelligence (I actually said it backwards in the last post).

I know that men have a larger standard deviation in SAT scores, 116 verses 110 on the math section. That's not that big, but if we're looking at the top 10 mathematicians in the US then it probably gives men a non-trivial advantage.

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloa ds/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2007/natio nal-report.pdf

At 2/9/09 06:25 PM, Proteas wrote:

If I'm paying out more in taxes than what I'm getting back from the government, then that negates the benefit entirely and thus nullifies any incentive to make beyond $50K a year.

With a 20% rate, if you make 50k a year, then you pay no taxes. If you make 60k a year, then you pay $2000 in taxes. Note that you post-tax income goes up $8000. The increase in post tax income is the same no matter how much your income is.

Think of who it is your aiming this tax act at; the average American worker who hates paying taxes. $50k is considered the median income level in the United States today, and at best that is a mathematical average at that. You're not taxing rich people, you're taxing from the middle class on up. What you will wind up doing is creating a tax program that encourages people to make less than that (or file it that way on their taxes) and pretty soon you'll have more people drawing out than paying in.

I'm getting tired of saying this. For every extra $10,000 you make, you get to keep $8,000 (for a 40% rate, $6,000).

Therefore there is never a monetary benefit to be had from reducing your income.

We've already got one financial black hole in the treasury department with Social Security, and you want to add another one?

This would probably replace social security.

I don't give a damn who you have behind you, tell me how you intend to get the average voter to support such a measure that they wouldn't vote out their elected representatives for voting "yes" on it.

People would vote for it because it creates a constant incentive to increase one's income, at any income level. It would create a safety net for the poor that is simple and efficient and ensures that they never have a net decline in post-tax income as they increase their income.

So at $60k, I automatically am paying more than my benefit of $10k you claim I'm receiving.

Yeah. It's called a negative income TAX. If you make $50,000 or more (on a 20% rate), then you pay more in taxes then you get back. This is pretty much the way it is today, because people who make $60,000 a year pay payroll taxes, income taxes, social security, etc.

Yeah, thanks for proving my point.

To be honest I really don't understand what you're point is.